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What magic properties does the number "3" have? Why would a slow 75-year projected decline past that number suggest anything special at all? Especially when the decline is premised among other things on legal and illegal immigration being flat or falling across most of that 75 years and on life expectancy at retirement continuing to increase at rates that it did during the 20th century.When we didn't have a recipient to worker ratio of less than 3. https://www.socialsecurity.gov/oact/tr/2011/lr4b2.html
For the same reason that they did? Look, considering the fact that 75% of scheduled benefits will be worth more by the time the SSTF runs out (assuming it ever does) than what 100% of benefits are worth today, those who will be retired in the second half of this century might want to roll the dice and just keep payroll taxes where they are. But if people are as concerned as they say they are about the financial future of the system, then lining up to pay more taxes to support it is the only logical choice for those who don't happen to be otherwise wealthy enough to have arranged for a secure retirement already.1. Why should I have to pay higher taxes into the system to get the same benefits that the last generation got?
We have had both booms and busts. The early 70's, early 80's, and early 90's were hardly the best of times, to say nothing of the Bush-43 administration and since. Do you think it is realistic or pessimistic to project 70 consecutive years of growth at 1.7%, when between 1960 and 2010, we exceeded it 31 times and average growth was 12% higher than that?2. Because we had an economic boom=more money into the system.
And at 2:00 am, it is merely wishful thinking to believe the sun will come up again until you can see the glint of some early morning rays. And we don't need 4% growth to blow the SS projections out of the water. 2% would do the job just fine. Remember: 1997 = SSTF exhausted in 2029...2007 = SSTF exhausted in 2042.But until our economy starts picking up again, it is merely wishful thinking to just assume that we will return to 4% growth rates and everything will be fine and dandy.
Look up the free-rider problem then do the math. A system of near universal coverage cannot be sustained without near universal participation which is not going to happen without a mandate. Which is why Republicans first proposed it.I agree. Except for the insurance mandate.
If that were true, you would have gone off to the library by now and read up on it. The demise of employment-based pensions is hardly some well-kept secret.I'd like to see some evidence?
No, they didn't, and the union had made years worth of concessions on compensation across the board in order to help GM et al. through their problems, many of those the plain result of poor planning and decisionmaking on the part of management. The auto industry as a whole was put in a bind by the Great Bush Recession. That is what brought about the bailouts. Ford was able to get by without assistance only because it has serendipitously arranged lines of credit totalling more than $25 billion before the crisis hit. GM and Chrysler had no such cushion to sit on.After all, excessive pension obligations did actually contribute to the auto bailouts and GM going bankrupt.
On the most elemenatry of scales, this must obviously be true. On any practical, sensible, analytical scale, it couldn't be further from the truth. The economics of a nation are a different animal entirely from the economics of a firm. This should have been made eminently clear in the very early days of your education.Both? Correct me if I'm wrong, but "macro" economics is just the total aggregate of the "micro."
You are too young to have learned better yet. You are still taken by neat and tidy and by the bright, shiny objects otherwise known as simplistic explanations. Your assumptions about the nature and value of land are chalkboard hallucinations. Things do not work that way in the real world. In the real world, two of the key determinants of land value are alternative capital gains rates and the existing level of real estate debt. I didn't see either one of those in your outline.Do elaborate.
The environment is dominated by the manufactured reality of the right-wing disinformation media. Facts are ignored and papered over with myths. Reason is rejected and replaced by emotion. Those who try to remain honest and independent in their reporting are tarred with charges of "liberal media bias" along with the threat and actuality of flash-mob assaults. The Republican Party is one big Lie Machine, and it has been now for decades -- pretty much ever since the post-Watergate hookup with Jerry Falwell and his bands of lying fundie extremists. They stole most of their propaganda techniques from the tobacco companies, then passed them on to the Republicans who've been using them ever since. As Carl Rove might tell you, you absolutely CAN fool enough of the people enough of the time to get to 50%-plus-one a time or two.Nah...they don't lack the skill. They lack the media and the tendency to lie repeatedly.
