Are you saying that the trust fund money should have just sat there rather than being invested?
No, I'm saying the whole thing was a scam. Maybe not an intentional scam... more like the kind of crap politicians pull on a regular basis. Only politicians could agree that the best way to secure the future of SS is to put their grandchildren into trillions of dollars in debt, spend all the money immediately, and then rely on the general fund halfway through the plan.
It is morally corrupt to fund the government with debt that you hand off to future generations, and no amount of tallying up the money in a pretend trust fund changes that.
I agree that SS is not much of an issue, but only if it is kept in the black by - as you suggest - raising FICA.
Then what generated the heat that caused the meltdown?
Radioactive decay, not fission.
It still has a cooling system with moving parts. Why?
I am by no means a nuclear expert, but my understanding is that: (a) the passive cooling is for when the reactor is shut down but cooling off (think Fukushima), not while operating (b) normally you need to move the heat over to the turbines in the most efficient way possible
The Social Security trust fund has over $2.6 trillion in it. Calculations show it should last into the mid 2030's before being exhausted
Right, but it's all an accounting trick. That money was spent a long time ago, and pulling from it will pull money out of the general fund. Right now it is only pulling a little bit out of the general fund, but that is going to change pretty soon. Making SS self-sufficient now, while it is still in the black and viable, seems to me the best way to keep it healthy going forward.
The problem was introducing the tax cut while financing the war.
I agree that the tax cut was probably irresponsible, but so was the 6+ trillion in deficit spending above and beyond the three quarter or so billion he spent on the wars. Bush completely threw out the whole concept of fiscal conservatism.
The republicans use the argument that every expenditures should be paid for but conveniently look the other way when it comes time to make up for loss revenue.
Well, it's a different set of Republicans. The non-Tea-Party sect of the party is the crew who was in charge during the Bush era. The Tea Party would not even exist if it weren't for how badly Bush screwed up our finances. The Tea Party side of the party want to make up for 100% of the deficit with cuts in spending. Eventually they will have to compromise, because the bulk of the Republican party is still tax-and-spend at heart, and you will see more of these "bi-partisan initiatives" as they realize they have much in common with the Democrats.
Social Security already is completely self sufficient
Yeah, it usually is in the black, though it has been slightly in the red recently. I'm proposing that the rate taken from paychecks vary to keep up with benefits, rather than the current plan to just go further into the red. Eliminating the income cap would probably drop the rate - which would of course all get eaten up by Medicare Part D.
Going forward, the adjustable rate would obviously rise absent any changes in the programs. This is good and bad - good because people will have a good feel for how much the programs cost and bad because people will have a good feel for how much the programs cost:)
Don't get me wrong - I was not defending Bush per se... just pointing out that the wars weren't really a huge contribution to our current debt problem.
I do question why it's "good" to get the nation into deeper debt to fund a war and "bad" to get us in debt for domestic spending.
In general, you only want to borrow for non-recurring expenses. If the domestic spending was for infrastructure improvements than that would be another thing entirely - buying infrastructure at 2% interest is a fantastic deal and we should be doing it right now. It is very irresponsible, however, to use debt to pay for recurring costs. In terms of personal credit, buying a house with a mortgage is fine - but using your credit card to make the mortgage payment because you can't pay otherwise is a recipe for disaster.
Rationalizing 4000 dead US Soldiers as a sound financial decision? priceless....
Huh? Stop putting words in my mouth. I think the Iraq war was poorly executed, and it sucked our attention away from Afghanistan. I was talking about the financial impact of the two wars and nothing else.
So how would you actually get the US Gov't financially stable in a politically doable way?
Step 1 would be to freeze spending. All spending. If you want to spend an extra dollar on defense, it has to come from somewhere else.
Why is this step 1? Well, eventually the economy and inflation will conspire against the deficit and the debt - so even if you never cut spending or raise taxes, the problem will eventually go away even if you do nothing else.
I think this is politically doable.
