> What does it say about the times we are in that the greatest champions of intellectual property freedoms are the constituents of the biggest dictatorship of the world?
Wait a minute. The article says:
"DVD player makers from China are suing the 3C DVD Patent Group over royalties on patents held by the consortium."
I keep telling you folks: China is the beta test site for America 2.0. We let them make the mistakes, then we implement what worked over here. If we can get the Chinese to adopt our strategy of basing their entire economy on lawyers, and we can adopt their strategy of managing dissent (for values of "management" that include mechanized infantry), we win!
We have lit a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power. It burns those who fight its progress. And one day - this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world, EVEN THE THATCHED-ROOF COTTAGES!
> Sales of newer electronic devices plummet as consumers realize the older DRM free players will play MP3 files, and the newer models offer no advantage.
...sales of current electronic devices skyrocket as consumers stockpile for the apocalypse!
> It's impossible to condense Ayn Rand's philosophy into a few sentences, but let me try anyway. Basically, the problem is that, at some point, the vast majority of people out there gave up on themselves. They decided, for whatever reason, that they weren't good students, or athletes, or artists, or leaders, or whatever, and that they never would be. To make things worse, they felt somewhat ambiguous on the subject of right and wrong. Their solution was to stop trying to rise any higher, and instead work to prevent anyone else from rising higher than they, and dedicate their lives to the pursuit of arbitrary power over other people, all the while pretending that that wasn't what they were doing.
Let's face it: unless you are a superhero with genius of the caliber of Galt or Roark, you've probably given up on yourself too. (Or you will eventually:-). Not every Slashdotter grows up to be RMS or Torvalds. Not every kid from the projects grows up to get a multimillion-dollar NBA contract. 95% of the time, it's lack of talent. 4% of the time, it's talent atrophied by laziness. 1% of the time, it's talent ground down into the dust by teh 3v1l m00chers and l33chers.
> Rand's proposed solution is to ignore such people as much as possible, and to focus on the handful of people you meet in life that are like you. Frankly, I don't think I have the energy or the patience for that any more. But maybe I would have done better had I learned about this early in life, instead of in my mid 30s.
Rand's pretty strong stuff, but you can still do OK in life by using it as a mixer against a base of Strauss and/or Machiavelli.
Let's take it from the top:
According to Rand, the moochers and leechers may be dirtballs, but they're pretty well-off dirtballs. After all, they run all of government and most of the business world.
According to Machiavelli, there's nothing particularly wrong with that, either.
Treat life as a game. It's a fun game, whether you're keeping score with dollars or human lives. Or better yet, both. There's a 99% probability that your optimal strategy is the same as everyone else's: kissing a little ass to get ahead. And investing the proceeds of your getting-ahead in the companies that are kissing a little government ass to get ahead. Even if it means giving a cut of the action to the governments that are kissing leech ass to keep themselves in power. (Remember, you get your tax dollars back in profits when Congress awards a fat contract to a company you own shares in!)
> "I'm grateful that Mr. Gross has stepped forward to help defend these crucial freedoms."
'Cuz all of a sudden Apple went berserk, the lawsuits startef flying, and these crucial freedoms just disappeared. All of 'em. And they were really good freedoms.
(I had to take the site down and rewrite it really quickly. Needless to say, my rushed website wasn't nearly as good, and I blame Steve Jobs for the grade I got.)
A dream, where Ted Nelson dared to go,
His server was fine, y'know,
'Til we linked to Xanadu.
And now, click on the link and see,
The website's now 503,
Slashdotted Xanadu.
A million lights are dancing and there you are, a shooting star
No Google cache I see, so you're 503, eternally
Chorus:
Xanadu! XanaduuuuoooooooOOooOO!, (now we are here) in Xanadu!
Xanadu! XanaduuuuoooooooOOooOO!, (pass me a beer) in Xanadu!
(Colo boxen blinkenlights will shine... for you, Xanadu!)
> The economy is a zero sum game, theres a looser for every winner, except its slightly faked by the fact that inflation and fractional banking creates 5-8% increase in magic money out of thin air and thus this is what creates wealth.
What the fuck? What the fucking fuck fuck?
If the economy is a zero sum game, why do you, I, and some 1,000,000,000 people have a standard of living (air conditioning, refrigeration, medical care, Slashdot, $1.99 Big Mac, $5.99/lb filet mignon, and $14.99 port) that would put everybody on the entire planet, including Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette, to shame?
