Re: social security trustees' report released two months late

Rumpelstiltskin wrote:

On Mon, 01 May 2006 15:44:47 -0400, Alan Lichtenstein <arl@xxxxxxx>
wrote:


Rumpelstiltskin wrote:


On Sun, 30 Apr 2006 18:16:41 -0400, Alan Lichtenstein <arl@xxxxxxx>
wrote:



Rumpelstiltskin wrote:

( previous post snipped-follow thread )



I don't see why people collecting SS should get all the pain while
the thieves who stole so much of the money in the first place should
be shielded as much as possible from the pain they created. Screw
"the economy" If "the economy" just means rich people staying rich,
then I don't have much use for it. People can buy Volkswagen instead of Mercedes for a while, at least until everybody has a decent
standard of living, especially the people who paid insurance to that end all their working lives.

I agree that the people collecting Social Security should not be the ones to shoulder all the pain. In fact, I believe they should not shoulder ANY pain. And I would hardly characterize the irresponsible actions of politicians as 'stealing.' They were just doing what spineless politicians do: Trying to satisfy everyone without ever having to make any hard decisions. And the economy is not just rich people staying rich; it's about keeping Joe Sixpack working at a job that pays him a middle class salary. Joe Sixpack doesn't buy a Mercedes, but he doesn't even buy his Ford if he's unemployed. If you raise taxes so high, you're going to hurt not only businesses, but those working stiffs as well. And since the increase in taxes will NOT be going to provide services to people, such as building roads, etc., instead going to retire debt, the public will additionally suffer. The Public can take small amounts of belt-tightening, but not large doses.

You touched on something above that's one of my bugbears: taxes
in the USA. They're not as high as taxes many other places, but in
Europe one has National Health and better social programs. In the USA, I find it hard to see what the taxes are doing for the people.

The reactionaries have one valid point. Raising taxes never produced anything.



Running up a $10 trillion debt is preferable?

A different issue. When they're right, they're right. and on the assertion I commented on, they happen to be right.




No, not different. The $10 T debt was instead of collecting
taxes sufficient to cover expenses.

Rumple, in the manner in which you wrote it, it indeed different. The tone in which you wrote it was an attempt to substitute this issue in favor of the discussion dealing with the relationship between taxes and economic prosperity. totally different issues. Now, if you want to speak about the effects redeeming those I.O.U.'s will have on our future economic prosperity, why that is another matter, and one which I have been posting to.

Economic growth does that. In Europe, they have settled into a status quo and accepted essentially a second class economic status. They have relatively little productive industries and while their high taxes do indeed provide services for their citizenry, which we don't have, they do tend to create a burden which I believe, ultimately works against their welfare. Obviously, they don't think so, for they continue to levy the taxes. And obviously, the population doesn't care, because they continue to get the services. Odd.

No, they don't think so. Australia runs something like Europe. My
Aussie roommate didn't have a steady job for three years (about age 19 to 21) after he left here and went back to Australia. I asked him
about health care, and he responded blithely that was not a problem in Australia. I think the Australians, and the Europeans, like things
that way. I would I have liked things that way in America myself.

I do not want to accept a second class status quo situation for a few conveniences. I believe that we can have both, if we refuse both the reactionary free market stupidity and the lefties total government care

from cradle to grave. There needs to be a middle ground, where

Government picks up those services which private individuals no longer can manage. Health care is indeed one of them. But we don't have to kill the goose to get it's eggs.




I myself prefer the Australian/European way of doing things. It's
not second-class at all to me: Hanging onto a job beyond retirement
age, or despite a distaste for it, in order not to be in danger of
being out on the street or having to beg for help or put up with bureaucratic indifference and contemptuousness is what seems
second-class to me.

I reject the European system, because what you have is economies which are stagnant. There is little economic growth, little opportunity for venture capitalism and essentially, a status quo. I prefer opportunity married to provision of services for the citizenry. We could do better, but we don't necessarily need the European model. The downsides are not in our interests.

Now, that doesn't mean that we can't find some middle ground. We still have the semblance of an economic plant, which we could still use if we'd get off this nonsense of the free market economy, which is the shortsighted mantra of the reactionaries. The one thing the U.S. has in its favor is that it still has the market for the consumer goods that are produced. We don't use that club to leverage our interests.



I would like to see the lobbying establishment killed off in the
USA. That institution seems to me a source of a great deal of
needless waste, and anti-democratic corruption.

A free society has to have access to Government. Unfortunately, access tends to generate influence peddling.

