For those of us who like to believe that human beings are rational, trying to explain what happens in politics can be a real challenge.
For example, that segment of the population that has the least to fear from a reform of Medicare or Social Security is the most fearful — namely, those already receiving Medicare or Social Security benefits.
[…]
There are people who take seriously such statements as those by President Barack Obama that Republicans want to “end Medicare as we know it.”
Let’s stop and think, if only for the novelty of it. If you make any change in anything, you are ending it “as we know it.” Does that mean that everything in the status quo should be considered to be set in concrete forever?
If there were not a single Republican, or none who got elected to any office, arithmetic would still end “Medicare as we know it,” for the simple reason that the money in the till is not enough to keep paying for it. The same is true of Social Security.
The same has been true of welfare state programs in European countries that are currently struggling with both financial crises and riots in the streets from people who feel betrayed by their governments. They have in fact been betrayed by their politicians, who have promised them things that there was not enough money to pay for. That is the basic problem in the United States as well.
We are not yet Greece, but we are not exempt from the same rules of arithmetic that eventually caught up with Greece. We just have a little more time. The only question is whether we will use that time to make politically difficult changes or whether we will just kick the can down the road, and keep pretending that “Medicare as we know it” would continue on indefinitely, if it were not for people who just want to be mean to the elderly.
In both Europe and America, there are many people who get angry at those who tell them the truth that the money is just not there to sustain huge welfare state programs indefinitely. But that anger might be better directed at those who lied to them by promising them benefits that were inherently unsustainable.
Neither Social Security nor Medicare has ever had enough assets to cover its liabilities. Very simply, there has never been enough money put aside to do what the government promised to do.
These systems operate on what their advocates like to call a “pay as you go” basis. That is, the younger generation pays in money that is used to cover the cost of benefits for the older generation. This is the kind of financial pyramid scheme that got Charles Ponzi put in prison in the 1920s and got Bernie Madoff put in prison in our times.
A private annuity cannot play these financial games without its executives risking the fate of Ponzi and Madoff. That is why proposed Social Security and Medicare reforms would allow young people to put their money somewhere where the money they pay in would be put aside specifically for them, not used as at present to pay older people’s pensions, with anything left over being used for whatever else politicians feel like spending the money on.
It is today’s young people who are going to be left holding the bag when they reach retirement age and discover that all the money they paid in is long gone. It is today’s young people who are going to be dumped over a cliff when they reach retirement age, if nothing is done to reform entitlements.
Yet the young seem not to be nearly as alarmed as the elderly, who have no real reason to fear. Try reconciling that with the belief that human beings are rational.
Hell, I’ll go you one better, Thomas. Try reconciling Obama’s election — and his current standing even as an incumbent who has (intentionally, in my opinion) made matters worse and nearer to collapse — with the belief that human beings are rational.
Self interested, sure. But rational? As a rebuttal I give you Peggy Noonan and the rest of the GOPers who in 2008 were telling us that Obama was the New Man Ascendant, and that his brand of pragmatic liberalism would heal all our historic wounds and bring the country under control of an educated, nuanced elite whose technocratic expertise, mastery of academic jargon, and delightfully crisp pant crease would bring about a true third way. Because these folks are back now, pretending that they never believed what they then blasted us for not believing, and we’re supposed to once again take their campaign advice and help elect their candidates for our own good.
And many of us seem quite willing to do so. Regardless of the long term consequences.
Rational? Yeah, right. These people can’t even do self-interested correctly.
I know my parents still give me Peggy Noonan articles. They go right in the trash. Not because I hold a grudge for her because she was wrong, but because when she admitted she was wrong it was by saying “You know, there is a hedgehog. And then there’s a fox. I thought Obama was a fox, but I’m willing to admit he’s also a hedgehog.”
Such brilliance is wasting my freakin’ time. A teacher that refuses to learn new lessons is not worth listening to.
Can’t you rationally arrive at a faulty conclusion by piling logic error upon faulty premise upon category error upon…
We are not yet Greece
– I was going to say yes to that, since we don’t have an equivalent Germany/Euro bloc AEM machine……
– Then I remembered China……(Although daddies starting to cut back on our allowance.)
Ernst, from a false premise you can deduce anything.
Let me be unhelpful, ungrateful and a small-tenter.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/08/28/Artur-Davis-electrifies-RNC
[Artur Davis:] John F. Kennedy asked us what we could do for America. This Democratic Party asks what can government give you. Don’t worry about paying the bill, it’s on your kids and grandkids.
