What Memorial Day means to NY Times readers
Cortillaen sends us a link to an article in the New York Times which highlights the saddest images it can as their Memorial Day weekend remembrance, One image is probably one you’re familiar with – Katherine Cathey, camped out overnight by the remains of her husband LT James Cathey on the night before his burial. Cortillaen warned me in his eamil to not read the comments, but, I couldn’t help it;
At the end of the article you ask an incredibly important question: What can I do?
What can we do? We can push our state and federal representatives to more heavily subsidize higher education so that we can have a much larger percent of the population with fully developed intellects.
[...]
Is there any doubt that with a more educated, more discerning, more deliberative voting population that George W. Bush would have ever been elected? A man that lacked the most essential quality that is necessary in United States President, i.e., intellectual curiosity.
An educated people would have more broadly pinpointed his lack of intellectual curiosity and therefore would have concluded that he cannot handle the nuance of critical decisions because he lacks the self-derived onus to investigate these nuances. The Iraq war would never have happened and future wars can likewise be avoided. That is what we can do.
Did you resist paying your taxes to fund these wars? Did you demonstrate, speak out, write to your political leaders, write letters to the editor? Did you, and do you, do everything you can to prevent needless wars? If the answer is yes, I salute you.
The Iraq war is especially tragic, started by a bunch of psychopaths who do what psychopaths do: lie, self-serve, and enjoy the spectacle of the death and destruction they cause.
Read Robert Hare’s book on psychopaths, Without Conscience, to understand how the Iraq war happened, how Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld came to power, how Little George was so manipulated; how dangerous Romney is.
Nowadays, is the decision to enter the military merely and solely an economic one? If so, one will surely never see the top 1% submit to military service and go in harm’s way.
What “American values” are worthy of this sacrifice? Do those values include “maximization of shareholder value”?
Is it to be regretted that “corporate persons” are unable to go in harm’s way on behalf of their (financial) interests like flesh-and-blood human “resources” and “capital”?
I remember the old anti-war phrase from the 60′s: “What if they gave a war and nobody came?” It’s a good question, isn’t it? Bush and Blair got America involved in a senseless war based on lies. There wasn’t even a draft in place. Why do men so willingly march off to kill on command in behalf of the Anglo-American oil cartel? Very sad indeed.
He was sent to his death (by men who evaded military service themselves everyone of them) on the otherside of the world to kill poor people and farmers.
Ask his widow what she thinks of the war
Every solider, in every war, who is not sent because s/he is a literal slave, goes because s/he chose to go. If the soldiers would refuse to fight, we would have no war. War happens because people think war is exciting and noble, or necessary, or inevitable.
The USA had no business going to war in Iraq and shouldn’t be in Afghanistan. The POTUS at the time lied, straight forwardly and stupidly, lied. I knew it then and so did many of my friends. Nonetheless, many people, men and women, chose to go to these places and fight.
And then they wonder why there’s a gap between the military and the people they’re defending in this country.
May 27th, 2012 at 8:48 am
Thanks, Jonn, for making my head explode this morning.
May 27th, 2012 at 8:52 am
We should apply their logic . . . and simply announce that, henceforth, the military will refuse to defend “blue state” interests.
The next 9/11 will hit a “blue” area simply because big cities are the targets, and they are overwhelmingly “blue.”
So, if they want to protect themselves from the bad guys out there . . . they can throw their organic granola bars at them.
May 27th, 2012 at 9:01 am
And that’s why I tend to avoid reading the comments at the Fish Wrap (also because of their 10 article limit).
Sadly, this doesn’t shock me. I’m too used to Lefties holding these types of bat guano crazy beliefs.
May 27th, 2012 at 9:17 am
And that same electorate put the empty suit that is BO into the White House! The stupidity that comes out of the NYT is breath taking
May 27th, 2012 at 9:19 am
All you have to do is understand the fundamentals of the worldview that drives the left (soft Marxism and counter-tribalism) and you can pretty accurately predict what they will say on any issue, so William is absolutely correct, this is sadly predictable.
Anyway, the old media can’t die too quickly for me. The Times loses money hand over fist, but the Post seems to be doing fine.
May 27th, 2012 at 10:06 am
[...] This ain’t Hell… discusses what Memorial Day means to the NY Times readers [...]
May 27th, 2012 at 10:12 am
Surely the comments quoted above are embarrassing to the “left,” as well. Ranging from a man with a newly discovered thesaurus to a man eager to brag about and recommend the only book he’s read in his life; these pseudo intellectuals are not representative of any group other than idiots.
May 27th, 2012 at 10:26 am
Comments in sites like these are entertaining but unsurprising. The short bus crowd on the right has places like Fox Nation and FR……..while their counterparts on the left have DU, Kos and the NYT.
The comments on this NYT article merely remind is of the disconnect some have with our military, and the distinct lack of intellectual curiosity we see daily from coast to coast. Unfortunately these particular comments inject politics and mar the real meaning of Memorial Day.
May 27th, 2012 at 10:34 am
Well I’m glad to see someone equate the New York Times (the “Old Gray Lady” and the “Paper of Record”) to Kos and DU. It’s perfectly true, of course, but it shows how far they have fallen.
May 27th, 2012 at 10:41 am
@7 Embarrassing, yes, but largely because they’re saying inexpertly and loudly what many people think.
May 27th, 2012 at 10:47 am
The freedom of speech most of us here spent years defending includes the freedom to spout truly inane nonsense in public. That’s regrettable, but is also unavoidable.
IMO the NYT (and other left-oriented papers) tend to attract as both writers and commenters those who’ve grasped the first part of the concept (free speech) without being able to discern the fact that they’re usually guilty of the second. It would be entertaining if it weren’t so sad.
“God must love fools, for he made so many of them.”
May 27th, 2012 at 11:03 am
As far as I’m concerned, that article is hate speech.
May 27th, 2012 at 11:11 am
Anti-war doesn’t mean anti-military.
You all know me. You know my affiliations. You know what I think of the Iraq War.
Today I’m in DC. I just got back from the Korean War Memorial and the World War II War Memorial, and I’m on my way to Arlington now.
I may post about it later, it’s been a really intense experience.
However, I will say that it’s not just the left who uses Memorial Day for their purposes. I just got into a heated discussion with some folks who thought the Korean War Memorial was an appropriate place to recruit for their church.
May 27th, 2012 at 11:18 am
…Mother. Of. Freaking. Gawd….
There just aren’t any more words to describe the utter foolishness of these people.
May 27th, 2012 at 11:33 am
And thus the reason I have implemented a “don’t look at the comments” policy when reading any article.
May 27th, 2012 at 11:40 am
For those shit comments and their freedom of speech, the only thing that I can say about the fools God made is that the gift of ignorance is bliss for them. They gave no clue and they never will.
May 27th, 2012 at 11:43 am
Army Sergeant, foolish people doing foolish things. Much like many of the commenters on the NYT article.
May 27th, 2012 at 11:58 am
If the new york times’ “writers” had NOT attended college, they may have HAD A CHANCE to think straight — as it is, they are brain-poisoned (“washed”), brain-dead zombies who are incapable of identifying Man, but can see only another robot-critter such as they are .
May 27th, 2012 at 12:20 pm
Yesterday I stopped at a restaurant and had to park next to one of those stupid front engined Beetles. This piece of crap had anti war, anti this, anti that, bullshit stickers all over the rear end of the car.Out of about 6 customers, still early, I zoomed in on one sitting at the counter near me, but she didn’t fit the bill. You know, covered in beads, frumpy dress kinda like an Amish dress, long hair down to her whatsit, but she didn’t have any of that. So, I started homing in on another one. In the meantime, miss prim and pretty, got up and left in said VW. I got my order and hit the road vowing if I ever saw that piece of crap again, no the car not her, I’d puke all over it.
May 27th, 2012 at 12:44 pm
@ #13- Get pic’s too, AS.
May 27th, 2012 at 1:03 pm
When I see crap like this I’m reminded of John Stewart Mills’ quote, “War isn’t the ugliest of things…” If these people can look themselves in the mirror and justify themselves and their points of view, I don’t feel anger or spite for them, I feel pity.
May 27th, 2012 at 1:10 pm
Adds clicked,to help fund an awesome website.Keep up the good work.
May 27th, 2012 at 1:10 pm
A couple of weeks back you had a thread in which the majority of posters were advocating ending social security and medicare. I’m pretty sure those comments would be far more shocking to 90% of the people then anything you quoted above.
May 27th, 2012 at 1:18 pm
Here’s a quote from a commie pinko you all can seethe over!
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower,
What’s worse, he made the speech to a group of newspaper editors! That military-hating bastard!
May 27th, 2012 at 2:30 pm
Ike gave that speech in 1953, shortly after Stalin died, and then he went on to maintain high levels of Defense spending throughout his administration. It would seem that he offered up a trial balloon with that speech in the hopes that the Soviets would respond and, when they didn’t, he acted as he thought best.
That’s not exactly the same as saying that those of us who served in one of the recent conflicts were sent to “…the otherside of the world to kill poor people and farmers.” Which, a reasonable person can easily understand, we might find just the least bit offensive.
May 27th, 2012 at 3:06 pm
I can only shake my head be know that good men and women will go in harms way to protect our freedoms.
I, like many of you have worn the uniform. I have seen and felt fear. I have seen act of courage from very ordinary people.
Just a few years ago I was at a send off for some national Guardsmen who were being deployed. The Mayor of the small town was holding his 2 year old grand daughter, asleep on his shoulder as he gave a short talk. He said that there were people in this world who would not hesitate to take that little girls life simply because of the color of her skin or her place of birth. He then gave a simple thanks to then deploying group for standing between those that would cause her harm and her.
I feel sorry for those that cannot understand that simple point.
May 27th, 2012 at 3:23 pm
Those comments in the NYT are just dumb comments made by dumb people.
What you said about the division between those who served in Iraq & Afghanistan and those who have not served really hit home to me.
Between 2002 and 2005 I deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. When I got out after I got injured in Dec 05 I made the mistake to go to college right away. I dropped out after 2 semesters because of ignorant professors and moronic students. I remember once that an English Lit prof went from teaching us about Charles Dickens to going into a inane rant about how evil the troops are “killing innocent people” and all that nonsense.
I took this fool down point by point with facts along with the fact that I spent almost 2 years in Iraq and the best he could come up with was that I was just lying to protect war criminals.
I ended up taking a long break from college and ended up finding another where I graduated from. Even today though there is something about me that I do fine around any veterans and I seem to respect them more than any civilians.
War changes people and it has changed me a lot. For me it has changed me for the better. That division though between those who never served in the military and those that have 7 years after getting out is still very fresh and on the forefront of my life.
May 27th, 2012 at 3:32 pm
@ 25 68W58, thank you. You said it more gooder than I could have. I guess my education is lacking because of the need for guns, ships and rockets so we were ready to meet the threat of the Soviet Union. Oh, Instupid…we won.
May 27th, 2012 at 3:51 pm
@28, yeah, we won, and instupid can’t and won’t forgive the U.S. for winning.
Instupid just happened to leave something out of Ike’s speech, “In the world of its(Russia’s) design, security was to be found, not in mutual trust and mutual aid but in force: huge armies, subversion, rule of neighbor nations. The goal was power superiority at all costs. Security was to be sought by denying it to all others.
The result has been tragic for the world and, for the Soviet Union, it has also been ironic.
