This is not possible. Social Security tax surpluses purchase Treasury bonds which, without a change in the law, cannot be defaulted upon.
Well that's good news. We'll just print more money if we have to?
If you raise the payroll tax rate, raise its ceiling, or both, Social Security will be able to pay scheduled benefits for longer into the future.
If you raise the payroll tax rate, you are just indirectly taxing people, not the company. The employees get less money, the investors get less money, the public pays more for the company's goods. Why not just raise taxes?
Payroll taxes -- the politician's friend when it comes to indirectly taxing you.
Then I want every last cent which came out of my paychecks for the last four years which went into the approximately $200 Billion which we're spending on Iraq.
Doesn't quite work that way, does it?
Unlike Social Security, national defense is one of the very few jobs the Constitution lays out for our government.
Whether you believe Iraq posed a grave security risk to the united states is an important point for debate, however you cannot debate that the government's primary role is to organize an army for the defense of the nation.
I see nothing in the constitution that says, take money away from every working person, stick it into an account, spend the interest earned off of it, and try to pay them back when they get older.
Now be a good boy and give Mommy back her AOL account.
How about studying the Constitution a bit instead of sinking to ad hominem attacks?
Bush may not hate old people, but he certainly wants to plunder Social Security.
How do you explain Congress, not the President, spending money that was supposed to be saved for social security, for YEARS now? Did Bush secretly orchestrate this? How can Bush want to plunder SS? It's already been plundered!
Remember, Bush and his supporters are ideological conservatives, and as such they are ideologically opposed to "wasteful" social programs, because they believe that giving things that aren't earned to people is immoral (fostering dependency).
I think conservatives would rather the government keep their nose out of their finances, and allow them to spend their money the way they see fit, including giving to the charities they wish.
Social Security is by far the most successful U.S. social program ever, in that it has fostered a tremendous increase in the standard of living for retirees.
I guess you received your latest issue of Time magazine, which you seem to be parroting above. Then allow me to parrot Neal Boortz's column from today, where he correctly points out that in fact, the best social program ever devised is actually Capitalism.
"The best social program ever is a system of economic liberty featuring capitalism and free enterprise operating under a system based on the rule of law. No program, private or public, has ever done so much to raise so many from the depths of poverty and despair as has capitalism. When the government steps aside and lets free people react freely with one another, amazing things happen. It's really too bad that Americans have fallen out of love with freedom and so in love with government-provided security."
Sure they do. Just not the kind of spending they like. Liberal politicians would love to eliminate spending for missile defence, and conservatives want to eliminate spending for Head Start.
Show me the last time Congress reduced spending on anything? Even when they lie and claim they are cutting spending, which is rare, what they are really doing is just cutting the PERCENTAGE OF INCREASE they are giving that funding for the year. Since most programs have something built in to guarantee them a certain "raise" every year. It'd be like if you had an agreement on a 5% raise every year from your boss, and then he tells you he's going to cut your salary next year -- you'll only be getting a 2.5% raise. Did he really cut your salary? Nope.
Idealistically you may be right, where you are painting the dems/repubs, but in reality, both sides are most interested in pork barrel spending increases, year after year.
This statement is just plain wrong. If it were true, there would be more people over 65 than there are in the work force 18-65, which just doesn't compute. There will be a bubble, where they ratio may drop to 2 workers to 1 retiree, but it's temporary.
You are correct, I mis-spoke, what I meant to say was the amount paid out will be more than what is taken in. And that is also presuming they'll stop spending the SS money coming in...
70 years? Where did that come from? Ah yes. 1935. The Great Depression. Americans were literally starving in the streets.
There's a reason for government spending and social programs. It's to smooth out the peaks and valleys in the natural economic system.
Where is the proof that government needs to be in charge of this? Where is the basis for it in the Constitution. I am of the mind that private charities and businesses can handle this burden without a caretaker government.
You sound like you've been reading too many White House or Cato Institute press releases. The system is not broken. There is no crisis. This "crisis" is being manufactured by the right-wing because that's the only way they'll convince moderates to go along with such a risky, reactionary, and thoughoughly unecessary return to 1929.
Which is exactly what it was used for before it became social security.
