What is generally accepted is not necessarily what is true. None have actually answered the questions posed; they simply rehash the same old excuses about why Enron accounting is alright as long as you're the government. Accounting is frequently about disguising the truth. It's not that you won't answer, but that you can't actually answer without admitting the simple truth about the irrelevancy of borrowing from yourself without addressing the very real externalities regarding repayment of borrowing from yourself. Continue believing the fiction that you can make money by indefinitely borrowing from yourself if you like. It still won't make the bill payable without increased external resources or decreased expenditures elsewhere (or inflation of the money supply, if you're the government). All social programs have one or more of the above costs, and nothing will change that.
Loans that don't produce more than face value from the use of the money aren't financially beneficial to the person taking out the loan. The current economic climate shows that the majority of government expenditures do little to stimulate growth. They have, at best, a maintenance effect.
Securities require the same outside income as direct payments. They cannot themselves be used as payment. That makes them nothing more than an accounting trick, no matter how you try to excuse it. Nobody credible has a plan which doesn't require increased taxes, decreased benefits, or diminishing the value of the dollar through inflation (or some combination of the above). If securities had real sustained value without requiring external income, they would make those choices unnecessary. There are a lot of people who want to fool themselves or others in order to excuse the behavior though.
If you see lying as reasonable, that's your choice. If you choose to call it something other than lying, that's also your choice. Borrowing money from yourself and calling it 'saving' is a lie, no matter how you slice it and no matter how many people think it's reasonable. It is no more sustainable than you borrowing money from yourself and not having another way to pay yourself back when the bill came due. SS simply uses accounting fiction to say it's saving anything. The budget all comes from the same place, and securities are paid from the same budget as SS payments are. Those securities on redemption draw money from the same place as if paid directly, so they are as much liability as asset. You may have no problem with it, but that doesn't mean people who do have something wrong with them. My complaint is eminently reasonable, regardless of your opinion. The 'trust fund' is, at very best, irrelevant. It is an accounting fiction to hide the fact that there is no money actually saved anywhere. It is contingent on future income, the same as if the 'trust fund' didn't exist at all.
Feel free to disagee, but if so, please tell me exactly how more money enters the general fund because securities exist that are both due to and payable by the same entity. If it doesn't somehow increase the assets available, then please provide a reasonable explanation for politicians claiming it is an asset rather than, at best, a net zero accounting entry with regard to overall budget expenditures.
3 of whom claim to represent me; they do not actually represent me.
There is a significant difference. They represent the proportion of the population who support their actions. I am not one of those people. "Representation" is usually nothing more than a convenient fiction.
Most of this is a strawman that has nothing to do with what I said. I was talking about your average voter, of which economists and billionaire businessmen are not. As a result, it all has zero relevance to the points I made. Making them again is a waste of time, given the lengths gone to in order to avoid examining them at face value.
Except the entity who issued the bonds in this case is also the one paying the value plus interest. Therefore, you need the thousand dollars in the other jar to pay for the securities, and then you have to find money elsewhere to pay the interest on those thousand dollar securities. Assuming that, unlike the government, you haven't already spent the thousand dollars in the jar.
The push is done. As of next year (IIRC, it's been a bit since I read the notice), it's electronically-loaded debit card or direct deposit. No more checks.
Is it really a promise broken if everyone knew you were lying to start with?
Most people, at least those I have talked to, have very little understanding of the accounting fiction that is known as the Social Security trust fund.
They don't realize all those taxes are spent immediately, rather than being saved for the future.
Since the taxes are exchanged by securities that are both held by and issued by the same entity, I like to use this example: The Social Security trust fund amounts to taking a dollar from your right pocket and an IOU written to yourself from the left, exchanging pockets, then spending the dollar. You claim that the IOU amounts to savings, because it is owed to you, but omit the fact that it's also a debt because you are the one liable for payment of that IOU. So the books say you have a dollar, but when the time comes to pay, you have to come up with money from somewhere else in order to actually make good.
