There’s something about old media trying to do new media. Sometimes it works wonderfully, but usually it comes off as an editor heard about one of those “blogs” or “twitters” and asked the tech guy to set one up. The Seattle Times’ Ed Page blog falls into the later category. Infrequently updated, clearly not edited, and as biased toward the status quo as anything in print, the Ed cetera blog manages to combine the worst parts of blogs and newspapers in one convenient package.
They have a weekly feature, Civil Disagreements, where Lynne Varner representing as far left as the Times allows and Bruce Ramsey representing curmudgeonly libertarian basically agree on an issue and argue about the details. This week’s issue is the debt. Varner comes out strong saying yay for a toothless commission, I hope it recommends working the elderly to death:
The panel is expected to come up with a deficit reduction plan by Dec. 1. But the part of this commission’s charge I like best is their promise to recalibrate American expectations around money and social benefits. For example, one suggestion is to raise the age people can collect Social Security and slow the growth of those benefits. Another is raising taxes on a larger portion of the populace, those making under $200,000. It will be interesting to see what this group comes up with.
Work harder grandma! And tax increases targeted to lower income people. (I think that’s what she’s getting at, but “those making under $200,000” is a strange construction, I assume she means everyone making under $200,000.) You know liberalism. I’d prefer a 50% top marginal rate, but start it at incomes above $30 Million. These are made up numbers, of course, but something out of the range of normal Americans, or even their crazy expectations.
Shockingly Bruce Ramsey is less wrong. After pointing out that the toothless commission would probably be toothless, he says that it’s important to cut the deficit the right way. Although, it’s not a great solution either.
As for the ideas menationed [sic]: sure, some of them make sense. I’m a small-government guy, so I like spending cuts lots more than tax increases. If we keep the present Social Security system, it has to be balanced. And the best ways to do that are to allow the tax cap to rise faster and make the benefits formula less generous over time. I am not so high on raising the retirement age. It might work for desk jockeys like you and me, but blue collar workers are done by 67, and many of them well before that. You can’t expect an ironworker, a sheet metal worker, a pipefitter, etc, to work to age 70 in order to get full benefits. Anyway, if we’re going to cut payments from the government, let’s cut them to people who don’t work, not to people who worked a lifetime.
I’m not sure what exactly “it has to be balanced” means; Social Security is the largest part of the budget that isn’t swimming in red ink, it seems strange to focus on it. There is also no mention from either of them, why the deficit is more important than, say, job creation, or even desirable in a recession. Of course neither of them say if we want to balance the budget, we’re going to need to tax the people with the most money, shrink the military significantly (yes including Boeing’s contracts) and take concrete steps to grow the economy that probably include government spending in the short term.
Even the “moderate” mainstream press (they don’t dare call themselves “liberal” any more) has fully embraced the right-wing lie that Social Security and Medicare have already “failed”, so the only way to “save” them is to take all the money out and shovel it down the giant toilet bowl called “Wall Street”. The next time the Republicans control the White House and Congress (hell, they already seem to control the latter, even though they’re the minority) you can bet your britches that’s going to be their first priority, unless an opportunity presents itself first to start another war.
“For example, one suggestion is to raise the age people can collect Social Security and slow the growth of those benefits. Another is raising taxes on a larger portion of the populace, those making under $200,000. It will be interesting to see what this group comes up with.”
Another is cutting defense:
“Your team first drew up a budget to reach your 2020 target with all spending changes, and no new taxes. So what would a responsible budget look like in 10 years if politicians refused to raise the tax burden on Americans”?
“The answer is you have to do some very, very dramatic things … we squeezed defense so that they couldn’t invest in new weapon systems but could retain their personnel. You could have minor foreign interventions but nothing on the scale of Iraq and Iran.”
— Former CBO director Rudolph Penner in The Atlantic
http://business.theatlantic.co.....system.php
The Penner interview is well worth reading in entirety. It’s not very long, and summarizes a massive study, by qualified experts, of what it would take — budget cuts, tax increases, or a combination of both — to balance the federal budget. This article makes clear there’s no easy way to do it.
The reality is we’re probably looking at a combination of tax increases, inflation, scaling back entitlements, and defense cuts to reduce (but not eliminate) deficits.
And, as President Obama has pointed out, there’s no way to control deficits without controlling health care costs. Even if Obamacare fails, the government is already paying half the country’s health care costs and that percentage will rise in the years ahead as more wounded veterans come home from the wars and Baby Boomers reach Medicare age.
” … or even desirable in a recession. … take concrete steps to grow the economy that probably include government spending in the short term.”
Of course, this is the nub of it. As John Maynard Keynes correctly pointed out, crashed markets don’t fix themselves, at least not quickly enough “to be politically tolerable.”
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/.....the-master
Keynesians believe the Hoover administration’s response to collapsing markets of cutting federal spending and balancing the budget made the recession worse. Whether you believe Keynes is up to you, but that’s what Hoover did, and the results are a matter of history.
Breaking News
Dick Cheney is hospitalized tonight for chest pains. Cheney reportedly is “resting comfortably at George Washington University Hospital and his doctors are evaluating the situation,” according to CNN. No further information is available at this time.
Cut all programs not running a surplus.
Cheney can afford to rest comfortably. Others who don’t have insurance are not resting comfortably, or at all.
Just tell me who’s going to hire a 65-year-old. Or a 60-year-old. In fact, when there are 30-year-olds without jobs begging to be hired, tell me who’s going to hire a 45-year-old.
Historically, whenever the federal deficit was eliminated, an economic retraction followed.
Discuss.
Deficit hawks are generally wrong, wrong, wrong…..
http://www.americanprogress.or.....acock.html
….or preening hypocrites.
