Of course, that's what libertarians are about, you know, giving money to corrupt industry leaders and politicians, and bailing out huge banks. - Sarcasm, to the 9th degree.
Batshit irrelevant to the subject of Social Security, to the 9nth degree. Care to try again, this time without the red herring and attempted deflection?
Let me point out the obvious. It works poorly as a safety net. If they really wanted a program that keeps granny from eating catfood, then they should have made it needs-based.
And let me point out the obvious: this is just more Randian propaganda designed to whittle away at Social Security.
It works poorly as a safety net.
It keeps millions of elderly from going homeless and without food. It has an amazingly low overhead. It has no chance of being stolen by Goldman Sachs.
If they really wanted a program that keeps granny from eating catfood, then they should have made it needs-based.
Nonsense. Social Security isn't just a safety net, it's insurance against getting old. You pay in, you get old, you collect. It's that simple. Would you try and make car insurance needs-based as well? Sorry, Mr. Rich Guy, we know you've been paying your premiums for 40 years, but you'll have to eat the loss of your stolen Lexus because you can afford it.
Applying needs-testing to Social Security will turn it from an insurance program into a welfare program - and we all know how you Randians hate welfare programs.
Finally, Social Security benefits are paid out on a progressive scale - you get more back in benefits from the first dollar you paid into Social Security than the last dollar you paid in.
In other words, if we didn't force people to participate, then nobody would. A huge sign that Social Security should never have existed in the first place.
Question: do you guys actually believe any of this stuff you throw out? Social Security is one of the most popular government programs ever created - if not the most popular - and messing with it has long been known as the "third rail of politics". As in any politician that touches it will be electrocuted.
Yes, there is something wrong with Social Security. It assumes that the population will continually be growing at a given rate - and that's why it's a Ponzi scheme.
False. The whole reason we have a "trust fund" in the first place was to pay for the Boomers. Where are the Boomers going to be when the "trust fund" runs out? Dead, mostly. Before we had a "trust fund", Social Security was a "paygo" system - money coming in from current workers was sent straight back out to retired workers, and that's what we'll go back to that after the Boomers are gone. It's literally impossible for Social Security to go bankrupt as money will always be coming in from payroll taxes, and is forbidden by law to add to the deficit.
This was planned for. Think tanks, Republicans and now Democrats have been lying to you. The shame is now on you if you choose to keep being fooled.
Disgruntled whining can be safely ignored, there needs to be some implication of something at least resembling a voting bloc to have real power.
That's why the two parties have the game no nicely rigged. For 2012, your choices will be 1) A Democrat that wants to cut Social Security or 2) a Republican that wants to cut Social Security.
The actual desires of the American people can be safely ignored.
Yes, there's a funded-through-2038 trust fund. However, the US Government as a whole collected that money, borrowed it, and spent it on other things.
Borrowed via Treasury Bonds. Funny how that part always gets left out of the IOU storyline. And the government has never, ever defaulted on a single Treasury Bond, nor will it - our creditors in China and Saudi Arabia would never allow such an event to occur.
The social security surplus helped cover up the problem, and it is going to have to be part of the solution.
But not cuts to defense spending or tax increases on the rich? Some priorities you have there.
Let the free market succeed where the USPS only exists by monopoly.
Force the "free market" to completely fund the pensions of workers that haven't even been born yet and then we'll talk about how the USPS has "failed".
Social security as we know it will be gone, or severely neutered by the time I reach retirement age.
Only if you let corrupt politicians take it from you. There's nothing wrong with Social Security. At all.
The "crisis" bullshit is propaganda to get you to accept cuts now so they can continue to use the 'trust fund' surpluses to fund tax cuts for the rich and the military-industrial-congressional-survellance-contractor complex.
Interesting....you can't read yet you claim to work in the nuclear power industry? Even Homer is better than that.
Oh, so you're at a U.S. plant that's started buying insurance in the private market then, and are paying whatever the going free market rate is for your liability insurance?
And aside from the issue of radioactive waste - which you just avoided for some reason - there are two other primal forces of nature at play here: human greed and hubris, which keep popping up again and again and again. Either safety measures deemed not necessary (like a plant in the U.S. that had turned off it's earthquake monitoring equipment) or a "who could have predicted...." moment like Japan getting hit with a 9.0 earthquake.
Most of the time, these incidents amount to nothing, like the U.S. plant that turned off it's earthquake monitoring equipment. But you get enough plants together with enough fools and tools, and a nuclear disaster becomes a question of when, not if.
We're insured by a private insurer, but thanks for checking your facts.