Really? Or are you mistaken, in that back before social security, our taxes were never this high? Back before WW2, taxes were not even taken out of your paycheck, they were paid generally once a year. Many feel this change has allowed the government to essentially hide from people how bad taxes have gotten. It doesn't hurt as much when you "get a refund" (ha!) at the end of the year.
Just because the government is bad at saving money, does not mean that the general populace will be any better; they do however, have the possibility of being woefully worse.
This is the worst logic I've come across in a while. Your reason for allowing the government to keep taking YOUR MONEY is that you feel, while the government is bad at saving, you might be worse?
You also, might be better! And, you also might like to keep the money you earned instead of having politicians spend it to buy more votes with pork.
Fear not, though. Bush's proposal, while allowing for private accounts, does not give you unrestricted access to your money. He knows that would never be allowed in the Nanny States of America.
One word: roads. There you go, that's one prime example of something done well by the government. They work well and they're highly effiecient overall.
Overall I will agree, the roads in the nation are decent. However, in many cases the states pay for the road work, the cities pay for the road work, tolls to private companies or municipals pay for the roadwork. I have seen private toll roads that are better maintained than anything controlled by federal taxes.
And as for incentive to improve.... it's called public accountability. Most democratic form of government are weak to it. The united states less than the vast majority of other democricies that use proportional representation systems, but hey.
Excuse me. Spending and waste are rampant in the US government. There is NO public accountability. Everyone passes the buck, if anything even comes to light. Show me an example of public accountability resulting in a substantial, positive change in government?
Oh, and here's two other words for you: Health Care. That right there is a prime example of something that private enterprise does awfully, with terrible repurcussions for the people.
Are you high? Private health care so completely blows away anything the government runs, it's insane. Ever worked with an HMO? Ever heard the horror stories involving Medicare HMOs?
I pay for health insurance, can choose practically any doctor in my area, pay reasonable fees for my visit and my prescriptions, and receive excellent care.
Heh. I wish conservatives and libertarians weren't so willfully ignorant.
Wow, you're pretty high on your horse for someone that just pointed out two programs, only one of which I even partially agree with, out of the tens of THOUSANDS of government programs currently throwing money down the drain.
and basically it says that there is a greate deal of misinformation coming from the right.
I'm not right or left, I'm central. But, please tell me what platform Al Gore ran on in 2000. I do recall being hit on the head with the phrase "lock box" about a billion times. The Democrats are notorious for running on platforms of "But my opponent wants to plunder Social Security and hates old people!"
Of course the numbers are political. But the reality is this:
- Politicians don't know how to reduce spending. - Politicians have been spending the SS income rather than investing it for years now. - There are going to be more people collecting from SS when the baby boomers retire than there will be contributing to it. - Politicians bought votes in years past by adjusting the cost of living based on wage inflation, versus the previous (more reasonable) way of calculating it based on regular inflation.
It's time to pay the piper.
If you raise taxes, it won't help social security, it will result in more spending, though. Want proof? Please refer to the last 70 years of spending increases by the government.
I don't agree with Bush on much, but I like his ideas for SS reform. It's a broken system. You can either start to fix it, or you can try to prop it up until it completely collapses.
Life is unpredictable not everyone who is down and out is irresponcible.
OK. And why does the government have to enter this equation? There are many private charities, and there would be even more if people weren't paying high taxes, which are simply wasted by government.
Do you realize how much further a private charity can stretch a dollar compared to the bureaucracy of the US government? I'd tell you, but it might just blow your fuckin' mind!
Because most people have no idea how to save money for retirement. So a few people properly plan their retirement and do better than they would with Social Security, while everyone else blows their money on late night infomercial products or has it swindled away by private enterprises promising you will "Retire with a million dollars!". This puts an additional burden on the welfare system, and worse, these people are retired so they have no chance of going on welfare-to-work programs or similar things. The economic dead weight from letting people blow their retirement savings and then looking for a free handout would be tremendous.
Then perhaps we should phase out the welfare system right along with SS?
You see, you've just explained that the problem is not that we are talking about phasing out SS, but that it and the welfare system existed in the first place. That people have, thanks to Congress and the bureaucrats, come to EXPECT to be taken care of by the nanny state, that is the problem.