Bill Clinton took on his base and made welfare a thing you had to work for; this current crowd guts the welfare work requirement in the dead of night.
Bill Clinton, Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson reached out across the aisle and said meet me in the middle;
Seriously? SRSLY?
Rhetorical note to JFK: It’s not my job to “do something for the country.” I want to be a free citizen of a republic, not a slave. It’s just as noxious for the “country” to demand servitude of me as it is for me to ask the “country” to do be my servant. Bill Clinton took on his base? O RLY? You mean after he vetoed welfare reform twice? And are you actually telling me LBJ was a model of bipartisan amity? Do you even know who LBJ was?
So what do we reap if we woo the saintly Undecided voter with praise and false encomiums for three Democrat presidents who helped shove the country leftward? I’m not feeling the electricity.
But I’m just a reactionary idiot. I’m totally certain what we will reap if Romney wins with this approach is full-throated, aggressive policy designed to roll back government. Because it’s what JFK, LBJ and Clinton would do.
Sadly, that’s more than a lot of people are willing to do for their country — and the one thing it needs most.
What was that somebody said? “The only way to end Medicare as we know it is to do nothing about Medicare as we know it?” If ever there was a third rail on it’s hands and knees looking over it’s shoulders right at you with knowing toss if it’s long wavy hair, this is it. You can even jujitsu this canard: Of course we want to end Medicare as we know it. Medicare as we know it is broken, just as the Democrats designed it to be.
Yet nobody humped the rail.
Now stop it with that pesky math.
Stupid math it won’t bend to the narrative.
Math is racist.
Here’s what I do for my country: I don’t ask it to provide for me like some incompetent or a minor child.
(No need to thank me. It’s the least I could do. Literally.)
Not quite true; if my premise is gravity pulls me away from Earth’s center, I cannot deduce Picasso’s hair was purple.
I figure I do plenty for my country. It takes a third of my paycheck and I don’t get anything back.
It’s redistributing my hard-earned bank and I don’t have a say in what it does with it.
– So now that they’ve spent the last 60 years saying it and proving it, that equality was never what they were after, but a free ride, lets give all these proud “Americans” a hearty round of applause, because thats freedom baby!
– *smack* …..Whhhaaa???….Oh, sorry.
Slartibartfast, in deductive logic, “Gravity pulls me away from Earth’s center, therefore Picasso’s hair was purple,” is in fact a true statement. A?B is true if A is false or if A is true and B is true. A?B is false if and only if A is true and B is false.
I’m sure you know this already though.
I’m waiting for the RNC to trot out its latest version of “compassionate conservatism.” After all, we must win at all costs. Except if it includes defeating Claire McCaskill. Or actually selling conservatism, as opposed to marketing something fuzzy and warm. Something that somehow simultaneously declares sharp differences between The President Whom Republicans Must Not Name and his Republican opponents, yet also pledges to pursue pragmatic bipartisan solutions that will bring us together in blissful unity.
I like math, especially the symbolic logic kind of math.
Oh, hey, sorry about the question marks above. The arrow worked fine in preview, but then not when actually posted.
– Blissful unity always seems to cost me money.
– That being the case, I think I’ll take distant division for 500 Alex.
I’m waiting for the RNC to trot out its latest version of “compassionate conservatism.”
I hope not. We need someone who can say “no” to, well just about everything.
My dad was always good at that. Or attaching a lot of conditions to requests.
Can’t wait for the pundocracy on the Right to drool over Jeb Bush’s and Condi Rice’s speeches.
We all understand the idea. You have to lie to the saintly Undecided to win their votes. Tell them anything Frank Luntz or Karl Rove or K Street consultants say they want to hear, and it is almost never anything conservative.
The problem is there seems to be a relation between the ideological softness of a campaign and what the campaign actually does when it wins. Have we ever seen a Republican campaign run to the right or even stay on point once it has won office? Even Reagan couldn’t eliminate the Dept. of Education. We have seen plenty of Democrat administrations run leftwards after their campaign victories.
I guess this is not a two-way street.
The left’s strategists know full well a total collapse is in the offing if we continue down this path. They simply believe they’ll be in a better position after the 20-30 years of unpleasantness sorts itself out and the new order emerges.
The average moonbat in the street doesn’t realize the strategists are willing to (literally) sacrifice his life for this long term goal. Millions are going to die in a total collapse. It will be ugly.
When distilled down to this level, the end of our country is easier to swallow. People are irrational as a whole, and the good that our country was could never last forever. I’m just glad I didn’t have any kids to put through the really bad years, which are on the way.