I don't think anyone else has a lobby system anything near as bad
as the USA, where business rides roughshod over the interests of the
people. That is arguably entirely the fault of the American people,
though, because the population elsewhere feels more like it owns the
government rather than just being a helpless pawn tossed around by
hopelessly powerful and indifferent interests. There are laws to keep
government and business from colluding elsewhere as they do in the
USA, enacted by the watchfulness and demand of the people.


We could easily cure that by total government funding of election campaigns.




That's a possibility, but I myself have one big objection, in that
it entrenches existing parties. They're entrenched anyway, I know,
but government funding entrenches them further and reduces hope of large-scale change. We do, IMO, need the possibility of
making large-scale change short of revolution, or we'll have little
hope of ever eliminating scourges such as the lobbyist establishment and the military-industrial marriage and the
medical-industrial-political marriage.

Somewhere along the line, you're going to get a popular member of one party or the other who got burned by his party and will create a new following. Equal campaign funding will give him equal status, and a new party. Almost happened in 1992. Can happen again. Best candidate for something like that is McCain.

We need more stringent laws to keep our politicians honest. After all, if the politicians weren't buying, the lobbyists would have no audience.

And if the American people wouldn't stand for their politicians
being bought, against the interests of the people, the lobbyists
wouldn't be able to buy the politicians, or at least wouldn't be able to buy each one more than once.

The American people enjoy being fat dumb and happy, with the emphasis on the dumb. They don't want to think; they don't want to have to critically evaluate. They want to make their political decisions on the basis of witty sound bytes rather than informed judgment. They want to 'be sold' by the media on their political candidates, the way they are 'sold' their breakfast cereal. the one worst thing that could happen to America would be the elimination of political party labels on the ballot. Such an action would strike fear into the hearts of most citizens, so much so, that without the label, they wouldn't know who to vote for, and consequently, wouldn't.

I think the worsening of the condition of the middle class might be
starting to wake some people up. I can't swear to really having
clearly observed any such thing though, admittedly, and I might just
be engaging in wishful thinking. Just before the French Revolution there was a very stable society of upper class and lower class, but
it got too far out of touch with reality and it collapsed suddenly,
and unexpectedly to those who thought they were securely in control. Things would have to get a lot worse in America before they got to that extreme, but that is the direction they're heading.

Well, I hope you're right. Maybe economic strait jackets will force the middle-class to take a critical look at their 'leadership.' Perhaps then, they'll vote with their pocketbooks, rather than with their false national pride.

That would be a GREAT thing for the Democrats, since their voters are generally more discriminating and do tend to make critical choices, which Republicans tend not to do. Republicans know this, and of course, would never permit it.


Eventually, we have to retire the public debt or devalue. I don't
know if the public debt can be retired at this point, it certainly
won't happen with the republicans in office, the way they've been
going starting with and including Reagan. On the other hand, it seems to me that most of the rest of the world is living the same
fantasy that debt doesn't really hurt.

I agree that we won't retire the debt with the Republicans in Office. But that is very likely to change soon.

Unfortunately collapse may be unavoidable now no matter what's
done, and if the Democrats are in power when the house collapses,
they'll get blamed for the collapse.

I don't think so. When the Democrats get back in power, you'll see an end to this quagmire of a war, and a tax increase to pay for the largesse of the dark Bush years. Somebody will have to clean up the mess, and it sure as hell won't be the Republicans who made it.





The total income taxes collected by the federal government in 2005 was less than a trillion dollars, according to:
http://mb26.scout.com/fncprepsfrm15.showMessage?topicID=41.topic

Our national debt at the end of 2005 was about eight trillion dollars, according to
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/faq.html

Where will the money come from to pay off the debt?
Shall we double personal income taxes for the next eight
years? If not that, then what can do the job? The Democrats are great, relatively speaking, but this is too huge a task.

"If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.

--- Lewis Carrol
Obviously, the money will have to come from those debtors, namely, the American People. Taxes on the wealthy can be raised and general tax levels can be returned to the pre-Bush days, when we had surpluses. Surpluses over a 40 year period can substantially reduce the debt. And if you cut expenditures( like an unnecessary war ), you do even better.

( snip )



Cutting down SS means that people are going to suffer too. It's
not a question of "are" versus "are not", of course, it's a question of "who" and "how". I'm tired of SS being attacked as if it's the problem - it's not so much the problem as the victim, but there seems little concern expressed for taking a pound of flesh from the
sources that victimized SS. Any such responsibility gets swallowed up into the fog of musings about "the economy", which doesn't
seem to mean the welfare of people who paid into SS in good faith.

