The Only Choice We’ve Left Ourselves
By Ahansen
Looks like the Boomerz, along with the rest of America, are finally going to have to bite the bullet. Not think about biting the bullet, someday, when things get really crazy, but bite the bullet right now, in time for Christmas 2010 –and beyond into the foreseeable future. Your leg (not some vague “somebody’s” leg, but your leg,) is coming off, and you can either have a bullet to clench between your teeth during the amputation or not–it’s your choice. But it should be apparent to all but about oh say, 95% of us, that that’s the only choice we’ve left ourselves.
We 50-60-somethings have always suspected we’d not be receiving Social Security when our time came; that was a program set up to benefit our parents and grandparents– at our expense, as always– and we’ve stepped up to that mandated plate by allowing the state to care for them in their old age rather than get our hands dirty by changing their diapers ourselves. We encourage what we subsidize. But Social Security as we know it today is about to wither away like our aging fun-parts and promises to bring us just about as much non-satisfaction as we reach our not-so-golden years.
Although (and ironically,) the more progressive and traditionally conservative among us acknowledge that this new austerity is upon us (and may even push for its implementation,) one doubts that those most politically vocal about paying down the national debt and limiting governmental intrusion really have any comprehension of what the ramifications of those policies might entail. With the bi-partisan Fiscal Commissions’ task force recommendations, http://www.fiscalcommission.gov/sites/fiscalcommission.gov/files/documents/CoChair_Draft.pdf
we’re about to find out.
Given its civic incuriosity and intellectual limitations, it’s not surprising that America’s vast and amorphous TeaParty refuses to confront its ideological inconsistencies. So neither should it surprise anyone when that huge portion of our country begins howling bloody murder about limiting “our” Medicare, and “our” defense, and “our” pensions, and about how that traitorous (epithet redacted) Obama is raising “our” taxes and destroying our Constitution. (And in all fairness, If McCain/Palin had been elected, the TeaParty would be a coalition of liberals and progressives raising the same stink–and they still may be.)
But in a very real sense, it has been this fine group of citizens who’ve brought the fiscal mess upon us by insisting, in typical call-and-response fashion, upon lavish funding for our invasionary military, our bloated retirement “benefits,” (we worked for them!,) our deregulated banking policies (remember that Cold War fight against “communism,” folks? After the Soviet Union broke up –for the same reasons the US is now doing so, btw– it was simply re-branded as “free market capitalism” and “God’s work,” and WE dolts went for it. ) Then there were our gas-hog trucks and motorized toys, our “right” to big houses and cheap electricity, our stubborn, willful denial of what every credible PhD climatologist and astrophysicist for the last thirty years has deemed obvious, (recall please, that it was George H. W. Bush who first proposed a cap and trade energy policy in an attempt to rein in the fiscal and environmental excesses of his own oil cronies?)
So as annoying as it is to admit, our national NASCAR tailgate party is finally over–and of course you don’t want to let “the illegals” in to clean up your mess, do you?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re going to have to tax the rich,(and the middle class, AND the poor,) re-regulate the FED, clean up the markets, “create” jobs (however we’re supposed to do THAT with the ill-educated citizenry we’ve allowed ourselves to become.) But more significantly, you and I are going to have to take the hit for our apathetic profligacy in letting this financial hoo-rah’s nest develop and fester in the first place. To wit (in my lifetime, at least,) Republicans loot the treasury, then the Dems come in and make it worse trying to clean up the smoking ruins with ill-conceived fiscal dishrags. Without addressing in-depth policy issues, which is another screed for another day, and in the spirit of the Fiscal Commission’s recommendations, here’s how we can start the loot-and-redistribute cycle this time:
-Reduce Social Security by 20%, across-the-board, effective immediately. Eliminate it completely for those with retiree incomes over 50K/year, and raise the retirement age to 70, with no phase ins. Sorry, but it’s not like we didn’t see this coming all our lives. I remember socio-economists screaming about the effects of the “Baby Bulge” on Social Security pay-outs back in the 1960’s. If you’re honest, so do you. On the “bright” side, that big an affected demographic will force a re-calibration of the CPI and a rethinking of just how much “the government” owes its oldster citizens. Isn’t that what the TeaParty is advocating?
-Reduce SSI/SDI benefits to “Widows and orphans” levels, and stop subsidizing semi-literate baby factories by limiting the number of offspring any one mother can receive money for gestating. To, say, one subsidized child per household. (I’m talking about your precious grandbabies, TeaPartiers, not just “Those Others.”)