> I'm surprised that with a $1.5 billion budget they couldn't find a better way to get people into space. Rockets don't seem like the "affordable" answer to me. Maybe a space elevator, or maybe some new technology that nobody's invented yet....but big rockets? They seem so dated...
Rockets are cheap.
Space elevator? Start thinking about building a space elevator when someone has built a carbon nanotube footbridge.
Something not yet invented? The probability of discovering a new physics is not directly proportional to the number of dollars spent.
So - we're back to rockets. Which are cheap.
NASA's rockets are expensive, because NASA doesn't care where the money comes from. (And NASA's funders in Congress don't care whether NASA's rockets even fly, so long as every district gets its piece of the pork pie.)
If you're Boeing or Lockmart, that's fine -- shuttling rich tourists to orbit and back will barely net you pocket change. So you build big expensive vehicles and you sell 'em to people who don't give a rat's ass about the cost of their ride, because they're using other people's money.
Thanks to Rutan, Bezos, and Musk, there's the possibility of a new market niche for those of us who prefer to use our own money.
> We believe that next-generation programming systems will most likely store source code as XML, rather than as flat text. Programmers will not see or edit XML tags; instead, their editors will render these models to create human-friendly views, just like Web browsers and other WYSIWYG editors. For example, a program stored on disk like this:
Slashdot: IT/Security: Tuesday, January 18, 2006:
"New MyDOOM.OOP virus attacks programmers"
A new virus has been unleashed against developers. The new virus exploits an XML parsing vulnerability in/usr/local/vi and/usr/local/bin/emacs...
> > Neither of them pointed guns at people's heads and said "buy our stock or we pull the trigger."
> >No gun, but what percentage of their employee's 401k was required to go back into Enron stock?
Don't know offhand what percentage. The real crime - for which Lay should fucking hang, by the way - is that by switching 401(k) administrators at just the "right" (i.e. wrong) time, Lay prevented his employees from being able to sell their stock during the crucial period when the shit was hitting the fan. When the SEC announced its investigation and the stock started to fall, Lay and friends could sell, but the employees couldn't.
By locking his employees into the plan during that time period, Lay prevented them from recovering anything. On that basis, of the two dirtballs, I'd say Lay's actions made him even more contemptible than Ebbers.
The practical effect was that mployees who held Enron stock were denied their rights as shareholders to liquidate those shares in the open market. An effect that was practically indistinguishable from the gun-pointing the SSA does with its "investors" 24/7.
> You philosophy is very harsh. What about invalids? What about the handicapped? What about the elderly who are left without family. What about average joes who are forced into retirement at a certain age so that their employer does not have to pay for their increasing insurance bills?
I'm not going to answer for the parent poster, but for myself -- screw 'em, screw 'em, screw 'em, and screw 'em, in that order.
If I wind up in any of those four categories (possibly all four, in rough chronological order), then screw me, screw me, screw me, and screw me.
> On the other side of the scale, what about the 5% of the nation that have inherited more money than you and all of your friends and family will ever see. What about those born into wealth that don't have to work, and don't?
If theft is wrong, I have no more right to steal from Bill Gates than I do from Joe Sixpack.
> Part of the reason the government has socialist programs is because otherwise the very poor have no real choice but to take resources from the very rich by force. This is usually in the form of a revolution, with death, torture, and all the inefficiencies and horror that comes along with it. The game is share the wealth enough, or die.
See above. To me, theft is theft. Whether it's Chavez and Putin stealing from PDVSA and Yukos, or Joe Crackhead sticking me up for my wallet, or the Social Security Administration sticking me and my employer up for 6.2%, it's immoral. Wrong. And it needs to stop.
> I'm happy to take personal responsibility for myself and my well being. I'm happy to expect exactly nothing from the government. In return I only ask that they stop taxing me and telling me what I can and cannot do. Does that sound fair to you?
That sounds eminently fair; I'd love to have that option, but at present, I don't. So why aren't you on our side, supporting an individual right to opt out - irrevocably - of Social Security?:)
> > 1) The Social Security Trust Fund is a series of IOU's from the Treasury.
> >
And stock is just a series of IOU's from corporations, and bank accounts are just a series of IOU's from the banks, etc. How is Social Security's investment in the Treasury any different than any other investment in anything?
