The gummint screwed up again

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Bill, the reason smart people have been talking about SS going broke for years is that its problems have been known for years; they were known before this fraud was ever enacted. FDR did it for short-term political gain.

As far as civilization depending on welfare, it is interesting that the more welfare we have, the less civilized we are becoming. Therapeutic liberalism is poisonous.

Taking care of "vulnerable" citizens means ensuring that they have some opportunities to better themselves, and to humane, rather than brutal, treatment. We have no duty to destroy our country over deadbeats. And deadbeats is the right term in most cases. Are all of these people really "vulnerable"? This article explains that those on welfare, not including SS, now outnumber those with full-time jobs. If SS recipients are factored in, there are far more takers now than workers. Do you really believe this situation is sustainable?

http://www.google.com/gwt/x?u=http://cn ... 4Dg&wsc=bf

As far as young people getting benefits out, you don't understand; there won't be any benefits. Assuming your are gainfully employed, I seriously doubt you will ever see anything from SS. Nor will I. The numbers matter.

To dismiss people in need as deadbeats is just another example of the heartlessness of the right. Mitt the plastic Mormon used the same rhetoric to dehumanize the needy, and it was just that reason why the American people rejected him.
And we've become less civilized with the advent of liberalism? In my part of the country in frontier times, you could get shot by some gun toting drunk for declining to let him by you a whiskey while in a saloon. Horse thieves were regularly lynched by vigilante committees less than two decades before my Dad (dob 1921) had been born in rural eastern Washington. Company owners hired gunmen to kill striking workers, such as in Everett, Washington. Chinese laborers and immigrants were the victims of racial purges in places such as Seattle, organized by municipal authorities for fear of the "Yellow Peril." I'm sure Texas had had an ugly side to it's frontier days as well. Trust me, liberalism has introduced a high standard of civilized behavior.

First, I would say you are being heartless to people of limited means by literally taking food out of their mouths. Not everybody who works is rich. Many working people desperately need every dime they make. I'm not talking about cutting off those who cannot work from government assistance; I'm talking about cutting off those who refuse to work, at least once decent-paying jobs are brought back. I'm not sure why you would be against such a thing.

To me, this hardly sounds like civilized behavior, though your definition of what constitutes civilized is very limited. How about the huge numbers of people in prison, and crime rates that are still high? How about the rap music that talks about beating ho's and killing cops? How about all the "polar bear hunting", as well as the black flash mobs? Is that civilized? How about the fact that many inner city neighborhoods are little better than combat zones? How about street gangs? All liberalism has done is to attenuate white crime while allowing nonwhite crime to explode.

You misunderstand the numbers. In 20 years, the surplus will be gone. You should look into the financial mechanics between the treasury department and the SSA. The money in the trust earns interest from the Treasury department. The trust has enough cash to keep things going for another 20 years (even using the worst case scenario calculations). Yes, the Treasury Department has spent most of that money, but the SSA is the holder of the debt that the Treasury Department must repay. It works in a similar way to those $20 government bonds that people sometimes buy for their new grand-kids. You give the Treasury some cash, they spend it, then pay you back later with interest. The money is not just "gone."

You say that SS takes from the poor and gives to the rich? 20-40% of those age are kept above the poverty line by social security. The are others who are below the poverty line even with SS. The poverty rate of 15.1% that you provided for the working youth is less than that by quite a bit, if I am not mistaken. It is not about taking from the poor and giving to the rich. If anything, the reverse would be true. But even that is not an accurate statement, as both young and old are eligible for SS benefits that they have paid for. SS is sort of like a disability insurance and pension plan combined. You talk about EIC as being one of the reasons SS is going broke, but it further refutes your argument that SS robs the poor. The closest thing to your argument there is that SS robs from the poor and gives to the poorer.
Yes, people who make more than the ceiling do not pay the tax on the amount above the cut-off, but at the same time, their benefits are only calculated using the money they did pay SS taxes on. The overwhelming majority of people who collect from the SSA for disability do so based on their SS taxes paid, with all who have not worked enough being subject to a means test.

