How to kickstart en economy

If it was easy to make money on Wall Street, everyone would do it. Most of those guys started out making 100+ calls a day and working 80 hour weeks to get where they are. I'd like to see everyone try that.

I hate it when people begrudge money & success. Yes, there are overnight success stories, and the inheritance class, but for the most part, those who made it that far distinguished themselves with either hard work, brains or ideas that were better than their colleagues. It's ridiculous to talk about punitively taxing them.

Exactly dude. I've got friends from school who chose that life and have done very well. However like you said they work 12 to 16 hours a day and work all day Saturday. They spend most of their 20's without a personal life. If that's what makes them happy then more power to them. I don't begrudge them for having economic success but I know not everyone wants to live that lifestyle even if you make good money. To each their own. But I'm not going to go around hating on someone who chooses to dedicate themselves to their work and are successful at it.
 
How does this take care of the people on SS who survive a young bread winners death?
Noit sure if this is what you mean, but the way I see it, little else of the SS system would significantly change. SS would still make payments to retirees when they reach retire and benefits age (I'm retired, but not yet of benefits age, so I still pay in.) SS would still make payments to surviving spouses (spice?) and qualifying dependents if the primary "bread winner" kicks off, would still make payments for things like partial or total disability, etc.

The difference would be that instead of SS trust fund being turned into T-Bills (and subsequently spent because T-Bill revenues go into the general fund), instead of drawing a measly 1.5-2% interest rate (which will never be paid because that money, too, is turned into T-bills and spent via the general fund) we see the trust fund properly invested, just like is legally required of private retirement funds, with a substantial real revenue from investment (instead of soaking the tax payers for the interest drawn) also going into the trust fund. Instead of worrying about the SS trust fund falling behind sometime between 2017 and 2040 (depending on who you listen to, though ALL admit it WILL fall behind) and eventually running out of money leaving the tax payers responsible to sustain the whole mess, it could become a self sustaining fund, even to the point that taxed revenues could be decreased but still maintain long term sustainability from investment income. This is because the performance of the stock market has averaged 10% AROI. As long as the trust fund continues to grow (ie: FICA revenues exceed SS payments) then it will grow that much faster - an extra 250 billion dollars this year if we were to start now. By the time SS payments exceed FICA revenues, say in 2017 worse case claim, the trust fund will have doubled, NOT including any extra FICA revenues put in and invested in the meantime. So instead of drawing on a fund of 3-3.5 trillion making a tax-payer supported 2% AROI, we'd be drawing on a trust fund of over 6 trillion making 10% AROI. If FICA revenues manage to hang on until 2024, the fund will be beyond 12 trillion. 2031, 25 trillion. At that point it would be self sustaining even without any additional FICA revenues. And self sustaining is SUPPOSED to be the original intent, was it not?

It sure as hell wasn't intended to be tax payer supported, which it is even now, even though FICA revenues exceed SS payments, because the tax payer is footing the bill for T-Bill investments.

Get the picture?
 
If it was easy to make money on Wall Street, everyone would do it. Most of those guys started out making 100+ calls a day and working 80 hour weeks to get where they are. I'd like to see everyone try that.

I hate it when people begrudge money & success. Yes, there are overnight success stories, and the inheritance class, but for the most part, those who made it that far distinguished themselves with either hard work, brains or ideas that were better than their colleagues. It's ridiculous to talk about punitively taxing them.

We begudge liars, crooks, and fascists.
 
They're opposed to privatization because those who support it have lost all credibility. Again, the people who support it are the same people who got us into this mess. How can we trust them to manage SS after the disaster they've caused?

IKE knew that SS was as sustainable as America. Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Bush all ran up the debt and turned the American dollar into monopoly money. When we can no longer sustain SS it won't matter. We'll have reached the end of our time.

Privatizing social security will not save the economy. It will only give those with OPM derived incomes more money to skim.
The mega yacht class of ship didn't even exist in 2000. There are now over 170 of them and the shipyards in Singapore can't build them fast enough to meet the demand.

Why would you want to give them an even bigger piece of the pie?

ROFLMAO.... so Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Bush all 'ran up the debt', but Kennedy, Johnson, Ford, Carter, Clinton and Obama did not????

you do realize that it is CONGRESS that controls the purse strings... not the President?

No one is suggesting that privatizing SS will 'save the economy'. We are suggesting that it will help to save SS.

Also, you are wrong... the people that 'got us into this mess' are the same ones that want to keep control of the SS funds so that they can continue to borrow against them.
 
ROFLMAO.... so Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Bush all 'ran up the debt', but Kennedy, Johnson, Ford, Carter, Clinton and Obama did not????

you do realize that it is CONGRESS that controls the purse strings... not the President?

No one is suggesting that privatizing SS will 'save the economy'. We are suggesting that it will help to save SS.

Also, you are wrong... the people that 'got us into this mess' are the same ones that want to keep control of the SS funds so that they can continue to borrow against them.

Haha! That's Desh's new hero for you.
 
Haha! That's Desh's new hero for you.

Yup, it's Congress:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/iraq_the_war_that_broke_us_not.html

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Sources: CBO and U.S. Statistical Abstract (see below).

...Just for grins, use the above chart to dissect Christopher Hayes' statement that our current and future deficits are caused by "three things: the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush tax cuts and the recession."

Two of those three things -- the wars and tax cuts -- were in effect from 2003 through 2007. Do you see alarming deficits or trends from 2003 through 2007 in the above chart? No. In fact, the trend through 2007 is shrinking deficits. What you see is a significant upward tick in 2008, and then an explosion in 2009. Now, what might have happened between 2007 and 2008, and then 2009?

Democrats taking over both houses of Congress, and then the presidency, was what happened. Republicans wrote the budgets for the fiscal years through 2007. Congressional Democrats wrote the budgets for FY 2008 and on. When the Democrats also took over the White House, they immediately passed an $814-billion "stimulus." (The $814 billion figure is from the same CBO report as the Iraq War costs. See sources at end of article.)

The sum of all the deficits from 2003 through 2010 is $4.73 trillion. Subtract the entire Iraq War cost and you still have a sum of $4.02 trillion.

No one will say that $709 billion is not a lot of money. But first, that was spread over eight years. Secondly, let's put that in some perspective. Below are some figures for those eight years, 2003 through 2010.

Total federal outlays: $22,296 billion.
Cumulative deficit: $4,731 billion.
Medicare spending: $2,932 billion.
Iraq War spending: $709 billion.
The Obama stimulus: $572 billion.

...
 
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