Same old republicans, same old failed ideas

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midcan5

Member
Brian Williams started the debate with the fact most Americans blame the policies of the last administration for the mess the economy is in now. So what do the candidates do but outline the policies of the last administration in more abstract and fluffy words, commenting on how well they have done and will do. Nothing new here, boring and predictable.

I am hoping Obama puts on his FDR/Truman hat and says something meaningful tonight. If he tries to please the party that got us here, he will only further alienate the sane people in America.

One of the curious ironies of the night for me was the fed can't do it but the state can. Think about that for a second. The united states of un-united states.

And Massachusetts requires a mandate because folks didn't or couldn't pay. That wins the best answer for the mandate but went unnoticed.

Calling social security a a ponzi scheme demonstrated a lack of conscience and experience of a Rick Perry and of the republicans.

Social security is the greatest thing America does for America, to deny that is have no heart and no soul. It helps many who through death, accident, or sickness need help. The heartless republicans only think of the rich, as the rich is where they are, or where they want to be. Empathy is missing from their soul.

And SS runs well - minus the morons in congress who haven't a friggin clue what they are talking about.

"For 45 years, the defense-industry analyst paid into the system until his retirement in 1994. But with all the recent hoopla over reform, Mr. Logue, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate, decided to go back and check his own records. Would he have done better investing his money than the bureaucrats at the Social Security Administration?

He recorded all the payroll taxes he paid into the system (including the matching amount from his employer), tracked down the return the Social Security Trust Fund earned for each of the 45 years, and then compared the result with what he would have gotten had he been able to invest the same amount of payroll tax money over the same period in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (including dividends).

To his surprise, the Social Security investment won out: $261,372 versus $255,499, a difference of $5,873." http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1227/p01s03-cogn.html
 
Missed a little bit there sonny....

Advocates of privatization point out - correctly - that Logue's analysis compares theoretical stock returns with what the Social Security Trust Fund earned - not what he himself would get from the system.
From that perspective, the investment approach looks better, they argue. Over the long run, a typical worker can expect to earn 4.6 percent a year (after administrative costs) on a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds and only about 2 percent or less from Social Security, according to federal estimates reported by Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute, long a proponent of privatization. Hypothetically, someone earning $30,000 annually would at the end of a 40-year career receive nearly twice as much under the investment approach ($344,000) than with Social Security ($185,000).


And another inconvenient truth is if you're unlucky enough to die before you reach retirement, you and your family members get NOTHING from Soc. Sec....
 
bravo said:
Missed a little bit there sonny....

Advocates of privatization point out - correctly - that Logue's analysis compares theoretical stock returns with what the Social Security Trust Fund earned - not what he himself would get from the system.
From that perspective, the investment approach looks better, they argue. Over the long run, a typical worker can expect to earn 4.6 percent a year (after administrative costs) on a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds and only about 2 percent or less from Social Security, according to federal estimates reported by Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute, long a proponent of privatization. Hypothetically, someone earning $30,000 annually would at the end of a 40-year career receive nearly twice as much under the investment approach ($344,000) than with Social Security ($185,000).


And another inconvenient truth is if you're unlucky enough to die before you reach retirement, you and your family members get NOTHING from Soc. Sec....
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You just willingly guzzle the koolaid that the Cato Institute passes out and you don't even question it.

Does it surprise anyone that an organization that has, in YOUR words "long been a proponent of privatization" would claim that social security earnings would be lower than earnings through private investment?
 
