I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
Whaaa?
Elsewhere? Where are all the best assumptions found?
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When do you think it's okay to stop worrying about this? It looks like w's *plan* is DOA. Do you mean they will keep on, relentlessly coming up with other, newer, even more fiendish tricks and ruses to part the naive with ever more of their precious dollars, rubles, sheckles, dinares, and rials? Is that what you mean?
With apologies to a greater wit than mine...
September 11.
I mean, you know, it just makes them sound kinda crazy.
That's not a good thing.
Sorry, even in a good slot this is a guaranteed ratings loser.
Try Desperate Seniors, maybe with a youth angle?
May - December! There you go.
We should have the Chinese guarantee the system/shortfalls.
In return we will give them Taiwan.
Given the value of Taiwan we can also have them guarantee Medicare and Medicaid.
Maybe we should sell Beirut to the Maronites, or the Syrians. Highest bidder system.
With our new imperialist strategy, we can shakedown many economies.
The results "showed a disappointing outlook for investors in the personal accounts relative to the rhetoric of their promoters," concluded Shiller, a leading researcher in stock market volatility who gained fame in the late 1990s for his warnings of a stock market bubble.
Who you gonna believe, Shiller or Dumbya? Hahahahahahahahaha.
You can't lose with our new faith based portfolio.
The more that pesky little things like, say, FACTS are known about Bu$h's non- plan for *saving* (hahahaha) SS the worse it looks. I don't think this will look attractive to anyone but investment firms.
Who you gonna believe, Shiller or Dumbya?
You'd think someone with a name like Shiller would be working *for* the administration...
Bigvic, have I mentioned that I love your evil laugh?
We are cantilevered so far past the tipping point. The anticipation is killing me.
Gee...going from a definite thing to nebulous investiments with no guarantee of higher returns means that those who divert their taxes will get screwed over?
I wonder how many geniuses it took to find that out?
This is of no concern to Bush...all he needs are 50 Senators, pressured by Bush's voting blocks, to vote for his revamping of Social Security and its a done deal.
regards
.
Hey Eli!
It is kind of wicked, isn't it? Did you also notice the mocking undercurrent?
Shiller is no shiller for Bu$h, thank god.
It is kind of wicked, isn't it? Did you also notice the mocking undercurrent?
Oh yes. It definitely has a nasty, mean-spirited edge to it. I wholeheartedly approve.
I saw a poll yesterday that had Bu$h's approvl rating at 45%, his Iraq policy around 40% and SS at 35%. Support for piratization among youner folks was tanking, as well.
Good job Dumbya. The more we know ya, the worse you look.
You know why they are running this story? Because ThereIsNoCrisis shamed them into it.
THOSE 55 AND older have taken a 180-degree turn
concerning the future of their children.
These incredibly patriotic Americans defeated enemies in Africa, Europe and Asia. Their backbone was strong. They made the world safe and gave their children the opportunity to prosper. Sadly today, that proud and noble defense of America's youth has been broken. Gone are the unique ideas, the pride of personal ownership and the protective support of a lifestyle earned.
Our seasoned citizens now choose to support an outdated Social Security program, even after our president has guaranteed no changes in current benefits for those 55 and older.
Society has changed since the 1940s. It is time to move Social Security into 2005. Americans 54 and younger overwhelmingly agree that Social Security needs to be changed and that government should no longer be in total control of our retirement money. The time is now ours to decide if we live in the past or if we move into the future.
Oh, and if you don't like the Bush Plan, why not at least COME UP WITH ONE? YOu liberals have no plan, just 1.nothing or 2.opposite of Bush, just to be mean and jealous. Stop whining and work harder and you will be as powerful as I am.
Hee, hee. The Social Security story gets better and better.
Oh, and if you don't like the Bush Plan, why not at least COME UP WITH ONE? YOu liberals have no plan, just 1.nothing or 2.opposite of Bush, just to be mean and jealous. Stop whining and work harder and you will be as powerful as I am.