Many progressives share the delusional fear of “deficits” found commonly amidst the fever swamps of wingnut thought. It’s well past time that you learned differently, and got up to speed with modern monetary theory (MMT)and the true nature of a fiat money system.
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/
Dean Baker and James K. Galbraith are also very good.
You can download Baker’s book, “The Conservative Nanny State” for free on the internet tubes.
It’s a short and easy read. I urge all here to check it out.
debt is evil…..
@13 The debt is much higher than it was in Eisenhower’s time, yet prices are stable, interest rates are low, the economy has grown tremendously, and tax rates are much lower. How can that be?
Let me spell it out for you debt supporters:
1. Post WW2, the US had just about the ONLY mfg base that had not been destroyed by the war
2. The US had a strong mfg base..WE DO NOT HAVE THAT TODAY
3. Much of western europe and some of asia needed to be rebuilt. This rebuilding was not only financed by the US, it was also SUPPLIED by the US.
4. The economy of the 1950’s and 1960’s was supported by the established mfg base in the US, along with the need to rebuild europe and japan, which had NO mfg base(destroyed by the war).
5. We no longer have that situation. We have massive debt, little mfg base, and NOWHERE to send anything we mfg. In other words, we have the opposite situation we were facing post WW2.
So tell me, all you debt supporters, how we gonna get out of this one? Your false argument about post WW2 debt is now nullified.
beeoootch….
I love it when people who have life time tenure tell us the retirement age has to be raised. Sure if you have a sitting down and talking out your ass job like US Senators, rightwing think tank analysts, or editorial board members, 65 seems early.
For the rest of us…
Where the FUCK are the jobs for people over 50? Turning 50 means hanging to whatever job you happen to hold before permanent unemployment. If you’re lucky you won’t have a major health issue between layoff at 56 and medicare eligibility at 65. If you can still stand up at 80(or 75 and look 80) you’ll be eligible for a Wal-Mart greeter position.
You really don’t get it, do you, Maxie? How can being so dumb make you feel so confident? Really, I’m asking this question from a social psychologist’s point of view. Please, oh please, tell me how you are right.
17
Ask Max about that. He’ll answer, but his answer will hardly be correct.
If you read nothing else in the next 48 hours, read this article:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc.....ica-future
“We are in a very deep hole, and we’ve been in it for a relatively long time already. Concerns over deficits are understandable, but in these times, our bias should be toward doing too much rather than doing too little. That implies some small risk to the government’s ability to continue borrowing in the future; and it implies somewhat higher taxes in the future too. But that seems a trade worth making. We are living through a slow-motion social catastrophe, one that could stain our culture and weaken our nation for many, many years to come. We have a civic — and indeed a moral — responsibility to do everything in our power to stop it now, before it gets even worse.”
“The number of 9/11 ‘truthers’ I encountered somewhat shocked and dismayed me. Perfectly normal people of all political stripes and socioeconomic backgrounds would, in my mind, transform into conspiracy nutjobs when they expressed their belief that the U.S. government was complicit in the 9/11 attack.
“I was also surprised by the number of conservative independents and Republicans I met in the South who considered the invasion of Iraq the primary cause of our national debt and economic downturn.”
— Christina Davidson in The Atlantic
http://correspondents.theatlan.....ective.php
@15 Get back to me when you can tell me something I don’t already know. That level of information is elementary, Max.
Meanwhile, I suggest you read the entire article I linked @20, then re-read the last paragraph of that article at least three times, then spend at least 24 hours thinking about it, before you pop off again.
@18 The blissfully ignorant are always wonderfully self-confident. Didn’t you know that? Only the educated are afflicted with uncertainty.
Well, Max, it’s like this. No company ever cost-cut its way to prosperity, and no government ever pulled its country out of recession by slashing its spending. The time to balance the budget is when the economy is booming, not when it’s gasping for air.
You should do some reading on the causes of the Depression, with special focus on the policy mistakes that were made when it was still a recession. You’re wrong, period, and your policy prescriptions if followed would have catastrophic consequences. That’s why no one should listen to you.
Of course, you don’t have to take my word for it. Ask the market:
“If the federal government’s fiscal position is so financially parlous, … then why is the interest rate on U.S. government bonds lower than at the beginning of the 2000s, when the government ran a budget surplus and was paying down its debt?
“What is the message in government bond yields? That the conventional fiscal pessimism could be wrong, deeply wrong. … [The market’s] price signal should be taken seriously.
“It’s also doubtful that the world’s hard-nosed bond market vigilantes …have suddenly gone squishy. … Bond-trader calmness partly reflects the reality that much of the bluster and wailing about the deficit is simply nonsense.”
Or ask seasoned investment professionals:
“‘No doubt, there is plenty to worry about. There always is!’ writes James W. Paulson, chief investment officer for Wells Capital Management, in his latest economic and investment newsletter. But his advice for dealing with the nation’s obsession with the [debt] is to ‘ignore the rabble.’
“Money managers well know that the extraordinary fiscal and monetary policy initiatives in the U.S. and elsewhere kept the economy from falling off the precipice. …
“Rates could go higher, but not because the bond market vigilantes are running from the federal deficit and government debt. …
“Investors also seem to have faith ….”
http://www.businessweek.com/in.....235986.htm
Carl: She’s talking about the payroll tax. Currently, wages, tips and salary over ~$105,000 aren’t taxed for Social Security. So those who make an extrmely high salary (ARod, for example) and somebody making $105,000 pay the same amount into Social Security. Varner is advocating raising the $105,000 maximum to $200,000. This is actually a little bit progressive and a good idea, especially if you’re concerned about the Social Security trust fund running out of money.
See Wikipedia about payroll taxes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.....care_taxes
From the OP: Social Security is the largest part of the budget that isn’t swimming in red ink, it seems strange to focus on it.