Stock is not an IOU from a corporation. It represents ownership. When a corporation is worth something, a little sliver of it is also worth something. When you buy and sell stock, you're just trading the little slivers of a company (maybe a desk or a coffee machine's worth) for money.
Bank accounts are not IOUs from banks. They represent property. The bank is contractually obliged to give you that money on demand. That's what "money" in a checking or savings account is. It's as real as what's in your wallet.
Social Security's investment in Treasury bonds is not the same thing. The bonds may be real, but Supreme Court ruled in 1960 that people who paid into SS do not have a right to any of that money. When you "buy" into SS, you don't own anything.
> Hmm, my parents and surviving grandparents LOVE me. I'm sorry that yours don't, and you seem to think that's the norm.
The intergenerational arguments cut both ways.
(Hmm, do you love your children and surviving grandchildren? I'm sorry that you don't, as you seem to prefer that someone else take care of them:)
> So you're saying those treasury bonds are no good? If that's the case we're in a lot more trouble than social security...
> >In fact, repudiating any treasury bonds would cause the great depression to look like a tiny pothole...
No, we're not. It's true that the unfunded liability of the Social Security pyramid scheme greatly exceeds its assets.
Because we want to avoid the fiscal meltdown that comes from redeeming the bonds (with printed dollars or taxed dollars), and (as you correctly point out) because the catastrophe of defaulting on those bonds is just plain unthinkable, there's only one thing left to do:
Renege on the contract, because it doesn't exist.
If your bank or brokerage house pulls something that, you can sue it into the stone age. But the
Supreme Court has already said that entitlement to Social Security benefits is not contractual right.
When I say that the treasury bonds are "no good", that's a shortcut. In truth, the bonds are just fine. But the people who paid for those bonds do not own those bonds -- they have no right to expect to see one thin dime.
It's an easy mistake. Most of the time, when someone pays for something, they own it. The government plays by different rules.
> That $1500 monthly check is equivalent of buying a $300,000 annuity at age 65. That $300,000 less you dont have to save starts look better and better as you get closer that magic age. And when your bosses are downsizing your job to India.
Yep, and if I had $317,000 saved up, I could have $1500/month for the rest of my life starting at age 45!
Maybe if I weren't paying 6.2% (12.4% if you're trying to run your own business) of my salary to the Ponzi scheme, I'D BE ABLE TO BUY MY OWN GODDAMN ANNUITY. In fact, I'd be able to buy it about 15-20 years earlier, and I wouldn't have to worry if my goddamn job winds up in India by the time I'm your age.
> If we were, then the idea of privitizing Social Security would be no big deal. If someone misinvested by putting all his retirement money into Tyco or Enron stock, fine. We let him die broke and impoverished and that's that.
> >
But we're not savages and we won't do that.
Right.
We'll just take money from him by force -- and put it in something we know is going to lose money.
> You object because you want to invest in a free market? Great. Most investors lose money, but if you really want to invest outside of the SS program, what's stopping you? Go ahead. You just can't risk this small percentage of your earnings. That goes to make sure you won't be too much of a burden on the rest of us when you get old.
What's stopping me (or at least slowing me down) is the 6.2% (plus another 6.2% from my employer) that you're taking out of my pockets.
If you want a "guaranteed" investment - an investment that'll do at least as well as Social Security - why not just invest in US Treasuries?
These financial instruments are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States Government's power to tax its citizens or run the printing presses to pay back the principal value of the bond and the stated coupon rate.
So I ask you -- if Social Security had private accounts that were truly free -- what would stop you?
> > If I started company X and implemented a retirement policy that works like Social Security, I would at best get told to change it and at worst would go to jail for a pyramid scheme. It is against the law for a company to implement a system that works just like the social security system. > > Governments are not companies.
They do things differently.
In other words, if Charles Ponzi had just had enough thugs with guns to keep beating money out of future generations of investors, there would never have been a crisis with his investment company.
> Your 22-year-old naivete would make you a perfect fit for a position in the company of Enron and Worldcom execs.
Last time I checked, my bank accounts didn't come with a disclaimer like this:
There won't be enough younger people working to pay all of the benefits owed to those who are retiring. At that point, there will be enough money to pay only about 73 cents for each dollar of scheduled benefits.
If a mutual fund propspectus said "By 2042, there won't be enough other investors depositing checks with us to pay all of the net asset value of the fund. At that point, there will be enough money to pay only about 73 cents for each dollar presently shown on this statement", would you invest in it?