Anti-Liberal Agitator
Nice recitation of the talking points for today. Mr. Rove will have your check in the mail shortly. Enjoy the cat food in 40 years!
Okay, I'm sure I used the close tag.
As stupid as that Anti-Liberal Agitator post was, I have to believe that was a parody troll.
It's so hard to tell the false stupidity from the real thing.
The reality of this morass is that the Social Security Trust Fund ("SSTF") insolvency crisis is but a symptom of a much larger problem - the mandatory spending that federal entitlement programs take out of the federal budget that cannot be slowed because these programs utilize taxation to support the goal of wealth redistribution (to one degree or another).
In a country that conducts commerce under a free market system, the introduction of wealth redistribution thru taxation of income is a doomed choice that has no basis as a sustainable social policy due to the laws of mathematics and business economics. This is no longer a question of theoreticals, but a simple matter of reviewing the historical outcome of these modern day policies to see what they have in fact produced in outcomes for the resources they swallow up.
First, let us look at the most dramatic result - the rise in mandatory spending as a percentage of the total federal budget. In 1964, this amount was 26% of the total federal budget. By 1984, it had risen to 42% of the total federal budget. Last year it was an astonishing 54% of the federal budget. It's the monster hovering at the edge of reason that continues to grow like the blob and consume every resource available and still need more.
If you don't like the Department of the Interior, or Homeland Security, or Defense, or any other governmental unit that is not part of mandatory social spending - you're in luck. Starting in 2018, you're going to get your wish as they are forced to cut these programs an average of 12% per annum to balance the budget. In 2028 we will have the military capacity of Mexico and the homeland security capacity of present day Iraq. You envrionmentalists will just be SOL because there will be no EPA and our kids will get to experience the kind of schooling that was available to the average person in the 19th century.
Next, let us take a hard look at what we have gained for this unprecedented level of taxation for the sake of wealth redistribution:
a) Social Security is broke. We have finally (maybe) come to the point in the road where we have begun to realize that political rhetoric cannot change the outcome of a program that is governed by the laws of mathematics and business economics. When FDR first signed it into law, the program was to only be voluntary and would tax the first 1.0% of taxpayer earnings up to $1,400 per annum. Since 1935, the taxation rate has increased at an average annual rate of over 17% - a rate that is a MULTIPLE of inflation, yet the program is broke.
b) Medicare and Medicaid are also broke. Yet we have poor people who cannot get access to health care, have no health care at all, or cannot afford health care - 40 years after the program was introduced. The same problems that brought these programs into place are still "unfunded federal mandates" some 40 years later.
c) Education remains a fiscal and service quality mess. You can't find any reasonable person who believes the quality of a public education is as good as that in a private school, yet we spend almost double per pupil/per annum on public education and we still have dumb kids, useless education workers and a refusal to accept the fact that public education is a total and complete failure for the American people.
If you want to know why these programs must fail from a purely mathematical or economic viewpoint, it comes down to two (2) things:
1. Competition.
The federal entitlement programs set forth above operate outside the free market system and the most confounding and direct negative impact of this approach to the funding and delivery of these entitlement programs is a lack of competition. Without competition, there is no efficient allocation of investment capital for capital expense, so the federal government (even though it is the biggest fish in the pond) gets a continuing raw deal for the investment of each of its capital dollars. Because there is no competition, worker productivity gains are non-existent and there are no competitive pressures placed on revenues, so costs spiral out of control. Now the math works against you because IT HAS TO WORK THIS WAY - THERE IS NO WAY TO STOP IT. Period. The end.