I recently took the time to clean up backed up documentation on our portfolio, very diversified, moderately conservative. I shredded lots of pages but I kept the main page as it has this nice graph showing the growth. Anyone who thinks the market is not a casino is a bit of a fool. Sure, if you are Buffet and can move millions around you'll do fine but the growth rate, while better than the bank today, ain't that great. Bush and the republicans in 2008 set many people back so far, they may never catch up. I know people today who are taking large sums and putting it in cash. But that isn't really the point of social security, SS is insurance and a buffer for working people. Wonderful wonderful thing for many, my mom used it till her recent death wisely. Heartless fools who read corporate sponsored think tanks that do anything but think are sad people.
 
the truth for a change

'Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult'

"...The GOP cares solely and exclusively about its rich contributors. The party has built a whole catechism on the protection and further enrichment of America's plutocracy. Their caterwauling about deficit and debt is so much eyewash to con the public. Whatever else President Obama has accomplished (and many of his purported accomplishments are highly suspect), his $4-trillion deficit reduction package did perform the useful service of smoking out Republican hypocrisy. The GOP refused, because it could not abide so much as a one-tenth of one percent increase on the tax rates of the Walton family or the Koch brothers, much less a repeal of the carried interest rule that permits billionaire hedge fund managers to pay income tax at a lower effective rate than cops or nurses. Republicans finally settled on a deal that had far less deficit reduction - and even less spending reduction! - than Obama's offer, because of their iron resolution to protect at all costs our society's overclass." http://www.truth-out.org/goodbye-all-reflections-gop-operative-who-left-cult/1314907779
 
"I believe in God and I believe in free markets." Ken Lay, Enron CEO


Bravo, another aspect of this debate corporate think tank ideologues miss is the market is managed by people, you know some I'm sure. And you know what, some ain't so good. Consider Enron and consider 2008 instead of the propaganda money buys to hypnotize.

The August Harper's outlines the issue well if you can find a copy, excerpt below.

From Easy Chair 'The Age of Enron' By Thomas Frank, August 2011, page 7

"Another hallmark of the contemporary scandal is a sort of unconscious journalistic perversity. [ I would add corporate perversity too. ] In virtually every case we have been considering, what turned out to be the worst companies were considered the best. Management theorists loved Enron. Fortune magazine compared it to Elvis. “We’re on the side of angels,” Enron president Jeff Skilling told BusinessWeek in 2001.

Skilling’s statement chimes nicely with the famous 2009 self-assessment of Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who said he was “doing God’s work.” And why shouldn’t he make such a claim? In the decade past, Goldman was routinely included on such lists as World’s Most Admired Companies (Fortune), 100 Best Companies to Work For (ditto), Best Place to Launch a Career (BusinessWeek), and Global 100 Most ustainable Corporations (the verdict of Corporate Knights, a magazine launched in 2002 to “humanize the marketplace”). And before journalists learned to scorn WaMu, the biggest bank to fail in American history, they invariably praised it as “innovative.”

http://harpers.org/archive/2011/08/0083527
 
midcan5 said:
"I believe in God and I believe in free markets." Ken Lay, Enron CEO


Bravo, another aspect of this debate corporate think tank ideologues miss is the market is managed by people, you know some I'm sure. And you know what, some ain't so good. Consider Enron and consider 2008 instead of the propaganda money buys to hypnotize.

The August Harper's outlines the issue well if you can find a copy, excerpt below.

From Easy Chair 'The Age of Enron' By Thomas Frank, August 2011, page 7

"Another hallmark of the contemporary scandal is a sort of unconscious journalistic perversity. [ I would add corporate perversity too. ] In virtually every case we have been considering, what turned out to be the worst companies were considered the best. Management theorists loved Enron. Fortune magazine compared it to Elvis. “We’re on the side of angels,” Enron president Jeff Skilling told BusinessWeek in 2001.

Skilling’s statement chimes nicely with the famous 2009 self-assessment of Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who said he was “doing God’s work.” And why shouldn’t he make such a claim? In the decade past, Goldman was routinely included on such lists as World’s Most Admired Companies (Fortune), 100 Best Companies to Work For (ditto), Best Place to Launch a Career (BusinessWeek), and Global 100 Most ustainable Corporations (the verdict of Corporate Knights, a magazine launched in 2002 to “humanize the marketplace”). And before journalists learned to scorn WaMu, the biggest bank to fail in American history, they invariably praised it as “innovative.”

http://harpers.org/archive/2011/08/0083527
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Yes....the market is managed by people.....and yes, Corporations are managed by people, etc.....whats your point ?.....is it that some of those people are crooks ?

shit happens....