I recently read that SS is not so secure:
Link
The generational warfare that is coming our way will be interesting to see. The majority of retired and boomers-soon-to-retire seem to have no problem loading trillions of more debt on the generations behind them.
I’m starting to see Roger’s logic of “why work?”…
And Bush borrowed money to wage a stupid war and cut taxes for billionaires..
I bet little Maxie got his jollies watching the swarthy people being cut to pieces on the Faux News…
China is only too willing to lend us money to sink into a hole.
Now Obama w/ the Fed is not only borrowing some money (not all of it by a longshot), they’re printing money to keep the banksters afloat. 700 billion for stimulus, for the little people is nothing. Some billions to protect the car industry in this country is nothing. TRILLIONS go to finance. Supposedly that means no Herbert Hoover debacle on their watch but it may also mean the kind of economy Japan had in the nineties and still has to a large extent.
it’s time for the American Empire to go home
where are our riches?
why are we beating our citizens into dust?
dryrot nation
What scares me the most about our current deficits is that the current world economy players do not have the ability to loan us the money we currently require to operate our federal government.
In the last year, $300 billion was loaned to us from other government entities. The rest (1+ Trillion) was loaned by the Federal Reserve Bank, who created that money out of thin air. (“quantitative easing”)
The Fed has stated they will stop QE in March of this year. What happens this year when the US needs to borrow 1.4 Trillion dollars to operate and nobody can loan us the money?
THAT scenario is what is happening in Greece and soon Ireland. In my opinion, THAT is more pain (think of gov programs and entities suddenly just stopping) than reducing the deficit to more manageable levels.
Relying on others to loan us such huge amounts of money to operate creates the potential for chaos. Deficits are ok in an environment that can support them, but right now the deficits are scary given the rest of the world’s ability to loan the USA money.
Edit above:
In the last year, $300 billion was loaned to us from other government entities.
I should have said instead, “loaned to us from foreigners“
RR @ 20: One of the structural problems which is really about to bite us in the rear end is that the current yough (high school through twenties) in the U.S. are finding it difficult to motivate themselves into working hard to get an eduction or job skills training. Sure, we old-timers like to complain about them being lazy and wanting to play video games all day. But they are actually pretty bright and well-informed, and realize that investing several years and tens of thousands of dollars training for a career isn’t necessarily a good investment.
Many have grown up watching their parents go from job-to-job, career-to-career, barely keeping within one paycheck of becoming homeless. Their parents struggled through the rescessions of the early 1980’s, the early 1990’s, post-9/11, and the current rescession, each time barely catching up before the next one hits, and in many cases having to pay for re-training and career changes each time.
As bad as it is with the college-educated, it’s even worse with the blue-collar jobs. You study hard in an internship and spend years learning how to master your job in the building trades, assembly work, auto repair, etc., and yet you are regularly placed out of work by mergers, out-sourcing, company relocations, etc. The more skilled and experienced they become, the more they are the first targeted for layoffs in order to cut payroll costs.
What has happened over the past several decades is that the American Dream has been killed by a small number of people working in corporate finance who value next quarter’s earnings reports over the long-term prosperity of the company, or the country as a whole. We used to believe that if you worked and studied hard, you would get ahead. Today’s youth is smart enough to see that’s seldom the case, as their jobs are eliminated by a privildedged few who haven’t the foggiest idea how to do the primary work their company is supposed to perform.
32 – The youth have a new word: funemployment. They want to work at things they actually enjoy, money be damned, instead of suffering at the hands of cruel taskmasters in the miserable quarter to quarter nightmare of the corporate workplace.
Again they’ll lend us some money if it means we’re bogged down in the middle east.
As for the rest? TAX! Yeah, cut spending but first do no harm and TAX! TAX! TAX!
32 – I read about some doctor in General Practice who’ll pay off her student loans:
WHEN SHE’S 71!!!
Whatamoron@35,
What income taxes did you pay last year? What WA State taxes (all taxes and fees) did you pay last year? What L&I taxes did you pay last year?
Watch this shithead shuck and jive and not answer. Puddy paid more in Federal taxes alone than you & your wife took in as income.
TAX! TAX! TAX! my ASS.
LMBBAO!
36 – I paid plenty asshole..
You make less than 250k per year? Then I don’t fucking care about you. Continue to whack off to your Limbaugh.
WHAT AN IDIOT!!!
Re 34
Fine. Every citizen benefits equally from national defense, interstate highways etcetera. Levy a flat 4% increase on everyone and your idea is fantastic.
Wait, you mean further debilitate job creation by theoritically increasing taxes on ‘the wealthy,’ don’t you.
Do you folks on the left really believe these people just sigh and stroke a check to their spendthrift Uncle Sam? Really? What they do in the real world is pass those taxes on in higher software pricing, food prices etcetera. Or they stop spending if they can’t pass it on, and we know how beneficial lower spending is in a recession, right?
And what do you mean by ‘wealthy?’ Anyone making just a bit more than you perhaps? All those bastards who planned and worked and sacrificed over a period of years to get the financial security they richly deserve? Marvelous social engineering! Encourage bad decisions and discourage good ones. I can’t wait to see the lazy worthless society your buddies create over time.
As Puddy said… watch the shithead shuck and jive. You meant to say: “My wife paid plenty“.
Pavlov struck as called… Nice shuck and jive shithead. As Puddy said, Puddy paid more Federal taxes than your income fool!
Remember Puddy said he’s come to DL and display the tax return. No one took Puddy up on it. GBS claimed he paid $0! Check your personal copy of Goldy’s HA blog on your personal system fool. As you display the link per Pavlov, you’ll find the challenge FOOL!
Re 34
In my prior post I made a mistake. Wealthy citizens benefit less from the shared costs of taxation. They pay much much more and get the same benefit, so dollar for dollar they get less for their money.