Sorry for being so negative.
I would accept that you could conclude anything that logically follows from one false premise and any other premise, Charles. You need two premises to even form an argument.
If the conclusion doesn’t logically follow, then the argument is invalid.
So, from (one or more) false premises, you can conclude anything, provided those premises get you to the conclusion. If not: not.
But it’s been 3 decades or so since I took symbolic logic, and I may very well be lecturing grandma on how to suck eggs for all I know.
That’s because neither Luntz nor Rove nor K Street consultants are particularly conservative. If that Foster piece is at all meaningful, it’s that swing voters are willing to be led by whomever has the conviction to lead them. They don’t care where they go, as long as it’s somehwere.
It’s inside the beltway aim-small miss-small nose counter thinking and liberal–elite cultural prejudice, reinforced through the media that has Luntz, Rove and their ilk thinking that swing voters reject conservative positions out of hand.
– Or sending the playmate of the months measurements, your morse code is so rusty.
it’s that swing voters are willing to be led by whomever has the conviction to lead them. They don’t care where they go, as long as it’s somehwere.
Why you unhelpful Visigoth. Besides, don’t you know that it’s always the swing voter who decides elections?
Talk about logical fallacies.
No disrespect here, but perhaps you’re so negative (as negative as you are, which is more negative than you might otherwise be) because you don’t have kids? I think starting a family is about the most optimistic thing you can do. That idea didn’t occur to me until after Frau Schreiber and I had our first kid.
I suppose the obvious reply is I’ve confused optimism with foolishness. And I won’t deny that idea hasn’t occured to me on occassion these past four years either.
What would consultants do without swing voters? Who’d hire ’em if our partisan politics was a stable as it was prior to 1968?
– I don’t believe theres even 0.1 % of undecideds at this point. You’re either benefitting cynically from the Obama candy-man admin, or you’re not, in which case, if you’re like most working Americans you’re deeply worried and not a little pissed, because you’re probably struggling, at best, just to stay even, or slipping further behind each month at worst no matter how hard you work and budget to cut costs. A very tiny fraction are actually gaining ground right now, and even they can’t feel very secure.
– To be ‘undecided’ at this point you’d have to be living under a rock.
I don’t think they’re thinking that many moves ahead. I think their plan is to do what they’ve been successfully doing since 1932.
It’s all the fault of the Republicans!
charles: HTML entities are your friend! You want to use → to get one of these → arrow thingies, assuming that was your goal.
That, and you get to sound like a pirate while doing so.
You know what? ← that
←↑↓→
New toy.
It is a sort of self-interest, albeit a “spiritual” one.
It boils down to the approbation of others–basking in the praise of proper, correct people who will applaud you for your exercise of pseudo-virtue. Call it “openness,” or “tolerance,” “multiculturalism” or similar soft-value buzzword beloved of the left.
You get the love bombing in return, along with no harassment, so it is a form of self-interest–short-sighted and short term as it is.
That certainly explains why the Romney people are taking disaffection for granted. Nonetheless, it might behoove people to attach Obama to their disaffection by name, because Obama is certainly going to try to.
I know you’re unhappy with me, but just think how much UNhappier you’d have been with four more years of Bush-McCain. And this Romney–Bush fellow? He’s out of touch, because he wants to take us back to the bad old days of Bush
Now, granted, usually if you think I/We suck, wait until you see how bad the other guy(s) suck! doesn’t work out (2006, 2010). But it has worked before, (1936) which means that it could work again.
Particularly if Romney gets his Wilkie on.
If Romney’s people were unconventional smart instead of conventional smart, they’d nuke Obama from orbit just to be sure. I guess we’ll find out once they’re cleared to spend money.
I wonder how John McCain felt when he found out he wasn’t even a starter-wife
just a practice girl.
I guess we’ll find out once they’re cleared to spend money.
I heard it’s going to be carpet-bombing for the next 10 weeks.
We’ll see. I have my doubts that he’ll go after Obama, either directly or indirectly, nearly as hard as he went after Gingrich and Santorum.
http://bit.ly/Oygc7g
Yesterday, Karen and Billy Vaughn, parents of Aaron Carson Vaughn, spoke at the Defending the Defenders forum sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots outside the RNC Convention in Tampa. Karen brought a copy of the form letter they were sent following their son’s death.
It’s a form letter.
It was signed by an electric pen.
Gosh, I shore hope Willard Mitt Romney, that excellent family man, doesn’t talk about this. He would look so meany-mean.
