Republicans immediately begin playing games with Social Security

[unregistered]

 

[Dumpington]

Sean Renaud wrote: "You do know Social Security can't actually go bankrupt, right?"

Anything can go bankrupt if it runs out of money, Sean.

The government can delay that somewhat by decreasing benefits and/or raising the age when one can collect, but if it regularly takes in less money than it's paying out, it CAN & WILL eventually run out of money.

"Or are you retarded?"

Jonathan Gruber, the man who designed ObamaCare, thought that the American voters were retarded, which is why he said that the president & Democrats in congress had to lie to get it passed.

Of course, we now know that those lies cost them political power nationwide as the result of November's elections. The Democrats haven't been this weak legislatively since the 1920's.

 

[Sean Renaud]

Social Security can't run out of money though.

 

[Dumpington]

Sean Renaud wrote: "Social Security can't run out of money though."

It can't because you say it can't? Is that your argument?

If you require X amount in payments, but you're only collecting a small fraction of X in income, you WILL eventually run out of money. It's basic math.

The baby boomer generation is aging, and if the younger generation can't come up with enough funding from their own paychecks to pay tomorrow's senior citizens their due, then it'll go bankrupt.

We need more leaders in Washington who understand everyday economics as opposed to those who understand everyday community organizing.

 

[Sean Renaud]

Sean Renaud wrote: "Social Security can't run out of money though."

It can't because you say it can't? Is that your argument?

If you require X amount in payments, but you're only collecting a small fraction of X in income, you WILL eventually run out of money. It's basic math.

The baby boomer generation is aging, and if the younger generation can't come up with enough funding from their own paychecks to pay tomorrow's senior citizens their due, then it'll go bankrupt.

We need more leaders in Washington who understand everyday economics as opposed to those who understand everyday community organizing.

No it can't because it can't and you're scum.

 

[unregistered]

 

[dan_c00000]

Sean Renaud wrote: "Social Security can't run out of money though."

It can't because you say it can't? Is that your argument?

We need people who aren't dumb shits, like you, who actually research stuff before they run their fucking mouth.

No it's because it was designed not to run out of money:

The Social Security program is funded by two sources of dedicated tax revenues. Roughly 96 percent of those revenues derive from a payroll tax—generally, 12.4 percent of earnings—that is split evenly between workers and their employers; self-employed people pay the entire tax. Only earnings up to a maximum annual amount ($113,700 in 2013) are subject to the payroll tax. That amount, referred to as the taxable maximum, generally increases each year at the same rate as average earnings in the United States. However, the share of economy-wide earnings that falls below the taxable maximum varies each year as the distribution of earnings changes. When earnings inequality increases, as it has in recent decades, the taxable share of earnings declines because a greater share of income is above the taxable maximum. Earnings inequality will grow somewhat during the next few decades, and the share of earnings subject to the payroll tax, which has varied between 82 percent and 85 percent in recent years, will average around 82 percent in coming decades, CBO projects.

The remaining share of tax revenues—4 percent—is collected from income taxes on benefits. Those filing singly must pay taxes on Social Security benefits if the sum of their non-Social Security income and half of their benefits exceeds $25,000. The threshold for those filing jointly is $32,000. Under current law, those thresholds remain fixed, with no adjustment for earnings growth or inflation.

Revenues from both sources are credited to the two Social Security trust funds (the OASI trust fund and the DI trust fund). Social Security benefits and the program’s administrative costs are paid from those funds; benefit payments constitute 99 percent of total outlays for the program. Interest on the trust funds’ balances is credited to those funds, but because the interest transactions represent payments from one part of the government (the general fund of the U.S. Treasury) to another (the Social Security trust funds), they do not affect federal budget deficits or surpluses. The balances in those funds ($2.8 trillion at the end of August 2013) have accumulated over many years, during which tax revenues and interest received by the trust funds have exceeded the benefits paid from those funds.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Sean Renaud wrote: "Social Security can't run out of money though."

It can't because you say it can't? Is that your argument?

If you require X amount in payments, but you're only collecting a small fraction of X in income, you WILL eventually run out of money. It's basic math.

The baby boomer generation is aging, and if the younger generation can't come up with enough funding from their own paychecks to pay tomorrow's senior citizens their due, then it'll go bankrupt.

We need more leaders in Washington who understand everyday economics as opposed to those who understand everyday community organizing.

Welcome to Lit, you stupid son of a bitch.

First of all, the Social Security system cannot go "bankrupt" as long as Congress controls the power to tax.

Secondly, in the mid-1980s the Federal government realized that an awful lot of baby boomers would put a strain on the system beginning in 2010. So they began "pre-funding" for that anticipated deluge. Baby boomers were born around 1946 through 1964, so they should mostly die off no later than around 2050.

Nobody can accurately predict the future but the boomers began taking early retirement and cost a little more than anticipated. Much of this was the fault of Dubya's unfunded Medicare D drug entitlement, which was created to ensure his re-election in 2004. "Mission Accomplished".