I have already agreed that the system is not sustainable in the long term. I have also posted some ideas thaat could push the insolvency back further or eliminate it entirely. There is still time to revamp, repair, and streamline the system. Your "there will be no more social security" cries are premature.

Well then by the time it ends in 20 years, it will have worked out pretty well for an entire century.

So you are saying that SS should be eliminated entirely and those poor people will do just fine? What happens when they are too old to work? As for those who refuse to work, you do realize how difficult it is to start collecting disablility don't you?



Crimes rates have been decreasing for quite some time now, and you might also want to look at the incarceration rate over time (keeping in mind the drastic increase in low level drug incarceration).
Rap music is a sign of things getting worse? I don't follow that one. Maybe heavy metal is some sort of proof that everyone is becoming evil, too.
Polar bear hunting? Do you really think that didn't happen before now?
Violent mobs? God knows that has never happened before modern times.
I live in an inner city neighborhood and have not seen anything that resembles a combat zone. In fact, the most likely thing to happen is theft. And that is usually done by the unemployed, not people on SS.
How about street gangs? Look up some statistics on gang related crime in the past few decades. If you want to make the numbers even more impressive, remove the numbers of gang-related crime that results from the war on drugs and its impact on Mexico.
I think you need to stop getting your "facts" from the "everything is going downhill" and "the end is near" crowd. Yes some aspects are getting worse, but more are getting better.

I really don't understand this whole everything used to better nostalgia stuff. People live longer now. People are less likely to be murdered. People aren't suffering from nearly as many crippling diseases. Medical advancements continue to improve treatments and the quality of life for those with life long conditions. Religious and racial tolerance continues to improve (with a few hiccups along the way). Crime is down. The internet has provided the ultimate medium for free speech. What more do you want?

It seems like you don't like SS or the ACA because you are young and healthy. You do realize that this will not always be the case, don't you?

I think sonofghandi has done an excellent job of answering your points, so I defer to him. At the moment, I am feeling very under the weather and am not as combative as you may have come to expect.

The ACA forces people who are already living check to check, to shoulder the burden of inflated insurance premiums. Then at the end of the year they get a "tax credit" (on increased taxes due to the ACA) ..... That does NOTHING to to keep food on the table on a daily basis.

How is that supposed to be a good thing?

This is just a huge corporate welfare program for insurance companies. A mere hours after the passing of the ACA they we're toasting champagne with Nancy Pelosi.

Insurance premiums are not going to skyrocket. That is some made up mumbo-jumbo. So are the ridiculously optimistic numbers the Democrats throw around about how much the premiums will go down.

And your taxes aren't going up unless you don't have health insurance. Insurance is most needed by those living paycheck to paycheck. If you have no money saved and have no insurance, an even relatively minor medical expense could drive you to bankruptcy.

Sir, since I gave you good evidence that SS will not last another twenty years, you are proof that the problem with being a good liar is that in senescence, the liar comes to believe his own lies, which is exactly what has happened of liberalism under the guise of postmodernism, which is the terminal phase of liberalism.

But let's assume that your fantasy is indeed fact. SS has worked out "pretty well" for some, but will leave many millions completely out in the cold. This callous indifference and injustice towards so many people is the same thinking that gave the world suttee, a society where most of its citizens were "untouchables", and where dead bodies floating on the rivers are facts of life.

Since America is about liberty and justice for all, you, sir, are proof that the federal government can hand out citizenship papers like toilet paper, but they can't make Americans out of immigrants. Your kind of thinking has NO place in the land of the free and home of the brave.

Pete, you are correct. Insurance premiums are already skyrocketing. But since Ghandi here has declared large swathes of the American people to be the equivalent of untouchables, they don't count.

Why do I say this? Obama himself has admitted that the prices on his website do not reflect what some people, particularly young people, will actually pay. In some cases, the prices are TRIPLE what the website indicates.