-Oh, and to counterbalance this, guess what, guys? YOU only get to collect ONE government pension. That means EITHER military, OR public service, OR Social Security, OR “first responders.” NOT all four.
-The defense budget gets reduced by 20%, effective immediately. Close and sell 20% of our off-shore bases, stop subsidizing foreign theocracies, incorporate veterans’ services into the domestic budget, reduce pay scale 20%, cut contractors’ contracts and compensation 20%, and eliminate automatic re-funding of projects and payouts. Fair is fair. The military is a de facto welfare system for the working poor. As much as our corporate oligarchy wishes it so, the rest of us can’t afford their private international security forces anymore.
-Cut all federal operating expenses and salaries by 20%
-Cut all entitlement budgets by 20% Yep, even National Endowment for the Arts. And VA benefits.
-Cut all federal pensions by 20% and guess what? The states will follow suit, as will unions, “private” industry and public corporations. We’ve had 30 years of arrogant expectation, now we get to spend the rest of our lives with our expectations reduced to more globally equitable levels. Whine all you like, stasis is stasis. And here’s a hint: 20% is just the beginning.
-Eliminate child, church, and mortgage tax credits. Period.
-Establish a single-payer public health clinic system to pay for public health issues. If you want dialysis, stomach stapling, hip replacement surgery, fertility treatments, “spare-no-expense” end care for Mum, great. Pay for it yourself. People die– even Boomer people. Remove the insurance industry from public health care and put them back into private elective medicine where they belong.
-Similarly, eliminate 20% of funding for “higher” education and put that money into scholarships for those who legitimately should be pursuing college-level studies. Not everyone should be taking up room in our university systems. Like maybe 20% of them.
-Let the Bush tax holiday expire in its entirety. YOU aren’t going to get a $10M inheritance anyway–let alone leave one– so why do you care? And if you’re making a quarter mill a year in this era of diminished expectations, you can pop for another 4% to ensure your head doesn’t roll when the hungry mobs hit the street. You DO want police and fire protection, don’t you? Or were you planning to pay for that privately?
-Raise gasoline taxes by 20%. Maybe you’ll think twice about driving those little TeaBaggers to school or soccer practice instead of making them walk. And Chevron thinks we’re stupid anyway. http://chevronthinkswerestupid.org/weagree
-Tax processed foods 20%. Kill two birds with one stone here and address America’s fatass health issues while encouraging it to consume healthily instead of mindlessly.
This is hardly a comprehensive list, but at least it’s ideologically consistent with our TeaParty’s stated positions. You don’t get to talk the talk and vote in idiots who do, if you’re not willing to walk the walk you’re forcing on the rest of us. Right? Right?!
Personally, a couple of years ago, I “cut a zero” off of my financial expectations and now live accordingly. That way, a mere 20% off “my” entitlements seems like a bargain. Or something.
More boomer self-loathing. I’m 61, attended 2 tax day tea parties, and supported the commission’s proposals on my own blog. It’s not my doing that pols are so afraid to touch my cohort’s retirement; recall it was the Greatest Generation that rioted at the first suggestions of taxing Medicare in the 80s.
Don’t sell us short.
Social Security is the biggest ponzi scheme ever created. It needs to be adjusted and eventually phased out. There’s no evidence that I’ve seen anywhere that makes it sustainable while providing for a reasonable retirement age.
I would say that our esteemed elected officials retirement and health care is the biggest PONZI scheme ever created.
It’s SS on a smaller scale.
I think the concept of “retirement” as a right that everyone in society should pay for is an expectation of our selfish, entitled Western mentality… We do not even seem to question this. Take a look at different countries and cultures for alternatives:
1. The kids take in their parents and the whole extended family lives together and helps each other out. I think this is the reason why many countries we consider “under-developed” seem to have such happy people as compared to Americans… In America we boot our kids out at 18/22 years of age and if they are still living at home the kids and or parents are deemed “failures”
2. Don’t have kids? Then your expenses are really low as a single or DINK couple so you should be able to save for your own retirement…
SS was set up to be “old age” insurance - not something that enables one to live it up and party on society’s dime for a third of their lives. Set the age to a level that maybe only 30% of the population make it to…
Our culture (if you can call what we have today a “culture”) seems to entitle everything to everybody and everyone is a winner… Everything is extend and pretend and we will deal with it later. Bad feelings are for bad people and we do not have any bad people…
The dislocation and mobility that results from industrialization fractures the extended family model. Old age insurance is mankind’s answer to this. Unless we revert to an agrarian society (family farm), old age insurance is a must.