Also the top 5% pay 30% of the tax burden in this country. The top 25% pay a staggering 80% of total tax revenue. What’s fair to you, a formula where the top 5% pay 75% of taxes and the bottom 60% pay none?
Re 32 and 33
WHAT? It’s not fun to go to work. Oh damn. Poor wittle things. The little snuggle wuggums don’t like to work at acquing a trade or profession? My heart bleeds.
38 – I’m going from memory here but a while back I cited a recent IRS study of the top 400 wealthiest households in this country.
AVERAGE income of 357 MILLION dollars per year.
Are they going to miss 50 percent of that? Or even 90 percent of that?
Guess how much they paid in federal taxes on that?
16.7 percent.
Now let’s say they’re all greedy and they really care about every cent of that money. Instead of throwing it at casino finance schemes on Wall Street, how about leaving them no choice but to channel those funds into meaningful enterprises that put people to work in this country?
Seems like the start of a halfway decent economic philosophy to me!
Maybe nobody fucking cares to see your ugly face.
Make a decent living? Fine. Jerk off to your Limbaugh and go your own way. You pay enough in taxes.
Make a obscene killing at other’s expense? Uhh. Sorry pony up for the wars of choice and other bullshit that right wingers has saddled us with. Me and my kids didn’t ask for it.
Re 42
Couple of things. 400 households in the US is not statistically significant. It makes for emotion, but not good policy. Since when does the US form policy on the basis of the actions of 400 of its’ citizens?
Also, you didn’t answer my main point. Even if it were moral and fair to steal from these people it wouldn’t be effective. They simply pass on the cost to you and I. Particularly the 400 households you reference. If they can’t they cut personal spending. Either way it helps nothing but a left wing sense of ‘fairness.’
Puddy going from memory and the most of the Top 10 richest in America lean Dummocrapt. Puddy posted the proof again last week. Ask ylb arschloch for the links.
Work is great. Wage slavery sucks..
Whatamoron@43,
Still mumblin nuthin and ramblin as always.
Lost,
Trying to converse with ylb arschloch is a lesson in futility. Taxing the top 400 families will not be a drop in the bucket for all those “progressive” policies. It the top 400 include George Soros, Puddy makes an exception for this fool.
Re 46
I agree. Good thing it doesn’t exist in the US for anyone but those who choose it.
Nope. Good policy forestalls that. Good policy says hey it’s great you’re so fortunate that you’re building up so much wealth – now keep it working in the real economy instead of in the mattresses which is more or less what rich people do with the bulk of their wealth these days. Guess what that means? The rich gets a lower tax bill.
And top 400 is just for show. There are many more after that who pay as little as nothing to really not much more than that 17 percent.
Recent history: Bill Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy. Right wingers said it would tank the economy.
THEY WERE WRONG.
And stealing? Borrowing money from China to finance tax cuts for billionaires and wars of choice isn’t stealing from future generations?
In many cases those are the only jobs out there right now. Roger Rabbit just cited an article that illustrated a young guy with machinist skills but couldn’t get pay higher than a wal-mart cashier.
Absolutely it’s fair. Who has the money? Who’s gotten the lions share of the gains from right wing governance in this country?
Not the middle class who hasn’t seen an inflation-adjusted increase in wages that whole time.
Translation: I (YLB) WIN, YOU LOSE!!!
I really do understand your frustration with the increasing rich/poor gap. I don’t happen to agree that tax policy is the way to address it.
For instance I can’t affect Patty Murrays’ choices, or Obamas’. Even if I agreed with them, which I don’t, they are much more interested in the workings of Washington DC than Washington State, and this is true of most politicians, either with an R or a D after their name. Don’t believe me? Look at the health care debacle. Look at banking regulations and oversight. (And no matter what RR, or Goldy or anyone else says, this was a bipartisan mess.)
Tax policy to address wealth disparity is like shooting a rabbit for venison. You might get your shot, but you won’t get what you want.
@24..dude, you are clueless…
IF they lean left or right I’m all for them paying LOWER taxes.
If they do the right thing with their money, they don’t have to pay anywhere near a higher top marginal rate.
It worked in FDR, Truman, Eisehower and Jack Kennedy’s time. With some adjustment it could work today.
Re 52
You’re talking about short term issues, not the fundamental equity or lack thereof in the tax structure.
Either the wealthy benefit disporportionately from being citizens or they don’t. If they do it’s because government overstepped its’ bounds involving itself in extra-Constitutional activities. If all the feds did was interstate commerce, national defense, maintain a federal judiciary and the few other constitutional obligations laid on it they would have no power to advantage the wealthy. The remedy to this is to scale back federal government, not to increase revenue. If the need is so great local and state government will step in to fill it. If not, the government activity never needed done anyway.
Re 56
I just realized what I should have seen before.
Conservatives see taxation as a way to fund the essential services we rely on government to perform.
Liberals see taxation as a way to engineer society and to pay for government.
A lesson in reading comprehension? Futile indeed for your stupid ass.
Nowhere did I state or imply that taxing ONLY the top 400 households would solve the problem.
In any case I’m talking my dogs for a long hike, so will leave the discussion to you fine foks. Have a nice day.
Re 54
Before I go, the rabbit commment in no way referred to rabbits on this blog, and should not be taken to have done so. It was purely a device intended to convey a point, and I apologize to any resident bunnies who might have been offended. Or deer.
58 – Effectively creating incentives for economic growth so everyone in society can look forward to the future.
What’s wrong with that?
We’ve seen plenty of tax cuts from right wingers these last 30 or so years.
Where are we now?
We’ve seen plenty of de-regulation from the right wing, finance being quite notable in that regard.
Where are we now?