From there, anything else you do can only help. I'd love to see comprehensive tax reform: - get rid of capital gains tax and corporate income tax and replace it with counting all income as regular income (dividends, capital gains, etc) - get rid of most deductions, especially for those who earn more than a lower-middle-class wage. - adjust the marginal income tax rates so that the total collected is roughly the same to make it more politically palatable ("I didn't raise taxes! I reformed them!") - make social security and medicare/medicaid completely self-sufficient. Payroll tax gets adjusted up or down based on something like a 5 year moving average. If people start complaining about the amount taken from their checks, then cut benefits. Like state sales tax, the cost of the programs is spelled out very clearly this way. Remove any caps or income limits - all of your income should be subject to these taxes.
But honestly, there are way too many barriers to the tax reform I'd like to see.
The other thing that would obviously help is actual spending reductions. Again, I don't see that happening in the current political climate, but any bit would help after spending is frozen.
The two wars combined over nearly ten years cost 1 trillion. That's about 100 billion per year. In terms of our current deficit, it is only 10%.
While I agree that it was foolish not to finance the war, 9/10 of the deficit problem still remains. It also wasn't all that foolish, since the fed can borrow money at around 2%. If you can finance a 10-year war over 30 years at 2%, that might be a pretty sound financial decision..
It is. We can print money. You wouldn't be reading about Greece right now if all that happened is their currency was devalued.
The problem with Greece is that they borrowed money at a cheap rate to increase their pay beyond what their productivity could support. When the cheap money went away, it meant they had to decrease their pay AND pay back their previous largess. If they could print money, their pay would still effectively have gone down due to inflation, but their debt load would go way down, too.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a deficit "hawk". If nothing else, I'd like to see the US freeze federal spending until the economy catches up. But while inflation is really bad - especially if it runs away - at least it has the nice side effect of reducing your debt load.
Is it too much to really ask for compromise? Some Tax raises and some cuts?
I can understand the people who want to draw a line in the sand. Some people think that the government is too big, and that holding the line on taxes will starve the beast. I happen to think that tax reform is important, even if the total collected doesn't increase. I think the marginal rates could be held or even reduced if deductions were limited. Get rid of capital gains tax and corporate tax and just count capital gains and dividends as regular income. Programs like Social Security and Medicare should be made self-sufficient - no loaning money to the general fund and no borrowing from the general fund. You could handle recessions and such by basing everything off of 3 to 5-year moving averages... then any shortfall or surplus would be short-lived and manageable. Combine this with a complete freeze on federal spending until the economy catches up with the government and I think you might make the government's balance sheet healthy again.
Only because energy prices have gone up (and with it food costs) - this isn't "inflation" in the sense of the money supply causing prices and wages to rise. This is simply because energy has become more scarce and expensive.
So it depends on what you are trying to measure. If everyone's salary were to go up to match the price for the scarce commodity, then the commodity would simply become even more expensive - in other words, it is impossible to match salaries to a scarce resource unless we ration.
my kid's school can't afford to hire enough teacher for every class.
Funding probably ain't the issue. With a few obvious exceptions, America's under-performing schools are among the best-funded in the world. Throwing even more money at the problem is almost as stupid as our children.
Yes, but then Apple will have to start building new fab plants as the tech becomes obsolete.
Yeah, I'm not sure it would make sense for Apple to buy an entire fab unless they were using 100% of the capacity of one of their suppliers. Then they are paying for fab upgrades one way or another - either through the cost of the sub-contracted parts or directly in their own fab.
Drooling? I mean, the IMDB quote says "grueling", but I always thought he said "drooling" - plus Cptn. Oveur drools right after he says it, just as with the other symptoms. Besides, what the hell is "inevitable grueling"?
The players don't just give up because the time is nearly over.
You compared two very different games. Use hockey instead, which is basically soccer on ice with full contact. Hockey does not suffer at all from the criticisms you lobbed at football.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you saying that the trust fund money should have just sat there rather than being invested?
No, I'm saying the whole thing was a scam. Maybe not an intentional scam... more like the kind of crap politicians pull on a regular basis. Only politicians could agree that the best way to secure the future of SS is to put their grandchildren into trillions of dollars in debt, spend all the money immediately, and then rely on the general fund halfway through the plan.
It is morally corrupt to fund the government with debt that you hand off to future generations, and no amount of tallying up the money in a pretend trust fund changes that.