The government is not your caretaker! It is not a replacement for family and friends!
Phase them both out. Let people who have contributed to it forever get paid something back over the next few decades. That is a debt owed by the government, racked up as they were busy spending the money they should have been investing in so-called Social Security.
Let the welfare system be replaced by private charities. Private charities have a built-in mechanism that ensures they get help to those that need it, which is lacking in government welfare. The government is held accountable to no one; private charities are held accountable by their donors. The ones that are run better are more successful and help more people.
It is rather disturbing at a base level that a company controls the domain.
I presume you mean that the U.S. government should be running the.net domain.
Please give me one example of our government running anything that works well, efficiently, and has an incentive to improve?
Why on Earth should we give our government more control over the Internet? Any time you give those fools more power, they become more corrupt.
The government is only good at spending money and increasing the size and complexity of government. In that, and nothing else, it gets an A+.
Now VeriSign fucked things up good and proper with the sitefinder gaffe. Now we have a bidding process, and if politics is kept out of it, we can get a better company to steward the.net TLD.
Why do you consider it tweaking the system? The point of the system is to encourage people to take risks and build new businesses to hire people and create new products and services.
If you don't like the fact that the CEOs make more money than you do, create your own company and be your own CEO.
People who don't take risks, and simply work hard and "excel" at what they do can earn good money, presuming they don't expect the system to take care of them, and are willing to update their skills if the demand for their skills goes away.
However, those that take risks will have the chance to get great rewards.
Actually, what you've described is the origin of this particular "figure of speech", but that's all that it is now and most people here understand it as simply meaning that a product has been released.
I have never heard anyone refer to an internet-only release of a product as "going gold." When a product goes gold, I understand that the master CD has been released to the manufacturer for pressing.
For internet-only software, people just say 'version x.x has been RELEASED.'
This kid didn't do anything of the sort -- he simply wrote programs that exposed insecurities in operating systems.
Sometimes those programs are called Viruses, sometimes spyware, sometimes worms.. etc. When you put them all in a pot and boil them down to their bare essentials, they all smell the same way -- programs that exploit insecurities in operating systems.
Excuse me, dumbass. There are many BENIGN ways to bring a lot of attention to insecurities in operating systems, which result in them getting fixed without costing people and companies millions of dollars in damages. Such sites are referenced nearly every day on slashdot.
On the extreme other hand you have viruses and worms, which are programs written to cause as much trouble as possible for as many people as possible. Releasing them is is a criminal act, plain and simple.
I am of the mind that we absolutely need people like Benny -- someone MUST check the locks to ensure that we are indeed safe.
I would rather have a locksmith check my locks to make sure they're safe, rather than a burglar breaking down my door and stealing all my valuables. I can learn the same lesson much more cheaply with the former.
For fuck's sake!
Re:Until they farm harvesting out to zombies...
on
New Attacks on Spam
·
· Score: 1
What do you mean "when"?
We are already seeing people who are infected with viruses that do not send spam, but merely collect email addresses and report those back to the perp. They then sell those addresses to spammers, who do the actual spamming, where we see it come in usually from Asia.
...are gonna love this too. Take a picture of the girl you like and do a search. This has some scary connotations I'm afraid.
Straw-man.
Stalkers already use Google. It's a lot easier to stalk someone with text than with pictures. What are the chances your image search would actually turn up anything for your average Jane Q Public?
Slashdot Mirror
Honestly I tried Picasa a while back and wasn't impressed.
You must be pretty fucking hard to impress.
No no no no no no ... not your DUAL BOOT system!
Heavens no!
Anyway, on my single boot system, Picasa will stay. I'll let you know when I start browsing the web with Picasa 2.0.
This is not possible. Social Security tax surpluses purchase Treasury bonds which, without a change in the law, cannot be defaulted upon.
Well that's good news. We'll just print more money if we have to?
If you raise the payroll tax rate, raise its ceiling, or both, Social Security will be able to pay scheduled benefits for longer into the future.
If you raise the payroll tax rate, you are just indirectly taxing people, not the company. The employees get less money, the investors get less money, the public pays more for the company's goods. Why not just raise taxes?