Nah...they don't lack the skill. They lack the media and the tendency to lie repeatedly.
No, they were merely called that because -- like almost everything Bush ever did -- they were so heavily tilted toward benefitting the already wealthy.
More to the point (and almost anything would be), they were passed before the road to the credit crisis had become clear. But when they failed (as predicted) and the Fed had to jump in to freeze interet rates at 1% in a last-ditch effort to stimulate economic activity, that path became a whole lot clearer.
That's quite irrelevant and also a hoot. ... In fact, having been told by outgoing Clinton staff that terrorism would be the number one problem on their watch, the Bush administration completely ignored the matter until they were blind-sided on 9/11.
And of course Bush-43 would fight his lovely wars in Afghanistan and Iraq using only and exactly the military that Clinton had left to him. You know what they say...
A commander-in-chief leads the military built by those who came before him. There is little that he or his defense secretary can do to improve the force they have to deploy. It is all the work of previous administrations.
-- Dick Cheney
Fortunately, that Clinton hand-me-down military was one that even in the face of declining budgets had moved forward into advanced command and control systems, precision weapons, expanded use of robotics, and communications protocols with real-time links between remote intelligence posts and boots on the ground. JDAMs and drones were Clinton products as well. Every time you hear about what a Predator or Global Hawk did, you should think of Clinton. The overwhelming speed and efficiency of military operations under Bush were owing to the quality and capacity that Bill Clinton had put together for him. Clinton also took care to boost military pay, retirement, and health care benefits -- all of which right-wingers naturally hate him for.
Well yes, the back story includes the Asian and Russian financial crises of the late 1990's that wiped out a significant number of the finance companies, That plus Bush's antagonism toward CRA helped create a credit vacuum in low- and moderate-income communities that unscrupulous private brokers could then easily push into, abusive practices and all;.
The rest of what? Can you explain what it is you are trying to add up?
Yet more unfounded slop. Led by right-wing rising star Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina (remember him proudly, right-wingers), a handful of whackjob southern governors walked away from free money for those struggling in their states to make an entirely partisan point. They put their own political needs ahead of the financial needs of people in their states. "Slime" is a good word for those folks.
We had people being denied credit when they had more assets in the bank they were seeking to borrow from than the amount they were seeking to borrow. Their applications were denied simply because of their street address while similarly situated borrowers in other parts of town were being routinely approved for loans. Does that meet your definition of "fair," or would you oppose practices such as that?
They absolutely WERE the originators of the crisis along with the cowboy capitalists they cheered on and opened doors for and then refused to regulate even when evidence of credit market abuse began piling up to the rafters. Warnings of an eventual crisis building in a stock of poorly underwritten adjustable-rate loans had begun to appear in professional and scholarly writings by late 2003. The chorus grew from there, but it was all ignored. Like the Wall Streeters, the Bush administration wanted its profits now and didn't care about bills that would come due in the future. We tend to descibe that sort of thing with words like "incompetence" and "malfeasance". These were in fact the hallmarks of the entire Bush-43 era.
Wouldn't it be better if these adults talked about who's going to fix the problem, instead of whining about who takes the blame? Boring.
The cannot even agree on what caused the problem, how are they ever going to fix it without first knowing the causes?
If our obviously unselfish professionals can't solve this problem, we could be screwed. /Sarcasm; politicians only care for themselves and their parties.
Republicans will probably take the blame, but it's both parties at fault.
Μολὼν λαβέ;1061292926 said:I really doubt they will take the blame, although the media and President Obama will certainly insist the blame is theirs. Why do liberals think its OK to borrow more than 40 cents for every dollar spent. It's ludicrous. Cut the damn spending!
This tax hike for my family means we pay at least $3,000 in additional taxes next year. That's pretty tough to accept for a middle class family.
Families making between $49,999 and $70,000 will be hit the hardest. Their tax rate will go up from 15% to 28%.
Didn't Obama state he wouldn't raise taxes on the middle class? So let's see, which number lie would this be?
Nah...they don't lack the skill. They lack the media and the tendency to lie repeatedly.