What about investments in Apple....Microsoft.....Intel.....Google.....Home Depot...Walmart....PPL....EXXON......and hundreds of other companies that were not run by crooks.....

Instead of ending up with what SS hands you, you just might have a hundred times that much with well managed investments over 35 or 45 years.....
 
I find it amusing a liberal would use the phrase "same old failed ideas" so soon after Obama's speech on job creation........
 
PostmodernProphet said:
I find it amusing a liberal would use the phrase "same old failed ideas" so soon after Obama's speech on job creation........
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I was thinking the same thing. Especially since the ideas proposed the Obama WERE tried and DID fail, whereas the idea of privatizing SS and investing it in a manner similar to the way every successful corporate pension fund is handled has NOT been tried, and is only PREDICTED to fail by those who prefer a locker full of government IOUs to actually having money in the SS trust fund.

It is also noteworthy that the predictions are based on catastrophic failures of individual corporations, and not on the overall performance of the stock market over the years. When FICA taxes were increased under Reagan, and the surplus of revenues removed from the general budget, and put into the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) trust fund, (unofficially the Social security Trust Fund), the DJIA stood at slightly over 1200. (No, I did not drop a zero.) From 1984 to today, DJIA - and the market in general - has increased by a factor of almost 10 INCLUDING THE RECENT FALL OFF. Even at the bottom of the banking crisis, with DJIA standing near 6500, investments from 1983 were still showing well over a 5-fold increase. That's an average of over 8% per year, compounded. What we got by "investing" in U.S. treasury notes was slightly an ROI of about 2.7% And that is using stock values at the BOTTOM of the crisis.

Come to today, and DJIA is standing over a 9-fold increase from 1984 (even after the recent drop-off of over 300 points) which comes out to almost 10% annual ROI over the 27 years. Had we invested surplus FICA revenues in the market at the inception of the SS trust fund, it would be sitting at well over $7 trillion, instead of around $2.5 trillion. In fact, had we invested in stocks, the SS trust fund would be nearing the point of making SS truly self-sustaining even in the light of increased life spans, and decreased ratio of contributors (those still working and paying FICA taxes) and beneficiaries. Instead, we are facing a system in which the trust fund (already being drawn against, which, according to liberal economists was not supposed to happen for 7 more years) will be depleted by 2035 at best, probably sooner.

And one more point: by "investing" SS trust fund revenues in U.S. treasury notes, they gained interest at the rate of 2.7% annually. That interest had to come from the general fund. IOW, the tax payer is paying the interest on the SS trust fund. Investing in the market, and the economy itself would be paying the ROI, instead of the tax payer.

In short - investing privately makes sense, even using SS funds. Investing in treasury notes not only is a far smaller ROI on those funds, when we need a high ROI, but the SOURCE of the interest just places an additional burden on the tax payer. We are paying FICA taxes, AND paying income (and other) taxes to pay the interest. What the hell kind of sense does THAT make?
 
SmarterThanYou said:
maybe you were sleeping under a rock or something, but BOTH parties got us 'here'.
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That may be but one party in particular does not want to raise taxes to help fix the problem.

How soon people forget history. Social Security was private, for years. For thousands of years, in fact. And during all that time to "get it right" some elderly persons still ended up living in abject poverty. Whether some people didn't save or others invested their money and the companies went bankrupt or still others needed their savings for an emergency they all ended up in the same position, poor and hungry.