There’s plenty of evidence out there that the majority of people see the game rigged and it’s NOT in their favor.
Then why do you fecklessly bring them up? Because Herr Goebbels Dumb Bunny did a few days ago? Vicariously living through other’s posts. Whatamoron!
Class envy? Dividing America into us and them? Standard progressive mumbo-jumbo!!! You do this every day here.
Yep, them liberal policies working wonders ylb arschloch.
Nope. Everyone out there sees this recession lasting a long, long time. We’re not doing much different. Obama’s policies are essentially conservative, making the patient stable. Whether the patient will be healthy again is yet to be seen. I don’t believe that will be the case unless we do things differently.
For illustration you stupid asshole. They pay taxes at a lower rate than you do. They can easily afford a much higher rate.
All to pay for the stupid shit you drool over on Faux News and right wing bullshit publications: wars of choice, torture, high tech Star Wars boondoggles, surveillance of electronic communications, silly ineffective drug wars. You believe in that shit don’t you. Who’s going to pay for it? Are you the kind of idiot who says “I’ll pay for it. The rich I worship don’t have to.”
Sure looks like it to me.
How are we going to pay for the stupid mistakes of the right wing if we don’t raise taxes?
With the gas from your stupid ass?
Nope you dope. We’re all in this together. This country helped make them rich. I’m not against them being even richer as long as they put their AMERICAN money to use supporting AMERICA.
Go back to your useless Sean Insanity…
lets just tax everyone at 99% and be done with it….actually, that would not be the end of it, as our overspenders in govt would scratch and claw at that final 1%….
@27 This “generational warfare” has been going on since before you were born, and hasn’t sunk either the economy or Social Security yet.
I remember having this argument with Pop Rabbit — a member of the generation that truly took out more than it put in — about 40 years ago. Our “generational war” lasted for about 30 disputational words.
All I can say is, with Pop pushing almost age 100, I’m glad that I don’t have to support him thanks to his Social Security.
But that’s not the end of the nonsense expressed in your comment. So you think Social Security is no longer viable because, for the first time, it’s taking in slightly less money than it’s paying out due to the deepest recession since the 1930s? If this were the criterion for judging federal programs, defense would have been gone 200 years ago.
@26
I wondered about that, but it doesn’t really make sense in a paragraph about how she hopes the commission will “recalibrate American expectations around money and social benefits.”
@68 Morons like you have raised whining almost to an art form. Tax rates today are vastly lower than in Eisenhower’s time or even in Reagan’s time.
@70 “Recalibrate expectations” = polspeak for lower benefits
There you go aaaaaagain aaaaarschloch, blaming anyone who disagrees with you as someone who listens to peeps you dislike. Unfortunately for you those peeps bring examples of useless progressivism every day in their own words.
@29 Bingo. As Reagan-era CBO chief Rudolph Penner recently said, anyone who isn’t willing to stop spending on new weapons systems and foreign wars isn’t serious about deficits.
America basically has a choice between cutting defense, or cutting Social Security and Medicare. Conservatives want to sacrifice your old age security to keep their war machine grinding away. Why would you vote for them? Why would anyone?
Remember how Republicans promised that Iraqi oil would pay for that war? Remember how Republicans promised that a river of jobs would flow from their deficit-financed tax cuts for the rich? Can you think of a single promise Republicans kept? Republicans don’t solve problems, they create them. Only gullible fools vote Republican.
whatamoron@66:
Your “illustration” is worthless. As GBS paid $0 in taxes he needs to be taxed more? As George Soros buries is $$$ in Caribbean nations he needs to be taxed more? So Bill Gates is a big time lefty. He hires peeps from India among other countries and has programmer peeps over there. He needs to be taxed more? Steve Jobs’ iPods are mode overseas so he needs to be taxed more?
@27 “I’m starting to see Roger’s logic of “why work?”…”
No, you’re blind as a bat. My mocking, disdainful comments about working have NOTHING to do with Social Security taxes.
For the average worker, Social Security is the best deal that exists. For most, it’ll be an essential part, if not all, of their retirement income. In an age when private employers have abandoned responsibility for the well-being of the nation’s workforce, it’s the one thing left workers can still count on. The government still keeps its promises; private employers do not.
There are many reasons why working is a BAD DEAL for workers:
1. The tax system is unfair to workers. This has been a primary focus of my commentaries, for good reason. Workers pay retail taxes: The average middle-class earner pays a marginal rate of 32.65% — 25% federal income tax + 7.62% FICA (it’s actually higher than that, because the employer contribution is effectively taken out of his overall pay package) — whereas the tax on investment returns is capped at 15% no matter how much the capitalists make. And the tax code gives wealthy executives and business owners wide leeway in converting their earned income into tax-favored “capital gains” through such devices as paying compensation in the form of stock options. But the effective tax rate on the wealthy isn’t even that much because they’re given a slew tax breaks, including deductions for virtually all their expenses of obtaining their income; wage earners, by contrast, can’t even deduct gas or bus fare to work. Only workers pay FICA taxes; investment income gets a free ride. Heirs pay nothing up to $3.5 million — an amount far greater than most wage earners will earn from a lifetime of toil. My point is the tax system is so unfair to workers, and wages are so heavily taxed, that the incentive to work has been greatly diminished.
2. Employers are disloyal to workers. Today’s workers should expect nothing from employers in return for loyalty to the company or hard work. Labor has been commoditized and managers now thought of employees an “economic input” to be manipulated like raw material, fuel, and other “costs,” instead of human beings. They cast aside workers without a second thought. Employment has become the least reliable way of making a living in our society, so why would anyone depend on it, if he has a choice?
3. Employers are untrustworthy. They’ve broken union contracts, reneged on pension promises, and their assurances to employees aren’t worth a bucket of warm spit. No matter what they say today, they can — and will — leave you in the cold tomorrow.