Say what you will about Kenneth Lay and Bernie Ebbers. Neither of them pointed guns at people's heads and said "buy our stock or we pull the trigger."
> Private pensions charge many times what national insurance (as we call it here) costs, and a lot of people just can't afford it (it would cut my wages by 30% to have a private pension and I just about get away with paying the rent already).
Perhaps if you didn't have 6.2% (or 15.4% if you're self-employed) of your money taken away from you, you could afford to retire.
As for your "affordable" pension plan...
There won't be enough younger people working to pay all of the benefits owed to those who are retiring. At that point, there will be enough money to pay only about 73 cents for each dollar of scheduled benefits.
If your bank statement said "By 2042, there won't be enough other depositors depositing checks with us to pay all of the balance owed to you. At that point, there will be enough money to pay only about 73 cents for each dollar you deposited with us", would you continue to bank with them?
[deliberately taking this quote out of its original context in a discussion on media integrity]
> I wonder if your bank cleaned out your account, you would claim it was your own fault, because "I'm a sucker for trusting them with all that money."
You choose an interesting analogy.
There won't be enough younger people working to pay all of the benefits owed to those who are retiring. At that point, there will be enough money to pay only about 73 cents for each dollar of scheduled benefits.
If your bank statement said "By 2042, there won't be enough other depositors depositing checks with us to pay all of the balance owed to you. At that point, there will be enough money to pay only about 73 cents for each dollar you deposited with us", would you continue to bank with them?
> I think the best solution would start requiring the federal government to start paying back the loans they have made against the SS Trust.
And with what do you suggest the Federal government suggest paying those "loans"?
You can pay them in dollars that currently exist - but only by confiscating those dollars directly out of other citizens' pockets, resulting in capital flight and economic implosion.
Or you can pay them in dollars that don't exist - but only by printing another $26,000,000,000,000 of them, resulting in hyperinflation and economic implosion.
> If the politicans hadn't been using the SS Trust as a slush fund to pay for their pork projects, we would NEVER have had this problem. There are 26 TRILLION dollars in IOU's setting in the "Lock Box," all wasted money that we can't account for.
Your first statement is true. So -- are we to end Social Security on the grounds that its accounting makes Enron look like a paragon of fiscal responsibility, or should we perpetuate it?
There are ZERO dollars in the "lock box". It doesn't exist. And we can account for those dollars -- they got spent. Some of it got turned into weapons and blowed up in Iraq. Some of it got turned into space probes. Some of it wound up in the hands of the working poor. Some of it wound up in the hands of your local neighborhood crack dealer. Most of it wound up in the hands of government bureaucrats (and government contractors) who never met pork they didn't like.
It's a shitty situation. The only ethical move is to acknowledge that SS (and the "lock box") was (and is) a fraud perpetrated on the public, and fire the hoaxters from the top down. End SS, abolish the department, apologize to the defrauded, and pass a Constitutional amendment never to do it again.
But even if Enterprise is cancelled, all may not be lost: Rick Berman said today he's working on a new Trek feature film that will have "a larger scope and budget" than ever."
I read that as: "Star Trek XVI: The Phantom Holodeck", to be followed by "Star Trek XVII: Attack of the Scriptwriters", and "Star Trek XVIII: Revenge of Berman".
Slashdot Mirror
> How far do you go to protect your computer?
I protect my Computer with my life, and the life of all five of my clones, as any Troubleshooter would.
What are you, some kind of commie pinko mutant traitor? Paranoia is treason! Paranoia is fun! Happiness is mandatory! I'm happ*ZOT*
A: You can hear screams of "YOU FUCKING INCOMPETENT COCKSUCKERS!" from six cubes away rather than the usual three.
Wait a minute. The article says:
"DVD player makers from China are suing the 3C DVD Patent Group over royalties on patents held by the consortium."
I keep telling you folks: China is the beta test site for America 2.0. We let them make the mistakes, then we implement what worked over here. If we can get the Chinese to adopt our strategy of basing their entire economy on lawyers, and we can adopt their strategy of managing dissent (for values of "management" that include mechanized infantry), we win!
We have lit a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power. It burns those who fight its progress. And one day - this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world, EVEN THE THATCHED-ROOF COTTAGES!
(They play us all like a fiddle.)