——
Ah, who am I kidding.
Or sending the playmate of the months measurements, your morse code is so rusty.
“Give me a ping, Vasily. One ping only, please.”
Thank Gaia there are people like Mark Levin, unwilling to parrot the happy-talk bullshit coming from the rightosphere. At least he isn’t buying this “don’t name Obama” crap.
Mark Levin is saying a lot of the right things, like not surrendering our principles to the GOP.
However, he wants to ignore the disconnect between that and voting for Romney, because he still thinks Romney will be significantly better than Obama. That notion has been shrinking for me the last few days.
I’m in the “hell, guess I’ll vote for Romney” camp (and I’m in PA, so my vote kinda-matters), not that I don’t think he’ll be nearly as bad as Obama in every way (but now with Miracle Ingredient RiN-O, for Improved Republican Sparkle!).
It’s just that his victory should cause the hated Left to go full-bore lunatic, which would at least be mildly entertaining. If we’re going to burn the world either way (and we are), might as well have fun with it!
We are all but deluded individuals already under the state’s sway, our egos lying to our ids about just what it is we are (and aren’t), so why is it that we don’t just fess up to our condition and accept it? And by “we”, I mean “a collection of us-es,” not a collection of “yous”. The latter doesn’t exist.
— Unless you want credit for penning a faux-scholarly philosophical opinion piece on the subject. In which case they’d damn well better spell your name right, and include a biography of your place in the scholarly world.
– Testing
No worries, Jeff. Judged by the rhetoric at the Republican convention the us-es are hell bent on keeping shit dumbed down. Cults depend on it.
Once again, the GOP establishment (via Fox News) dumps on Sarah Palin.
You will comply, hobbits!
What causes democratic nations to incline towards Pantheism
My god, this is pathetic.
I have no patience for the Republican party-bots telling these front-line soldiers to shut up in the name of unity — and to hide “in-fighting” because the Left will publicize it. It should be publicized. Conservative activists and Tea Party members have worked their asses off within the system, doing the groundwork of righting the wayward GOP ship from the inside. These are the door-knockers, sign-makers, phone-bankers, and message-spreaders who fueled the Tea Party revolution and who enabled the 2010 GOP midterm victories. They fought for and earned their place at the table.
I also have no patience for the sideline-sitters who gripe that rules fights are booooooring and meaningless. The Tea Party conservative activists are doing what an effective movement is supposed to be: They’ve moved on from protests and rallies to the nuts and bolts of party politics. These battles matter, because exercising grass-roots muscles makes them stronger.
Finally, I have no patience for the addled critics who think we are unable to multi-task. Yes, you can criticize bad GOP maneuvers AND maintain the fight against Obama and the progressives at the same time! It’s easy if you try.
Below, I’m reprinting the after-action report from veteran conservative blogger and South Carolina GOP activist Drew McKissick, who first alerted me to the battle earlier this week.
link
– Yeh, its not just hyperbole. Listening to Chrissy Mathews litterily foaming at the mouth in a confrontation with Gingritch, the Left is trully bat-shit frantic.
Huh? The right is literally full-on moronic.
– Well JHo, maybe you should send the DNCC a memo or somethimng because apparently they’re peeing themselves in public these days.
Now McLame has taken the stage. The fact that he’s giving a speech and Palin isn’t tells me all I need to know about the present-day Republican Party.
John Bradley, thank you.
– Happy birthday J. McCain. (Is he still alive?)
Thomas Sowell: These systems operate on what their advocates like to call a “pay as you go” basis. That is, the younger generation pays in money that is used to cover the cost of benefits for the older generation. This is the kind of financial pyramid scheme that got Charles Ponzi put in prison in the 1920s and got Bernie Madoff put in prison in our times.
Um, no. It’s not a Ponzi scheme.
http://www.ssa.gov/history/ponzi.htm
Because the government always tells the truth. Doubleplusgood, citizen!
Back in our little stalls we go for another four years, the teevee on the wall blaring our daily bread. This time it’s FREEDOM!
Meh.
To the extent that Ponzi schemes are mere fraud unaccompanied by coercion, Social Security turns out to be worse, so yeah.
My god, this is pathetic.
There are automatons at Disney more life like.
Dude is disturbing.
If ssa.gov said it was a fine cheese, Zachriel might prove that by linking to an ssa.gov description of itself as a fine cheese and consider the matter settled.
Go away.
shut up, sdferr. Lockbox!