The amassing of the Soviet power alerted free nations to a new danger of aggression. It compelled them in self-defense to spend unprecedented money and energy for armaments. It forced them to develop weapons of war now capable of inflicting instant and terrible punishment upon any aggressor.
It instilled in the free nations-and let none doubt this-the unshakable conviction that, as long as there persists a threat to freedom, they must, at any cost, remain armed, strong, and ready for the risk of war.”
May 27th, 2012 at 7:47 pm
Eisenhower also had a lot to say about the military industrial complex at the end of his Presidency. The point is that it is entirely possible to be against having the military take up 20% of our budget be against a dumb-ass war like Iraq and still support the troops.
May 27th, 2012 at 7:56 pm
Einsamkeit, I’m in a similar predicament right now. I’m at Auburn so it’s not that I’m dealing with frothing liberal professors (then again I’m a science major so maybe I just haven’t run across them yet), but a campus full of people who are largely indifferent to anything that doesn’t actually outright effect them or their ability to watch Dancing With The Stars. Class global affairs discussions almost always result in comments related to ‘we’re still over there?’, ‘it’s all over oil’, and ‘the American military are pawns and/or war criminals.’
There are some surprisingly liberal groups of students who regularly infuriate me. I often help out with awareness events set up by the campus LGBT group I’m a part of so I regularly run into the hyper leftists who consider it one of their token issues to support. I came VERY close to throttling one spoiled brat who was going on and on about how Bradley Manning is a hero, we shouldn’t have secrets, and we couldn’t say for sure that any of it had gotten Iraqi civilians murdered without any proof (but the same standards apparently didn’t apply to his outrageously high Iraqi death count.) When I asked him how he knew anything about what was going on over there he said his Dad had been to Iraq as if that gave him any insight on the matter. At that point I had to walk away.
May 27th, 2012 at 8:01 pm
The liberals aren’t the only ones that piss me off. I’ve talked to several members of the College Republicans and College Libertarians. For as much as they claim to love America, support the troops, and feel it’s disgraceful that more people aren’t willing to serve their country not a one had even the slightest inclination to serve in the military. Or even worse they try to say working for some think tank or becoming a politician somehow equates to it.
May 27th, 2012 at 8:15 pm
@ 32 Ann, unfortunately Sis this crap has been going on since I went back to school in the early ’80s. Until there is some mandatory national service requirement there will always be this division. Even more unfortunately as fewer young people serve this rift is only going to get wider. I’m glad I won’t be around when it reaches it’s final out come.
May 27th, 2012 at 8:59 pm
Let’s extend the logic of the NYT readers. If we get rid of all police, there will be no more crime. Get rid of all doctors, and all diseases and medical ailments will end.I remember while reading Stolen Valor that the author had a quote from the lead singer of Counrty Joe And The Fish, years after his anti-Vietnam song, had a change of perspective and said something along the line of “Blaming soldiers for war is like blaming firemen for fires.”
May 27th, 2012 at 9:24 pm
@33 Yat Yas: Robert A. Heinlein said it best in “Starship Troopers”: young people with no moral values or character get nothing from forces national service.
This whole anger over the Iraq war, troop hate and Bush derangement syndrome is just spoiled children acting out. They are lazy and spoiled and need some excuse so that they can feel good about not caring. Not caring about real heroes, a real war and real threats to their way of life.
The anti-war crowd is full of idiots who think that “armies are evil because war is evil.” It’s lazy thinking.
May 27th, 2012 at 9:51 pm
@Chock I love when they harangue the government into sending the military to wars they consider justified such as Darfur, Libya, and tracking down Joseph Kony (because they never want to actually do any of the work that requires more effort than posting an angry call to action on Facebook.) Of course nobody is perfect, and life isn’t fair. So when an accident happens and a civilian is hurt or killed then we’re all back to being evil agents of imperialism whose day isn’t complete until we kill a baby and oppress a minority.
May 27th, 2012 at 10:22 pm
Ann-I will never forget back when things started to go pear-shaped in Somalia in late 1992 they were interviewing one of the aid workers there on one of the nightly news shows and her exact words about military intervention were: “I wish they weren’t coming, but since they are, they need to hurry up.”
Cognitive dissonance should hurt.
May 27th, 2012 at 11:15 pm
#35 ChockBlock,
I’m glad you brought up RAH & “Starship Troopers”. If/when America’s gubbment collapse comes, the remaining vets need to impliment the society espoused in the book — if you’re not that concerned about society and life outside of yourself enough to volunteer for an honorable term in the military services, then you don’t get to vote or hold elected office, and therefore don’t get to decide the fate of other people outside of yourself.
It wouldn’t get rid of assholes like Murtha & Heinz-Kerry, but it would definitely reduce their impact on the people they were/are supposed to be serving.
May 28th, 2012 at 5:45 am
Insipid…please break out a copy of the Constitution. Go to Article I, Section 8. See Army and Navy funding in there? You betcha. See welfare and gimmies for half of American households? Nope. Yet we spend less than 4% of GDP on our military while we spend almost four times that on “human resources.”
Now GDIAF.
May 28th, 2012 at 7:56 am
Insipid: do you have any idea just how much, percentage wise, of the Federal budget your beloved FDR spent on defense during his last 4 years in office? Or how about JFK, or LBJ? Clue for ya, sunshine – it was substantially more than 20%.
And don’t trot out that tired “but they were fighting a war” BS. So are we.
Even though FDR started us down the socialist path to the “nanny state”, during their days in office FDR/JFK/LBJ spent more of the federal budget to defend this country than to do things for people that the people should do for themselves (e.g., plan for retirement, pay for healthcare, feed and house themselves, etc . . . ). We should try to get back to that state of affairs.
Freedom includes the freedom to end up a penniless bum if you’re stupid enough not to plan ahead or spend beyond your means.
May 28th, 2012 at 8:09 am
@30: 700 billion dollars out of a 3.7 trillion dollar budget leaves 3 trillion dollars for other things. Whether you like it, or not, providing for the national defense (military) is one of the only enumerated powers of the federal government in the Constitution. You may have no idea what everyday products got their start from the eeeevil “military industrial complex”, so it’s best if you just stay inside your momma’s basement and not go anywhere, since we don’t want your self righteousness to take a whooping. Oh, and don’t heat up your lunch in the microwave, cuz that, too, got its start in the military. In fact, you had better not use a GPS system to find your way to the next occutard meetup, either. Oh, and this internet thingy? Yeah, spun off a military system (even its inventor, Algore, admits that part, of course he didn’t take credit for inventing the military). Satellites and manned space flight? That’s right, Redstone, Atlas, Titan…..all ICBMs; all designed by the military industrial complex starting under Ike and Kennedy and modified for manned space flight and launching satellites. Ike knew that as well as anyone but his warning was for us not to become what he saw happening in the Soviet Union, where the people were going without as they were building up their military (part of that great central planning thing under communism). Less than 20% of the budget doesn’t make us the Soviet Union, but you knew that; it just doesn’t fit your narrative.
May 28th, 2012 at 12:30 pm
Yes I do see a general Welfare Clause in Article 1 Section 8,
“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States;”
And before you start yammering how general welfare doesn’t mean what I think it means, i caution you to read the works of Alexander Hamilton before you make a bigger ass of yourself. You also may want to look at the myriad court cases on the subject, much of which passed by a much larger majority then the 5-4 decision gun enthusiasts love. That same article clearly gives the power to Congress to arm and regulate and discipline the militia and yet you still whine like piggies whenever a single gun law is even suggested. Plus the same article also mentions postal service and the Conservatives can’t wait to defund that.
I’m also getting sick and tired of this repulsive rhetoric that many of you have been applying to Social Security and Medicare. Implying, if not outright stating that my mother- who paid into the system for 50 years- is somehow a welfare cheat for collecting Social Security and calling Social Security and Medicare a ponzi Scheme- even stating that we should end those programs.
The fact is that the true “gimmies” has been defense not the safety net. Right now Social Security and Medicare is running at a surplus. Since their inception Medicare and Social security have been running at a surplus. It’s been the safety net that has been supplementing defense, not the other way around. So it is not true that my mother has been leaching off the taxpayers, nor is it necessary that I pony up to take care of my mother (though i do). If anything, using George Bush’s logic that all surplusses are bad and should be paid back, you owe my mother a substantial amount of money.
Furthermore the maligned safety net has achieved its goals. The backbraking poverty among the elderly has largely ended thanks to these programs. The same huge success cannot be pointed to from our defense budget. Since WWII we have a tied war in Korea, an outright loss in Vietnam, an Iraq that was formally controlled by Secular Sunni now controlled by religious Shi’a and it sure doesn’t look to me like much good is going to come out of Afghanistan.
Plus there’s a huge difference in the way Vietnam, Korea and WWII were funded and George Bush’s wars. The other wars weren’t funded off-budget. None or those Presidents passed massive tax cuts during a time of war.
Al Gore never said he invented the internet. He said that he pushed for funding for Arpnet that led to the creation of the internet. So you can stop with the lying.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2000/0004.parry.html
Yes, lots of advancements came from the military, lots of advancements came from Nasa as well. Lots of advancements come from Universities funded by federal dollars. If you throw enough money in one direction some good things will happen. Many advances in medicine have come from medicare and medicaid. Much of the funding for training of doctors comes from these two programs.
Do i think we should end the military? No, absolutely not. I’m far more charitable then many of you are towards the safety net- despite the fact that defense has been leeching off the safety net these many years.
I think that it is vital that veterans be supported, that veteran education benefits be maintained, that they be well paid and that they have all the benefits entitled by their service. But i also recognize that we can do all of that without spending more on the military than our next ten competitors combined. Especially since we have no contiguous threats, unless you think Canada or Mexico is set to launch an invasion.
We can certainly cut the military to levels that the founding fathers invisioned. Unlike many liberals, i do believe that sensible changes to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid should be made. The prorgrams are not sacrosanct and immune from review and oversight. The military shouldn’t be either.
May 28th, 2012 at 12:37 pm
Insipid, you are omitting the important point that many of us do not believe [based on the Constitution and other founding documents] that the Federal Government has a mandate to impose involuntarily financial ‘safety nets’ upon the citizenry…with the force of law.
Until you come to terms with that aspect, you’re generally pissing up a rope here.
May 28th, 2012 at 12:49 pm
Instupid, living proof that liberals do, indeed, inhabit a parallel universe.
And, you can rave all you want about SS and Medicare surpluses, but raving don’t make it so, cupcake. Any more than crying that “general welfare” means bridge cards, Cadillacs and lobster.
Instupid, take Sparky’s advice, GDIAF.
May 28th, 2012 at 12:59 pm
I don’t think it is an “important point” i think it is, what John Kenneth Gallbraith called the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. I can make the same argument about my involuntarily paying for wars that were not authorized by Congress. And last i looked they collected THOSE taxes with the force of law too. And yet i still had to pay because i lost at the box office.
Look, if you want to put ending medicare and SS up for a vote, i welcome that. Until that time you have to pay just as i have to pay for the wars. And yes, i am one of the 52% that does pay Federal taxes, though i’m sure my statement to that effect won’t prevent any of you from proclaiming that I don’t.
May 28th, 2012 at 1:00 pm
I meant to say ballot box above. Serves me right for writing a reply after looking at rottentomatoes.com.
May 28th, 2012 at 1:04 pm
It’s not “raving” it’s stating a fact. SS and Medicare DO operate at a surplus. But I know you Conservatives hate those facts.
And why don’t you take the advice of your favorite Vice President and go fuck yourself?