So yes, there is a shortfall, as your girlish shreiking reminds us. Let's assume that Congress does nothing and the pre-funded trust fund is exhausted early. In a worst-case....I repeat, WORST FUCKING CASE scenario, retirees will still be able to receive 75% (that's three quarters, numbnuts) of their benefits, so it's not the end of the world.

We have the luxury of a 20 year or so window to make technical corrections, which I suspect will allow the conservatives to play their usual delaying games until it's crisis time once again.

I hope this lessens your colossal ignorance somewhat, but I sincerely doubt it will, seeing as you are one stupid son of a bitch.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Invocation of the discredited "SS is a Ponzi scheme" meme in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1

 

[Dumpington]

dan wrote: "We need people who aren't dumb shits, like you..."

RobDownSouth wrote: "Welcome to Lit, you stupid son of a bitch."

Hey, guys, I truly love being here! And get this - I'm already getting furious liberals to cuss me out all because of their self-righteous intolerance that I'm not a supporter of their pro-Obama politics! I love that! It's fun!

RobDownSouth wrote: "Social Security cannot go 'bankrupt' as long as congress controls the power to tax."

dan wrote: "No, because it was designed not to run out of money..."

So you're both saying that Social Security is now just another huge government WELFARE program? And that all we need to do is to keep taking more & more money out of the dwindling paychecks of Americans as we continue to build an entitlement state?

Sorry, Dan & Rob, but socialism ALWAYS fails when you eventually run out of other people's money to spend!

Basic economics is NOT a friend of liberals. I've found that it only outrages them! They believe that governments can legislate prosperity! Seriously!

 

[Sean Renaud]

Yo Dumpy, you're playing in the big leagues now. I might not be the best of the warriors at digging up things but I remember great. So what will you do now? Admitting that the only way SS can go bankrupt is if America is over isn't an option so maybe you'll cry?

 

[KingOrfeo]

So you're both saying that Social Security is now just another huge government WELFARE program? And that all we need to do is to keep taking more & more money out of the dwindling paychecks of Americans as we continue to build an entitlement state?

Sorry, Dan & Rob, but socialism ALWAYS fails when you eventually run out of other people's money to spend!

OTOH, this form of "socialism" more nearly resembles the welfare-state institutions of European social democracies -- which have been functioning for decades now, and are in no perceptible danger of failing or of running out of "other people's money."

 

[phrodeau]

Invocation of the discredited "SS is a Ponzi scheme" meme in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1

It was just September last year, when Carlos Curbelo, a new Congressman from Florida (where else?) was caught on mic saying that Social Security and Medicare were Ponzi schemes.

What are they teaching in Poli Sci classes these days?

 

[Dumpington]

Sean Renaud --- Barack Obama was outraged when President Bush added $4-trillion to our nation's debt, calling Bush "unpatriotic."

Did then-Senator Obama have a right to be outraged? Or was he just blowing smoke to get elected president?

The reason I ask is because we're less than six-years into the Obama presidency, and this self-described "unpatriotic" embarrassment currently in our White House has already added $7.5-trillion to America's debt!

By the time he leaves office his administration's additions to our debt will almost certainly have reached $10-trillion!

Can we sustain that kind of debt-growth with new taxes to keep Social Security alive?

A community organizer who knows nothing of basic economics might think so, but most intelligent Americans see otherwise. Look at the results of last November's elections and I think you'll see that I'm correct.

 

[Dumpington]

KingOrfeo --- Socialism strangles economic growth everywhere it's ever been tried!

There have been riots in Greece & Spain and other representative socialist European governments that have tried to trim benefits to balance their budgets.

Every African nation without exception that adopted socialism after gaining independence is an economic mess today.

Cuba and North Korea jail anybody in their respective nations who opposes socialism.

Capitalism, on the other hand, brought the world the United States of America, the most prosperous & economically powerful nation in the history of our planet.

Yet you're now going to try and compare the tiny, miniscule Swedish economy to our own?

 

[RobDownSouth]

dan wrote: "We need people who aren't dumb shits, like you..."

RobDownSouth wrote: "Welcome to Lit, you stupid son of a bitch."

Hey, guys, I truly love being here! And get this - I'm already getting furious liberals to cuss me out all because of their self-righteous intolerance that I'm not a supporter of their pro-Obama politics! I love that! It's fun!

RobDownSouth wrote: "Social Security cannot go 'bankrupt' as long as congress controls the power to tax."

dan wrote: "No, because it was designed not to run out of money..."

So you're both saying that Social Security is now just another huge government WELFARE program? And that all we need to do is to keep taking more & more money out of the dwindling paychecks of Americans as we continue to build an entitlement state?

Sorry, Dan & Rob, but socialism ALWAYS fails when you eventually run out of other people's money to spend!

Basic economics is NOT a friend of liberals. I've found that it only outrages them! They believe that governments can legislate prosperity! Seriously!

Aw, Dumpy is butthurt about sociamalism.

This is RobDownSouth's complete lack of surprise.

Hey Dumpy, do you own any jackboots? Most of you fascists do.

I suspect you're in the core Fox News demographic, probably 60+ and unemployed for most of this millenium. Don't worry, though, there's quite a few of "your kind" around here.