Hysterical laughter ensues - They lack the media???? Seriously? - yet we are constantly reminded that Fox News has the highest viewer numbers of the 24 hr news channels
lack ... tendency to lie repeatedly??? HELP! I can't stop laughing
from Newt and his multiple sex 'offenses' to Paul Ryan's "2:50 marathon time" to our most recent incident of a hypocritical Republican, Crapo of Idaho, and the attempted justifications thereof, the modern Republican Party congress critters have shown an extreme tendency to lie like 5 year olds caught crapping in the sandbox
I am glad we are going over the cliff. I have grown tired of doing all I can for my family while paying my fair share of taxes only to see people on unemployment for two years now which is ridiculous. My taxes will go up but at least the government won't be able to continue these silly programs that reward people for bad behavior.
I have to agree with you. I didn't support the bailouts for pretty much the same reasons. We are falsely holding up parts of society, not providing them with what they truly need and the government is not working because real working solutions will not be popular. Let it come, hell, let the whole damned system crash to the ground, then when people face real hardship, then maybe they will start making and voting for working solutions.
My only caveat is that we should take proper care of our veterans, especially those who were disabled while serving.
A much simpler and fairer solution would be raising the amount of income subject to FICA (presently at $110,000). If that level were to be raised to say $1,000,000, SS and Medicare - if the funds were protected, remember some guy saying something about a "lockbox" - would be solvent into the foreseeable future
How about if we quit allowing public employees to retire at the age of 45 or so? That might be a good start too. Early retirement needs to come to an end, ESPECIALLY if you are in a public sector union.
I totally support unions, and I think the working man needs some leverage, but you must admit that a lot of these public sector unions have gotten greedy.
How about if we quit allowing public employees to retire at the age of 45 or so? That might be a good start too. Early retirement needs to come to an end, ESPECIALLY if you are in a public sector union.
I totally support unions, and I think the working man needs some leverage, but you must admit that a lot of these public sector unions have gotten greedy.
The same way everybody else did.I am not sure how you get "heavily tilted" towards the wealthy.
The previous source was an atrocity. This one is from late 1999 noting a pilot program being run by Fannie Mae in selected markets. The success of CRA portfolios had opened the eyes of traditional lenders to the profit potential available in underserved markets, but serving them would require a blend of prime and subprime lending. The GSE's already defined conformance parameters in the world of prime mortgage contracts and Fannie was setting out to do the same thing for subprime lending. They were looking to develop and test fixed-rate instruments with upfront premiums to offset rated extra risk that borrowers could earn their way out of with consistent payment performance. The 1% two-year premium was just one of the models they were interested in. But before Fannie could ciomplete its research and design efforts, Wall Street and the private brokers jumped the gun on them, pulling an end run around the GSE's and creating the first of cascading waves of adjustable-rate contracts packed with high-cost, high-profit terms that could only get worse for borrowers over time. With nobody in the Bush administration willing to do any sort of oversight, Wall Street went wild, and it ended up being those exotic and volatile adjustable-rate contracts that became the standard in subprime and near-subprime markets. To tragic effect.Since you didn't like the previous source...
That's actually a quote taken from bin Laden. Did you admire him or something? There were more like 75 missiles involved than a few. bin Laden had been at one of the camps blown to bits, but the arrest earlier in the day of one of the people he was supposed to meet with there spooked him, and he left the camp a few hours before the missiles arrived.In August 1998, Al Qaeda carried out two attacks on US embassies. Clinton launched a few cruise missiles and it has been reported by some that they actually manged to kill a camel used by Al Queda.
It took several months to unravel the plot that culminated in the bombing. The CIA report on responsibility was presented to Cheney and Bush in February 2001. They decided to walk away from the matter. I suppose they had other things on their minds.The attack on the USS Cole happened in October 2000, to the reaction to it can be blamed on Clinton and Bush, not Bush alone.