May 28th, 2012 at 1:22 pm
Just so much stupid in one post. I certainly don’t think Insipid’s mom is a “welfare cheat”, but I do take exception to a program that stuck a gun in her back to pay for someone else’s retirement and continues to stick that same gun in the back of today’s workers to pay for today’s retirees. There are other ways to do have some sort of old age “safety net” and yet give those who pay into it actual control over their investment (see, for example Chile’s system), which is more than we’ve got now.
Of course, I’d have to actually ignore the 10th amendment for Insipid’s interpretation of the powers of the Federal government to make any sense, but I get the feeling that he ignores the document in question as he sees fit (his moronic reading of the 2nd amendment proves that, every other part of the BOR has to do with the rights of the people, but not that one?).
May 28th, 2012 at 5:07 pm
A Source, for that claim in #42? A reputable, reliable source?
68W, he can’t wrap his head around the concept of individual rights.
May 28th, 2012 at 5:17 pm
Well, obviously our “friend” insipid missed the fact that the DoD budget has included a category called “Overseas Contingency” since FY2002.
The purpose of that category, insipid, was/is to fund operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. So your charge that “Bush funded his wars differently” rings a bit hollow. If anything, doing it explicitly as an add-on to the DoD budget rather than attempting to hide war-related expenses (as did McNamara and Johnson until approx 1967) seems somewhat more honest.
Next time, maybe you should actually do your homework before posting. For you, that’s obviously optional.
May 28th, 2012 at 6:51 pm
@ 47Insipid, would you please recite your citation that supports your claim, “SS and Medicare DO operate at a surplus”? And please don’t go to the DU or PuffHo or some other libtatd rag.
This address will take you an USGovt site that explainss that both programs operate at deficits.
http://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/index.html
I think what you don’t recognize is that at the time theConstitution was written, the concept of a government provided ” safety net” wasn’t even an idea. People were expected to fend for themselves and take care of their elderly family members. SS and welfare are both programs of the ’30s, the roots of Medicare appeared in the ’20s, oh and that’s the 20th century not the 18th.
May 28th, 2012 at 7:23 pm
@48- No one “stuck a gun” to my mothers head. She has voted in every election since the early 50s. She voted for Truman, Kennedy and Johnson and would of voted for FDR if she could. She’s gladly paid into SS for 50 years. In fact most people happily pay into it as it still remains the most popular federal program. If you don’t want to pay into it, tough shit. I didn’t want to pay for any of Bush’s wars. The price you pay for living in a democracy is that sometimes you pay for things you don’t want.
I’m aware of the 10th amendment. You don’t seem to be aware of the General Welfare Clause or the Necessary and proper clause.
While i do loathe second amendment arguments the reason for the second amendment is to maintain a well regulated militia. The founders were afraid that the Federal Government would strangle the militia by just not arming it. I was part of the National Guard for 10 years, i can assure you it was very well armed.
That being said, i’m all for you all having guns, especially if it produces more heart warming stories like this one:
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474981297409
I wonder if they pried the gun from his cold dead hand?
May 28th, 2012 at 7:27 pm
Insipid, you still seem not to understand the limitations of the scope of the Federal Government. The General Welfare clause does not equate to an involuntary financial ‘safety net’, unless you’re willing to utterly discard the notion of individual liberty.
Which by all appearances, you are.
May 28th, 2012 at 7:42 pm
“In fact most people happily pay into it as it still remains the most popular federal program.”
Oh Baloney-not a one of us has the slightest choice in the matter so it can hardly be said that we “happily” do anything of the sort.
Were the guardsman in your unit responsible for providing their own arms? If so, I think you were possibly in this unit http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/04/12/chinese-national-accused-army-recruiting-scam/
As to the rest of your loathesome screed, what a pathetic hateful little man (I use the term loosely) you are.
May 28th, 2012 at 7:43 pm
I assume you’re referring to my claim that SS runs at a surplus?
http://www.nasi.org/research/2011/social-security-finances-findings-2011-trustees-report
As far as “freedom” goes you have it. The problem isn’t that you don’t have freedom, it’s that you lose elections when you put SS up for a vote. The ones that are infringing on freedom are the Republicans as they try and take away voting rights from minorities and students.
May 28th, 2012 at 7:53 pm
@51: That’s NOT what your source says. Here’s what your source actually says:
“The deficit of non-interest income relative to expenditures was about $49 billion in 2010 and $45 billion in 2011, and the Trustees project that it will average about $66 billion between 2012 and 2018 before rising steeply as the economy slows after the recovery is complete and the number of beneficiaries continues to grow at a substantially faster rate than the number of covered workers. Redemption of trust fund assets from the General Fund of the Treasury will provide the resources needed to offset the annual cash-flow deficits. Since these redemptions will be less than interest earnings through 2020, nominal trust fund balances will continue to grow. The trust fund ratio, which indicates the number of years of program cost that could be financed solely with current trust fund reserves, peaked in 2008, declined through 2011, and is expected to decline further in future years. After 2020, Treasury will redeem trust fund assets in amounts that exceed interest earnings until exhaustion of trust fund reserves in 2033, three years earlier than projected last year. Thereafter, tax income would be sufficient to pay only about three-quarters of scheduled benefits through 2086. ”
That means that including interest SS STILL takes in more than it lays out. And it will continue to do so until 2020. So according to your own source SS is solvent until 2033 which is the year the reserves run out. Is it something we should be concerned with? Yes. But should we use this as an excuse to end the program? No. Ronald Reagan had a similar problem in the 80s, he fixed it along with Tipp O’Neil. We can and should do it again.
May 28th, 2012 at 8:07 pm
I do understand you CI. I disagree with you. There’s a difference. I do not believe that taxation is equal to tyranny. I believe that as long as you have a vote, you have a say. You may not like the answer, but that’s not tyranny, that’s just losing.
And you may disagree, but SC rulings going back 70 years say you are wrong. Alexander Hamilton says you’re wrong as well. The debate has been had, the safety net is Constitutional. If you want to end it, i suggest the ballot box.
This is the USA. We do not let our seniors starve, we do not turn away people in emergency rooms for not having insurance or not being able to prove you have insurance. We take care of eachother and we do it through taxation.
By the way, someone mentioned the Chilean system before. Huge failure:
http://tcf.org/commentary/pdfs/nc962/chilefactsheet.pdf
Paul Krugman summarizes it well:
Privatizers who laud the Chilean system never mention that it has yet to deliver on its promise to reduce government spending. More than 20 years after the system was created, the government is still pouring in money. Why? Because, as a Federal Reserve study puts it, the Chilean government must “provide subsidies for workers failing to accumulate enough capital to provide a minimum pension.” In other words, privatization would have condemned many retirees to dire poverty, and the government stepped back in to save them.
The same thing is happening in Britain. Its Pensions Commission warns that those who think Mrs. Thatcher’s privatization solved the pension problem are living in a “fool’s paradise.” A lot of additional government spending will be required to avoid the return of widespread poverty among the elderly – a problem that Britain, like the U.S., thought it had solved.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/17/opinion/17krugman.html
May 28th, 2012 at 8:13 pm
Actually, insipid, the Federal government did “hold a gun to your mother’s head” – figuratively. But the threat was real, and it could easily have become literal.
Unless your mother was one of a very small number of persons exempt from participation in Social Security, since 1982 if she had an earned income she had no choice in whether she participated. She almost certainly did not choose voluntarily to do so, either – it’s a virtual certainty she was compelled to do so by law. (There are a small number of cases where persons had an option, but those cases generally relate to persons covered by a retirement system who would otherwise be exempt from participation who opted to voluntarily transfer to a different retirement system including Social Security.) The same is true with Medicare; participation therein is similarly compulsory by law.
Had your mother actually tried to avoid participating in either program while earning an income, she’d eventually have received a visit from Federal law enforcement agents. And they are generally armed.
Further: the description of Social Security as a “ponzi scheme” is, from the perspective of a retirement investment, exactly correct. A ponzi investment scheme uses receipts from current investors to pay benefits to current beneficiaries vice basing those payments on any form of securing collateral. That’s precisely what Social Security does today. Current OASDI taxes are used to pay current beneficiaries; only any “surplus” is “invested” in Federal bonds – which happened to be issued by the same organization that has the obligation to pay.
In short, there’s nothing securing Social Security. It’s all smoke and mirrors. And the future demographics are a killer.
If you tried to set up a private retirement fund today like Social Security is currently organized, you’d get a visit from law enforcement posthaste. The first thing they’d do is to ask you if you’ve actually done anything to set up the system and taken any employee contributions. If you answered yes, the next thing you’d hear is, “You are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent . . . . “
May 28th, 2012 at 8:16 pm
I believe you’re wasting your time arguing, CI. Anyone who fails to see that compulsory does not equate to voluntary has already traded their freedom for a promise of security – and, absent the efforts of better men than themselves, will soon have neither.
May 28th, 2012 at 8:23 pm
Oh, bullshit, Hondo. Cash is also issued by the U.S. government, and is backed by its credit. If you think that’s worthless you can send me all you’ve got. Hell, if you have any extra “worthless” government bonds you want to send me, i’ll take those too. Hell because i’m a generous guy, i’ll give you 10 cents on the dollar for every worthless scrap of paper you send me. I’m a giver.
ALL insurance operates on lots of people paying into it. It doesn’t make it a “ponzi scheme” that’s just how insurance works.
Yes, my mother paid taxes. It was the law and she followed it. The law also enforces that she not speed, that she not steal or any other illegal activities. Obeying laws and paying taxes is the price she and i and you pay for a civilized society.
Oh- off topic- but the Moyhnihan report which you claimed somehow proved that welfare has been as bad for black people as the KKK came out the same year Medicare came into existence and at a time when most blacks were still prohibited from collecting SS. So you’re full of shit there too.
May 28th, 2012 at 8:25 pm
@59- Wow, that should win a medal for the worst mangling of Franklin’s statement ever. The phrase is no taxation without representation. Unless if you live in Washington DC, you have representation.
May 28th, 2012 at 8:58 pm
Experts agree: SS is not Ponzi Scheme:
“Social Security is and always has been either a “pay-as-you-go” system or one that was partially advance-funded. Its structure, logic, and mode of operation have nothing in common with Ponzi schemes or chain letters or pyramid schemes.