And you have a low liability cap set by the government. Funny how you left that fact out - as if you were a less-than-honest apologist for nuclear power, or something.
Huh, interesting.
I wonder what my car insurance would cost if there was a federal law limiting my liability to $500 for an accident - would probably cost about as much as insurance for a smartphone.
Remove that cap and mandate that the plant manager live in the shadow of the plant he manages, as well as the chairman and CEO of whatever company owns said plant, and then we can talk about how safe nuclear power is.
But even that's avoiding the nuclear waste problem, which will be around for tens of thousands of years.
There's a reason why they keep going on about health hazards even as they're deploying ear-bleeding noise cannons....because anti-terrahrist legislation includes threats to.....public health.
It's universally accepted that Prohibition was a failure, and WHY it was a failure. So why haven't we repealed the War on Drugs the same way alcohol prohibition was repealed?
Because Prohibitionists hadn't figured out how to make a profit off of Prohibition when it was passed.
Whereas now you have both corporate interests (for-profit prisons) and labor (prison guard unions) supporting the War on Drugs because for them it means money and jobs. A lot of money.
And municipalities make a fortune off of fines, mandated treatment programs, and of course asset forfeiture. A hefty chunk of which is kicked backed to police departments - which, shockingly enough, results in a great deal of police corruption and civil rights violations. "Confidential informants". LIDAR. Planting drugs on innocent people. Or even raiding multi-million dollar estates with the intent of using asset forfeiture laws to sell the property. Except whoops, there weren't any drugs to be found. And whoops, they murdered the homeowner in the process.
Beause there's a chapter in there (Chapter 7, IIRC), titled "Attribution of climate change forcings". There's even a little bar graph showing the forcings on climate and do you know what, man's influence is ONLY ONE OF THEM.
BUT IT'S THE DRIVING FACTOR. The biosphere is capable of handling normal climate fluctuations. Human activity has pushed Co2 levels far past normal.
If you think humans are solely responsible, and that all other factors, including changes in solar output, have ZERO effect (which is what you are saying), then you have probably been paying attention to the last 30 years of science and aren't a religious fanatic (denialist)
100 years ago, there was no Clean Water Act, no Clean Air Act, no FDA, and no Environmental Protection Agency. Meaning if someone else poisoned your food, your water, your air, you were shit out of luck.
100 years ago, you were at the mercy of monopolies that dominated entire sectors of the economy - railroads, oil, steel.
100 years ago, the Bill of Rights did not apply to the states - and some Loons like Ron Paul still hold that belief. Meaning that, among other things, state-based gun laws that give gun nuts the vapors would be perfectly legal.
100 years ago, child labor was still legal and there was no middle class.
100 years ago there was no Medicare, leaving the middle age to die in the streets from easily-treated ailments. Nowadays that only happens to 24 year old fathers with toothaches, thanks to the miracle of for-profit health insurance companies.
Could go on, but you get the point. Which is....
You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Just because health care and funding from education come from the same overall government that throws away a trillion dollars a year on the military-industrial-complex, when we haven't had an invasion in 200 years, doesn't mean that both forms of spending are a total waste.
Just because food, air, and water regulations come from the same overall government that spys on you without warrants doesn't mean they're both examples of authoritarian overreach.
If you had the same jaundiced eye towards businesses, you'd want them all banned because running a corporation means you'll be dumping toxic waste into the river while grouping your secretary. But you probably don't paint with such a broad brush because that would be unbelievably stupid.
If there was a warrant, there wouldn't be a story. The "we don't know what they know" defence didn't hold water in Vietnam, and it hasn't improved with age.
Some newspapers actually did that once, except it involved searching trash instead of GPS tracking:
RUBBISH! Portland's top brass said it was OK to swipe your garbage--so we grabbed theirs.
Back in March, the police swiped the trash of fellow officer Gina Hoesly. They didn't ask permission. They didn't ask for a search warrant. They just grabbed it. Their sordid haul, which included a bloody tampon, became the basis for drug charges against her (see "Gross Violation," below).
The news left a lot of Portlanders--including us--scratching our heads. Aren't there rules about this sort of thing? Aren't citizens protected from unreasonable search and seizure by the Fourth Amendment?
The Multnomah County District Attorney's Office doesn't think so. Prosecutor Mark McDonnell says that once you set your garbage out on the curb, it becomes public property.
...
After much debate, we resolved to turn the tables on three of our esteemed public officials. We embarked on an unauthorized sightseeing tour of their garbage, to make a point about how invasive a "garbage pull" really is--and to highlight the government's ongoing erosion of people's privacy.