Frequently people will say it's their money and they should be permitted to invest it as they see fit with the government mandating a certain amount must be placed in a private retirement fund but where is the logic to that? Let's say a person loses their job and they have $20,000 in their retirement fund. Three months later they have difficulty making their mortgage payment and risk losing their home. If that happens the house will be sold at auction and they'll probably lose the down payment they used to buy the house.

If the retirement fund is their money it would be logical to take, say, $10,000 of it to make a number of mortgage payments insuring they keep their home which, when sold later on, will be a great source of retirement income. What possible logic could the government use to counter their argument?

Of course, we would still have the same problem we started with and that is the people whose investments went bad would end up with nothing unless there was some scheme where everybody's investment retirement plan was subjected to being skimmed off the top. If one made between 5% and 10% on their investment the government would take 1% to finance the fund. Between 11% and 15%-->2%. 16% to 20% --> 3%, etc.

That might be a solution. Of course, during a dip like we're experiencing now the fund would be quickly running dry unless the government skimmed a bit more. Similar to raising taxes.

Regardless of what solution people come up with some people will have to pay to cover the less fortunate. Agree?
 
We have raised FICA taxes repeatedly, and all it does is push the problem a few years into the future. Raising taxes (the eternal liberal response to every problem that ever raises its ugly head) is NOT a "fix" or even close.

Reagan raised FICA more than any one president in history; raised them high enough so working people were paying more than SS was needing at the time; raised them so we would create a surplus to be used later, because even then they knew the increase in taxes would eventually (sooner than predicted, as usual) be used up. Well, later HAS come. We are now using the SS trust fund instead of adding to it, and what was accumulated (and borrowed) will run out far sooner than even the most pessimistic of forecasts predicted. This is inevitable because, if nothing else, we are using the trust fund sooner, and therefore before it had a chance to accumulate as much as predicted.

Raising taxes is a short-sighted "answer" that will invariably end up failing in the long run. It's time to actually FIX the system instead of depending on repeated, failed band-aid answers.
 
Good Luck said:
We have raised FICA taxes repeatedly, and all it does is push the problem a few years into the future. Raising taxes (the eternal liberal response to every problem that ever raises its ugly head) is NOT a "fix" or even close.

Reagan raised FICA more than any one president in history; raised them high enough so working people were paying more than SS was needing at the time; raised them so we would create a surplus to be used later, because even then they knew the increase in taxes would eventually (sooner than predicted, as usual) be used up. Well, later HAS come. We are now using the SS trust fund instead of adding to it, and what was accumulated (and borrowed) will run out far sooner than even the most pessimistic of forecasts predicted. This is inevitable because, if nothing else, we are using the trust fund sooner, and therefore before it had a chance to accumulate as much as predicted.

Raising taxes is a short-sighted "answer" that will invariably end up failing in the long run. It's time to actually FIX the system instead of depending on repeated, failed band-aid answers.
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Cutting benefits across the board is not fixing the problem. Raising the retirement age is not fixing the problem. The logical and easiest solution is to claw back the benefits, through taxes, from those who do not require them. The purpose of SS is to ensure the elderly are not destitute. It's absurd to cut benefits to the needy so a wealthy individual is able to receive a check.
 
LOL I knew you would end up with the age old "tax the rich" mantra - talk about the same tired old failed ideas.

And how is taking benefits away from a select group of the populace - possibly the ONLY group whose contributions have paid in full the benefits they receive, NOT a cut in benefits? Seems to me cutting benefits to zero is a pretty severe cut. What happens when there are no more rich for you tax and spend assholes to tax?
 
Good Luck said:
LOL I knew you would end up with the age old "tax the rich" mantra - talk about the same tired old failed ideas.

And how is taking benefits away from a select group of the populace - possibly the ONLY group whose contributions have paid in full the benefits they receive, NOT a cut in benefits? Seems to me cutting benefits to zero is a pretty severe cut. What happens when there are no more rich for you tax and spend assholes to tax?
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"possibly the ONLY group whose contributions have paid in full the benefits they receive"

Are you saying that everyone other than that select group receive more than they paid in? If that's the case then SS is a deal!