The first modern social insurance program began in Germany in 1889 and has been in continuous operation for more than 100 years. The American Social Security system has been in continuous successful operation since 1935. Charles Ponzi’s scheme lasted barely 200 days.”
http://www.ssa.gov/history/ponzi.htm
“Assuming that technological progress continues over the next 70 years, and output productivity growth continues over the next 70 years, the finances of Social Security are relatively easy to fix. A fairly minor cut in benefits, combined with a relatively small increase in taxes, will bring the system back into balance again. (the latest Social Security report projects a 75-year deficit of $4.3 trillion. That sounds like a lot of money, but over 75 years it’s roughly $60 billion a year…not chicken feed, but not overwhelming). ”
http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/economicsunbound/archives/2008/12/is_social_secur.html
A Ponzi scheme is a purposeful investment swindle in which early investors are paid off with money put up by later investors in order to encourage more investors. Along the way, the perpetrators pocket a lot of the investors’ money — remember Bernie Madoff? Social Security simply doesn’t fit this definition. While the first Social Security beneficiaries did receive more in benefits than the amounts they paid in FICA taxes, Social Security lacks the fraudulent, profit-making intent to fit the definition of a Ponzi scheme. Social Security is simply one generation helping another. [CBS MoneyWatch.com
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505146_162-39942595/is-social-security-a-ponzi-scheme/?tag=mwuser
As I make clear in Securing America’s Future, “Social Security is not a Ponzi, or pyramid, scheme; it bears no resemblance to one.” Social Security does not promise great riches, and in fact is not an investment scheme at all. All participants benefit. Even the unusual person with no dependents who dies before retirement without ever having become disabled has received a measure of protection from disability insurance. This person may also have benefited indirectly by not having to support elderly relatives who are independent because of Social Security. The situation of such a person is similar to that of the homeowner who has fire insurance but never has a house fire; that homeowner has benefited from the insurance coverage, and is hardly likely to consider it unfortunate that his house didn’t burn. Social Security does not encourage risk, and certainly does not benefit a manipulator. In fact, it “turns the notion of a Ponzi scheme upside down; instead of impoverishing all but a few, for nearly three-quarters of a century it has provided extensive benefits to virtually the entire population.” No Ponzi scheme can survive for an extended period, and none can pay benefits to all who participate — or even to more than a very few of them. All participants in a Ponzi scheme lose their investments, except for the initial handful of investors (and, of course, the promoter).
http://www.psocommons.org/ppp/vol2/iss4/art8/
Social Security is not a Ponzi Scheme, but that should be small comfort to those who are counting on it. Unfortunately, Social Security is on the road to insolvency and this sad situation is unlikely to get better with time. By way of background, a Ponzi Scheme is a private investment scam that makes phony claims about high investment returns to draw in a steady supply of suckers. Eventually, the supply of suckers runs out and the scheme collapses.
Social Security is a government program designed to ameliorate old age poverty for working Americans. Social Security was created in the 1930s to help working Americans survive in retirement. In that regard, it has worked well. Unfortunately, from a financial perspective, the program is now on the road to insolvency, according to the Social Security Administration’s own annual report. [MarketWatch,}
http://blogs.marketwatch.com/fundmastery/2011/09/06/is-social-security-a-ponzi-scheme/
May 28th, 2012 at 9:26 pm
Uh, insipid – you’re the one who’s full of it here. The quote you’re thinking of – “No taxation without representation” – wasn’t by Franklin at all. And it wasn’t the quote I was referencing, either.
The most famous form of the quote is “Taxation without representation is tyrrany”, and is often (though inaccurately) attributed to Patrick Henry. The phrase was in use in the American colonies since at least 1750; the concept predates even that. Variants of the phrase were published in Boston papers at the time of the Boston Tea Party and were used to justify same. In particular, James Otis of Boston is most often associated with the “tyranny” variant.
Once again, insipid, you didn’t know what you were talking about. No surprise there. We’re used to that from you.
The quote I was actually referencing has indeed been attributed to Franklin, though he may or may not have actually said it first. And it has nothing to do with taxation, but instead discusses the distinction between security (provided by government) and personal liberty. One form of the quote is “People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both.” There are other variants.
And you still don’t get it. Insurance is voluntary; paying taxes is compulsory. If you can’t see the essential difference – and how that relates to the concept of personal freedom – then I truly pity you.
May 28th, 2012 at 9:36 pm
Oh, and in case you’re going to claim that Social Security isn’t a ponzi scheme, insipid, here’s the commonly accepted definition:
“A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors.”
http://www.sec.gov/answers/ponzi.htm
Certainly sounds to me like exactly how Social Security operates.
May 28th, 2012 at 9:42 pm
I knew which quote you were referring to. I stated that we have representation in order to illustrate the fact that paying taxes does not take away your freedom so long as you have the vote. If you want to run on a program of getting rid of SS and the payrole tax, have at it. But if you lose- as you will- then it’s because we the people rejected your idea.
Whether you like it or not, the founding fathers most cerainly did bring about a government that called for the lefy and collection of taxes through the force of law.
Laws our compulsery, who makes them is up to us. It’s no more tyranny to pay taxes then it is to go the speed limit.
Again, you might, object to SS, i definately objected to paying for a lot of the defense programs republicans put forth. That doesn’t mean the fact that we have to pay for them as tyrany. It just means one side or the other didn’t win at the ballot box.
Yo
May 28th, 2012 at 9:49 pm
You dishonestly left out the entire definition, SS. Kind of like the way the NRA likes to read the 2nd Amendment. Here’s what the ENTIRE defintion says:
A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors. Ponzi scheme organizers often solicit new investors by promising to invest funds in opportunities claimed to generate high returns with little or no risk. In many Ponzi schemes, the fraudsters focus on attracting new money to make promised payments to earlier-stage investors and to use for personal expenses, instead of engaging in any legitimate investment activity.
SS does not promise riches, does not promise high returns, SS does make its finances public, SS operates at a 1% overhead so very little of the money is going for personal investors and none of the money goes to make any of the operators rich.
So, once again, you’re full of shit.
May 28th, 2012 at 10:02 pm
Oh, by the way there’s a post waiting moderation that nicely refutes the ponzi scheme myth, It has a lot of links to i guess the site owners want to make sure i’m not linking to a porn site or something.
May 29th, 2012 at 6:04 am
insipid: Bullshit, and bullshit.
Regarding #65: it’s obvious you no more knew which quote I was referencing than I’m the King of Thailand. And given your continued harping on the same subject (taxation) in #65 above, it’s remotely possible you don’t realize your error even now – though I’m fairly sure you do.
In #61, you erroneously discussed an entirely different, non-Franklin quote (which you erroneously attributed to Franklin) than the one I referenced in comment #59. The quote you referenced was on a completely different subject. In #59, I wasn’t discussing taxation at all, dipstick – I was discussing the worth of those individuals, like you, who are willing to trade their personal freedom for the promise of nanny-state-provided “security”. Further, in #61 you made no mention whatsoever of the quote attributed to Franklin that I actually referenced, again referencing “taxation without representation”. It’s obvious you screwed up, jackass. Be man enough to admit you screwed up vice trying to cover up your mistake with thoroughly transparent “spin” bordering on an outright lie.
Further, quit falsely accusing me of dishonesty (#66). The complete definition of a ponzi scheme is contained in the first sentence of the paragraph you quote – which I also quoted verbatim. To anyone with normal reading comprehension ability, the remainder of the paragraph you quoted is clearly nothing more than a discussion of the behavior of ponzi scheme operators vice definition. I omitted that part for brevity, but also provided a link to the original source for full context. Doing that is hardly dishonest behavior; inclusion of the link as ready reference proves that. You’d realize all of that that if you (1) had normal reading comprehension ability or (2) weren’t so emotionally invested in the subject at hand (Social Security) that you choose to ignore reality. Obviously, either your reading comprehension ability is lacking or you are incapable of being objective on this subject – or, perhaps, both. My money’s on both.
Quit pissing on peoples’ legs and telling them it’s raining, insipid. People have figured out you do that as a matter of course. You’re no longer fooling anyone.
May 29th, 2012 at 6:37 am
No, you were the one trying to fool people by conveniently leaving out the entire definition because it did not fit your meme that it is a ponzi scheme. The entire paragraph was the definition, not just the first sentences. In fact it even has a question at the header, “what is a ponzi schem” and the ENTIRE paragraph is the answer. Plus even if you were to go by just the first sentence Social Security does not fit the definition of a ponzi scheme because there is no fraud involved. Everyone knows where the money is coming from, what the purpose is and what it’s there for. They publish yearly reports as to its solvency. So even if you go by just the first sentence and leave out the rest, you’re still wrong.
As stated in the waiting for moderation quote above:
“A Ponzi scheme is a purposeful investment swindle in which early investors are paid off with money put up by later investors in order to encourage more investors. Along the way, the perpetrators pocket a lot of the investors’ money — remember Bernie Madoff? Social Security simply doesn’t fit this definition. While the first Social Security beneficiaries did receive more in benefits than the amounts they paid in FICA taxes, Social Security lacks the fraudulent, profit-making intent to fit the definition of a Ponzi scheme. Social Security is simply one generation helping another.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505146_162-39942595/is-social-security-a-ponzi-scheme/?tag=mwuser
So again, you’re full of shit. Even if we used your agreed upon definition, it is no ponzi scheme.
As far as the Frankilin Quote, yes i absolutely did understand which quote one you were referring to. My mother did not give up freedom for security, she had freedom. She had the freedom to vote out of office anyone supporting the safety net. Instead she did the opposite, so no she did not give up freedom for security. Obviously you’re too dense to understand that basic consept.
May 29th, 2012 at 6:46 am
insipid: numbnuts, the definition I quoted was from the SEC. Regarding investments, their opinion is definitive; CBSNews’ opinion, which you now quote because it serves your purposes, is not.
Further: the definition you quote in your last post above is not the definition not each of us quoted previously. Quit trying to revise your argument after the fact when you’ve already been proven wrong. That’s dishonest as hell. It’s also a clumsy, obvious attempt to do so.
Finally: if you deny that the definition is contained in the first sentence, and that the rest of the paragraph is explanation, you’re either unable to comprehend written English or are deliberately dissembling. What part of “A ponzi scheme is . . . . ” don’t you get?
Then again selective quotation and dissembling is what I’ve come to expect from you. So I’m not surprised.
May 29th, 2012 at 6:48 am
You’re better off ordering something from the dollar menu Hondo, that’s something he understands.
May 29th, 2012 at 7:26 am
Insipid, no one cares! Stop mis quoting Franklin, and suck start a shotgun in your mouth please, it will cure you of you manifold issues and misconceptions…
May 29th, 2012 at 7:33 am
Guys, guys…he’s just pissed he lost his slap fight over in Dupont Circle over the weekend, and as a result he’s trying to argue himself into knots.
Looks like he’s done a pretty good job thus far.
insipid, SS should never have been a permanent program, it should have been declared unconstitutional, and the “Great Society” did nothing more than create a permanent underclass that as LBJ said, “I’ll have those n*****s voting Democrat for the next hundred years.” Can you dispute ANY of that?
May 29th, 2012 at 10:11 am
Ah yes, we’re all racist, uneducated, violent morons who want nothing more than to kill farmers.
I’ll have to bring that up to my non-anglo friends at my next Mensa meeting.
Goddammit I hate these idiots.
May 29th, 2012 at 10:20 am
I can’t believe I missed all this.
Insipid: Do you genuinely believe that taxation is okay no matter what it is going towards? Or wouldn’t you rather see a system that didn’t operate at the point of a gun in order to spend on whatever it believed was right?
May 29th, 2012 at 5:30 pm
As i stated before, even if you go by just the first sentence, and ignroe the explanation, there is no way that SS mits YOUR definition of Ponzi scheme because there is no fraud involved. So, once again, you’re full of shit up to your eyeballs.
May 29th, 2012 at 5:53 pm
Apparently you don’t recognize what fraud is, or a ponzi scheme,much like you don’t know the difference between an opinion and a fact. Now, make that a large fries and a coffee.
May 29th, 2012 at 6:01 pm
Yo, insipid! You gonna comment on your brother liberal’s comments about disparaging veterans, or just piss and moan that people who don’t give up their entire paychecks for “the greater good” are just somehow cold-hearted pricks?