4. Jobs are scarcer, pay is lower, work is harder, and employment offers less security. Clearly, working for someone else is not an area of opportunity growth. We’re facing a prolonged period of high unemployment. Downward pressure on wages shows no sign of abating. Employers are ditching benefits as quickly as they can. They’re demanding more productivity — and sharing none of the gains with their workers. Employment is a failing enterprise; so, why would you bet your future on it? Think self-employment and capital ownership, instead.
5. Society disrespects workers. Bosses and customers alike treat employees with rudeness that wouldn’t be tolerated in any other social setting. Workers are regarded as inferiors and losers. Who in his right mind would volunteer for inferior social standing and ill treatment?
I’m not making this stuff up. I’m stating facts. America once honored, respected, and rewarded hard work. Today, the lip service paid to “work ethic” is merely propaganda aimed at snookering the gullible into thinking if they work hard they’ll be rewarded and get ahead. The opposite is the truth.
This, of course, spells the end of America’s greatness as both an economic power and a nation. I saw the beginning of the end a quarter century ago when Mrs. Rabbit and I sent our first-born to a private school. One day Mrs. Rabbit got a phone call from the parents’ organization asking her to come in on Thursday morning to help with a bake sale. Mrs. Rabbit explained she couldn’t because she had a full-time job. There was a pause on the other end of the phone, then the woman who called told the other mothers, “She works.” Our little bunny attended that private school for six grades but we never heard from the parents’ group again. The fact that Mrs. Rabbit held down a job to help raise the tuition to send Baby Bunny to the private school resulted in social exclusion.
I mention this incident not because it’s unusual, but precisely because it is common. Work is disrespected. If you work, you’re an object of derision and rejection. In addition, your employer is constantly scheming to work you harder and pay you less, and 30 years of Republican government have resulted in wage earners carrying a crushing tax burden that is not shared by those who inherited their money or made it by flipping assets or owning businesses.
Whether or not America’s workers comprehend why, how, and by whom they’re being screwed; whether or not they can articulate their grievances; I am stating the realities of their lives. In today’s America, workers are being badly used. The solution is clear: The only reason to work is to make a living, and any other way of making a living is preferable to working, so there’s no reason to work if you don’t absolutely have to. And further, if you do have to work, you should spend no more of your earnings than necessary, and use any surplus to accumulate capital in order to end your dependence on employment as quickly as possible.
@76 In Puddy Crazy World, employers should be rewarded with tax breaks for shipping American jobs to foreign countries so our own workers have to live out of food banks.
Then Puddy will tell us what a generous Christian he is because he donates a little money to charity — at the same time he opposes unemployment benefits extensions or food stamp funding.
Don’t misunderstand: Puddy doesn’t want you to starve. He only wants you to beg for food. He doesn’t even want your money. He only wants to take away your dignity.
FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps wasn’t a handout. It was a job. It didn’t give the unemployed welfare. It gave them paychecks, and above all, their dignity back.
Republicans oppose combatting unemployment with government jobs programs. They always have. Why would any jobless person vote for them?
Yesterday, newly elected GOP Sen. Scott Brown joined a few other Republican senators to prevent their fellow GOP senators from filibustering the Democrats’ modest $15 billion jobs bill. Today, the rightwing blogosphere is calling Brown a “traitor” and “turncoat” and threatening to defeat him in 2012.
If you’re a worker, whether employed or not, why would you ever ally yourself with people like this? Why would you ever vote for candidates who think like they do? It makes no more sense than trying to have children by shooting your own balls off.
All of this lengthy post could be condensed in a response to these two points-
” In an age when private employers have abandoned responsibility for the well-being of the nation’s workforce-” Employers never had such a responsibility. The worker might for him or herself. It might be in the employers enlightened self interest to look after his employees beyond wage and legal requirements. But employers owe employees a paycheck and working conditions that comply with whatever regulations apply. They do not owe them job security, a good pension, health care, well being, job satisfaction or anything else.
” it’s (Social Security) the one thing left workers can still count on.” Uhh, no. They can count on whatever savings, investments and assets they accrue through hard work, discipline, delayed gratification and a reliance on themselves rather than the government or their employer.
Had a wonderful hike, but didn’t see any rabbits to set my dogs on. Oh well.
The truth, from an unexpected source, is that Medicare failed for almost five decades to do the due diligence that you’d demand from Wall Street or Main Street.
Medicare was sold to us with left-wing lies. LBJ, HHH, and Teddy Kennedy assured us in 1966 that the Medicare tab in 1990 would be only twelve billion (inflation-adjusted) dollars. True cost in 1990? $107 billion. That’s a rounding error to power-drunk Democrats who binge on other people’s money.
The current $400 billion Medicare program was pushed at us recently as the desired model for Obamacare. Everybody loves Medicare, Dave Ross tells us. Single-payer low overhead, says Rachel Maddow.
Here’s the rest of the story:
NPR, today
I won’t bother to mention that investment income is taxed when it shouldn’t be. The income with which I invest for my retirement, travel or just to have savings was already taxed. To tax it a second time is unfair on its’ face. This is the canard liberals use to establish a two tier citizenship though, where 20% have financial responsibility for the governmental costs of the other 80%, and they call this fair.’
That’s where we were on 10 September 2001: Donald Rumsfeld telling the armed services they couldn’t “invest” in new weapons systems such as the Crusader.
Rumsfeld, it was said back then, was a dead man talking. Taking away toys from the services was like taking away Everclear from a liberally drunk Rabbit. Rumsfeld was so hated by the services for cutting their candy that, said insiders, he wouldn’t live until 2002.
Question: Why didn’t you radical rabbits ride to Rummy’s defense when he tried to cut defense?