Payroll taxes -- the politician's friend when it comes to indirectly taxing you.
No, its not broken. You are just misinformed. Go back and read the article.
Time magazine, bastion of liberal thought? How will I become informed reading that magazine?
Social Security is a ponzi scheme where the people entrusted to run it are spending the profit rather than investing it back into the ponzi scheme.
Then I want every last cent which came out of my paychecks for the last four years which went into the approximately $200 Billion which we're spending on Iraq.
Doesn't quite work that way, does it?
Unlike Social Security, national defense is one of the very few jobs the Constitution lays out for our government.
Whether you believe Iraq posed a grave security risk to the united states is an important point for debate, however you cannot debate that the government's primary role is to organize an army for the defense of the nation.
I see nothing in the constitution that says, take money away from every working person, stick it into an account, spend the interest earned off of it, and try to pay them back when they get older.
Now be a good boy and give Mommy back her AOL account.
How about studying the Constitution a bit instead of sinking to ad hominem attacks?
So your contention is that without the government, there exists no charity?
Are you breathing?
Bush may not hate old people, but he certainly wants to plunder Social Security.
How do you explain Congress, not the President, spending money that was supposed to be saved for social security, for YEARS now? Did Bush secretly orchestrate this? How can Bush want to plunder SS? It's already been plundered!
Remember, Bush and his supporters are ideological conservatives, and as such they are ideologically opposed to "wasteful" social programs, because they believe that giving things that aren't earned to people is immoral (fostering dependency).
I think conservatives would rather the government keep their nose out of their finances, and allow them to spend their money the way they see fit, including giving to the charities they wish.
Social Security is by far the most successful U.S. social program ever, in that it has fostered a tremendous increase in the standard of living for retirees.
I guess you received your latest issue of Time magazine, which you seem to be parroting above. Then allow me to parrot Neal Boortz's column from today, where he correctly points out that in fact, the best social program ever devised is actually Capitalism.
"The best social program ever is a system of economic liberty featuring capitalism and free enterprise operating under a system based on the rule of law. No program, private or public, has ever done so much to raise so many from the depths of poverty and despair as has capitalism. When the government steps aside and lets free people react freely with one another, amazing things happen. It's really too bad that Americans have fallen out of love with freedom and so in love with government-provided security."
Sure they do. Just not the kind of spending they like. Liberal politicians would love to eliminate spending for missile defence, and conservatives want to eliminate spending for Head Start.
Show me the last time Congress reduced spending on anything? Even when they lie and claim they are cutting spending, which is rare, what they are really doing is just cutting the PERCENTAGE OF INCREASE they are giving that funding for the year. Since most programs have something built in to guarantee them a certain "raise" every year. It'd be like if you had an agreement on a 5% raise every year from your boss, and then he tells you he's going to cut your salary next year -- you'll only be getting a 2.5% raise. Did he really cut your salary? Nope.
Idealistically you may be right, where you are painting the dems/repubs, but in reality, both sides are most interested in pork barrel spending increases, year after year.
This statement is just plain wrong. If it were true, there would be more people over 65 than there are in the work force 18-65, which just doesn't compute. There will be a bubble, where they ratio may drop to 2 workers to 1 retiree, but it's temporary.
You are correct, I mis-spoke, what I meant to say was the amount paid out will be more than what is taken in. And that is also presuming they'll stop spending the SS money coming in...
70 years? Where did that come from? Ah yes. 1935. The Great Depression. Americans were literally starving in the streets.
There's a reason for government spending and social programs. It's to smooth out the peaks and valleys in the natural economic system.
Where is the proof that government needs to be in charge of this? Where is the basis for it in the Constitution. I am of the mind that private charities and businesses can handle this burden without a caretaker government.
You sound like you've been reading too many White House or Cato Institute press releases. The system is not broken. There is no crisis. This "crisis" is being manufactured by the right-wing because that's the only way they'll convince moderates to go along with such a risky, reactionary, and thoughoughly unecessary return to 1929.
Which is exactly what it was used for before it became social security.