The US is living beyond its means. Eventually, something has to give. Politicians rarely get elected by telling the truth though, since the average voter is too stupid to be able to handle it readily. They just get mad and throw gasoline onto the fire that is current partisan politics.
You can create a water filter for a shopvac relatively easily. 5 gallon bucket, a hose extension, and two appropriately-sized pieces of PVC pipe. One long intake pipe below the water line, a short exit pipe above the water line, and you have wet filtration.
Even as used here, I doubt many will jump to linking it with actual death. It's simply ridiculous to do so. A site without traffic is dead, so cutting it off is clearly a death sentence for the site. The terminology is commonly used to relate non-biological death in many different circumstances. This is nothing new. Sans other sensationalist wording, this is perfectly applicable to the matter at hand.
Refusing to route traffic to a site is a death-knell to it no matter how you slice it. The term "death" has many different and perfectly reasonable contexts. Only one of those is biological death.
You're always limiting the rights of other people, including their right to live, by asserting your rights.
This is a failure to comprehend that the right to life is a negative right, not a positive one. What that means is you have the right to be free from another killing you, not that you have the right to force another to prevent you from dying. The latter is the reading of the "right to life" being a positive right. Negative rights require no action to assert. Positive rights require another to act in order to provide you with something.
That's one of the pitfalls of nearly-universal higher education. HR won't look at an application that doesn't have an advanced degree on it or years of experience. Sometimes the latter still isn't enough.
Those on the lower rungs will remain on the lower rungs, because it's not about education; it's about motivation and skill.
It's not just rural schools. I went to a high school that had an enormous amount of funding due to being a rich-people-have-second-homes-here location. There were no AP classes available.
After reading the ruling, it seems we're talking about two different things. I was talking about the scope of powers granted to the government. The government's power is not constrained to limit legislation governing the issuance of patents by the "promotion" clause of the Constitution. The ruling limited the scope of contract terms that a patent-holder could impose in return for licensing a patent.
Formal education and experience-based education provide vastly different skills. A formal education does almost nothing to prepare people for the real world.
Hobbies are incredibly important, since they provide direction that is lacking in formal education prior to your 14th or 15th year of formal education. Unless you have interest in learning how technology works, dependence on it tends to undercut other hobbies. I've got a great deal more to say about it, but this forum is hostile to any idea that there are places where unchecked technology is harmful. Technological evangelists are as bad as religious ones (that's not directed at you, by the way).
No, since descriptive clauses like "To promote the progress of Science and useful Arts" have no force in and of themselves. They give the reasoning behind why a power is granted government, but don't prevent that power from being used for other things so long as it does not exceed the scope of power granted.
When you cut out interaction with real, tangible things you don't get experience with real, tangible things. Play is incredibly important to learning, so if all one does in play is use a digital device, one learns nothing but dependency on digital devices. The manner of play you engage in will have profound impact on your later life.
If all that play is first routed through one of a mere handful of devices, you're raising a generation of individuals who are completely unable to cope without said devices. It's sad to say, but I can easily see a future along the lines of Wall-E or Idiocracy.
The flaw in that plan is expecting a majority of Congress to do something sensible. They won't, unless it helps get them re-elected. Given that most states are red states, universal healthcare won't pass that test.
Judging by the last attempt, even those politicians who will get re-elected for supporting nationalized healthcare are incapable of doing it sensibly.
Okay, 3-5x. Regardless, the actual payout benefit is still many times above the premium compared to vehicle insurance.
Certainly it can get better. The main point, however, was that the "free market" does not exist in the insurance industry. Not even close. It's like blaming Lichtenstein for the way our government runs. It's a complete non sequitur.
I can understand the need for quick replacement parts. I guess I just wouldn't consider them competitors, since immediate fulfillment is a service Newegg can't really do.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that all those things are true. They would still be true if SS held no securities though.