Please spare of the nostalgic desire to “return to the farm”. You haven’t any idea what you’re asking for.
I have decent income (as a family, together with my wife). In the near future there will be also a significant increase. However, even now I could live quite nice with a 20% cut. Unfortunately, that’s not what I can say about most of my friends/relatives, some of them with a lot higher incomes.
I can’t say that we have ever tried to live within our means, we just questioned every purchase reasonably and when you do that you realize that most of them are wants not needs.
I can’t describe how relaxed I sleep at night …
There is this small problem with deaf ears.
Apparently, you haven’t seen the “Budget Puzzle: You Fix the Budget.” at The New york Times, or read this comment about it, here’s a bit of it:
“First, as inadequate as the allowed spending cuts were, I chose what was available to me–100% spending cuts, 0% tax hikes. And I was able to close the budget gap by 2030 without a single tax increase!
Next, I chose every tax increase offered to me, with no spending cuts. I mean, this was every wet dream a Big Government liberal could dream up–a veritable flood of new taxes! Of course this would decimate the American economy, but we don’t have to speculate about that. The bottom line is that choosing EVERY tax hike available wasn’t enough to close the budget gap by 2030!
So, the next time someone tells you we have to cut spending AND raise taxes, you can confidently reply: No, the budget gap reflects a spending problem, not a revenue problem, and we can close the budget gap with reasonable spending cuts alone.
And when they ask for your source for this n0nsense, you can close the deal by citing none other than The New York Times…”
I agree with clark, ahansen, that your cuts and tax increases are too draconian. It’s easier to fix the deficit than you think!
I agree with Clark, it can be done even without
all the pain. And I laugh at your assertion about
global warming, it’s a fraud.
Laugh at your own risk. Global warming is real. Al Gore is a fraud.
Pollution is real; let’s call it what it is. Let’s not scare people with 20 foot sea level rises.
Heat pollution. I coined that phrase over 20 years ago and prefer it to global warming.
Even if it wasn’t so, it wouldn’t hurt to act like it is, now would it?
Yes, it may hurt– it may drive the wrong behavior. Warming is not necessarily bad, whereas smog has been known to affect people’s health.
The Carbon Trading scheme is dead in Chicago. They have abandoned and closed down the igore driven failure ETF. RIP igore.Anyone for a message?
The Carbon Trading scheme is dead in Chicago. They have abandoned and closed down the igore driven failure ETF. RIP igore.Anyone for a massage?
? I’m confused. I know that smog is harmful to people’s health, so whether we reduce it due to that reason alone or because there may be global warming — then what’s the difference? Just reduce it.
You don’t see something wrong with misleading people?
Total fraud. Anyone who knows anything about the UN will tell you in a heartbeat that CO2 emissions do not cause problems. Anyone who says they do is grossly uneducated about the United Nations.
Global warming is a fact (and could very well be part of a normal cycle). What is causing it is what’s up for debate. Don’t be a fool.
I think people were pretty happy with global warming when it pulled us out of a mini ice age some hundred years ago. It opened up some nice farmlands that had been covered by glaciers. They must be pleased in Greenland.
if yall are going to debate global warming…can you at least make the distinction between man-made versus naturally occurring.
And clark, the commission chairs included cuts and tax increases in the spirit of compromise. You (and congress) should be willing to compromise, or nothing will be accomplished. This “my way or the highway” attitude gets us nowhere.
Actually, Clark, I DID see the budget puzzle and it was what inspired this piece. Although most were superficially defined, there wasn’t a single “cut” option that I had any qualms about checking– and we had a surplus before I even got to the tax initiatives.
My satiric-serious point here is that the USA is SO entitled, that even taking a 20% reduction in our standard of living seems “draconian” to most of us–while to much of the rest of the planet, that level would amount to a huge leap forward in their quality of life.
If we are truly serious about living within our national means–as the TeaParty keeps insisting (and with which I agree–) we’re going to have to face the facts. And those facts are that 20% across the board cuts in our standard of living are just the beginning until we pay off the debts we’ve incurred with “our” wars, “our” benefits, and “our” mindless insistence upon unlimited energy and throw-away consumerism.
+ a bunch, Ahansen…
First this:
“Given its civic incuriosity and intellectual limitations, it’s not surprising that America’s vast and amorphous TeaParty refuses to confront its ideological inconsistencies. So neither should it surprise anyone when that huge portion of our country begins howling bloody murder about limiting “our” Medicare, and “our” defense, and “our” pensions,”
and then this
“Establish a single-payer public health clinic system to pay for public health issues.”
pot meet kettle.