We chose District Attorney Mike Schrunk because his office is the most vocal defender of the proposition that your garbage is up for grabs. We chose Police Chief Mark Kroeker because he runs the bureau. And we chose Mayor Vera Katz because, as police commissioner, she gives the chief his marching orders.
Each, in his or her own way, has endorsed the notion that you abandon your privacy when you set your trash out on the curb. So we figured they wouldn't mind too much if we took a peek at theirs.
What baffles me in this case is that they COULD HAVE GOTTEN A WARRANT!
LEO's didn't get a warrant for the same reason the President didn't bother to get Congressional authorization for his war in Libya - to establish a precedent that they don't have to.
Do you really think that "the 1%" is going to eat the cost of paying someone better wages and benefits, or do you think they are going to roll that into the price that "the 99%" pays for the same goods and services that they already buy?
I guess the fascist apologists forgot their junior high econ and the fact that all companies already charge whatever the market will bear. If they could jack up prices without it costing them sales, they would go right ahead and do so.
The solution to the current problems simple and obvious but go against the religious dogma of free market fundamentalists
FTFY. Bring back 91% marginal tax rates, repeal anti-union and corporate-written trade laws. The solutions are already out there and they are simple.
Slashdot Mirror
Batshit irrelevant to the subject of Social Security, to the 9nth degree. Care to try again, this time without the red herring and attempted deflection?
And let me point out the obvious: this is just more Randian propaganda designed to whittle away at Social Security.
It keeps millions of elderly from going homeless and without food. It has an amazingly low overhead. It has no chance of being stolen by Goldman Sachs.
Nonsense. Social Security isn't just a safety net, it's insurance against getting old. You pay in, you get old, you collect. It's that simple. Would you try and make car insurance needs-based as well? Sorry, Mr. Rich Guy, we know you've been paying your premiums for 40 years, but you'll have to eat the loss of your stolen Lexus because you can afford it.
Applying needs-testing to Social Security will turn it from an insurance program into a welfare program - and we all know how you Randians hate welfare programs.
Finally, Social Security benefits are paid out on a progressive scale - you get more back in benefits from the first dollar you paid into Social Security than the last dollar you paid in.
Question: do you guys actually believe any of this stuff you throw out? Social Security is one of the most popular government programs ever created - if not the most popular - and messing with it has long been known as the "third rail of politics". As in any politician that touches it will be electrocuted.
False. The whole reason we have a "trust fund" in the first place was to pay for the Boomers. Where are the Boomers going to be when the "trust fund" runs out? Dead, mostly. Before we had a "trust fund", Social Security was a "paygo" system - money coming in from current workers was sent straight back out to retired workers, and that's what we'll go back to that after the Boomers are gone. It's literally impossible for Social Security to go bankrupt as money will always be coming in from payroll taxes, and is forbidden by law to add to the deficit.
This was planned for. Think tanks, Republicans and now Democrats have been lying to you. The shame is now on you if you choose to keep being fooled.
That's why the two parties have the game no nicely rigged. For 2012, your choices will be 1) A Democrat that wants to cut Social Security or 2) a Republican that wants to cut Social Security.
The actual desires of the American people can be safely ignored.
Borrowed via Treasury Bonds. Funny how that part always gets left out of the IOU storyline. And the government has never, ever defaulted on a single Treasury Bond, nor will it - our creditors in China and Saudi Arabia would never allow such an event to occur.
But not cuts to defense spending or tax increases on the rich? Some priorities you have there.
Because you'd prefer the elderly to die in the streets?
Force the "free market" to completely fund the pensions of workers that haven't even been born yet and then we'll talk about how the USPS has "failed".
Only if you let corrupt politicians take it from you. There's nothing wrong with Social Security. At all.
The "crisis" bullshit is propaganda to get you to accept cuts now so they can continue to use the 'trust fund' surpluses to fund tax cuts for the rich and the military-industrial-congressional-survellance-contractor complex.
About as interesting as the Colts beating the Cowboys in the Superbowl that year. About as relevant, too.
Now that the pedantry is out of the way, anything to say on his actual point?
Interesting....you can't read yet you claim to work in the nuclear power industry? Even Homer is better than that.
And aside from the issue of radioactive waste - which you just avoided for some reason - there are two other primal forces of nature at play here: human greed and hubris, which keep popping up again and again and again. Either safety measures deemed not necessary (like a plant in the U.S. that had turned off it's earthquake monitoring equipment) or a "who could have predicted...." moment like Japan getting hit with a 9.0 earthquake.