2. Inflation.
A little inflation is great because it provides a counter-balance to worker productivity efforts and thereby effectively awards competition, but in the case of these quasi-command economic structures under which our federal entitlement programs operate, the impact of inflation only ensures that it is impossible to control spending. Inflation eats at tax revenues, so it places pressure on the government to raise tax rates to gain the same inherent revenue value ("bang for your buck"). In turn, this means the government has to raise interest rates and this creates a negative pressure on capital investment as more and more money is taken out of the economy to service the programs. This isn't a merry-go-round. This is a vicious cycle that cannot be stopped because it creates a negative impact on the economy on a continuing basis - BY ITS VERY DESIGN.
So what does this mean to the average American out there? What can be done? What do we really have left to work with to fix this?
All you have is about $80 billion in SSTF surplus investment income the SSTF will receive until around 2018 when the income is then needed to start paying benefits that revenues won't cover.
A reasonable person would conclude that you must then come up with a fix that addresses the SSTF insolvency crisis based upon this $80 billion in proceeds (such that it is) - and fix it now.
This means the only solution will be to actually create wealth where none existed and have the government act as a co-investor in the program instead of a drag on the growth. In other words, the only fix for the government is to invest in the private economic sector and use its returns to pay down its obligations because it is already bankrupt (I should know, I'm a corporate bankruptcy consultant and I can assure you the federal government is indeed broke by every business accounting measure there is in existence today).
But the doom also carries within it a seed of hope. A single chance. A light at the end of the tunnel that has been heretofore ignored - INSTICERT.
INSTICERT is a proposed new electronic capital market exchange that is similar in concept to the existing NASDAQ. It won't trade stocks in corporations, or bonds, or futures. No, those are too risky my friends and we need risk-proof investing to solve this crisis, if we are to solve it for good and leave this world as good as we found it (at the very least).
INSTICERT will allow institutional, governmental, and public investors to trade a new class of securities in a special kind of business organization (that any business can use) that is inherently bankruptcy-proof and tort-proof so that the investment has less total investment risk than those cheesy Treasuries the Trustees now purchase on behalf of us (supposedly). Yes, there is a kind of business organizational approach that will make a company bankrupty-proof and tort-proof: it's called a "Royalty-Based Structured Finance Business Combination". The most common construction is known as a "Royalty Limited Partnership" (please visit our corporate website for whitepapers and further information on this matter).
The funny thing about Royalty Limited Partnership (or "RLP") constructions is that they are THE most cost-efficient stewards of capital investment because they are not capitalized (financed) with any debt capital (no debt means no liabilities and that means you CANNOT go bankrupt)- just cold, hard cash. This arrangement creates a massive competitive edge for the business and it creates the highest amount of financial investment leverage possible for the investors resulting in long-term earnings in the range of a 12% per annum IRR to over 20% per annum IRR - consistently.
Now back to our $80 billion question and INSTICERT...
If the federal government took its $80 billion per annum and invested it into companies listed on INSTICERT and reinvested its gains back into the system - in 10 years it would be able to completely defease (cancel out) the $11 trillion in SSTF borrowings that are now missing.
Guess what that will do for taxpayers?
Now here's the killer part - Republicans in Congress and the White House want nothing to do with INSTICERT because they are more interested in beating the Democrats to death over the failure of social security which they believe they can hang around the liberal's necks as the millstone to prevent them from making an electoral comeback.
Smart politics? Maybe. Smart policy? Nope. Never. No better than the Democrats who say and do nothing.
ALA is probably a real troll, as sad as that is. I mean, they pretty much have the exclusive on the brainwashed, over there at LGF, don't they? Claiming that the under 54-years-olds overwhelmingly support Bush's destruction of SS shows the lack of reality-based information they are being fed by the Washington Kremlin. Hey, ALA, America has been the #1 country on the planet for several decades, up until now. Notice that it took a Repig administration and congress to drop us to number 27 or so. You have no idea what harm has been done by the overthrowing of true American values and morals by this bunch of socialists called the neocons. And only a degenerate moron from the uterus of Babs of the Beautiful Mind would be blind and stupid enough to actually follow the script, although you and your kind are pretty close to that level of ignorance and soullessness. The great nightmare of the Clinton years of peace and prosperity is over, and the first thing your side does is let the terrorists succeed beyond their wildest dreams, then attack a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. Very good, little boy, no call up your ocal Repig dimwit and ask him why the chemical plants and ports are still unprotected by the great Repig Machine. Gad, but you people are incredibly stupid and naive.