Public health clinics (as opposed to fee-for-service corporate medicine,) are vastly less expensive to administer and finance than redundant private “boutique” facilities. That, ostensibly, is why HMO’s and medical centers came to exist in the first place.
The VA is a public health clinic, for example. Expand that system to include all matters affecting the public health (hip replacements for 90-year-olds and stomach stapling for 30-somethings are not matters of public health,) and quit expecting us private payers to subsidize your massive entitlements with our disparately-priced private insurance premiums. Isn’t that what TeaParty wants?
This is not to say that you’re not welcome to pay for Grandpa’s tricked-out “Scamp” and diabetes paraphernalia yourself.
That’s not really true. The Tea Party is against taxation, but for all of their entitlements. I’m sure ahansen and most democrats would say they are willing to raise taxes (perhaps on someone else, but raise none the less) to pay for these programs.
That’s a big difference.
There’s little evidence that extreme conservatives are any more concerned about spending now than they’ve ever been, and over the past 30 years they’ve never been concerned about spending. They didn’t cut it under Reagan, they didn’t cut it under Bush Sr., and when they finally controlled the government completely under Bush Jr., they didn’t cut it then either. Hell, Social Security privatization never got anywhere even within the Republican caucus despite the fact that it was sold relentlessly and dishonestly as a free lunch. Actual cuts in spending were never on the radar.
The tea partiers are angry not over spending, but because a Democrat is in the White House. Rick Santelli’s rant, which kicked off the whole movement, occurred one month after Obama took office. That was before the auto bailout, before health care reform, before financial reform, before the Iraq drawdown, before cap-and-trade, and before extension of the Bush tax cuts was even on the horizon. The only thing that had happened at that point was the stimulus bill, but even as big as that was, everyone knew it was a one-time shot, not a permanent change in spending levels.
Really, there’s just no evidence at all to suggest that tea partiers are any more upset about the level of spending and deficits than they ever have been. Rather, they’re upset because the spending is currently being done by a Democrat. As soon as Republicans are doing it, they won’t really care anymore.
You are dead wrong.
Not to pay for entitlements, Doggster, to pay off our debts. (Remember that war in Iraq no one wanted but we got anyway? No, wait, the folks who run the TeaParty wanted it, IIRC.)
My personal preferences as to where my taxes are spent have nothing to do with getting this country back to a place where there are actually taxes to collect. If it were up to me, I’d switch the budgets for NEA/NSF and the Pentagon–but I’m willing to compromise on this….
Raise the retirement age to 70? Are you kidding me? Not everyone works in a cushy office job. Do you really think that the average 60 something can handle a factory job?
Social Securities problems can be fixed by simply eliminating the cap. Right now, if you make under 90K you pay SS tax on your entire income, but anything above is not taxed at all.
As for balancing the budget, it should all be taken out of the military budget. We spend more than the rest of the world combined. Why do we still have troops in Germany and Japan 65 years after WWII ended?
FYI - if you cut the military to zero we would still have record deficits. Entitlements are that HUGE and are growing that FAST.
Jojo, think compromise. Sheesh.
“…Do you really think that the average 60 something can handle a factory job?”
Nope, not in America we sure can’t–because we don’t expect to. Nor can we do rough framing, or inventory an industrial warehouse, or….
But we can make cabinets, babysit, do data entry, teach literacy, manage the office, pick up trash in the park, read chest x-rays, take tickets, write blogs, register voters, etc. Or we could readjust our lives and expectations so they’re more in line with our economic realities.
Your outrage reflects precisely the sense of entitlement I’m talking about.
There are a lot of 50 somethings who were laid off that will never work again. Where are all these jobs you speak of ???? And … if these jobs are somewhere… are you displacing younger people who cannot find entry level jobs?
“…are you displacing younger people who cannot find entry level jobs?”
That imbalance why I propose 20% cutbacks in our national expectations. As Boomerz bodies mitigate against more strenuous/stressful work, (and downsizing of oldsters continues,) they will naturally gravitate towards more low-impact, hence lesser-paying, jobs. If their remuneration is reduced to sustainable levels, there will be less of a disparity in availability. Moreover, as we Boomerz begin dying off en masse over the next twenty years, demand for strong healthy workers to fill those jobs will increase.
Those seeking entry level work in this environment would do well to go into some aspect of geriatrics or retirement services.