Meghan’s coward daddy hasn’t even mentioned about how we need a boxing commission. Well not yet anyway.
yup he totally dropped the ball
this is why you aren’t president, dicklick
As soon as McLame started speaking I hit the mute button. Would that he’d do so with his daughter.
John McCain trusts Mitt Romney to lead us. Because he’ll always always, always stand up for the rights and freedoms of all people and because love conquers hate.
Because, John McCain. And John McCain’s Reagan paraphrases and John McCain’s notions of national LEADERSHIP! in this highly decentralized Republic.
This shit isn’t sophisticated enough for your fourth grader.
[Self-parodying music plays]
Is this for real?
If the left is pissing itself it’s out of uncontrollable laughter.
Is this for real?
4 years of baracky were unreal, mittens will change it to surreal
Genius Romney tag line in the crowd: We Can Change It.
On a blue field.
Ace of Polls is readying another 43/43 Obama/Romney results summary. “Is this something?”
you’d think the gop could find some mellow entertainment that weren’t aarp eligible.
– Well, at least That’s over.
– I should have put a few bucks on Clint. Turns out he is the mystery speaker. Up yours Commywood.
Hurricane Isaac is gayer than a “we can change it” bumper sticker on the back of putin’s vw cabriolet
Maggies Farm finds in unconscionable that human delegates with actual minds went rogue and didn’t support the Presumptive Nominee.
TEAMWORK!
From SSA’s history of Ponzi’s scheme:
OK. Now, I would call early “investors” in social security the older generation, but maybe that’s just me. But in any case, in order for SSA to pay off those older early investors, they need an ever larger pool of younger, later investors, right?
Oh, Wait. No they don’t. I get it, government doesn’t have to con you. They can just
put a gun in your face and help themselves to your walletraise the payroll tax to get what they need in order to “pay as they go.” So the fact that the pyramid in the S.S. scheme is starting to resemble a column isn’t a problem at all, is it?Still, the system would probably be a bit more structurally sound if the left wasn’t intent on killing as many future workers in the womb as they choose, wouldn’t you agree?
Thanks for the chuckle
chucklehead.
Are every one of these clowns really monosyllabic?
D. Axelrod is pitching for the Chicago White Sox. Even if his name isn’t David, with a moniker like “D. Axlerod” he deserves to lose — just like those Republicans protesting RonPaulians demanding Mainers be seated are racists for chanting “USA USA USA” while some poor Puerto Rican functionary was attempting to make her report.
Man, that Joe Saunders sure was a great pickup. Well, if giving up 4 in the first and 5 before the 4th is over he is.
putin’s vw cabriolet
vlad’s more of a “fiat” dude
– Its like a very bad SNL skit.
In Russia, fiat drives you!
gun > foot
ANYBODY BUT OBAMA!
What the hell is that on the podium now?
Words fail.
Damn it sdferr, why’d you have to go and shoot Zachy in the head while I was still wrapping barbed-wire around my cranky cudgel?
Did I accidentally tune into an episode of Romper Room?
what did her boobs do to her that she’s punishing them like that
is this prime time? like other people are seeing this?
Isn’t Bondi one of the ones railroading Zimmerman?
The Republican National Convention Presents: Anything
Maybe these are the outtakes, feets. Please.
“Igor, would you please help with the bags…”
“Of course, you take the blonde, I’ll take the short fat gay guy.
*that* was Attorney General Barbie?
– It’s 44 now, but the speech was written two months ago, so….who’s counting.
Rhetorically bitching about the left while running your nation-of-men candidate is how liberty prospers.
-Geo. Washington.
Ernst
I don’t have kids partly by choice, but mostly because of some health issues. That said, I have nieces and nephews that I really worry for. But I also don’t blame people for not having kids so they won’t have to put them through whats coming.
All that aside, the kids growing up now are really going to be stuck with some major issues. I’m not sure what can be done at this point. I wish I had some answers.
Ernst Schreiber: But in any case, in order for SSA to pay off those older early investors, they need an ever larger pool of younger, later investors, right?
No. It’s an income transfer from young to old. If nothing is done with Social Security, under current law, it will continue to pay benefits at 75% levels in perpetuity. A Ponzi scheme is exponential and will inevitably collapse.
– Quick, MSNBC just switched to a WalMart commercial, theres a minority on.
“Barack Obama gonna pay my mortgage!” -2008
“Mitt Romney gonna roll up his sleeves!” -2012
I can’t take any more of this. Nite all. May God have mercy.
So under currrent law, you’re forced to put in money and you get less back later, if nothing’s done. Is that your argument for SS not being a big fat broken fraud?