Really? Or are you mistaken, in that back before social security, our taxes were never this high? Back before WW2, taxes were not even taken out of your paycheck, they were paid generally once a year. Many feel this change has allowed the government to essentially hide from people how bad taxes have gotten. It doesn't hurt as much when you "get a refund" (ha!) at the end of the year.
Just because the government is bad at saving money, does not mean that the general populace will be any better; they do however, have the possibility of being woefully worse.
This is the worst logic I've come across in a while. Your reason for allowing the government to keep taking YOUR MONEY is that you feel, while the government is bad at saving, you might be worse?
You also, might be better! And, you also might like to keep the money you earned instead of having politicians spend it to buy more votes with pork.
Fear not, though. Bush's proposal, while allowing for private accounts, does not give you unrestricted access to your money. He knows that would never be allowed in the Nanny States of America.
No, but he quoted the entire scene verbatim, without attribution. C'mon...
One word: roads. There you go, that's one prime example of something done well by the government. They work well and they're highly effiecient overall.
Overall I will agree, the roads in the nation are decent. However, in many cases the states pay for the road work, the cities pay for the road work, tolls to private companies or municipals pay for the roadwork. I have seen private toll roads that are better maintained than anything controlled by federal taxes.
And as for incentive to improve.... it's called public accountability. Most democratic form of government are weak to it. The united states less than the vast majority of other democricies that use proportional representation systems, but hey.
Excuse me. Spending and waste are rampant in the US government. There is NO public accountability. Everyone passes the buck, if anything even comes to light. Show me an example of public accountability resulting in a substantial, positive change in government?
Oh, and here's two other words for you: Health Care. That right there is a prime example of something that private enterprise does awfully, with terrible repurcussions for the people.
Are you high? Private health care so completely blows away anything the government runs, it's insane. Ever worked with an HMO? Ever heard the horror stories involving Medicare HMOs?
I pay for health insurance, can choose practically any doctor in my area, pay reasonable fees for my visit and my prescriptions, and receive excellent care.
Heh. I wish conservatives and libertarians weren't so willfully ignorant.
Wow, you're pretty high on your horse for someone that just pointed out two programs, only one of which I even partially agree with, out of the tens of THOUSANDS of government programs currently throwing money down the drain.
And you're proud of that achievement.
And you think libertarians are ignorant?
and basically it says that there is a greate deal of misinformation coming from the right.
I'm not right or left, I'm central. But, please tell me what platform Al Gore ran on in 2000. I do recall being hit on the head with the phrase "lock box" about a billion times. The Democrats are notorious for running on platforms of "But my opponent wants to plunder Social Security and hates old people!"
Of course the numbers are political. But the reality is this:
- Politicians don't know how to reduce spending.
- Politicians have been spending the SS income rather than investing it for years now.
- There are going to be more people collecting from SS when the baby boomers retire than there will be contributing to it.
- Politicians bought votes in years past by adjusting the cost of living based on wage inflation, versus the previous (more reasonable) way of calculating it based on regular inflation.
It's time to pay the piper.
If you raise taxes, it won't help social security, it will result in more spending, though. Want proof? Please refer to the last 70 years of spending increases by the government.
I don't agree with Bush on much, but I like his ideas for SS reform. It's a broken system. You can either start to fix it, or you can try to prop it up until it completely collapses.
Life is unpredictable not everyone who is down and out is irresponcible.
OK. And why does the government have to enter this equation? There are many private charities, and there would be even more if people weren't paying high taxes, which are simply wasted by government.
Do you realize how much further a private charity can stretch a dollar compared to the bureaucracy of the US government? I'd tell you, but it might just blow your fuckin' mind!
Because most people have no idea how to save money for retirement. So a few people properly plan their retirement and do better than they would with Social Security, while everyone else blows their money on late night infomercial products or has it swindled away by private enterprises promising you will "Retire with a million dollars!". This puts an additional burden on the welfare system, and worse, these people are retired so they have no chance of going on welfare-to-work programs or similar things. The economic dead weight from letting people blow their retirement savings and then looking for a free handout would be tremendous.
Then perhaps we should phase out the welfare system right along with SS?
You see, you've just explained that the problem is not that we are talking about phasing out SS, but that it and the welfare system existed in the first place. That people have, thanks to Congress and the bureaucrats, come to EXPECT to be taken care of by the nanny state, that is the problem.