I agree that SS is not much of an issue, but only if it is kept in the black by - as you suggest - raising FICA.
It only needs to be as safe as automobiles, and it far exceeds that.
Then what generated the heat that caused the meltdown?
Radioactive decay, not fission.
It still has a cooling system with moving parts. Why?
I am by no means a nuclear expert, but my understanding is that:
(a) the passive cooling is for when the reactor is shut down but cooling off (think Fukushima), not while operating
(b) normally you need to move the heat over to the turbines in the most efficient way possible
The Social Security trust fund has over $2.6 trillion in it. Calculations show it should last into the mid 2030's before being exhausted
Right, but it's all an accounting trick. That money was spent a long time ago, and pulling from it will pull money out of the general fund. Right now it is only pulling a little bit out of the general fund, but that is going to change pretty soon. Making SS self-sufficient now, while it is still in the black and viable, seems to me the best way to keep it healthy going forward.
2030 is also not very far away.
The problem was introducing the tax cut while financing the war.
I agree that the tax cut was probably irresponsible, but so was the 6+ trillion in deficit spending above and beyond the three quarter or so billion he spent on the wars. Bush completely threw out the whole concept of fiscal conservatism.
The republicans use the argument that every expenditures should be paid for but conveniently look the other way when it comes time to make up for loss revenue.
Well, it's a different set of Republicans. The non-Tea-Party sect of the party is the crew who was in charge during the Bush era. The Tea Party would not even exist if it weren't for how badly Bush screwed up our finances. The Tea Party side of the party want to make up for 100% of the deficit with cuts in spending. Eventually they will have to compromise, because the bulk of the Republican party is still tax-and-spend at heart, and you will see more of these "bi-partisan initiatives" as they realize they have much in common with the Democrats.
I betcha we could get an agreement to freeze spending. But yeah, most of it is fantasy.
Social Security already is completely self sufficient
Yeah, it usually is in the black, though it has been slightly in the red recently. I'm proposing that the rate taken from paychecks vary to keep up with benefits, rather than the current plan to just go further into the red. Eliminating the income cap would probably drop the rate - which would of course all get eaten up by Medicare Part D.
Going forward, the adjustable rate would obviously rise absent any changes in the programs. This is good and bad - good because people will have a good feel for how much the programs cost and bad because people will have a good feel for how much the programs cost :)
Don't get me wrong - I was not defending Bush per se... just pointing out that the wars weren't really a huge contribution to our current debt problem.
I do question why it's "good" to get the nation into deeper debt to fund a war and "bad" to get us in debt for domestic spending.
In general, you only want to borrow for non-recurring expenses. If the domestic spending was for infrastructure improvements than that would be another thing entirely - buying infrastructure at 2% interest is a fantastic deal and we should be doing it right now. It is very irresponsible, however, to use debt to pay for recurring costs. In terms of personal credit, buying a house with a mortgage is fine - but using your credit card to make the mortgage payment because you can't pay otherwise is a recipe for disaster.
Rationalizing 4000 dead US Soldiers as a sound financial decision? priceless....
Huh? Stop putting words in my mouth. I think the Iraq war was poorly executed, and it sucked our attention away from Afghanistan. I was talking about the financial impact of the two wars and nothing else.
I mentioned Bush? No - only the wars.
I disliked Bush's economic policies - he expanded entitlements while lowering taxes. I voted against Bush in 2004. I'm not defending Bush.
So how would you actually get the US Gov't financially stable in a politically doable way?
Step 1 would be to freeze spending. All spending. If you want to spend an extra dollar on defense, it has to come from somewhere else.
Why is this step 1? Well, eventually the economy and inflation will conspire against the deficit and the debt - so even if you never cut spending or raise taxes, the problem will eventually go away even if you do nothing else.
I think this is politically doable.
From there, anything else you do can only help. I'd love to see comprehensive tax reform:
- get rid of capital gains tax and corporate income tax and replace it with counting all income as regular income (dividends, capital gains, etc)
- get rid of most deductions, especially for those who earn more than a lower-middle-class wage.