When Clinton took office, nobody had ever heard of al Qaeda or bin Laden. They had grown up in the shadows and backwaters out of Bush-41's graceless exits from Afghanistan in 1989 and Iraq in 1991. This came as a new threat in a new area. There were no resources available. Dealing with it would require new units, new contacts, new networks, new alliances, new tactics, and new means of tracking and gathering information. Clinton did not inherit any of it. He had to invent the entire counter-terrorism apparatus from the ground up. And did. The final impetus was not the botched WTC bombing in 1993, but the successful Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995. Even with no public or international support for major counter-terrorism actions, Clinton put the US in high gear preparation for that. While political pressure on Sudan did yield the expulsion of bin Laden into Afghanistan in 1996 -- a serious setback for him -- it would still be Clinton's second term before the new counter-terrorisn infrastructure reached the early stages of effectiveness. Intelligence services believed they had disabled a cell discovered in Nairobi by raiding it and seizing computers and people. A lesson in the resilience of al Qaeda would be learned at the embassy some weeks later. Of course, Monica Lewinsky was still more important to Republicans. As for the assertion that Clinton "did very little" after the embassy attacks, try a little of this on for size...So clearly Al Qaeda grew and was able to take actions long before Bush came into office, despite attacks and provocations, Clinton did very little to deter or eliminate them. Clinton didn't do his job, he just passed it along. Yes, I accept that Bush was initially lax in his handling of Al Qaeda, but he only had that ability because Clinton didn't take actions and allowed the threat to grow.
The previous source was an atrocity. This one is from late 1999 noting a pilot program being run by Fannie Mae in selected markets. The success of CRA portfolios had opened the eyes of traditional lenders to the profit potential available in underserved markets, but serving them would require a blend of prime and subprime lending. The GSE's already defined conformance parameters in the world of prime mortgage contracts and Fannie was setting out to do the same thing for subprime lending. They were looking to develop and test fixed-rate instruments with upfront premiums to offset rated extra risk that borrowers could earn their way out of with consistent payment performance. The 1% two-year premium was just one of the models they were interested in. But before Fannie could ciomplete its research and design efforts, Wall Street and the private brokers jumped the gun on them, pulling an end run around the GSE's and creating the first of cascading waves of adjustable-rate contracts packed with high-cost, high-profit terms that could only get worse for borrowers over time. With nobody in the Bush administration willing to do any sort of oversight, Wall Street went wild, and it ended up being those exotic and volatile adjustable-rate contracts that became the standard in subprime and near-subprime markets. To tragic effect.
That's actually a quote taken from bin Laden. Did you admire him or something? There were more like 75 missiles involved than a few. bin Laden had been at one of the camps blown to bits, but the arrest earlier in the day of one of the people he was supposed to meet with there spooked him, and he left the camp a few hours before the missiles arrived.
It took several months to unravel the plot that culminated in the bombing. The CIA report on responsibility was presented to Cheney and Bush in February 2001. They decided to walk away from the matter. I suppose they had other things on their minds.
When Clinton took office, nobody had ever heard of al Qaeda or bin Laden. They had grown up in the shadows and backwaters out of Bush-41's graceless exits from Afghanistan in 1989 and Iraq in 1991. This came as a new threat in a new area. There were no resources available. Dealing with it would require new units, new contacts, new networks, new alliances, new tactics, and new means of tracking and gathering information. Clinton did not inherit any of it. He had to invent the entire counter-terrorism apparatus from the ground up. And did. The final impetus was not the botched WTC bombing in 1993, but the successful Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995. Even with no public or international support for major counter-terrorism actions, Clinton put the US in high gear preparation for that. While political pressure on Sudan did yield the expulsion of bin Laden into Afghanistan in 1996 -- a serious setback for him -- it would still be Clinton's second term before the new counter-terrorisn infrastructure reached the early stages of effectiveness. Intelligence services believed they had disabled a cell discovered in Nairobi by raiding it and seizing computers and people. A lesson in the resilience of al Qaeda would be learned at the embassy some weeks later. Of course, Monica Lewinsky was still more important to Republicans. As for the assertion that Clinton "did very little" after the embassy attacks, try a little of this on for size...
Broad Effort Launched After '98 Attacks
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