Let's face it: unless you are a superhero with genius of the caliber of Galt or Roark, you've probably given up on yourself too. (Or you will eventually :-). Not every Slashdotter grows up to be RMS or Torvalds. Not every kid from the projects grows up to get a multimillion-dollar NBA contract. 95% of the time, it's lack of talent. 4% of the time, it's talent atrophied by laziness. 1% of the time, it's talent ground down into the dust by teh 3v1l m00chers and l33chers.
> Rand's proposed solution is to ignore such people as much as possible, and to focus on the handful of people you meet in life that are like you. Frankly, I don't think I have the energy or the patience for that any more. But maybe I would have done better had I learned about this early in life, instead of in my mid 30s. Rand's pretty strong stuff, but you can still do OK in life by using it as a mixer against a base of Strauss and/or Machiavelli.
Let's take it from the top:
According to Rand, the moochers and leechers may be dirtballs, but they're pretty well-off dirtballs. After all, they run all of government and most of the business world.
According to Machiavelli, there's nothing particularly wrong with that, either.
Treat life as a game. It's a fun game, whether you're keeping score with dollars or human lives. Or better yet, both. There's a 99% probability that your optimal strategy is the same as everyone else's: kissing a little ass to get ahead. And investing the proceeds of your getting-ahead in the companies that are kissing a little government ass to get ahead. Even if it means giving a cut of the action to the governments that are kissing leech ass to keep themselves in power. (Remember, you get your tax dollars back in profits when Congress awards a fat contract to a company you own shares in!)
The chaser for your philosophical martini comes from the greatest of all sages... Daffy Duck. "Oh, sure, I know I'm a louse. But I'm a live louse."
listen - there's a hell of a white castle next door; let's go.
- e.e. cummings
> "I'm grateful that Mr. Gross has stepped forward to help defend these crucial freedoms."
'Cuz all of a sudden Apple went berserk, the lawsuits startef flying, and these crucial freedoms just disappeared. All of 'em. And they were really good freedoms.
(I had to take the site down and rewrite it really quickly. Needless to say, my rushed website wasn't nearly as good, and I blame Steve Jobs for the grade I got.)
His server was fine, y'know,
'Til we linked to Xanadu.
And now, click on the link and see,
The website's now 503,
Slashdotted Xanadu.
A million lights are dancing and there you are, a shooting star
No Google cache I see, so you're 503, eternally
Chorus:
Xanadu! XanaduuuuoooooooOOooOO!, (now we are here) in Xanadu!
Xanadu! XanaduuuuoooooooOOooOO!, (pass me a beer) in Xanadu!
(Colo boxen blinkenlights will shine... for you, Xanadu!)
(Repeat chorus until 404 or 503...)
"You're welcome. Now, can I please let go of your balls?"
- CEO Nwabudike Morgan, "Five Centuries is Long Enough for Sid Meier"
What the fuck? What the fucking fuck fuck?
If the economy is a zero sum game, why do you, I, and some 1,000,000,000 people have a standard of living (air conditioning, refrigeration, medical care, Slashdot, $1.99 Big Mac, $5.99/lb filet mignon, and $14.99 port) that would put everybody on the entire planet, including Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette, to shame?
Rockets are cheap.
Space elevator? Start thinking about building a space elevator when someone has built a carbon nanotube footbridge.
Something not yet invented? The probability of discovering a new physics is not directly proportional to the number of dollars spent.
So - we're back to rockets. Which are cheap.
NASA's rockets are expensive, because NASA doesn't care where the money comes from. (And NASA's funders in Congress don't care whether NASA's rockets even fly, so long as every district gets its piece of the pork pie.)
If you're Boeing or Lockmart, that's fine -- shuttling rich tourists to orbit and back will barely net you pocket change. So you build big expensive vehicles and you sell 'em to people who don't give a rat's ass about the cost of their ride, because they're using other people's money.
Thanks to Rutan, Bezos, and Musk, there's the possibility of a new market niche for those of us who prefer to use our own money.
Slashdot: IT/Security: Tuesday, January 18, 2006:
"New MyDOOM.OOP virus attacks programmers"
A new virus has been unleashed against developers. The new virus exploits an XML parsing vulnerability in /usr/local/vi and /usr/local/bin/emacs...
>
>No gun, but what percentage of their employee's 401k was required to go back into Enron stock?