May 29th, 2012 at 6:05 pm
Inipid, just out of curiosity do you realize what kind of monster Stalin was? Ignore all the other crap you are trying to drag into this. When that many years of facing THE WORST HUMAN TO WALK THE EARTH maybe there was a little more going on than what you want to look at. If you take something out of historical context sure you can say well this applies now…blah, blah, blah. The Korean war was Stalin using the Norks and Chinease to test the world. You don’t look at things with any perspective except whatever skewed vision you want to. I know you think that we are just a bunch of dumbasses, but we know history and we know evil a hell of a lot better than you do.
May 29th, 2012 at 6:08 pm
By the way insipid you should feel blessed that there are people like us that are willing to kill and die to protect people like you from the evil in the world.
May 29th, 2012 at 6:45 pm
Wow! You ignore a topic for a bit and it goes from an article about Veterans to the Ponzi scheme aka Social Security??
Typical self-centered troll behavior. Bwess his widdle hardt.
May 29th, 2012 at 11:01 pm
@70- Fine, let’s look at the definition from the SEC again and only regard the first sentence because you say so.
Here’s the definition:
A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors.
That’s the one you agree on, right? You’re not going to come back and say that i can only consider every other word after i prove that you’re wrong even when we apply that defintion are you?
Ok, using the agreed upon definition (for now, until you try and claim that it only applies when you do THIS with your hands) Social Security does not meet the definition of a ponzi scheme.
Social Security is not a fraud. Here are the elements of fraud. In order to claim fraud you must prove ALL of the elements.
1. Fraud is done intentionally You have to
A. Make a false statement. Is usually done in connection with the sale of something. Generally it is the seller who does it.
B. The false statement has to be of a material fact.
C. There has to be a knowledge of the falsity of the statement either lying, or a reckless disregard for the truth.
D. Intention to induce reliance on the statement.
E. Plaintiff justifiably relies on stmt. To detriment of plaintiff.
Not only is there no lying involved in SS, but so far SS has been an asset rather than a detriment to society. SS along with medicare has virtually eliminated what used to be horrible poverty amongst the elderly. Even people who die before collecting it generally benefit in some way either through not having to support a relative or at least they get the security of knowing that it is there should they become disabled.
Furthermore, the funds in SS are not “purported” to be there, they ARE there as is evidenced by the fact that it has not missed a check for over 70 years. So even going by the definition you favor FOR NOW you’re still wrong, Socaial Security is not a Ponzi Scheme.
Futhermore you were also full of it when you said this:
If you tried to set up a private retirement fund today like Social Security is currently organized, you’d get a visit from law enforcement posthaste. The first thing they’d do is to ask you if you’ve actually done anything to set up the system and taken any employee contributions. If you answered yes, the next thing you’d hear is, “You are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent . . . . “
I would ask, before I was read my rights, what crime have i broken? Are you saying that a group of people can’t get together and agree that they will give a part of their income to the elderly among them? That if a person honestly says that this is what he is doing, and others agree to that it would be illegal somehow? Why? What crime? Generosity is illegal in Conservative land?
It’s not illegal, you just said it because you love to paint a picture of the government doing everything nefarious.
May 29th, 2012 at 11:02 pm
Wow insipid really goes beyond himself. I liked when he called us racist for using the term “thug” but couldn’t tell how he could tell what race any of us were.
May 29th, 2012 at 11:06 pm
6 hours to come up with that answer? Or did sweetmeat have you pull a shift at the bus station?
May 29th, 2012 at 11:07 pm
Jason, let’s make a deal, you won’t compare me to Stalin and I won’t compare you to Hitler. Ok?
May 29th, 2012 at 11:20 pm
When i called you racists, i was basing it on what you were DOING. I don’t remember all the particulars of the thread, but i do remember one person, for instance, saying something to the effect that he was glad Trayvon was dead. I also remember the fact that there was a double standard in calling Trayvon a “thug” who was never arrested never accused by anyone of violence and not calling George a “thug” who was arrested twice both for violent behavior.
For instance i think the most virulently racist ad i’ve heard was done by Herman Cain:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-uckxN7-sY
The fact that Herman Cain, a black man, made the ad does not absolve it of racism. Likewise exhulting in the death of Trayvon Martin a 17 year old because you decided he’s a thug is still racist. I don’t care what color you are. So no, it didn’t matter to me what color you were, because that’s not why i called folks that.
Also, it took 6 hours because when i’m not typing here, i’m actually doing other things. Did you really think i was sitting in front of the computer contemplating the answer for 6 hours. For the record, i went to the gym, i ate dinner and i went to the library.
May 29th, 2012 at 11:21 pm
Just to be clear, i don’t think i was calling everyone a racist, just those doing racist things…. Which was almost everyone.
May 29th, 2012 at 11:23 pm
I didn’t compare you to Stalin, I just think you are a really bad student of history. See you took a quote out of context and without any historical context. Do you realize how many people Stalin starved to death?
If you study history you realize how much fraud was involved with the passage and legal argument to get social security through the supreme court. Just saying….
May 29th, 2012 at 11:44 pm
I just read the decision I didn’t see anything fraudulent in their decision. Seemed like a well reasoned decision based on law to me.
Yes, i am aware of how many people Stalin starved to death. Are you aware of the millions that have not starved to death because of SS?
May 29th, 2012 at 11:59 pm
I would be willing to bet WAY more people starved to death under Stalin than didn’t starve to death under SS. Also I would argue that SS has had an overall negative effect on society, because rather than neighbors, families and society taking care of itself it now relies on the government. Since SS and Medicare healthcare costs and the proliferation of nursing homes have skyrocketed. Rather than people taking care of each other it is easier to just push it off on the government. Granny gets too old rather than keeping her at home like traditionally was done you send her to a nursing home which is paid for by SS and Medicare. Wow I came up with that in like five minutes…
Without looking I do believe that Social Security was passed as a tax, but in what way is it a tax? Now I know you don’t like playing by the rules but constitutionally does that really apply…
May 30th, 2012 at 12:11 am
Wait a minute why am I bothering trying to discuss anything with you? I know that you will not get it in the end and I will just have more fun playing my kitty and you would have more fun with a glory hole…have fun and good night.
May 30th, 2012 at 12:12 am
…and by my kitty I mean an actual cat.
May 30th, 2012 at 12:19 am
Well, you can have your opinions but you can’t have your own facts. The fact is that there WAS a crushing rate of elderly poverty before SS and Medicare. Hell, Medicare alone reduced elderly povery by 50%. Most people do take care of their parents, the choice to send them to a nursing home or hospice is not made lightly. But there are also times when the parent has a condition that is not easily treated at home and requires professionals. When those times happen, it’s nice that medicare and medicaid is there. Plus there is also times when the children do not have the financial means to take care of their parents. Again, it’s nice that it is there.
Here’s the reality of what SS and Medicare provides and what it was like before these programs existed:
http://blogs.reuters.com/reuters-money/2011/09/16/perrys-monstrous-lies-about-social-security/
May 30th, 2012 at 12:21 am
By the way, i think you’re a homophobe because you say homophobic things, Jason. I don’t know if you’re gay or not.
May 30th, 2012 at 12:24 am
Also, this refrain of “don’t get it” coming from some of you is incredibly arrogant. Just because someone disagrees with you doesn’t mean they don’t understand you. The notion that you are telling some indellible truth that can’t be argued with once some revelation is revealed is just pure ego.
There’s not a single solitary thing anyone has written on this board that i do not understand.
And i garuntee you that outside the bubble of this site, if we took the things said about the military from the NY Times comments and showed them to people along with the statements here regarding SS most of the public would find the later to be more shocking.
May 30th, 2012 at 12:34 am
The article i just linked to has a nice take-down of the notion that we’d be better off if we handed SS over to the private sector:
There is nothing in the private sector — nor is anything likely to emerge — that could replace Social Security at the same low cost to taxpayers.
From the article:
“Simply trashing Social Security by calling it a Ponzi scheme ignores the fact that when you pay your FICA payroll tax, you’re getting an inflation-adjusted annuity, disability insurance, a small death benefit for your survivors plus Medicare benefits.
Try to find a package like this in the private sector. It doesn’t exist. You’d have to buy an inflation-protected annuity, disability and life policy separately — and they are no bargains.
Keep in mind, when private insurers offer these products they have to pay commissions and marketing costs, so they load policies with lots of hidden expenses. They can’t offer the same economies of scale that Social Security can, which isn’t burdened with the excessive marketing and administrative expenses.
On an inflation-adjusted annuity alone, you pay dearly to keep up with the cost of living. Compared to an immediate annuity (without inflation protection), your payment would be from 24 percent to 30 percent lower. For that reason, private inflation-protected annuities are relatively scarce and unpopular.
Private disability policies, which I recommend, are expensive outside of group plans (buy one through your employer if you can). For a 40-year-old wanting a $4,500 monthly benefit, the annual premium would be about $2,300.
Life insurance premiums vary greatly, depending upon your health, age and amount of coverage. The older and sicker you are, the higher the cost. If you have chronic conditions, risky occupation or a flawed medical history, good luck getting coverage. Social Security and Medicare don’t turn anyone away.
What about examining Perry’s inference that current workers are contributing money for today’s retirees?
That’s true, but it’s not a Ponzi scheme. It’s well known that there will be fewer workers in the future to fund the system, which will create a regular structural deficit by 2016. But that’s only the case if nothing happens and Congress completely ignores technical fixes or simply cuts benefits.
There’s more about the “if nothing is done” scenario: The Social Security Trust Fund — Congress borrows the cash and replaces it with Treasury securities from a pool of payroll taxes — will be exhausted in 2039, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Yet that doesn’t mean that Social Security will be bust; it will then begin to pay reduced benefits, again, if Congress doesn’t take action.
In what Washington Post economics blogger Ezra Klein calls “the boring truth” about Social Security, Congress can raise the amount of salary subject to Social Security tax to fill the funding hole.”
May 30th, 2012 at 3:18 am
Insipid: Originally, the Supreme Court was firmly against Social Security and other expansionist views of the Commerce Clause. The way that it was decided the way it was is because Franklin Delano Roosevelt essentially threatened the Justices, saying that if they didn’t rule the way he wanted them to, he would institute forced retirements, radically expand the court, and pack it with his people.
So they made a decision in favor of it, even though technically according to the legal doctrine of the time it was unconstitutional.
May 30th, 2012 at 4:10 am
The court packing plan was shot down by Congress and was vastly unpopular. In fact, it was probably FDR’s largest political defeat. He wasn’t able to impliment any of his plans in changing the SC. He got his way the old-fashioned way, by remaining President long enough to pick out his own justices. Nothing nefarious about it.
Here’s the supreme court decisions
:http://www.ssa.gov/history/court.html
If you actually read them, you’ll see that every single issue you guys have brought up, including 10th amendment arguments is addressed and shot down.
I know you like to see nefarious things in every loss (why did Obama win? acorn!) but sometimes your argument is heard and either the voters or the courts just reject them. In the case of SS both the voters and the courts have rejected your arguments resourdingly.
May 30th, 2012 at 6:25 am
insipid: re your inane comment 82. The law you’d have broken is the ERISA – specifically, you’d have violated 29 USC 1082, which requires private pension plans to meet minimum funding standards. You’d also have been guilty of either theft or fraud, as well as tax evasion.
Essentially, a private pension plan is legally required to have assets backing it. A private-sector employer setting up a pension plan is legally required to contribute to the pension fund (29 USC 1082) in order to ensure assets are available, and in return receives favorable tax treatment for those contributions. Employee contributions likewise go to the pension fund. The pension fund pays expenses and benefits using its assets.