As for "What happens when there are no more rich" that's about as likely as having no more poor.

Why is it so difficult for you to understand the country is capable of looking after the poor and ill? The resources are here. The ability to grow the food. The ability to build enough homes. Why do you want people to do without? Why do you want some people to have more than they need when others are suffering? Why do you not care about other people? Were you taught to believe that way? Were you in need once and no one helped?

Just trying to understand why you think the way you do.
 
apple0154 said:
"possibly the ONLY group whose contributions have paid in full the benefits they receive"

Are you saying that everyone other than that select group receive more than they paid in? If that's the case then SS is a deal!

As for "What happens when there are no more rich" that's about as likely as having no more poor.

Why is it so difficult for you to understand the country is capable of looking after the poor and ill? The resources are here. The ability to grow the food. The ability to build enough homes. Why do you want people to do without? Why do you want some people to have more than they need when others are suffering? Why do you not care about other people? Were you taught to believe that way? Were you in need once and no one helped?

Just trying to understand why you think the way you do.
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Do you really imagine that those that work long and hard and prosper will continue to just give what they earn away so people that won't, don't or can't work and prosper can enjoy a standard of living for doing nothing.....really ?
 
It is quite obvious you cannot understand. When any kind of problem facing the human spirit arises, the ONLY thing you can think of is government. Government. Government. Government. Government. Government. Government. Government. Government. Government. Government. Government. Government.

Government is NOT always the answer. In fact, government is RARELY the correct answer. Why, you ask (and have been REPEATEDLY told, but you refuse to hear) are government programs bad? First, because the programs are almost invariably designed to CREATE dependence on the very programs which are SUPPOSED to help people - which means further and PROLONGED poverty, by the very design of the assistance system you laud. What kind of "help" is it when the people are enmeshed in the system which PURPOSELY KEEPS them at a low level of income, and then takes away assistance at a rate greater than they can replace by working to get out of the system? And to top it off, use fear mongering of those bad, selfish, mean conservatives who want to take EVERYTHING away from them. I do NOT call it help. I call it ENSLAVEMENT to government, using economic traps and fear. That is NOT the mark of a country dedicated to liberty of the individual. That is the mark of a country whose government is more concerned about keeping its power over the people than serving them the way it was designed to do.

You have NO fucking idea what it is like to TRULY be poor. You look at people in government tenements eating prepared meals on food stamps while watching color cable TV and you call them poor because they cannot afford a new car, a bigger TV, and a 5 bedroom McMansion. Sorry, but those whom we deem as living below the poverty line in the U.S. are considered borderline wealthy by a large percentage of the Earth. (Not to mention personal experience.)

And, in case you did not notice (which you rarely do because you are so blind to anything but your own set of big mommy government ideals all else escapes you) I was not the one who mentioned cutting SS benefits. People paid in (mostly involuntarily) to the social security retirement system, they deserve to get what they paid for. That means we need to redesign the system so it CAN give the people what they were promised WITHOUT running out, WITHOUT bankrupting the government, and WITHOUT placing an unfair burden on the wealthy. As usual, you COMPLETELY ignore what was ACTUALLY written, and pull up the usual, brain dead, and quite tiresome strawman argument that if we don't want to solve things YOUR way, it means we don't want them solved at all.