Don't know offhand what percentage. The real crime - for which Lay should fucking hang, by the way - is that by switching 401(k) administrators at just the "right" (i.e. wrong) time, Lay prevented his employees from being able to sell their stock during the crucial period when the shit was hitting the fan. When the SEC announced its investigation and the stock started to fall, Lay and friends could sell, but the employees couldn't.
By locking his employees into the plan during that time period, Lay prevented them from recovering anything. On that basis, of the two dirtballs, I'd say Lay's actions made him even more contemptible than Ebbers.
The practical effect was that mployees who held Enron stock were denied their rights as shareholders to liquidate those shares in the open market. An effect that was practically indistinguishable from the gun-pointing the SSA does with its "investors" 24/7.
1998: $68400
1999: $72600 +6.1%
2000: $76200 +4.9%
2001: $80400 +5.5%
2002: $84900 +5.5%
2003: $87000 +2.4%
2004: $87900 +1.0%
2005: $90000 +2.3%
"You're Wrong."
Source: Social Security Administration - Annual maximum taxable earnings and contribution rates, 1937-2003.
Only recently has the cap risen less than the rate of inflation.
I'm not going to answer for the parent poster, but for myself -- screw 'em, screw 'em, screw 'em, and screw 'em, in that order.
If I wind up in any of those four categories (possibly all four, in rough chronological order), then screw me, screw me, screw me, and screw me.
> On the other side of the scale, what about the 5% of the nation that have inherited more money than you and all of your friends and family will ever see. What about those born into wealth that don't have to work, and don't?
If theft is wrong, I have no more right to steal from Bill Gates than I do from Joe Sixpack.
> Part of the reason the government has socialist programs is because otherwise the very poor have no real choice but to take resources from the very rich by force. This is usually in the form of a revolution, with death, torture, and all the inefficiencies and horror that comes along with it. The game is share the wealth enough, or die.
See above. To me, theft is theft. Whether it's Chavez and Putin stealing from PDVSA and Yukos, or Joe Crackhead sticking me up for my wallet, or the Social Security Administration sticking me and my employer up for 6.2%, it's immoral. Wrong. And it needs to stop.
> I'm happy to take personal responsibility for myself and my well being. I'm happy to expect exactly nothing from the government. In return I only ask that they stop taxing me and telling me what I can and cannot do. Does that sound fair to you?
That sounds eminently fair; I'd love to have that option, but at present, I don't. So why aren't you on our side, supporting an individual right to opt out - irrevocably - of Social Security? :)
>
> And stock is just a series of IOU's from corporations, and bank accounts are just a series of IOU's from the banks, etc. How is Social Security's investment in the Treasury any different than any other investment in anything?
Stock is not an IOU from a corporation. It represents ownership. When a corporation is worth something, a little sliver of it is also worth something. When you buy and sell stock, you're just trading the little slivers of a company (maybe a desk or a coffee machine's worth) for money.
Bank accounts are not IOUs from banks. They represent property. The bank is contractually obliged to give you that money on demand. That's what "money" in a checking or savings account is. It's as real as what's in your wallet.
Social Security's investment in Treasury bonds is not the same thing. The bonds may be real, but Supreme Court ruled in 1960 that people who paid into SS do not have a right to any of that money. When you "buy" into SS, you don't own anything.
> Hmm, my parents and surviving grandparents LOVE me. I'm sorry that yours don't, and you seem to think that's the norm.
The intergenerational arguments cut both ways.
(Hmm, do you love your children and surviving grandchildren? I'm sorry that you don't, as you seem to prefer that someone else take care of them :)
>
>In fact, repudiating any treasury bonds would cause the great depression to look like a tiny pothole...
No, we're not. It's true that the unfunded liability of the Social Security pyramid scheme greatly exceeds its assets.
Because we want to avoid the fiscal meltdown that comes from redeeming the bonds (with printed dollars or taxed dollars), and (as you correctly point out) because the catastrophe of defaulting on those bonds is just plain unthinkable, there's only one thing left to do:
Renege on the contract, because it doesn't exist.
If your bank or brokerage house pulls something that, you can sue it into the stone age. But the Supreme Court has already said that entitlement to Social Security benefits is not contractual right.
When I say that the treasury bonds are "no good", that's a shortcut. In truth, the bonds are just fine. But the people who paid for those bonds do not own those bonds -- they have no right to expect to see one thin dime.