What is generally accepted is not necessarily what is true. None have actually answered the questions posed; they simply rehash the same old excuses about why Enron accounting is alright as long as you're the government. Accounting is frequently about disguising the truth. It's not that you won't answer, but that you can't actually answer without admitting the simple truth about the irrelevancy of borrowing from yourself without addressing the very real externalities regarding repayment of borrowing from yourself. Continue believing the fiction that you can make money by indefinitely borrowing from yourself if you like. It still won't make the bill payable without increased external resources or decreased expenditures elsewhere (or inflation of the money supply, if you're the government). All social programs have one or more of the above costs, and nothing will change that.
Loans that don't produce more than face value from the use of the money aren't financially beneficial to the person taking out the loan. The current economic climate shows that the majority of government expenditures do little to stimulate growth. They have, at best, a maintenance effect.
Securities require the same outside income as direct payments. They cannot themselves be used as payment. That makes them nothing more than an accounting trick, no matter how you try to excuse it. Nobody credible has a plan which doesn't require increased taxes, decreased benefits, or diminishing the value of the dollar through inflation (or some combination of the above). If securities had real sustained value without requiring external income, they would make those choices unnecessary. There are a lot of people who want to fool themselves or others in order to excuse the behavior though.
If you see lying as reasonable, that's your choice. If you choose to call it something other than lying, that's also your choice. Borrowing money from yourself and calling it 'saving' is a lie, no matter how you slice it and no matter how many people think it's reasonable. It is no more sustainable than you borrowing money from yourself and not having another way to pay yourself back when the bill came due. SS simply uses accounting fiction to say it's saving anything. The budget all comes from the same place, and securities are paid from the same budget as SS payments are. Those securities on redemption draw money from the same place as if paid directly, so they are as much liability as asset. You may have no problem with it, but that doesn't mean people who do have something wrong with them. My complaint is eminently reasonable, regardless of your opinion. The 'trust fund' is, at very best, irrelevant. It is an accounting fiction to hide the fact that there is no money actually saved anywhere. It is contingent on future income, the same as if the 'trust fund' didn't exist at all.
Feel free to disagee, but if so, please tell me exactly how more money enters the general fund because securities exist that are both due to and payable by the same entity. If it doesn't somehow increase the assets available, then please provide a reasonable explanation for politicians claiming it is an asset rather than, at best, a net zero accounting entry with regard to overall budget expenditures.
3 of whom claim to represent me; they do not actually represent me.
There is a significant difference. They represent the proportion of the population who support their actions. I am not one of those people. "Representation" is usually nothing more than a convenient fiction.
Most of this is a strawman that has nothing to do with what I said. I was talking about your average voter, of which economists and billionaire businessmen are not. As a result, it all has zero relevance to the points I made. Making them again is a waste of time, given the lengths gone to in order to avoid examining them at face value.
Except the entity who issued the bonds in this case is also the one paying the value plus interest. Therefore, you need the thousand dollars in the other jar to pay for the securities, and then you have to find money elsewhere to pay the interest on those thousand dollar securities. Assuming that, unlike the government, you haven't already spent the thousand dollars in the jar.
The push is done. As of next year (IIRC, it's been a bit since I read the notice), it's electronically-loaded debit card or direct deposit. No more checks.
Is it really a promise broken if everyone knew you were lying to start with?
Most people, at least those I have talked to, have very little understanding of the accounting fiction that is known as the Social Security trust fund.
They don't realize all those taxes are spent immediately, rather than being saved for the future.
Since the taxes are exchanged by securities that are both held by and issued by the same entity, I like to use this example: The Social Security trust fund amounts to taking a dollar from your right pocket and an IOU written to yourself from the left, exchanging pockets, then spending the dollar. You claim that the IOU amounts to savings, because it is owed to you, but omit the fact that it's also a debt because you are the one liable for payment of that IOU. So the books say you have a dollar, but when the time comes to pay, you have to come up with money from somewhere else in order to actually make good.
The US is living beyond its means. Eventually, something has to give. Politicians rarely get elected by telling the truth though, since the average voter is too stupid to be able to handle it readily. They just get mad and throw gasoline onto the fire that is current partisan politics.