@83: You should be grateful to live in a progressive paradise where you are generously given the obligation to offer revenue “enhancements” twice on the same income stream for liberals to “invest.”
Re 78
Ironically this quote could be the battle cry for liberal policies accross the board. “He doesn’t even want your money. He only wants to take away your dignity.” Obama? FDR? Lyndon Johnson? Could be any one of them really.
Thanks Rabbit for putting this basic principle of progressive aims so succinctly!
Re 85
The least I owe my fellow citizens is all the hard work I can muster for no reward. What’s that the horse says in Animal Farm? “I will work harder,” I think. Good to know the end result will be almost exactly the same as in that book.
Meaning that government is already more than half the country’s healthcare problem. Meaning that the current liberal canard about healing our healthcare cost crisis by increasing government infiltration into the system makes little sense except to liberal bureaucrat empire builders.
This article from The Atlantic makes the point.
“if you do have to work, you should spend no more of your earnings than necessary, and use any surplus to accumulate capital in order to end your dependence on employment as quickly as possible.”
Rabbit, you’re a conservative!
Government-run Medicare medical care pushed costs into crisis. Amazing that you Democrats think the cure for the crisis is more government-run medical care.
From Goldhill’s article in The Atlantic
@87: When some are more equal than others, some have the privilege of paying more equally than others. Double taxation is the price you pay for progressive civilization as we know it.
(You just know that Rabbit has some damned clever dodge to keep from paying his fair share on all that easy money he extorts from suffering labor. My guess is that he has a P.O. Box burrow in the Caymans.)
Yes, DOD has a $ addiction, just like HHS and HUD and all the rest of the alphabet.
And that’s exactly the problem. If NPR (see above) and a self-described Crat at The Atlantic (see above) can get a clue about government-induced dollar disease, why can’t you?
Hey Moron off-topic troll – the over head for Medicare….3%…the overhead for private health insurance ….rising at 20%….
It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out which is more expensive….guess you never really looked up the facts.
And your article….gee, medical costs started rising along with Medicare….is another example of simple-minded and pathetically stupid thinking…didn’t you ever learn that correlation is not causation?
Try making a real argument or citing some real facts…it might actually help you to grow up and learn how to think.
We spend almost twice what any other country does on health care and we come in 38th in total health…in my book, that means our system stinks and is inefficient.
Where is your argument…..umm, I didn’t see any cogent argument that you put out there…..
Follow the NPR link, then follow the money.
For almost 50 years Medicare maintained the low-overhead illusion because it failed to use the basic cost controls that a mom&pop store in the real world must use if it has a chance of surviving by real-world rules.
Basic cost controls for mom and for pop mean preventing theft, preventing ‘shrinkage,’ preventing fraud. Those controls have an overhead cost.
Medicare evaded the cost of cost-controls for almost 50 years. When a faux vendor in Miami billed Medicare for a phantom wheelchair, Medicare paid the bill. For 50 years. At least $60 billion of our dollars lost each year to Medicare fraud. Just so Maddow can ooze a gorebasm for Medicare’s low overhead.
Medicare’s actual overhead is the nominal 3% it pays for grinding out checks, plus the actual factual cost of the billions of dollars in checks sent out to Medicare criminals.
Not saying, or didn’t mean to say, that Medicare has lost >$60 billion to fraud each year for almost 50 years. So back off, wingfucks.
Just to be a helpful ‘wingfuck,’ (nice elegant phrasing by the way) the number according to your NPR source as of late 2007 was estimated at 35 billion, or approximately 10 percent of the total cost of medicare per year. This was stated with the emphatic caveat that no attempts at fraud control had then been made so the number could well be considerably higher. Not lower, as someone will almost certainly try to state, because the 35 billion is the caught fraud and extrapolated data number. As you point out this alters overhead costs as a percentage of program costs.
@69 said: So you think Social Security is no longer viable because, for the first time, it’s taking in slightly less money than it’s paying out due to the deepest recession since the 1930s?
Where did I say I didn’t think SS was viable in my post, Roger?
I do think it’s not sustainable in its current form because many organizations, including your often-quoted CBO, have done extensive studies saying that SS outlays vs projected revenues will run into big problems within 10-15 years.
I also think that when given a choice to maintain current SS benefits by loading younger generations with additional debt, or perhaps taking less to help contribute to the rebuilding of america’s economy, the majority of the over 55 crowd (a huge voting block with one of the most powerful lobbyists in the country) will take the former.
I think that will cause Gen X, Y and Z to say “WTF?”. But, when the SHTF, the young can just eat the elderly – they’re easy to catch.
SS To the Brink
I wonder what’s been the average age of a Senator or House Rep for the last 25 years?
Lets see, here’s my fixes for the fiscal mess:
*Chop defense spending in half.
*Put marginal income tax rates for the top 50% back to what they were under Clinton, or even better what they were under JFK.
*Remove the earnings cap on what FICA taxes. If you earned $2 million in wages last year you get to pay FICA taxes on the whole thing not just the first $100k or so.
*Tax capital gains the same as income, including FICA taxes. The only exception would be certain types of retirement, college savings, or health savings accounts.
*Tax all estates worth over $1 million net the same as income. Allowing for some exceptions so small businesses and farms could be passed along. If the heirs sell out prior to say 10 years they forfeit all tax breaks and have to pay full taxes on the current fair market value.
Oh I forgot one, everyone is eligible for Medicare. That should help hold down those health care costs some.
correctnutright and lostblue are off on a weird tangent. NPR’s estimate today:
lost’s 2007 number, $35 billion, has been posited by NPR as Medicare’s loss to fraud in one state, Florida.