It's an easy mistake. Most of the time, when someone pays for something, they own it. The government plays by different rules.
You get it!
Annuity Calculator
Yep, and if I had $317,000 saved up, I could have $1500/month for the rest of my life starting at age 45!
Maybe if I weren't paying 6.2% (12.4% if you're trying to run your own business) of my salary to the Ponzi scheme, I'D BE ABLE TO BUY MY OWN GODDAMN ANNUITY. In fact, I'd be able to buy it about 15-20 years earlier, and I wouldn't have to worry if my goddamn job winds up in India by the time I'm your age.
>
> But we're not savages and we won't do that.
Right.
We'll just take money from him by force -- and put it in something we know is going to lose money.
> You object because you want to invest in a free market? Great. Most investors lose money, but if you really want to invest outside of the SS program, what's stopping you? Go ahead. You just can't risk this small percentage of your earnings. That goes to make sure you won't be too much of a burden on the rest of us when you get old.
What's stopping me (or at least slowing me down) is the 6.2% (plus another 6.2% from my employer) that you're taking out of my pockets.
If you want a "guaranteed" investment - an investment that'll do at least as well as Social Security - why not just invest in US Treasuries?
These financial instruments are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States Government's power to tax its citizens or run the printing presses to pay back the principal value of the bond and the stated coupon rate.
So I ask you -- if Social Security had private accounts that were truly free -- what would stop you?
>
> Governments are not companies. They do things differently.
In other words, if Charles Ponzi had just had enough thugs with guns to keep beating money out of future generations of investors, there would never have been a crisis with his investment company.
Last time I checked, my bank accounts didn't come with a disclaimer like this:
If a mutual fund propspectus said "By 2042, there won't be enough other investors depositing checks with us to pay all of the net asset value of the fund. At that point, there will be enough money to pay only about 73 cents for each dollar presently shown on this statement", would you invest in it?
Say what you will about Kenneth Lay and Bernie Ebbers. Neither of them pointed guns at people's heads and said "buy our stock or we pull the trigger."
Perhaps if you didn't have 6.2% (or 15.4% if you're self-employed) of your money taken away from you, you could afford to retire.
As for your "affordable" pension plan...
If your bank statement said "By 2042, there won't be enough other depositors depositing checks with us to pay all of the balance owed to you. At that point, there will be enough money to pay only about 73 cents for each dollar you deposited with us", would you continue to bank with them?
> I wonder if your bank cleaned out your account, you would claim it was your own fault, because "I'm a sucker for trusting them with all that money."
You choose an interesting analogy.
If your bank statement said "By 2042, there won't be enough other depositors depositing checks with us to pay all of the balance owed to you. At that point, there will be enough money to pay only about 73 cents for each dollar you deposited with us", would you continue to bank with them?
And with what do you suggest the Federal government suggest paying those "loans"?
You can pay them in dollars that currently exist - but only by confiscating those dollars directly out of other citizens' pockets, resulting in capital flight and economic implosion.
Or you can pay them in dollars that don't exist - but only by printing another $26,000,000,000,000 of them, resulting in hyperinflation and economic implosion.
> If the politicans hadn't been using the SS Trust as a slush fund to pay for their pork projects, we would NEVER have had this problem. There are 26 TRILLION dollars in IOU's setting in the "Lock Box," all wasted money that we can't account for.
Your first statement is true. So -- are we to end Social Security on the grounds that its accounting makes Enron look like a paragon of fiscal responsibility, or should we perpetuate it?
There are ZERO dollars in the "lock box". It doesn't exist. And we can account for those dollars -- they got spent. Some of it got turned into weapons and blowed up in Iraq. Some of it got turned into space probes. Some of it wound up in the hands of the working poor. Some of it wound up in the hands of your local neighborhood crack dealer. Most of it wound up in the hands of government bureaucrats (and government contractors) who never met pork they didn't like.
It's a shitty situation. The only ethical move is to acknowledge that SS (and the "lock box") was (and is) a fraud perpetrated on the public, and fire the hoaxters from the top down. End SS, abolish the department, apologize to the defrauded, and pass a Constitutional amendment never to do it again.
From the article:
I read that as: "Star Trek XVI: The Phantom Holodeck", to be followed by "Star Trek XVII: Attack of the Scriptwriters", and "Star Trek XVIII: Revenge of Berman".
Sounds pretty terrible to me.