 

[KingOrfeo]

KingOrfeo --- Socialism strangles economic growth everywhere it's ever been tried!

But social democracy does not. You're thinking of Marxist-ideological command-economy Stalinism, which is a very different thing.

There have been riots in Greece & Spain and other representative socialist European governments that have tried to trim benefits to balance their budgets.

And the riots are bad why? They're a symptom of not enough social democracy. The neoliberals at the IMF and in Germany have decided "austerity" is the way to handle the global recession, and it has everywhere turned out to be a bad idea; the blame is on them, not the rioters.

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

Bets on whose alt this "Dumpington" is?

 

[KingOrfeo]

But social democracy does not. You're thinking of Marxist-ideological command-economy Stalinism, which is a very different thing.

BTW, Even the Stalinist model of totalitarian socialism does work -- for limited purposes, i.e., heavy capital formation. In 1924 Stalin took control of a backward, agrarian country, marginally industrialized by the onset of WWI and that little industry devastated by that war and the Russian Civil War, and -- by methods which were bloody, brutal, repressive, wasteful, but effective -- by 1939 had turned it into an industrial power capable of going head-to-head with Hitler's Germany; and Germany had always been at the leading edge of the Industrial Revolution. No way could that have happened, if Russia had had a free-market system during that period.

OTOH, central economic planning, lacking the constant corrective feedback of competitive market performance, is spectacularly inept at any kind of fine-tuning. Moreover, it does not encourage innovation very well. No state planner would ever have thought of something like the Sony Walkman, or the Pet Rock, or fabric softener. (Whether that is an argument for or against Stalinism is open to debate.)

From Economics Explained, by Robert Heilbroner and Lester Thurow:

The reason it [the Soviet system] did last [as long as it did] is that in the beginning the system very much resembled a military operation. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, Lenin confronted an almost totally disorganized society, and tried at first to build a "socialism" that was partly capitalist -- private farming and private small enterprise -- and partly socialist, in the form of state-owned banks and large centers of production. Russia staggered along under this mixed system for a few years, without either great success or great failure, but after Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin took command and rapidly instituted the highly centralized system we have sketched in.

Stalin's methods were ferocious and bloody, but they were successful in bringing about an immense accumulation of wealth, much as did the ruthless ways of the ancient pharoahs of Egypt and emperors of Rome or China. The difference was that whereas the latter built palaces and cities, Stalin built factories, steel mills, hydroelectric plants, and railway systems -- the ingredients of an industrial economy. The fact that Stalin's Russia was strong enough to resist Hitler's armies -- and efficient enough, after its reconstruction following World War II, to impress the world with its industrial and military capabilities -- shows that Soviet central planning was by no means a failure in its initial years. That is why "military socialism" may yet be a model for development efforts in the future. China is today a semi-military socialism which appears to be successfully negotiating the early stages of industrialization, much aided by a carefully supervised free market sector attached to the planned core. Hence the collapse of the Soviet system should not lead us to the snap judgment that centralized socialism is no longer on the agenda of the coming century. That is indeed likely to be the case with the North, but it is not a foregone conclusion in the troubled countries of the South.

THE COLLAPSE

But we are ahead of ourselves. After so successful a beginning, why did Soviet socialism finally break down? The answer is that it is a great deal easier to design and build the skeleton of a mighty economy than to run it. Building a steel plant requires good industrial draftsmanship, but running a steel plant requires good industrial management. Management, in turn, depends on the ability to adapt flows of production to ever-changing conditions -- the unforeseen contingencies, mistakes, mismatches, shortages, and overruns that are inescapable in any complex undertaking.

In a market system, these mistakes are repaired and remedied as soon as possible because they cost the factory or store money. Hence suppliers are told to hurry up, or to hold back on shipments, unprofitable items are canceled and profitable ones run overtime, the Yellow Pages are searched for last-minute necessities. None of this can happen in a society planned from top to bottom. When mistakes are made, they bring about a kind of gridlock in the flow of production, so that the pace of Soviet economic production was a never-ending sequence of feast or famine, too much or too little, with no way of remedying the errors other than recasting next year's plan or seeking the semi-illegal channels of "tolkachi" -- fixers.

 

[NeverEndingMe]

Well lambaste is a strong word. If you mean the comment on raising the debt ceiling yeah, he's since learned.

You do know Social Security can't actually go bankrupt right? Or are you retarded?

you are a fucking idiot

 

[RobDownSouth]

Bets on whose alt this "Dumpington" is?

Five bucks on query.

 

[NeverEndingMe]

Social Security can't run out of money though.

you are a fucking idiot

 

[NeverEndingMe]

Bets on whose alt this "Dumpington" is?

still wearing tights ... what more can you say about union dumbasses like yourself

 

[PoppingTom]

And the riots are bad why? They're a symptom of not enough social democracy. The neoliberals at the IMF and in Germany have decided "austerity" is the way to handle the global recession, and it has everywhere turned out to be a bad idea; the blame is on them, not the rioters.

Absofuckinglutely right.

 

[NeverEndingMe]

Absofuckinglutely right.

get a real job...that's the problem with your kind. too lazy to work