Obama, remember, wanted to balance Obamacare’s broken budget on massive savings from blowing the fraud out of Medicare. But NPR today shows that snuffing the program’s high fraud cost will come at high cost.
Bottom line: Somehow, 44 years of loss should be reflected in Medicare’s deceptively lowball overhead costs of ~3%/annum. Creative accounting is called for. Maybe a FIFO (Fraud In Fraud Out) method will work.
Ummmm … marginal JFK tax rates before JFK’s tax cuts for the rich, or after JFK’s tax cuts for the rich?
You’re being whimsical? And about JFK taxes? To repeat:
See Goldhill’s article, above.
Re 99
With all due respect-
Chopping defense spending in half is appealing on a lot of levels. It’s time the rest of the world started assuming responsibility for world stability and not just leaving it to us. But this won’t happen. In light of that we’d gain temporary savings to spend much more later on crisis that could have been avoided with a strong defense.
Remove the incentive to innovate, invent and invest time and energy into making a good living using the tax code? I can’t say I agree on practical terms. As I’ve written before, the very wealthy will do one of two things with your tax hike. They’ll pass it on to you and I in their costs of doing business. Or if they can’t they stop spending, which will really help the slow economy. On moral terms what you suggest is reprehensible. It is theft.
The reason for the cap is that social security isn’t paid above a certain wealth line. You’re asking people to pay for the retirement of others too lazy to make provision for retirement. This will slow the economy as payroll taxes and the consequent cost of doing business rises as well.
Capital gains have already been taxed. I invest with mostly after tax income. The balance is already tax exempt (IRAs and the like.) What you propose is a disincentive to investing and saving. Social engineering for the grasshopper and not the ant, if you will.
The estate tax. Go to hell. Most of what you are talking about is theft excused by your vision of social responsibility. This is simple jealousy and theft with no veneer of justification.
The way to cure costs in medical care is to ensure that a system with at least 10% total cost fraudelently made is in charge of all medical care? Bravo.
Re 101
Don’t look at me. I agree that Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and most of the social programs the federal government undertakes should be phased out. They are unconstitutional, out of line with the framers intent and, most importantly, stupid policy.
I just googled NPR and medicare fraud and got the $35 billion number from a leftist source so the resident progressives couldn’t say the numbers were politically motivated.
Isn’t this special:
Suppose one of our conservative wingfucks (that’s Rabbit’s nice elegant phrasing, by the way) had told this story about his conservative wingfuck family.
Think Rabbit would have let it pass without a nice elegant slapdown of elitist unpatriotic Republicans who diss democracy by sending their babies to elitist private schools? What part of diversity, Rabbit would ask, do elitist conservative racist Republican wingfucks not understand?
No disrespect to Ms R and Baby Bunny, but didn’t they at some point feel creepy about bailing on big government schools? Rabbit wants to spin his spin into privatization as a parable about disrespect for women who work, but isn’t the real lesson one about Democrat hypocrisy?
I mean, have they no shame? No sense of irony? Fortunate sons Al Gore and Evan Bayh didn’t go to government school. They went to St. Alban’s. Chelsea Clinton? Sidwell Friends. Sasha and Malia? Sidwell Friends. Baby Bunny? Snooty private school.
Lock-down rock’n’roll grade school not good enough for you people?
HNMT Jr, HNMT Jr Jr, and Little Ms HNMT …? Public schools every one. Then Little Ms paid full-freight at Goldypuddy U. (And shouldn’t we be almost as concerned about the inflated costs of “education” at endowment universities as we are about the high costs of health?)
Of course Rabbit will say that he was somehow subsidizing my babies by double-paying for his baby: school taxes and snooty school tuition. OK. Thanks, sort of. But I still think you’re an elitist hypocritical snot.
Bingo. When the left sneers about backward America, when the left whines about how fine life is in the enlightened welfare states of France and Canada, the left fails to mention that, after 1945, we taxed ourselves to pay for their survival.
Sometimes our defense umbrella let us all down, sometimes mistakes were made, but we mostly lifted a burden from our friends and “friends.” We provided the protection that allowed them to become the socialist utopias that Michael Moore berates us for not being.
Looks like we’re closer to 20% of Medicare’s program costs being fraud costs.
Gives government work a bad name. In fact, it gives work a bad name. Easier, or recently was, to pretend and then to send a bill to Medicare. It’s overhead was so low because it’s administrative costs were basically the costs of writing checks. If they got a bill, they wrote a check. No questions. No oversight. No real-world accounting and no accountability. Madoff went to jail for less. So did Ponzi, maybe.
In YOUR CASE, it happens to BE TRUE!
ARE YOU THIS STUPID OR DO YOU PURPOSELY PLAY THE PART FOR GOLDY?
PUDDY VOTES
[ ] NATURALLY STUPID
[ ] BECAME STUPID AFTER VIETNAM
[ ] STATE GROWN STUPID
[ ] STUPID IN RETIREMENT
[X] ALL OF THE ABOVE
Where has Puddy ever espoused that crap Dumb Bunny?
So Dumb Bunny, do you own an iPod?
Does any of the HA Libtardos own an iPod? Well per Herr Goebbels Dumb Bunny if you own an iPod you are helping Steve Jobs ship jobs overseas.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
BTW the Puddy house does NOT own iPods.
See ya suckas!
Hey arschloch@109…
You are a yo-yo. Link the name, not link the name, link the name, not link the name, link the name, not link the name, link the name, not link the name. Pavlov has you pegged.
Whatamoron. And yep, Sean has pegged your kind perfectly!
@106,
Did Little Ms HMNT enjoy GoldyPuddy”K” U? And Puddy saw those university costs. Astronomical. Puddy went back recently and there are so many new buildings there. Lets see where lil arschloch jr and lil ms arschloch goes eh HMNT?
She liked it. Did you?