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Did you bother to read my 1st post? My plan/suggestion is to begin the long-term process of eliminating social security so that people learn to become less “dependent” on others (government) and rely more on themselves….you know…..the way it [b]USED[/b] to be a long time ago. How we get there I’m sure there are many ways but the plan is to get there. It’s beyond me why so many people feel this NEED to have to be “dependent” on someone else or something else. We have evolved into such weaklings……
Age limits needs to be raised. S.S. was at 62 years of age when the average age at death was 68. Now 60 is the new 40. Means testing is another. We need to start it now and phase it in.
That may be a partial solution but eventually (long after we’re all gone) won’t we be facing the same issues again? I forgot where I read this but it was very recent (within the past week or 2) where some scientist indicated that the first person to live to be 150 years old has already been born….
[quote=”clayton”]Age limits needs to be raised. S.S. was at 62 years of age when the average age at death was 68. Now 60 is the new 40. Means testing is another. We need to start it now and phase it in.[/quote]
I’m a firm believer in means testing for both contributors and recipients. Why someone making a million dollars a year should be exempt from full taxation while some guy making the minimum wage pays the full cost utterly eludes me. Likewise, why someone with high taxable income shouldn’t at least have their entire Social Security benefit taxed as ordinary income is a mystery.
The original eligibility age was 65, not 62. Congress amended the Social Security Act years ago. Raising the retirement age to 65 or higher makes fiscal sense, but what will be the impact upon folks in their mid-sixties? And youngsters?
This is the age when disabilities begin to manifest themselves. And, as a sixty something, have you actually gone out and looked for work that you’re still able to perform physically? And work for which your current skill set is in demand in the workforce?
I retired very early (thanks to a very generous governor) and I can tell you that looking for work once you’ve turned forty even is very tough much less looking for work when you’re in your mid-sixties. Of course there are exceptions, but we’re talking about entire populations here and not just a few outliers.
And what might be the impact on the opportunities for young people (college loans, aspirations, and all) if all these sixty somethings are cluttering up the workforce?
[quote=”bogino”]My plan/suggestion is to begin the long-term process of eliminating social security . . .[/quote]
That’s an admirable aspiration, but it’s an [u]end[/u]. I’m asking about the [u]means[/u]. How do we get to where it is you’d like us to end up? What are the steps?
All of the suggestions and plans to “fix” things are a waste of time and would be doomed to fail anyway since they are based on the current monetary system in place, which is on the cusp of collapse. All of us are stuck in this monetized paradigm. All you are talking about is re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
There are a couple of opinions on what is happening. One opinion is that the people who run things (the rich and powerful) have made some bad decisions and we are all paying the price. The other opinion says that this monetary system is a tool of acquisition invented and controlled by elitists and the collapse is engineered to take possession of physical assets. There is ample historical evidence to support the latter opinion.
Both opinions agree on one thing, though: The only interest the rich and powerful have in you and I is grounded in what we can produce for them with our energy. Whether the collapse is engineered or is an accidental tragedy doesn’t change the outcome for us.
As far as I can tell, there is little or nothing that we can do to change the course of the world economy. Governments are corrupt, fiat currencies always, always inflate to zero value and, in due course, the rich get richer, power consolidates, and the poor get poorer…and eventually angrier and violent.
It just get sillier and sillier:
“Wait, it gets better. Before downgrading U.S. debt, S.& P. sent a preliminary draft of its press release to the U.S. Treasury. Officials there quickly spotted a $2 trillion error in S.& P.’s calculations. And the error was the kind of thing any budget expert should have gotten right. After discussion, S.& P. conceded that it was wrong — and downgraded America anyway, after removing some of the economic analysis from its report.”
[ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/opinion/credibility-chutzpah-and-debt.html?src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB ]
It is crystal clear that nobody knows WTF they are doing even when it comes to managing TRILLIONS of dollars?
Scott
So is the US all washed up as a global leader? Not really
[ http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/08/us-decline-not-washed-up ]
Doug Saunders, in Canada’s Globe and Mail concluded: “At some point, the US will become ‘just another country’, like Britain, its sterling-and-empire days behind it. To a certain sort of flag-waver, and to a certain sort of anti-American, that will be as good as death. But given this patient’s habit of leaping up from the mortuary slab, I wouldn’t put pennies on its eyes quite yet.”
Ha!
Notice how he subtly he refers to “Britain” rather than: “Great Britain”
[b]The Trouble with Treblings[/b] (Apologies to Star Trek)
When discussing the loss of the AAA rating, sometimes the main point can be lost!
Can it be noted that the trebling of trillions is the reason for the trouble? That’s what raised the subject for the new Tea Party inhabited Congress, and then for S&P and Moody.
Yet given the incredible spending of the Obama administration and the previous Democratic Congress – little wonder the subject of downgrade came up!
The system is being overloaded, and I think that’s the point. The solution might be taking a look at the spending by the last Congress and reversing it.
[quote=”mike6181″]The solution might be taking a look at the spending by the last Congress and reversing it.[/quote]
And while we’re at it, maybe a brief look at the unfunded spending of the previous Administration, eh?
Mike,
Those who still look to blame one political party or the other for what is happening do not understand the reality.
BOTH parties have been bought by the banking cartel and BOTH parties do the bidding of that interest. They can continue to play the US public as suckers by keeping them fighting with each other and distracted in a false two party paradigm, or any other false, designed paradigm they wish to create such as economic class, race and religion.I read that a lot of people are waking up but every day I am confronted with mainstream opinions which profess that we are no longer in a recession and that one party or the other can save the day. Man, you people have to open your eyes and look around. We are in a depression and it is going to get much worse soon. We have 22 % REAL unemployment and the fake world debt is well above 100 trillion dollars. This cannot be paid. The numbers I am told, do not lie. We would need five more planet earth populations to pay that off. So either we write off that debt or let the IMF move in and turn us into Argentina.
[quote=”sprite”]
BOTH parties have been bought by the banking cartel and BOTH parties do the bidding of that interest.[/quote]In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
-Harry Lime, The Third Man [not factually accurate, but a great quote]
Now, for Switzerland, substitute USA and for clock, substitute Congress.
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