Setting up a private pension fund as Social Security is currently set up – e.g., direct payment of current benefits from current employee contributions – would be illegal in at least two and almost certainly three ways. First, it would fail to meet the funding requirements of 10 USC 1082, in that the employer would not be making the contributions to the fund as required by law. Second, by using employee contributions to pay benefits as opposed to pension plan assets/income, the employer would be intentionally diverting contributions from their legally required purpose (pension plan funding) to other uses (payment of current benefits), and could also be achieving a financial gain from doing so (avoidance of making some or all of the legally required employer contributions). Whether that’s theft or fraud, take your pick. It’s one or the other, and possibly both. Since deception is involved (pension funding practices are commonly accepted practice and are well-known), I’d say it qualifies as fraud – but I’ll settle for grand theft. Third, if the employer in any way received favorable tax status (e.g., by gaining tax exemption for reduced current employer contributions), there would also be tax evasion. Since the employer contributions would not have been used for the purpose required (funding pension plan assets) in order to legitimately gain tax exemption, any tax benefit claimed by the employer would be unlawful.
Bottom line: once again, insipid, you really don’t know what you’re talking about. But please – by all means, go ahead. Start a business and set up a private employee pension plan for your employees using the Social Security model. I’ll be happy to attend your arraignment.
May 30th, 2012 at 8:25 am
Minor addendum to post 100: I missed a couple of other obvious violations of law in comment 99 above. To set up any type of scheme, it’s a virtual certainty that either electronic communications or the USPS will be used. So add either wire fraud and mail fraud (or both) as charges.
And if more than one person is involved in setting up the scheme, each individual will also be guilty of conspiracy.
Regarding your assertion that there is “no lying involved in SS”: bull. The Federal government has been lying about Social Security since before it existed.
When FDR first proposed Social Security, he deceptively sold it as a “savings program” where you’d be “getting your own money back”. We all know that’s bullshit.
The SCOTUS has held that Social Security taxes are not earmarked in any way (and that they thus may be used for any purpose the Congress desires). Congress has done exactly that for years.
The SCOTUS has also held that an individual has no vested property interest in Social Security – as a US communist who later was deported found out the hard way when he tried to collect Social Security benefits that he’d “earned” (Flemming v. Nestor, 1960). With Social Security, you get what the Federal government decides to give you. You don’t “earn” squat – because no contractual relationship exists. And you have no legal claim to ownership of a damn penny paid into Social Security, nor any contractual claim to a damn penny from Social Security. All you did was pay your taxes. You didn’t purchase or invest a damn thing. If the Federal government decides you get nada, nada you get.
Further, the supposed Social Security “Trust Fund” – isn’t. As noted above, per the SCOTUS there are no legal restrictions on how Congress can choose use that money. It’s merely the cumulative difference between receipts and outlays, loaned by the Federal Government from itself to itself – and already spent. (Try getting your bank to OK a loan like that.) Further, there are also no real assets or investments backing same. Other than IOUs from the Federal government, there’s nothing there.
Bottom line: Social Security is nothing but an income transfer program from younger to older – AKA welfare for the aged. Calling it an “investment program”, or leading people to believe they “own” an “account” and will “get their own money back”, is a damned lie. And the Federal government has been actively propagating that lie for decades.
Social Security is not an investment. Your taxes have bought you nothing. You own nothing of value. You have no ownership rights to a damned penny paid into the system, nor is there a contractual obligation on the part of the Federal government pay you a penny. Once you pay your Social Security taxes, it’s the Federal government’s money to do with what they will. And the “trust fund” is nothing but an accounting fiction designed to fool those too ignorant to know better.
Not my opinion, insipid. Source of the above is a former Federal judge, who (unlike you) actually knows the law – and the pertinent history – concerning the subject.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/04/26/social-security-iisi-ponzi-scheme/
The only reason Social Security is not illegal is the fact that the government has authorized itself to run a Ponzi scheme. If it were being done by private industry, it would constitute fraud. Don’t believe me? Ask Bernie Madoff.
May 30th, 2012 at 8:30 am
insipid–to boil it down, go to your local SSA office and ask to see “your account.”
See how long it takes before you’re laughed out of the place.
May 30th, 2012 at 8:36 am
One last point, insipid. Since I recall that you appear to have the “hots” for Nobel economists, you might want to check out what Milton Friedman, Paul Samuelson, and Paul Krugman have said in the past about Social Security. Each has likened Social Security to a Ponzi scheme. In fact, 2 of the three have outright stated that Social Security IS a Ponzi scheme. Krugman was more circumspect, merely saying that it has “Ponzi game aspects” and that the “Ponzi game will soon be over”.
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/09/is-social-security-a-ponzi-scheme.html
In case you’ve forgotten, “game over” in a Ponzi scheme means virtually all the participants take it in the shorts. Bigtime.
May 30th, 2012 at 2:52 pm
Somewhere upthread, #56, insip posted a quote that SS is solvent, yet in the same post, admits that in less than 8 years it’ll be insolvent. So, nope, it isn’t self-supporting, never has been, never will be.
And, I encourage you to follow Sparky’s advice. While you’re there, ask to see the SS balance sheet, you know, how much they’re taking in, opposed to what they’re paying out. If they aren’t rolling on the floor laughing at you with the “account” request, they will be at that.
May 30th, 2012 at 4:11 pm
” . . . provide for the COMMON Defense and GENERAL Welfare OF the United States; . . . ”
– Constitution of The U.S.A., Article. I. Section. 8. (No, not the Military Section Eight) —
The wording means — the WHOLE, NOT the individual .
NO DIRECT TAX also means NOT INDIVIDUAL — thus tariffs are Constitutional, the IRS is NOT (Amendment XVI is WRONG, but Constitutionally ratified (as is Amendment XVIII)) .
The DIFFERENT concepts Man (The Individual) and some GROUP (mere sum of some men) —
ARE MASSIVELY EVADED .
The gov’t-funded colleges have no motivation to teach straight thinking .
May 30th, 2012 at 4:30 pm
Insipid, this is just an observation, a personal opinion, my thoughts, my feeling.There is a quote out there that goes something like, “All the world is crazy but me and you but sometimes I wonder about you.” So you are right and everyone else, who has posted anything counter to you, is wrong.
Read #103 and dispute it. Did you or did you not claim, @ 56, that SS is solvent then in the same post you say it will have exhausted it’s reserves by 2033. The only way that can happen is if it’s paying out more than it’s taking in.
How about this. I’m on a PLA (Personal Leave of Absence) which started on 1 Feb. I won’t be returning to work until 31 Jan 2013. When I started my PLA I had $35,000+ in my saving account. I have been living off that since I quit working. My living expenses are $2,500 a month not including my entertainment costs. I guestimate I’m spending $3,000 a month. I’m doing some consulting work which brings in about $500 a month. The net loss to my savings is $2,500 a month. Using round figures my bank account will be broke in 14 months.
This is what’s happening to SS. More money is going out, because there are more people receiving money, than there are people putting money in. Demographics don’t lie. I’m a baby “Baby Boomer” the largest group of current and future SS recipients in history. My parents have five kids paying into SS to cover their benefits. I have three that are paying in to cover my x-wife and myself. Son 1 has one to pay for him and Mikki, son 2 has 2 to pay for him and Jamie and daughter has 2 to pay for her and Ruben. Another thing to consider is there are people out there not paying anything into SS. Here in Az firefighters and LEOs belong to a separate retirement fund. My older brother hasn’t paid SS taxes in 30 years BUT he has enough earned credits so he will be receiving some SS benefits. There is a huge difference between being solvent and being self sustaining, SS is neither.
May 30th, 2012 at 11:45 pm
Long post, but I’m trying to answer everyone in one shot, because i have work tomorrow!
I sure hope you didn’t give yourself Carpal T typing all that out, Hondo because almost none of what you say applies to SS. Yes, if SS were operating as a pension plan much of what you say would be true. But SS is not a pension plan and never has been. Social Security’s initials are actually SSI and SSDI, which stands for Social Security INSURANCE and also Social Security Disability INSURANCE. What it does is insure against your no longer being able to work should you become old or infirm.
Insurance companies work in entirely different ways than pension funds. If you buy health, life, fire car or unemployment insurance there’s no account there for you saving all the money you put into it. You can’t go to your broker and say “I want my money back, i didn’t get sick, die early, have a fire or get into a car accident, and have never been unemployed a day in my life! Pay up!” As with Social Security INSURANCE that is not how it works. Everyone pays into it so it’s there IF you are one of the people that need it. Likewise insurance, also works on the principle of many people paying for a minority of people just like SSI and SSDI. Insurance like SSI and SSDI does not give a guaranteed pay out. That depends on what kind of policy you buy and the severity of the accident, illness etc. etc.
Furthermore, insurance like Social Security and Medicare is paid for with the understanding that there will be a major windfall. Nobody thinks that if you buy insurance for you condo that it will be replaced with a mansion should there be a fire. Nobody pays into SSI with the belief that it will make them wealthy. They pay for it with the knowledge that it will be there as a back up should when they get old or should they become infirm.
So no, if a private company decided to run an insurance agency in which many people decided to pay for the retirement and disability of other people that would not be illegal. It would be impractical to run because there’s no way a private insurance agency could muster enough people in the pool in order to make it profitable, but still it would be legal.
In order to save you more carpal t (you just don’t appreciate what a giver i am!) I’ll answer your next challenge, “But it was CALLED a pension on this date and in this time! Fraud! They’d be in jail if they tried that in the private sector! Hell, I’ll even provide a video produced in 1953 which has that quote from Roosevelt you referenced above and even clearly states that the money you pay into Social Security is stored in a vault with your name on it (or something to that effect).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGq_tJMvIaU
Fraud! Lying bastards! If the private sector tried something like that they’d be in jail post haste!
No, not at all. If you actually applied the rules of fraud to the facts of the video then you would see that it does not even come close.
In order for that video to be fraud it has to meet ALL of the following criteria:
1. There has to be a false statement and it has to be done with the intention of harming the plaintiff. I will stipulate that calling it a pension is a false statement and that stating that there is money in vault for you is also false. However enrolling someone in a program that has paid out in EXACTLY the manner described in the video for over 50 years would not qualify as an intent to harm. It’s actually deceiving with an intent to do good.
2. It has to be of a material fact. No, in this case it is not a material fact. Whether i call it a pension or insurance SS STILL did and does everything the video claimed it did. If i sell you fire insurance and I say something to the effect of “I’m going to take your money and put it in an account and it will be there if you need it when you have a fire”. That is not a true statement. The money is not being stored in a vault, it’s being used to pay for the damages of other people and it’s going to pay for my salary. So, am i guilty of fraud, am I going to jail post haste!? No, not at all, because the fact is not material, as long as the insurance company shells out the money if you have a fire. You’re allowed to make misstatements as to the particulars in or describing a program or product as long as the program does what you say it will and SSI did EVERYTHING described in that video.
3. I’m going to be generous and give you number three. I do believe that when the video said that your money is stored for safe keeping, that does fall under the category of lie. However I do not believe this falls under the category of “reckless disregard for the truth” because they also use the words insurance, or insured at least 50 times in that 17 minute video.
4. There has to be an intention to induce reliance on the statement. Again, I’ll be generous and concede that the portion of the video that stated your money is in an account and that one use of the word pension was used to induce reliance.
5. Plaintiff relies on the statement to the Detriment of the plaintiff and here’s the biggy and here’s where you fail miserably. For the 59 years since the video has been made SS has worked EXACTLY as described in the video. It’s paid out in the sums described in the video (going up quite a bit for inflation of course).