This is my argument with regard to SS: The liberals are dead set against anything resembling privatization, and tell horror tales (again, the fear mongering of which they correctly, yet still hypocritically accuse republicans) of what would happen if we were to invest SS funds in the stock market. They whine about all the crashes and crises, yet fail to acknowledge that even WITH all the crashes and crises, a stock portfolio would still have produced 5 times the ROI as the current system provides, with the ADDED feature of NOT depending on additional taxes to pay the accrued increase in value. THEY ARE WRONG!!!!! And the entire history of the stock market INCLUDING THE GREAT DEPRESSION, proves that their fear mongering is pure unadulterated bullshit. Tens of millions of people have provided for their retirements through stock investments. Andd the only ones to actually LOSE are the ones who panicked and sold off during a crisis. Those who held on during the last crisis, at most, ended up delaying their retirement by a year or two - something that has also been happening with those who depend on SS for their retirement, but for a lot longer. Many of those who held on, and did not panic, managed to make MORE, by staying calm and then grabbing a bunch of stock at crisis prices. A number of big names KILLED during the crisis. Now, imagine what would happen if the U.S. took FICA revenues and hand their control over to a group of money managers of the type referenced above: ones that understand the stability of long term investments despite any crises. One can find stock price histories in 1000 different places on the net, and using those histories can easily see that over the long term, and INCLUDING crises and sell-offs, stock values have ALWAYS gone up, ALWAYS recover after a crisis or sell-off, and ALWAYS brings in ROIs at rates significantly greater than any other investment practice. IMO, the REAL reason democrats (and some republicans) do not want to hand SS over to an outside agency is they do not want to give up the economic and political power SS has come to represent.

Again, it's about power. The republicans, for the last several decades, have been about securing power via convincing the people they need protection from outside threats, from the Cold war to terrorism, we are supposed to willingly give up our liberties so government can make us safe and secure from those evil people out there who want to kill us. BULLSHIT. Yes, there are bad people out there. Yes, there are people who want to kill us, or impose their own system on us through violence. But NO, we do not, should not, and as far as I am concerned WILL not give up my liberties to be "made safe" by a government whose PRIME purpose is to secure THEIR power OVER ME.

And, on the other side, the democrats are using the SAME TACTICS of fear and intimidation. But instead of bad people "out there", the boogy man for the democrats are the wealthy. The wealthy want to enslave us! (while the government does exactly that with their so-called assistance programs) The big, bad corporations want to make everyone but their CEOs poor. (But, then, who will buy their goods and services?) The democrats have a different bad guy, and propose different tactics to "help" us poor little people's who can't blink without mommy government; but in the end it is STILL a game of "us" (with government laughingly pretending to be on our side) versus "them". And, of course, as with the republicans, we are supposed to willingly hand over our liberties so that government can make us safe and secure from the democrats' version of the bad guy.

BULLSHIT. Government is NOT the answer because government is NOT out for the people, they are out for THEMSELVES. From the politicos writing and passing the laws, to the functionaries and bureaucrats who implement them, the end game with government is POWER. And every time government GAINS power, it is at the cost of liberty for the people.

Yes, we CAN feed and house the people of these United States. But we can do FAR BETTER at that job by doing it in a manner that does NOT give government more power over ourselves or our economy than is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. We have allowed the interstate commerce clause to become an excuse to do anything. That is one reason we are in the trouble we're in.

SS CAN and SHOULD be privatized, because a private company can and will do a better job of handling FICA revenues to generate more revenue that do NOT cost the tax payers even more, make the necessary payments efficiently, keep the costs of running the program down, and, in general, keep the system solvent. SO WHAT if they make a profit doing so? If they can make SS WORK, without or with minimal added taxation, are they not EARNING a profit? Do we cut our own throats to begrudge someone making money off of making a system WORK that the government has grossly botched?

And assistance programs CAN and SHOULD be handed over to local governments, which are for more aware of, and for more responsive to, the needs of their communities than an overbearing, one-size-fits-all, overly regulated federal program with its inevitable over sized, bloated self-sustaining and self-serving bureaucracies and waste. And, above all, it is way past time that the PEOPLE started taking on the PERSONAL responsibility for all these things, for themselves AND their families (INCLUDING the elderly so they AREN'T solely dependent on SS), AND their neighbors who are in need, instead of foisting it off on government because we are too busy keeping up with their facebook accounts to be bothered with doing anything ourselves.
 
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