Lockbox!
And of course, perpetuity only lasts until there’s no more money. At which point, 75% of nothing is nothing. In perpetuity.
Go away.
For their own good, though, this paranoia has to stop. Maybe I can help their mental sanity by explaining something?: The whole point a dog whistle is for your adversaries to not hear it.
It should go over their heads, and straight into the ears of your base (who nod approvingly.)
If you want an example of a real, modern day cipher, here it is. As I noted at Politics Daily, “During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama used the terms ‘bamboozled’ and ‘hoodwinked,’ which to most reporters meant nothing. But to those who had seen the film, the lines were an obvious reference to ‘Malcolm X.’”
(The people who might have been offended by Obama furtively paying homage to Malcolm X would never know; the people who would “get” the joke would be inclined to like it.)
There is no doubt that politicians have, in the past — and still sometimes do — use code language. But the phenomenon we’re witnessing today is quite different. Republican politicians say something, which their base takes at face value. And then later, the left assigns a cynical interpretation to it.
But that’s not how code language works.
link
Henry Sam and Charlie do not understand the glory of the pipelines
If nothing is done with Social Security, under current law, it will continue to pay benefits at 75% levels in perpetuity.
Its magic.
this is demeaning to small business owners everywhere plus everybody else
whiny whiners what whine
So the fact that the pyramid in the S.S. scheme is starting to resemble a column isn’t a problem at all, is it?
Ernst, math is hard. Especially for Zachriel.
pawlenty will speak tonite!!11!!
Thank God for Shiner Bock. That’s the only thing making the convention bearable tonight.
Yeah, about that.
Maybe you appreciate the public’s generosity with your income, but I kind or resent paying out more than I can expect in return. If I want to transfer my money to the older generation, I can do that just fine on my own. Also, generally speaking, the older generation has more wealth than the younger. That’s the kind of taking from the “poor” to give to the “rich” that your side of the aisle likes to bitch about.
You and your greedy oldsters. Why do you hate younger workers Zachy?
in other news
A New Judge For George Zimmerman
Speaking of dog whistles, did anybody else hear a bit of Everybody Must Get Stoned in that jam during the break?
I understand what you’re saying. It just occured to me that if more people had more kids (and more people more than one designer kid) there would be more incentive to address the issues now rather than to keep putting them off because why upset my comfortable lifestyle?). I think that’s particularly true for our elites, (such as they are these days).
I think we can see this to some extent from the fact that Paul Ryan has solid support from seniors, who not only have kids, but grandkids and greatgrandkids lengthening their timeframe.
Portman should be carrying a violin.
I just flew in from Ohio, and boy are my arms tired!
But leigh, 75%. In perpetuity!
And the other 25% of your cost of living?
death panelsFree health care!“No more oil for you China!”
– Can you believe we’ve got 69 more days of this crap to go.
“….and when we were kids, me and my brothers and sisters had to walk 15 miles to school, one way, uphill in both dorections.”
– I’m going to go cook dinner. Maybe by the time I get back, the Acadamy of farts and sinuses will be handing out awards for the best blow job under the podium.
Oh my God Jeff. Talk about faulty tendentious reasoning. I think I’d rather watch the Republican Convention than keep reading that piece. And I’m only three paragraphs in.
The law will print the money necessary to do this?
Zachriel doesn’t seem to know about demographics. The Baby Boom generation was the largest in American history. It’s in the process of becoming the largest-ever pool of Social Security recipients.
Each generation since the Baby Boom has been smaller than the one before. Eventually, even if all had gone well economically, there would come a time when there would be more people receiving benefits than paying into the system.
But all has not gone well economically. A lot of the people the Boomers are counting on to support them in retirement, can’t find jobs and have given up looking.
Where is your god now, Zachriel?
I read the whole thing. I have a headache now.
Does that dude teach at the University of Phoenix or some other back of the matchbook U?
Because the government does it it isn’t a Ponzi scheme. Or a Madoff scheme. Or a Corzine scheme.
Say, which of those things is not like the other?
I’ll take Corzine Alex. He’s the only one who hasn’t gone to prison.
Hey leigh, at least he didn’t call those poor dumb benighted teatard’s from Chisago hypocrites. Of course, that would be because they’re suffering from false consciousness….
I think it’s also unintentionally revealing about the left elite mindset (probably the right to): You take the gubmint man’s money, the gubmint man owns you, sorry-assed losers full of fail that you are.
Even if the gubmint man is the one who created the conditions that left you no choice but to take the gubmint man’s money in the first place.