You can create a water filter for a shopvac relatively easily. 5 gallon bucket, a hose extension, and two appropriately-sized pieces of PVC pipe. One long intake pipe below the water line, a short exit pipe above the water line, and you have wet filtration.
Even as used here, I doubt many will jump to linking it with actual death. It's simply ridiculous to do so. A site without traffic is dead, so cutting it off is clearly a death sentence for the site. The terminology is commonly used to relate non-biological death in many different circumstances. This is nothing new. Sans other sensationalist wording, this is perfectly applicable to the matter at hand.
Refusing to route traffic to a site is a death-knell to it no matter how you slice it. The term "death" has many different and perfectly reasonable contexts. Only one of those is biological death.
You're always limiting the rights of other people, including their right to live, by asserting your rights.
This is a failure to comprehend that the right to life is a negative right, not a positive one. What that means is you have the right to be free from another killing you, not that you have the right to force another to prevent you from dying. The latter is the reading of the "right to life" being a positive right. Negative rights require no action to assert. Positive rights require another to act in order to provide you with something.
That's one of the pitfalls of nearly-universal higher education. HR won't look at an application that doesn't have an advanced degree on it or years of experience. Sometimes the latter still isn't enough.
Those on the lower rungs will remain on the lower rungs, because it's not about education; it's about motivation and skill.
It's not just rural schools. I went to a high school that had an enormous amount of funding due to being a rich-people-have-second-homes-here location. There were no AP classes available.
Risk throwing everything away? She's a cop. She'll be given administrative leave while they figure out some way to keep her employed.
Too late. The iRing has been forged by the Dork Lord Jobs in the fires of Cupertino.
After reading the ruling, it seems we're talking about two different things. I was talking about the scope of powers granted to the government. The government's power is not constrained to limit legislation governing the issuance of patents by the "promotion" clause of the Constitution. The ruling limited the scope of contract terms that a patent-holder could impose in return for licensing a patent.
Formal education and experience-based education provide vastly different skills. A formal education does almost nothing to prepare people for the real world.
Hobbies are incredibly important, since they provide direction that is lacking in formal education prior to your 14th or 15th year of formal education. Unless you have interest in learning how technology works, dependence on it tends to undercut other hobbies. I've got a great deal more to say about it, but this forum is hostile to any idea that there are places where unchecked technology is harmful. Technological evangelists are as bad as religious ones (that's not directed at you, by the way).
Interesting, I was not aware of a single ruling holding that a descriptive clause carried any force to limit a power granted to Congress.
No, since descriptive clauses like "To promote the progress of Science and useful Arts" have no force in and of themselves. They give the reasoning behind why a power is granted government, but don't prevent that power from being used for other things so long as it does not exceed the scope of power granted.
When you cut out interaction with real, tangible things you don't get experience with real, tangible things. Play is incredibly important to learning, so if all one does in play is use a digital device, one learns nothing but dependency on digital devices. The manner of play you engage in will have profound impact on your later life.
If all that play is first routed through one of a mere handful of devices, you're raising a generation of individuals who are completely unable to cope without said devices. It's sad to say, but I can easily see a future along the lines of Wall-E or Idiocracy.
Wish I still had some mod points. This is way more insightful than the post it's in response to.
The flaw in that plan is expecting a majority of Congress to do something sensible. They won't, unless it helps get them re-elected. Given that most states are red states, universal healthcare won't pass that test.
Judging by the last attempt, even those politicians who will get re-elected for supporting nationalized healthcare are incapable of doing it sensibly.
Okay, 3-5x. Regardless, the actual payout benefit is still many times above the premium compared to vehicle insurance.
Certainly it can get better. The main point, however, was that the "free market" does not exist in the insurance industry. Not even close. It's like blaming Lichtenstein for the way our government runs. It's a complete non sequitur.
I can understand the need for quick replacement parts. I guess I just wouldn't consider them competitors, since immediate fulfillment is a service Newegg can't really do.