I'm not in favor of cutting Social Security. I'm just a realist and I understand the dilemma that we now have with regard to solving the problem, which will only get worse the longer we wait.

I don't think we should just slough off the "dusty old IOU's". I agree that something needs to be done for the future, but not nearly so much as is advertised by those who think of the money
already paid in to SS as "dusty old IOU's". I'm personally opposed
to raising the SS taxes, which leaves me with raising the retirement
age - not an attractive prospect to me, but not as bad as
alternatives.

Unfortunately, given my position, I am inclined, unfortunately, to agree with Jeff about that characterization. Those I.O.U.'s will never be paid. And that's the problem.

They'll be paid if I have anything to do with it. Of course, I
won't have anything to do with it. I'll be in a wheelchair, assuming
my wheelchair hasn't been sold for scrap by then to help pay for
golden parachutes for Exxon execs.

Rumple, come back to reality; they'll never be paid.




One of them just got paid $400 Million.





I guess we could, for a while, keep collecting money from people indefinitely with the promise it was going to help them out later, then continue to renege when it came time for them to get the benefits they'd been promised.

That's the Republican way.

Too bad for them, but it would



sustain "the economy" (in the new sense) a little longer until the wheels of progress got to the point they had to go so fast that the
materials could no longer sustain the acceleration, and everything
flew apart at once because its safety margin had been cut so
thin it could no longer be of any help.

Alice in Wonderland. Run faster and faster, just to stay in the same place.

That's the history of our politicians solutions to the problem. We will have a similar one which will only defer the problem for another few years.

It's a fairly recent problem, starting with Reagan. We did, true,
run up big debt for WWII, but that was for a vital reason. Now we're running up debt for no good reason.

Unfortunately, as much as I would like to blame Reactionary Ronnie, for this one I can't. It's simply a case of demographics, which became noticeable on his watch.

Ronnie is the one who started running up deficits and never paying
them off. That was the start, and it was an explosion rather than a slow start, of the current fiscal irresponsibility.

Well, Clinton did fix the mess that Ronnie made somewhat. The problem is that the American public was so damn stupid that they didn't learn that his voodoo economics just didn't work, and they went right on in their stupidity and elected Dumbya who is doing the same thing, in spades.




No argument from me there.




Things may have gone too far now. People talk about how the
deficit is not much compared to the GNP, but, oddly enough the
roller coaster shows no ability even to slow down the acceleration into heretofore unplumbed depths.. Hopefully, things
won't shatter into complete collapse until after I'm dead. Then,
après moi, la déluge.

Rumple, just wait until China gets tired of purchasing our debt.

Oh yeah, I've mentioned that myself, as have others. Sometimes
I look toward China and see a cat waiting at a mousehole for the most promising moment to pounce.

I don't consider it pouncing. It will strictly be a business decision.

Sure, a lion pouncing on an antelope is a business decision too.

The difference between what you post in each example is significant, making the analogies incomparable. In your initial post, your underlying motivation, which you wanted to communicate was malice of forethought, where one party takes an action to deliberately do harm to a second party, and for no other reason than to do harm. The example you post above, does not have that underlying motivation, but rather a clear example of how two organisms interact in the ecosystem.

The effect might be the same, but the motivation is different. And that's why your analogies are not applicable.





I don't remember the "malice" part. I wasn't thinking of malice
on the part of China, except in that China would like to replace the USA as the world's great power, but that's not different from
Rockefeller trying to beat Vanderbilt, or from a battle of lions to
take over a pride. There might be malice as an evolutionarily-
proven spur to implementing a successful strategy, but malice isn't the thing that makes things happen - it's the strategy itself -
the quest for self advantage - that makes things happen.

The malice was inserted to demonstrate the difficulty with your analogy. China does indeed want to replace the U.S as the world's greatest economic power, and whether we like it or not, they're going to do it. The only question is "how soon?" The free market economy will hasten that day, while if we take steps now to reduce those effects, we'll be able to defer it for a goodly number of years. And the reason is because WE control the major markets now. If we wait too long when we slip into economic decline, as is rapidly happening with the demise of our middle class, then we'll lost that edge and we'll be totally impotent as an economic power. We need to force China to raise its costs of production NOW, when it can't really afford to do so in order to compete in our markets. And if we force China to raise its costs, we can once again make manufacturing profitable HERE and effectively compete.

.

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