Plenty of others are taking up the slack for him though, Ernst.
I read today that all us stupid hicktard bitter-clingers over-use entitlement programs like a mofo. Why the people in Janesville are practically all on some kind of welfare.
And the racists are all white, too!
Bizarro world, anyone?
Not really. See page 4 here.
In all honsesty, it wouldn’t surprise me if that were true. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that Obama is deliberately impoverishing the middle class. Because this is a greedy, racist, sexist country built on greed, racism and sexism. And we in the middle class who’ve benefitted from our greed and racism and sexism while neglecting to be the keepers of our brothers and sisters, the poor, the colored, and the feminist deserve to find out what it’s like to be poor and colored and female —i.e. dependent.
Bizzaro world indeed leigh.
Geoffb, that seems to raise the question of whether the open-borders and similar agendas are really simply about keeping the Ponzi scheme afloat.
I’d tend to want to know the size of each generation as a percentage of the US population, not as an absolute number.
Hmmm…Firmin DeBrabander is a real name?
This guy wrote an entire article based on ideas that have never been validated. Are Ego, Superego and Id actually real? No one has ever been able to tell. They are models, unvalidated and unverifiable.
But handy when you’re cobbling together a Tea Party hit-piece gussied up as intellectualism.
Oh. This explains a great deal. He would accept the Ring from a desire to do good.
Jeff G: And of course, perpetuity only lasts until there’s no more money. At which point, 75% of nothing is nothing. In perpetuity.
By current law, once the Trust Fund is exhausted, then expenditures must equal receipts. At that point, Social Security will be able to pay 75% of benefits in perpetuity.
B Moe: Its magic.
Not at all. People incur a payroll tax, and this is used to pay current beneficiaries.
McGehee: The law will print the money necessary to do this?
That isn’t required, as the level of benefits come from payroll taxes.
McGehee: The Baby Boom generation was the largest in American history.
That’s right. Which is why payroll taxes were raised so that Social Security would be running a surplus. In the aftermath of the 2000 election, the U.S. decided to provide a break on income taxes based on these surpluses. Now that bill is coming due.
Gee, if only we’d elected Algore. Then we could have kept the promissory notes in a lockbox!
Paid by a smaller proportion of Americans than at any time since Social Security was enacted. Because of policies enacted by your guy.
Ernst Schreiber: Gee, if only we’d elected Algore. Then we could have kept the promissory notes in a lockbox!
At the end of the Clinton Administration, the U.S. was running structural cash surpluses. If the U.S. had continued on this path, the publicly-held debt would have been dramatically reduced. This would have tempered the overheated economy, leaving the U.S. in a much stronger fiscal position in the event of any financial crisis.
Zachriel: Do you ever stop to listen to yourself? So by current law, the US will only steal 25% of your investment, not including whatever interest or profit you might have been able to turn on that money had it not been forcibly taken from you in the first place. Where it was put in a lockbox.
Not to mention that, once it goes dry, the amount of the payroll tax taken from the young to give back (part) of that investment to the old who it was stolen from to begin with, will be onerous, and they will never ever get back what they are, by force, required to put in.
But don’t call that a fraud or a Ponzi scheme. The government says it’s different, and we, the people who Speak Truth to Power, believe everything the beneficent government tells us!
Again. Go away.
It almost appears that somewhere along the way, the notion that “if some fraud is good, more fraud is better” has become embedded somehow. Well hey, good luck with that!
Zachriel: at the end of the Clinton Administration, even with the conservative Congress he had, Clinton was not running a surplus. We were playing accounting games. Re-imagining reality to create an alternate “truth” that Democrats could tout while building up the heroic image of a serial sexual predator whom they continue to caress with their tongues to this day while simultaneously fighting the GOP’s “war on women.”
Go away.
Clinton was forced to allow congress to balance the checkook. There was not a surplus.
I realize you were still in elementary school then and only read the textbook revisionist history in high school.
Jeff G: So by current law, the US will only steal 25% of your investment, not including whatever interest or profit you might have been able to turn on that money had it not been forcibly taken from you in the first place.
It’s not an investment. The money you pay goes towards your parents’ and grandparents’ social security.
Jeff G: Where it was put in a lockbox.
The small Social Security payroll tax surplus was meant to help with the baby boomers’ retirement. One candidate in 2000 wanted to put that money aside in a “lockbox”, the other wanted to use that money to lower marginal income tax rates. Oddly enough, the candidate with the lockbox won the most votes, but due to a peculiarity in the U.S. electoral system, the other candidate became president. Such is life.
leigh: There was not a surplus.