It is not enough for Bush's evil schemes to fail -- he has to pay -- the entire Repiblican Party has to see this latest bold faced attack on the American people for what it is and get rid of these people and put them in jail where they belong!
Not that it will ever happen ... SIGH!
The front page of the WP has a worse media whore SP privatization article today.
Michael A. Fletcher writes on the Southeast Texas experiment with a privatized Social Security plan.
That's funny, I seem to have read a better version of that article about a month before. Or maybe not so funny. What has been removed from the Chicago Tribune original story are all the quotes from people that actually etire under that plan. Left out are these quotes:
"I get around $460 per month now, but under Social Security, I would have gotten $1,000," said Joyce Longcoy, who retired in 1998 after 23 years working for Galveston County. "They are putting this up to be a model for the rest of the country. Some model."
"I didn't come out ahead," said Evelyn Robison, who was the Galveston District Court clerk for 13 years before her retirement in 2004. "My
chief deputy did not come out ahead. My bookkeeper did not come out ahead. I personally don't know anyone who has retired who came out ahead."
Most of the people interviewed and the facts in the story are the same as is the overall structure of the article. Hmmm...
I think this is an example of the Washington Post being fed a story being pushed and whomever is doing the pushing providing the contacts.
I also think this part of the extremely well-funded PR campaign for privatization.
The Chicago Tribune actually had a decent story with real people with real stories in it. The Washington Post took the same story and followed some mass media play book - most people say privatization good but some say poor will lose, others disagree. I also question the high degree of overlap in the later WP story.
Copy of original Chicago Tribune story
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld...ld/
10933779.htm
WP story -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
ac...anguage=printer
or Yahoo -
http://story.news.yahoo.com/
news...48305_2005mar18
Some more on Daily Kos dairy -
http://www.dailykos.com/story/20...3/19/15555/
4083
I can fix the 3% problem. Just raise it to 10% like the yahoo Bushevics in my local paper. Then everyone is rich rich rich!
Watch for this to develop as the solution. Bush's economic genius will save us all.
Clint Lovell,
That was a thoughtful, informative post.
Nothing will change, I'm sorry to say.
We've hit the wall.
A majority of the politicians in Congress are beholden to their corporate contributors, not to the citizens of this country, nor to its principles.
The only time they speak up for the "little guy/gal" [q.v. Terri Schiavo] is when it will politically favor them so that they can recapture their seat at the next election.
Most Congressional House seats go unopposed. Many Senators are in their seats for life.
The executive branch has entered the era of dynastic rule.
I'm afraid we've lost democracy and the tools it gives its people to effect the sort of change you wrote about.
I guess no political system lasts forever. I can't believe I would see this in my lifetime.
I'm sorry for my children and my children's children.
Politicians' greed and cynicism + public apathy and ignorance = Death of Democracy
Oh, and if you don't like the Bush Plan, why not at least COME UP WITH ONE?
We have a plan.
It's called Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance. Sometimes known as "Social Security."
Lift or eliminate the cap on contributions to Social Security, or roll back a few of the bribes Nero gave to his campaign donors. The system continues working, and there's no need to screw anyone.
The next time you have an impulse to wail "they have no plan!" you should choke on it, and then drink a bottle of Drano to clear the clog.
There's a tremendous amount of data showing that the people who would depend on SSI for their retirement years would lose under the Bush plan. Ergo, his pitch can fairly be identified as a scam. In every scam, someone's making out. Isn't it time to take the next step and look at who would win and how?
Would you give it a frigging rest? SS reform is DEAD, DEAD, DEAD!
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