The government is not your caretaker! It is not a replacement for family and friends!
Phase them both out. Let people who have contributed to it forever get paid something back over the next few decades. That is a debt owed by the government, racked up as they were busy spending the money they should have been investing in so-called Social Security.
Let the welfare system be replaced by private charities. Private charities have a built-in mechanism that ensures they get help to those that need it, which is lacking in government welfare. The government is held accountable to no one; private charities are held accountable by their donors. The ones that are run better are more successful and help more people.
It is rather disturbing at a base level that a company controls the domain.
.net domain.
.net TLD.
I presume you mean that the U.S. government should be running the
Please give me one example of our government running anything that works well, efficiently, and has an incentive to improve?
Why on Earth should we give our government more control over the Internet? Any time you give those fools more power, they become more corrupt.
The government is only good at spending money and increasing the size and complexity of government. In that, and nothing else, it gets an A+.
Now VeriSign fucked things up good and proper with the sitefinder gaffe. Now we have a bidding process, and if politics is kept out of it, we can get a better company to steward the
Your entirely true story of your father stirred a memory.
When I was little, I used to think "breech babies" were babies that came out of your ass.
Which is what I suspect your father must have had.
It was funny the first time but you can't keep using the same joke!
But this is how we meme things.
(I know, I know... "verbing weirds language.")
Why do you consider it tweaking the system? The point of the system is to encourage people to take risks and build new businesses to hire people and create new products and services.
If you don't like the fact that the CEOs make more money than you do, create your own company and be your own CEO.
People who don't take risks, and simply work hard and "excel" at what they do can earn good money, presuming they don't expect the system to take care of them, and are willing to update their skills if the demand for their skills goes away.
However, those that take risks will have the chance to get great rewards.
Actually, what you've described is the origin of this particular "figure of speech", but that's all that it is now and most people here understand it as simply meaning that a product has been released.
I have never heard anyone refer to an internet-only release of a product as "going gold." When a product goes gold, I understand that the master CD has been released to the manufacturer for pressing.
For internet-only software, people just say 'version x.x has been RELEASED.'
Dont forget the hardworkers get a dime, while the CEO/leader walks away with millions because his equity was 95%+
You know how to solve that?
Open your own company and stop complaining.
That is the beauty of a free market.
people who don't want to pay to play the mod and people who run Linux
These are the same people.
This kid didn't do anything of the sort -- he simply wrote programs that exposed insecurities in operating systems.
Sometimes those programs are called Viruses, sometimes spyware, sometimes worms.. etc. When you put them all in a pot and boil them down to their bare essentials, they all smell the same way -- programs that exploit insecurities in operating systems.
Excuse me, dumbass. There are many BENIGN ways to bring a lot of attention to insecurities in operating systems, which result in them getting fixed without costing people and companies millions of dollars in damages. Such sites are referenced nearly every day on slashdot.
On the extreme other hand you have viruses and worms, which are programs written to cause as much trouble as possible for as many people as possible. Releasing them is is a criminal act, plain and simple.
I am of the mind that we absolutely need people like Benny -- someone MUST check the locks to ensure that we are indeed safe.
I would rather have a locksmith check my locks to make sure they're safe, rather than a burglar breaking down my door and stealing all my valuables. I can learn the same lesson much more cheaply with the former.
For fuck's sake!
What do you mean "when"?
We are already seeing people who are infected with viruses that do not send spam, but merely collect email addresses and report those back to the perp. They then sell those addresses to spammers, who do the actual spamming, where we see it come in usually from Asia.
...are gonna love this too. Take a picture of the girl you like and do a search. This has some scary connotations I'm afraid.
Straw-man.
Stalkers already use Google. It's a lot easier to stalk someone with text than with pictures. What are the chances your image search would actually turn up anything for your average Jane Q Public?
What if your non-smart gun has a mechanical problem and jams? Or your ammo is bad and doesn't fire?
Shit happens. You have a gun in your house to increase your chances of survival in a very bad circumstance, not guarantee it.
I am against gun control, but I am also in favor of technology that can make guns safer.
Inmate 2: Bend over.