A surplus is normally defined as positive cash flow. The U.S. paid down the publicly-held debt during the latter years of the Clinton Administration.
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/120xx/doc12039/historicaltables%5B1%5D.pdf
Stupid dotcom bubble for breaking. If only it would have kept going and going like the energizer bunny.
Thanks for the page not found link, Z.
Oh. If Z had actually read the townhall article that Jeff linked to, he’d know why there wasn’t really positive cashflow. You can’t claim positive cashflow when you’re loaning yourself money to pay off external debt.
Slartibartfast: Stupid dotcom bubble for breaking. If only it would have kept going and going like the energizer bunny.
The 2001 recession was mild, and real gains were made during the 1990s as the U.S. restructured for the information age. The cash surpluses would have continued.
Slartibartfast: Thanks for the page not found link, Z.
CBO Revenues, Outlays, Deficits, Surpluses, and Debt Held by the Public, 1971 to 2010, in Billions of Dollars
http://tinyurl.com/Deficits-Surpluses
Slartibartfast: You can’t claim positive cashflow when you’re loaning yourself money to pay off external debt.
A cash surplus is just that, more money coming in than going out. The Clinton Administration left structural cash surpluses. The unified budget was in near balance. Indeed, paying down the publicly-held debt was happening so fast, that some economists were worried about the international implications, as U.S. bonds undergird much of the world economy.
Zachriel doesn’t read. He drops talking points, plays semantic games, acts the sophist, and pretends to reason.
He’s tedious, and he’s meant to distract.
Some economists!
Incidentally, no one here is arguing that the fiscal and economic sanity pushed by the GOP Congress was a bad thing, or that the spending of the GOP Congress under Bush was a good thing. Just that Obama’s policies have made it worse, that SS, Medicare, and every other entitlement program run by the government has been destroyed by the government, and that we’d rather just as soon not keep putting our faith in a government that consistently outspends what it brings in, and whose spending accounts for an every greater percentage of the GDP.
Go away.
Has anyone else noticed that CBO’s “historical perspectives” spreadsheets are all of a sudden invisible?
Transparency!
Its entertainment value escapes me.
Ok, found it, finally.
Here is the federal debt history. Zachriel would have Column D be the figure of merit, but the true figure of merit is Column B.
So, if anyone ever tries to pull that “Clinton paid down the debt” stunt on you again, just throw that at them.
Zachriel: Do you ever stop to listen to yourself?
Zach doesn’t even stop to read the shit he copies and pastes for us. Plus, nobody knows better than Zach just how useless it would be to listen to what Zach had to say.
It’s not an investment. The money you pay goes towards your parents’ and grandparents’ social security.
No, the money I pay goes toward other people’s parents’ social security. My parents’ are supported by my money that I pay to help them. Odd, isn’t it, how Zach believes that I require a government program to care for my family, and how he castigates me for disliking his program when it keeps me from fulfilling the goal that it strives for, yet never achieves?
Umm. Would you believe me if I told you that the only thing Al Gore wanted to put in the lock box were “promissory notes”? Because all the money, income tax, payroll tax, death tax, whatever, comes into the treasury and it goes right back out again. Congress spent the surplus year after year. Because it’s a transfer payment as you go scheme, and since they had more money than they needed to pay-go, the went and spent (on other things).
This surplus you keep waving at us like a talisman only ever existed on paper. Kind of like the “equity” in many homes just before the Housing Bubble burst.
Anybody with half a brain understands this, but because Democrats wave magic talismans like “surplus” and “lockbox” and “Greedy Republicans spent that money on tax cuts” you stay on the plantation they’ve built for you.
Slave.
Reader Poll: Are the wife and I greedy because we continue to spend 12% of our income on our IRAs instead of taking the kids to Paramount Great America, Six Flags, Disney World AND Disney Land, and eating out at Chuck-E-Cheez every week? I mean that money we’re spending on ourselves in the form of retirement savings could be spent on other things, and those little urchins of ours have the right to pursue their bliss at our expense, don’t they? After all, it is the (new) American way. Are we giving our kids their fair share of the family income or not?
Ernst, you’re just begging Z to cut and paste a slew of:
Reagan/Bush!! were bad, bad, bad.
Clinton/Gore were peace and prosperity.
Bush/Cheney were E-vil incarnate. And bad, bad, bad!!!
Obama is the messiah (PBUH).
I dont know if I can take it.