So that’s only 2 out of the 5 elements. So there’s no fraud there. Furthermore the constant repetition of the word insurance and insured certainly makes it clear that they wanted people to think it was an insurance policy (which it is).
So while there were parts of the video that were admittedly deceptive it hardly rises to the level of Bernie Maddoff. The people who bought into SSI got the payments they were expecting when they got old and had it there for them if they became disabled. SSI paid out exactly as described, unlike Bernie Madoff.
Now as to the other big kinnard! This would be SOOOO much better if handled by the private sector! Mmmmm, no.
Let’s examine just what you’re getting for the 12% of your income that you pay into SSI, Medicare and Medicaid:
1. You get a guaranteed payment, that’s adjusted for inflation that will pay out from the time you’re 67 until the day you die even if you live to be 120.
2. You get an insurance program that cannot turn you down for pre-existing conditions that will pay your basic needs until the day you die no matter how long you live. With it you also get the right to buy into another program that will pay for virtually all your care till the day you die.
3. You get insurance that will pay you an amount should you become disabled and cannot work until you either get better and are able to work or until you die.
You get ALL of this for just 12% of your income (14% if and when the Obama Tax cut runs out). There is not a private insurance anywhere that can compete with that. Hell many employers will take 10% or more out of your pay JUST for health insurance.
Not only that, but no insurance IS competing with that. When private insurance was tried to replace government insurance in Chile and Britain it was a disaster. Since you referenced Krugman as somehow agreeing with you I’ll quote what he had to say:
<<<>>>>
Wow, doesn’t sound like he thinks it’s a ponzi scheme to me! It sounds like he likes it!
As far as all the folks who claim that social security is insolvent based on this link that pretty much all of us agree is a fair link:
http://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/index.html
Right now the site states that SSI is taking in more than it’s paying out and will continue to do so until 2020. It also states that it can continue to pay full benefits by cashing in the reserves until 2033 (and if you think government bonds are worthless Hondo, I’ll be happy to take any of them off your hands for 10 cents of gold ((since i assume you don’t like cash either it also being backed up by the U.S. Govt))). However when that happens it’s not like SS will evaporate. Even if we do nothing SS can still pay out benefits for the remainder of the 75 year period at roughly 75%.
But we’re not going to do nothing. I garuntee you that something will be done because any political party that allows SS to go out will go the way of the whigs within 4 or 5 years.
And there’s probably a dozen ways we can fix it without ending the program. We could raise the retirement age slightly, we can raise (or better yet eliminate) the cap on income, we can raise the amount that the employer and employee pay into SSI and Medicare by 1 or 2 percent. Both programs can- and will- be mended without being ended. Here’s a good article on the subject:
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500395_162-6494282.html
May 30th, 2012 at 11:59 pm
I meant that there is an understanding that there will NOT be a major windfall in paragraph 4.
I was trying to do show visually that it was a quote, but somehow I eliminated the quote from Krugman:
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Privatizers who laud the Chilean system never mention that it has yet to deliver on its promise to reduce government spending. More than 20 years after the system was created, the government is still pouring in money. Why? Because, as a Federal Reserve study puts it, the Chilean government must “provide subsidies for workers failing to accumulate enough capital to provide a minimum pension.” In other words, privatization would have condemned many retirees to dire poverty, and the government stepped back in to save them.
The same thing is happening in Britain. Its Pensions Commission warns that those who think Mrs. Thatcher’s privatization solved the pension problem are living in a “fool’s paradise.” A lot of additional government spending will be required to avoid the return of widespread poverty among the elderly – a problem that Britain, like the U.S., thought it had solved.
Britain’s experience is directly relevant to the Bush administration’s plans. If current hints are an indication, the final plan will probably claim to save money in the future by reducing guaranteed Social Security benefits. These savings will be an illusion: 20 years from now, an American version of Britain’s commission will warn that big additional government spending is needed to avert a looming surge in poverty among retirees.
So the Bush administration wants to scrap a retirement system that works, and can be made financially sound for generations to come with modest reforms. Instead, it wants to buy into failure, emulating systems that, when tried elsewhere, have neither saved money nor protected the elderly from poverty.
======================================================
Finally SSI faced a similar “crises” in the 1980s did Reagan scream PONZI SCHEME! and demand that they end it? No, the gipper actually worked out a deal with Tipp O’ Neil. He raised the retirement age a little, he started taxing unemployment insurance and VOILA! Crises averted. The same thing will happen here, hopefully sooner rather than later.
It’s funny how often i wind up bringing up Reagan fondly here, you’re the guys who are supposed to worship him.
May 31st, 2012 at 12:24 am
THIS is where we’re headed if we don’t get this fraud out of office: “Ineptocracy (in-ep-toc’-ra-cy)•A system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.”
May 31st, 2012 at 2:12 am
Insipid, you have proven, “All the word is crazy except me and thee, and I’ve been wondering about thee lately.”
You continue to insist you are right and everyone else is wrong. MANY of us here have Graduate and Post Graduate degrees, we’re not exactly dummies. Having my BA + 16 in Business Admin I am well aware of of finance. Your continued use of foreign examples of socialism to support your arguments are wearing thin and are becoming extremely boring. Citations from questionable sources don’t help either. Lastly, longwinded diatribes DO NOT imply authority nor facts. A sign of maturity is admitting when you’re wrong. A sign of immaturity is continuing to argue a point that is lost. Guess where you fit in?
May 31st, 2012 at 6:11 am
You’re acting as if this is a straight down the middle site, Yat. It’s not. This is a right-wing site. If i was in a flat earth or holocaust deniers forum i might very well be arguing with everyone on the board that the earth is round and i’d still be right and “everyone” would still be wrong. Not that I’m comparing right wingers to flat-earthers but….. mmmmm….. I’m not sure how to finish that sentence.
I’m not aware of where I used foreign examples of socialism other than to say Germany’s system has been around since 1889. But last I looked SS and medicare are American. I’m also not aware of any sources that I’ve had that are the least bit “questionable”. Hell many of the sources I’ve used have been provided by posters here.
You’re acting as if there are no right and wrong answers Yat.
SS is an insurance fund, not a pension fund, anyone who says otherwise whether it is FDR or Hondo is wrong.
SS has been operating at a surplus for almost its entire 70 year period. SS has not contributed one penny to the debt, in fact it’s alleviated it. At the very least, if you’re going to insist that SS go bankrupt and that we not give the money back, you must give up the tired talking point that “the poor don’t pay taxes” because the SS paid for by poor and middle class has been supplementing the military, education and the rest of the Federal budget for 70 years. That’s a fact.
SS is not going bankrupt, nor can it go bankrupt. Even if we do nothing it will continue to run at a diminished capacity.
Here is an article from Forbes magazine that does a nice job of explaining why SS cannot go bankrupt. I assume that’s conservative enough for you?
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What, then, you may ask, is the Social Security Trust Fund, the pool of money that people say will dry up and make it impossible for anyone to receive their Social Security payments? It is the surplus that resulted from having collected more in taxes than was necessary to pay out to retirees. Let me say that again: it is how much existing workers were overtaxed relative to the need to pay retirees in the past. It was never the source of the money we’ve been paying to Social Security recipients all these years. Strictly speaking, it’s completely unnecessary if we are able to precisely and continuously match tax revenues and pay outs.
We cannot do that, of course, partly because we are dealing with millions of people in a complex economy. In addition, while the payments to retirees are fairly formulaic and change in a predictable way (we can figure how many people are about to reach eligibility and how much they will draw), the revenues fluctuate with the state of the economy. They rise during expansions and fall during recessions. The trust fund can therefore serve as a place to park excess revenues when taxes exceed expenditures and from which additional funds can be drawn when the reverse occurs. It’s a buffer, sort of like that give-a-penny-take-a-penny tray at the local convenience store. As always, however, productivity and productivity alone determines our ability to support a class of retirees. This is only about how we coordinate that system.
There is another trust fund issue and it is the one related to the expected increase in the ratio of retirees to workers over the next couple of decades. This would presumably cause a net drain on the fund since payments to retirees might increase relative to tax revenues. This is actually the specific phenomenon to which many people are referring when they say that Social Security is going to go bankrupt. However, a) there is no guarantee this will occur since rising productivity could drive up wages sufficiently to compensate (although our trend of stagnating wages relative to profits is frustrating this) and b) even if that did occur, this hardly means that Social Security is kaput. Any shortfall can always be addressed in a very straightforward and supremely logical fashion: raise taxes or lower benefits (and it is exceedingly like that even if this occurs, we aren’t talking about anything drastic). It bears emphasizing, however, that such changes would still be a function of productivity and have absolutely, positively nothing to do with how much money we have or haven’t saved up. Funding, finances, money, taxes, etc. are part of the coordination mechanism, not the feasibility.
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May 31st, 2012 at 6:12 am
insipid: your long-winded, tilting-at-windmills diatribe in 106 above boils down to nothing more than an attempt to put lipstick on a pig, “spin” the unspinnable, and dissemble. The fact remains that Social Security is not an insurance scheme, a pension plan, or anything of the sort. It is a direct income transfer plan (AKA tax-funded social welfare program) that is also demographically unsustainable. Social Security participants own nothing, and have no contractual claim to getting squat. You have no Social Security “account”, and will get only what the government decides you will get.
Social Security has been sold as a pension plan where one “got his own money back” since before its inception. That’s been bullshit ever since it was first voiced by FDR and his staff – but was necessary to mislead the public into supporting Social Security. In plain language, Social Security is not a pension – it’s “welfare for the aged”. The only reason it’s not considered fraud is because the government, by law, has made it both legal and compulsory. It would qualify under Federal law as prosecutable fraud (e.g., a Ponzi scheme and an ERISA violation) if done by private industry.
Oh, and you also need to work on both your basic research and math skills. Your diatribe above is inaccurate concerning the “Medical coverage” part. Medicare is not and never has been a part of Social Security; it’s a separate program altogether, financed through separate taxes (and is also financially unsustainable over the long term). Combined Social Security taxes total 12.4% of income, not the 14% you claim above. Medicare taxes are separate, and currently total 2.9% of income, split evenly between employee and employer. And unlike Social Security, Medicare taxes are not capped by any annual maximum. They will also go up by an additional 0.9% of income for high-income earners next year.
The combined total of Medicare + Social Security taxes is 15.3% of income – or about 1 dollar out of every 6 1/2 dollars an employee earns.
You obviously freely choose to trade liberty (in terms of freedom of economic choice) for temporary financial “security” provided by the government. So be it. It’s a free country, and freedom includes the freedom to be a fool. But I’d suggest you pray that the country never runs out of better men (and women) than you – e.g., those who actually value personal freedom. And I’d also recommend you start investing privately, as if you’re in your late 20s or early 30s you may well not see anything approaching what you think you will from Social Security. Demographics pretty much guarantee that.
Someone who continues to argue a point after he’s been proven wrong is either an idiot incapable of understanding; is brainwashed and unwilling to think for themselves; or is being deliberately mendacious. I’m not sure which of these categories you fall into, but none are what I’d consider admirable. But your continued attempts at misdirection, bringing up marginally related points, and general refusal to admit the possibility that you might be wrong in the face of compelling evidence you are indeed incorrect are all evidence of gross immaturity if nothing else.