Most of the time, these incidents amount to nothing, like the U.S. plant that turned off it's earthquake monitoring equipment. But you get enough plants together with enough fools and tools, and a nuclear disaster becomes a question of when, not if.
Nuclear power is far more expensive than coal power
Rubbish.
Tautology.
Of course nuclear is far more expensive than coal, even if you're only looking at containment costs, which go out many thousands of years.
So, a false dichotomy with a side order of Chewbacca Defense?
And you have a low liability cap set by the government. Funny how you left that fact out - as if you were a less-than-honest apologist for nuclear power, or something.
Huh, interesting.
I wonder what my car insurance would cost if there was a federal law limiting my liability to $500 for an accident - would probably cost about as much as insurance for a smartphone.
Remove that cap and mandate that the plant manager live in the shadow of the plant he manages, as well as the chairman and CEO of whatever company owns said plant, and then we can talk about how safe nuclear power is.
But even that's avoiding the nuclear waste problem, which will be around for tens of thousands of years.
There's a reason why they keep going on about health hazards even as they're deploying ear-bleeding noise cannons....because anti-terrahrist legislation includes threats to.....public health.
The Ayn Rand that used Social Security and Medicare? How did she make it past all that skull-cracking government oppression to do that?
It's universally accepted that Prohibition was a failure, and WHY it was a failure. So why haven't we repealed the War on Drugs the same way alcohol prohibition was repealed?
Because Prohibitionists hadn't figured out how to make a profit off of Prohibition when it was passed.
Whereas now you have both corporate interests (for-profit prisons) and labor (prison guard unions) supporting the War on Drugs because for them it means money and jobs. A lot of money.
And municipalities make a fortune off of fines, mandated treatment programs, and of course asset forfeiture. A hefty chunk of which is kicked backed to police departments - which, shockingly enough, results in a great deal of police corruption and civil rights violations. "Confidential informants". LIDAR. Planting drugs on innocent people. Or even raiding multi-million dollar estates with the intent of using asset forfeiture laws to sell the property. Except whoops, there weren't any drugs to be found. And whoops, they murdered the homeowner in the process.
BUT IT'S THE DRIVING FACTOR. The biosphere is capable of handling normal climate fluctuations. Human activity has pushed Co2 levels far past normal.
FTFY.
100 years ago, there was no Clean Water Act, no Clean Air Act, no FDA, and no Environmental Protection Agency. Meaning if someone else poisoned your food, your water, your air, you were shit out of luck.
100 years ago, you were at the mercy of monopolies that dominated entire sectors of the economy - railroads, oil, steel.
100 years ago, the Bill of Rights did not apply to the states - and some Loons like Ron Paul still hold that belief. Meaning that, among other things, state-based gun laws that give gun nuts the vapors would be perfectly legal.
100 years ago, child labor was still legal and there was no middle class.
100 years ago there was no Medicare, leaving the middle age to die in the streets from easily-treated ailments. Nowadays that only happens to 24 year old fathers with toothaches, thanks to the miracle of for-profit health insurance companies.
Could go on, but you get the point. Which is....
You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Just because health care and funding from education come from the same overall government that throws away a trillion dollars a year on the military-industrial-complex, when we haven't had an invasion in 200 years, doesn't mean that both forms of spending are a total waste.
Just because food, air, and water regulations come from the same overall government that spys on you without warrants doesn't mean they're both examples of authoritarian overreach.
If you had the same jaundiced eye towards businesses, you'd want them all banned because running a corporation means you'll be dumping toxic waste into the river while grouping your secretary. But you probably don't paint with such a broad brush because that would be unbelievably stupid.
Except those that did the fucking in the past aren't the ones getting fucked now, so no.
If there was a warrant, there wouldn't be a story. The "we don't know what they know" defence didn't hold water in Vietnam, and it hasn't improved with age.
Some newspapers actually did that once, except it involved searching trash instead of GPS tracking:
Nevermind that warrants can be granted with minutes, where is the "it will save time and money" exception in the Bill of Rights?
LEO's didn't get a warrant for the same reason the President didn't bother to get Congressional authorization for his war in Libya - to establish a precedent that they don't have to.
I guess the fascist apologists forgot their junior high econ and the fact that all companies already charge whatever the market will bear. If they could jack up prices without it costing them sales, they would go right ahead and do so.
FTFY. Bring back 91% marginal tax rates, repeal anti-union and corporate-written trade laws. The solutions are already out there and they are simple.