"So you are saying that SS should be eliminated entirely and those poor people will do just fine? What happens when they are too old to work? As for those who refuse to work, you do realize how difficult it is to start collecting disablility don't you?"

Tell me, since I have already explained, and you have admitted, that SS will leave countless millions out in the cold who paid for a retirement program they will never receive, it is fair to ask whether you have declared these people untouchables? Or are they "former persons" in the Stalinist model? Or are they "life unworthy of life" in the Nazi model?

Crimes rates have been decreasing for quite some time now, and you might also want to look at the incarceration rate over time (keeping in mind the drastic increase in low level drug incarceration).

Insofar as crime rates have been declining, it's because of some of the highest incarceration rates in the world, and turning the land of the free into a veritable police state. That may be okay with you, but it is not okay with Americans.

Nor is your lie that large numbers of people are imprisoned for smoking a joint. Sorry, it's just not true. Americans value truth and facts rather than postmodernism.

Rap music is a sign of things getting worse? I don't follow that one. Maybe heavy metal is some sort of proof that everyone is becoming evil, too.

This is the same callous indifference to human life that permits Indians to casually go about their business with dead bodies lying all over the place. That is NOT what I want my country to become.

Polar bear hunting? Do you really think that didn't happen before now?
Violent mobs? God knows that has never happened before modern times.

Of course there has always been some injustice; it proves that Americans are human. The fact that other peoples can be so cavalier about it begs questions about their humanity. What is done to my fellow Americans is done to me as well.

I live in an inner city neighborhood and have not seen anything that resembles a combat zone. In fact, the most likely thing to happen is theft. And that is usually done by the unemployed, not people on SS.

Sir, it is simply breathtaking the way the lies come out of you. Where I live, ammunition is sold in the convenience stores, and murders are as rare as hen's teeth. The fact of the matter is that if the inner cities were excluded, Americans have one of the lowest murder rates in the world--a rate comparable to Belgium's.
How about street gangs? Look up some statistics on gang related crime in the past few decades. If you want to make the numbers even more impressive, remove the numbers of gang-related crime that results from the war on drugs and its impact on Mexico.



I think you need to stop getting your "facts" from the "everything is going downhill" and "the end is near" crowd. Yes some aspects are getting worse, but more are getting better.

I really don't understand this whole everything used to better nostalgia stuff. People live longer now. People are less likely to be murdered. People aren't suffering from nearly as many crippling diseases. Medical advancements continue to improve treatments and the quality of life for those with life long conditions. Religious and racial tolerance continues to improve (with a few hiccups along the way). Crime is down. The internet has provided the ultimate medium for free speech. What more do you want?

Yes, due to liberal open borders policies, that crime has all migrated up here. That may be fine with you, but it's not okay with Americans. Considering your callous indifference to the lives of my people, I can't help but get the impression that you are some kind of reptile.

It seems like you don't like SS or the ACA because you are young and healthy. You do realize that this will not always be the case, don't you?

Your presumptions once again are breathtaking. Who says I am young or healthy? I simply have concern and compassion for my people.It must really blow your mind that I can be concerned about people in a situation that doesn't directly affect me. Then, I don't want a Mother Teresa here because of native indifference to suffering, and I don't want dead bodies stacked up without anybody caring. I don't doubt that was Ghandi's way, but that is not the American way.

So Social Security is the same as suttee? Not following you there.



The government is handing out citizenship like toilet paper? You may want to research that more.

Last edited by sonofghandi on 27 Oct 2013, 7:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

Who have I labelled as untouchable?



And in some cases the premiums are drastically lower. It varies by state. Texas and Florida are the worst, thankks to their respective state legislative bodies.

The government is handing out citizenship like toilet paper? You may want to research that more.[/quote]

Research? You, sir, are exhibit "A". What's American about you except your address and your passport?

My statements stand about you.

"Who have I labelled as untouchable?"

How about young Americans? You don't seem to care a whit that they will be getting robbed by both Obamacare AND Social Security. And you are so callous you can't even see it.