May 31st, 2012 at 6:18 am
Oh, i forgot the link:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/johntharvey/2011/04/08/why-social-security-cannot-go-bankrupt/
One of the comments in that section has a GREAT reply. People have been making the same claims since 1940!
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Are most mistaken, Social Security IS going bankrupt! So are Medicare and Medicaid. Consider the following stories in the Los Angeles Times.
April 6, 1992 – “The new siren is a frank and gloomy assessment that the national trust fund that pays hospital bills for 34 million Americans on Medicare will be broke in 10 years.” The would be George H.W. Bush telling us that Medicare would be broke in 2002.
January 9, 1984 – “Some adjustments are needed to head off bankruptcy in the Medicare system. The trust fund that helps pay doctor and hospital bills for 29 million Americans will run out of money by 1990 if nothing is done” That would be President Reagan saying that Medicare would be broke by 1990.
June 20, 1980 – “Unless Congress acts, the Social Security fund will run out of money to pay retirement and survivors’ benefits by late 1981 or early 1982, the funds government trustees reported Thursday.”
May 6, 1978 – “The social security trust funds that pay benefits to retired and disabled workers will be in good shape for several more decades but the fund that pays hospital insurance under Medicare will go broke by 1990, the trustees told Congress today.” That would be President Jimmy Carter again with a “go broke date of 1990.
August 30, 1960 – “That the [Medicare] bill passed was totally uninformed and almost totally irrational made no difference; the Democratic Presidential candidate can cry that he wanted to do more the old folks and the Republican candidate can say that the Congress might have done less if he hadn’t been so busy…We said that he bill was total uninformed, and it is…Nobody knows what it is right to do about medical aid to the aged because nobody has determined how many need help….Moreover, the political promoters have not had the courage to declare bluntly that everybody at age 65 receive a government health stipend, regardless of need…”
Oct. 8, 1940 – Republican Presidential candidate Wendell Willkie addressed social security – “…I want to say this in connection with social security that unless there is a change in administration those people who are presently paying into social security fund will never get any benefit there from…If it continues down the present path it will eventually bankrupt this country. We are bound to have either bankruptcy or inflation, and I say it very solemnly that those who are paying in on their social security will never get the principal of the social security when they need it in their old age…”
So, in other words Social Security has been going bankrupt for over 70 years! Social Security was on the verge bankrupting the entire country before your father was even born. What is more, 70 years from now, when your children are approaching retirement it will still be going bankrupt.
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May 31st, 2012 at 6:38 am
Social Security tax rates have also been rising for over 70 years, insipid. They started out at 2% (1% each for employee and employer), and stayed at that rate from 1937-1949. They’ve risen 620% since 1949. Had the rates remained
Social Security also did not include annual COLA increases until 1972. Prior to then, COLAs were made by irregular acts of Congress.
The only reason Social Security has remained solvent is that the government has the power (1) to compel participation, and (2) to forcibly increase rates as it deems justified. As I said above: they’re already taking a 12.4% cut “off the top” for Social Security alone, plus an additional 2.9% (scheduled to rise to 3.8% for high-income earners next year) for Medicare.
May 31st, 2012 at 7:02 am
Hondo, you have given no evidence whatsoever. You failed in proving its a “ponzi shceme” you failed in proving that it is in danger of collapse, you have failed in everything. And my post was long winded because i was trying to answer the misninformation of a lot of people. I already gave you the elements of fraud, you attempted and failed to state how SSI is fruad. It is not. It’s not even close.
Demographics do not gaurantee anything as that CBS news post points out, only modest changes are needed. There are a variety of ways to fix the shortfall without ending the program. Ronald Reagan proved that.
Also will you step outside the right wing bubble and look at how crazy you sound? You’ve not denied that thus far SS has operated at a surplus. I don’t think you can rationally deny that it has rescued 10s of millions from poverty. And you’re saying that this program that has never failed to pay a check in 76 years, that has paid out benefits as advertised and has not contributed a penny to our debt should be ended because if nothing is done it will someday be operating at a deficit? Huh?
That’s insane, it’s unreasonable. It’s like me saying we ought to end the defense budget because we lost in Vietnam. Hell, that statement would be more reasonable because at least I’d be pointing to an ACTUAL deficiency. That’s closer to the equivelent of me saying “We will lose a war someday inthe future so let’s end the military now.”
As far as your Franklin quote, i do not believe that money equals freedom. While poor people have less options, they’re certainly not “enslaved”. I certainly don’t believe that paying taxes is akin to a denial of economic liberty. Even when i pay for things i don’t agree with- like the enormous size of our military budget, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan etc. etc. I still do not equate the appropriation of those funds as “tyranny” just the price i pay for living in a civilized society and for my view not winning at the ballot box.
SSI and Medicare has benefited you in some way or some form. Even if somehow someway you’ve never had a parent or relative use either of those programs you’ve still enjoyed the benefits that improved medicine and standards of living has given to the elderly. Assuming you work for a living, you enjoy the benefit of disability insurance. Even if you never use it, you have the piece of mind knowing it is there for you.
I do not believe that Franklin was referrring to taxes when he made that quote. I think he was referring more to things like the patriot act. Taxes are not tyranny, they’re the price we pay for a civilized society. If you go into a store and pick up a candy bar you’re not entitled to pay for it. If you open the wrapper and bite into it, you are. We all enjoy the benefits of the government, whether it is safe food and water, safe air travel, roads or military or SSI and Medicare the government provides something we all “bite into”. We must pay for it. That’s not “tyranny” that is responsibility. Which is something you guys are supposed to be about.
May 31st, 2012 at 7:10 am
Yes, SSI has taken more, but it’s also done more. And your post only proves that it is possible to make changes without ending it.
You’re also forgetting that GWB proposed a privatization scheme less than 10 years ago. It went down to a SCREAMING defeat. It wasn’t even close to passing, not even in the vicinity of passing. You may think the American people are fools, that is your right. But foolish or not, SSI remains the most popular government program ever. It will remain that way probably forever. It will pay out benefits in my old age, and yours and your childrens old age and children’s children. And i’m sure, just like they did for it’s entire history someone somewhere will be screaming that it is heading for calamity.
May 31st, 2012 at 7:43 am
‘sip is, as usual, simply being hard headed. (surprise, surprise!)
Social Security is a ponzi scheme by definition, but ‘sip doesn’t like the definition so chooses to ignore simple facts of life.
Guess that is what seperates us adults from the children on the left – we deal with real life while they pretend that unicorns riding on rainbows will save them from us eeeeeevil people who want to take away their skittles.
May 31st, 2012 at 7:46 am
Well, when you suggest someone should have their hand out taken away and work for a living, they usually get angry.
May 31st, 2012 at 7:52 am
Just because a program is popular, it doesn’t equal being Constitutional, or just.
May 31st, 2012 at 8:19 am
insipid: There’s an old Catholic saying. I forget the Latin, but it essentially translates as “Don’t waste your time arguing with a fool”.
Anyone who asserts that Social Security, were it done by private enterprise vice government, would be a legitimate investment vice a Ponzi scheme is either an idiot or is intentionally dissembling. As I’ve said previously – and proved, contrary to your words above, by citing applicable Federal law (29 USC 1082) – Social Security would be unlawful fraud if done by private industry. It was “sold” as a “retirement plan” vice welfare – hence dishonesty/deceit is indeed involved. It promises a high rate of return (e.g., potentially unlimited) for its investors. It pays current returns with current investor contributions vice via the earnings of assets purchased with participant investments. Done by anyone other than the government, it would therefore meet the definition of a fraudulent Ponzi scheme. The only reason it is not prosecutable fraud is that it’s done by the government.
To deny the above is equivalent to denying that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west in the tropics. Go ahead and deny reality if you wish. I prefer to deal with reality vice deny it.
In short: your comments here prove you either a fool, or a deliberate dissembler. Either way, I’m done with this subject. I have no more time to waste arguing on the Internet with someone who has the intellect of a fence post or is willing to deliberately disregard proven facts. I’ve provided you documentary evidence that you’re wrong. If you choose to be a fool and continue to ignore the truth, well, that’s your problem – not mine.
May 31st, 2012 at 9:17 am
I was going to post that insipid has the disease, liberalis mentis, but Hondo nailed it better than that, with “the intellect of a fence post”. That says it all.
One who denies the facts that are presented, because they don’t fit his world view, can’t be persuaded with rational argument. This is just another in the long line of diatribes that it’s posted here, like the “you’re all racists” diatribe of earlier times.
The quality of it’s argument can be seen in it’s reliance on See BS as one of the foundations of the argument. I’m sure that Insipid still believes that NBC didn’t doctor the audio tape of Zimmerman’s phone call.
May 31st, 2012 at 9:25 am
SSI has taken more, but it’s also done more.
How so? Clinton started taxing it, we’re getting less in return with more taken out, assuming those of us under age 50 ever see a dime from the program, a possibility which is becoming less and less likely.
I could stick cash under my mattress and get a better rate of return from SS. And the government won’t force me to contribute to a system for 50-plus years and then up and tell me, “Whoops, sorry, we’re broke–our bad!”
May 31st, 2012 at 10:53 am
No. 104 follow-on:
Gov’t welfare $$ to individuals — NOT Constitutional, and, it has destroyed the country:
“THE REAL CRASH: America’s Coming Bankruptcy – How to Save Yourself and Your Country,” by Peter Schiff — a “must read,” if ever there were such a book .
June 26th, 2012 at 10:41 pm
So basically Hondo, your debate strategy is that you just declare that you won loudly enough and hope that no one notices that the liberal kicked your ass. That and cling to the fact that i posted some numbers off of the top of my head and got the percentages off by a bit. Ah ha! And you did get your ass kicked. That’s just a fact.
You did not prove fraud. You did prove that there was some false statements but you did not prove that it was of a material fact and you certainly did not prove intent to harm. If you tried to make this legal case before a judge you’d be thrown out of court. Hell, if you wrote this argument for a paralegal class you’d get an F. You did not prove fraud, therefore your whole “ponzi scheme” mantra is as full of shit as you are.
Furthermore you show a fundamental lack of understanding of SSI that would be breathtaking in its stupidity if it weren’t coming from… well…you. Social Security cannot go bankrupt. There is only three ways SSI can end and i’ll list them in order of most probable to least probable.
1. Everybody dies.
2. people stop aging
3. Congress votes to abolish it.
Other than those 3 things happening, SSI cannot “go bankrupt” because it is NOT a pension fund. It is an insurance fund. It works the way ALL insurance works, where a lot of people pay towards a few people. The very worst that can happen to SSI is that it pays out at a lower percentage. But it cannot go bankrupt.
Furthermore you’re also wrong about the supposed illegality of SS in the private sector. It cannot be done in the private sector because there is no way to make the pool large enough. Nor is there anyway to get the private sector to run at the 1% operating budget SSI runs at. But there’s no reason whatsoever that a private organization can’t set up an insurance fund like this. It’s impractical, and nearly impossible for a private firm to do it, but it’s not illegal.
You can continue to make the lame case that this is a pension fund and that it operates under pension fund rules. But you’d be lying. Nothing new for you.
June 26th, 2012 at 10:58 pm
See, Hondo. You’re wrong, not because you’ve made any factual errors, or got your facts wrong, which you didn’t do. You’re wrong because a troll says so.
June 26th, 2012 at 11:44 pm
No, he did make a factual error. When he called it fraud that is a factual error. Fraud MUST have intent to harm and the falsehood must be a material fact. That’s not a “troll” saying so, that’s what the law says.