- adjust the marginal income tax rates so that the total collected is roughly the same to make it more politically palatable ("I didn't raise taxes! I reformed them!")
- make social security and medicare/medicaid completely self-sufficient. Payroll tax gets adjusted up or down based on something like a 5 year moving average. If people start complaining about the amount taken from their checks, then cut benefits. Like state sales tax, the cost of the programs is spelled out very clearly this way. Remove any caps or income limits - all of your income should be subject to these taxes.
But honestly, there are way too many barriers to the tax reform I'd like to see.
The other thing that would obviously help is actual spending reductions. Again, I don't see that happening in the current political climate, but any bit would help after spending is frozen.
The two wars combined over nearly ten years cost 1 trillion. That's about 100 billion per year. In terms of our current deficit, it is only 10%.
While I agree that it was foolish not to finance the war, 9/10 of the deficit problem still remains. It also wasn't all that foolish, since the fed can borrow money at around 2%. If you can finance a 10-year war over 30 years at 2%, that might be a pretty sound financial decision..
that the US is 'different'
It is. We can print money. You wouldn't be reading about Greece right now if all that happened is their currency was devalued.
The problem with Greece is that they borrowed money at a cheap rate to increase their pay beyond what their productivity could support. When the cheap money went away, it meant they had to decrease their pay AND pay back their previous largess. If they could print money, their pay would still effectively have gone down due to inflation, but their debt load would go way down, too.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a deficit "hawk". If nothing else, I'd like to see the US freeze federal spending until the economy catches up. But while inflation is really bad - especially if it runs away - at least it has the nice side effect of reducing your debt load.
Is it too much to really ask for compromise? Some Tax raises and some cuts?
I can understand the people who want to draw a line in the sand. Some people think that the government is too big, and that holding the line on taxes will starve the beast. I happen to think that tax reform is important, even if the total collected doesn't increase. I think the marginal rates could be held or even reduced if deductions were limited. Get rid of capital gains tax and corporate tax and just count capital gains and dividends as regular income. Programs like Social Security and Medicare should be made self-sufficient - no loaning money to the general fund and no borrowing from the general fund. You could handle recessions and such by basing everything off of 3 to 5-year moving averages... then any shortfall or surplus would be short-lived and manageable. Combine this with a complete freeze on federal spending until the economy catches up with the government and I think you might make the government's balance sheet healthy again.
Only because energy prices have gone up (and with it food costs) - this isn't "inflation" in the sense of the money supply causing prices and wages to rise. This is simply because energy has become more scarce and expensive.
So it depends on what you are trying to measure. If everyone's salary were to go up to match the price for the scarce commodity, then the commodity would simply become even more expensive - in other words, it is impossible to match salaries to a scarce resource unless we ration.
Forgive my ignorance, but do we actually have that kind of technology?
Pretty sure that actually pre-dated GPS. MPEG came out of terrain-following research for the Tomahawk missile IIRC.
my kid's school can't afford to hire enough teacher for every class.
Funding probably ain't the issue. With a few obvious exceptions, America's under-performing schools are among the best-funded in the world. Throwing even more money at the problem is almost as stupid as our children.
Yes, but then Apple will have to start building new fab plants as the tech becomes obsolete.
Yeah, I'm not sure it would make sense for Apple to buy an entire fab unless they were using 100% of the capacity of one of their suppliers. Then they are paying for fab upgrades one way or another - either through the cost of the sub-contracted parts or directly in their own fab.
Good to see some good ol' vertical integration still going on out there.
That's way more depressing than it is funny :)
Drooling? I mean, the IMDB quote says "grueling", but I always thought he said "drooling" - plus Cptn. Oveur drools right after he says it, just as with the other symptoms. Besides, what the hell is "inevitable grueling"?
But I didn't write it... Dr. Seuss. And he'd probably have something to say about rhythm :)
Confederacy of Dunces
Right, thus my contention that soccer is run by Luddites :)
We wind our watches and we LIKE it!
The players don't just give up because the time is nearly over.
You compared two very different games. Use hockey instead, which is basically soccer on ice with full contact. Hockey does not suffer at all from the criticisms you lobbed at football.