Less children/immigration… It requires far fewer people to produce much higher standards of living than at any other point in history. We simply don’t need more people, we need more better educated people…
I’ve been living in China for over a year now and few people over 50 work. And it’s a pleasant life for them due to family support. The younger generations bring in the money while the older takes care of kids and cook. Imagine how much more your paycheck could go if you didn’t have to pay for childcare or eldercare?
Over the long run, our fall from top dog to Europe-level will force these demographic changes on us. The very idea of each family unit needing a separate 3000sf house is too wasteful for a country on the decline.
Hmmm, 60-somethings handling physical labor…
Right now, in my very house, I have a Vietnam-era Marine veteran working on a carpentry project. She’s doing a great job and is working with gusto.
Oh, I’m 53 and she’s about a decade older.
You might want to pay by the piece, and not by the hour.
A challenge to you.
My wife came in this morning and said “let’s do
something, we’re to young and active to just be
retired”.
So, Do we start a business or buy into one?
What do we start or buy into? Something for
seniors? travel? games? mobility aids?
Are there nine other HBB’ers that would join
into a new senior venture? Or even a Jr. one?
How about designing a totally new type of
senior assisted living center?
I’m all ears Rancher.
I’ll keep you posted..got one or two ideas running back and forth between the ears..
Great topic for another piece!
Thanks, Rancher. (I would suggest that you and your wife figure out how to do something you LOVE and just worry about making it financially sustainable, rather than profitable.)
I recall one HBB thread a couple of years ago in which we discussed at length the feasibility of converting multi-multi-bedroomed McMansion housing tracts and redundant subdivisions into community-living apartments with central kitchens and living quarters. Nurses and administration upstairs, codgers like us downstairs. Communal living returns to the sixties generation.
I would suggest that you and your wife figure out how to do something you LOVE and just worry about making it financially sustainable, rather than profitable.)
That’s are problem. We’ve always done things we’ve love to do, and we’ve ALWAYS made them profitable…We’ll just slow up
a bit…laughing.
Keep struttin’, Rancher, but you’re a product of the lucky sperm club more than you are of your own devices. I have yet to meet someone who came into this world with thousands of acres who’s not doing things they “love to do.”
I have two suggestions:
1. Develop affordable hearing aids. Right now, they’re ridiculously expensive. And they don’t work very well.
2. Pet-free communities. By this, I mean places where people can live where they don’t have to deal with cats roaming around everyone else’s yard — and leaving deposits. And barking dogs. I would love to live in a place where I don’t have to hear yip, yap, and woof 24/7.
I think bad hearing aids will take care of listening to those yappy dogs.
I am listening also Rancher…
write blogs
1. Start a blog
2. ???
3. …Profit!
Not to mention, there aren’t that many jobs available. But I guess all those kids who graduated college don’t really need a job?
As far as fire and police forces goes, the other unmentioned option is an all-volunteer force.
Volunteer fire fighters today are just as good as those on the taxpayer roll.
If you would please read, The Culture of Violence in the American West: Myth versus Reality, you will find the people of the Western states protected themselves with things such as cattlemen’s associations which produced a low crime environment contrary to popular misconceptions.
A private pay-as-you-go system would probably be relatively inexpensive, on a par with the many roadside assistance programs available today. Perhaps about the same cost as a cell phone plan, or half that?
Think of the jobs and opportunity that would create!
unmentioned option is an all-volunteer force ??
It was that way long ago…Why do you think that changed…Sell the fear…
Well there’s a REASON for the traditional urban/rural split between professional/volunteer firefiters, and it has little to do with the skills of those involved. In rural areas the population is spread out enough that if firehouses are close enough to ensure a timely response, fighting fires is an occasional, part time job. In dense cities OTOH, many firehouses go on multiple calls per day. You’re just not going to get all that many people who can afford to volunteer that kind of time.
I think that most volunteer police are actually used as adjuncts to professional police in large cities. Again, you’re just never going to get enough volunteers for the number of hourse needed to police a large city. And most of the world knows that severly underpaid police forces are typically corrupt as all get out.
What percentage of the cost of an effective firefighting force is salatries and other items that volunteers don’t get? Once you eliminate all that, you still have equipment, supplies, supplies used up in training, etc. How much does a buying and maintaining a fire truck cost? Do volunteer fire fighters pay for their own breathing equipment? Nope. Saying you should use a volunteer force doesn’t mean it doesn’t cost anything.
Around here we have brand new shiny fire and police stations that have been completed SINCE the bust. The perfectly good old locations are vacant blemishes adding to all the other vacant commercial blight. Nothing apparently is too good for our “heros”.
My wife volunteered at a local fire station in Riverside County some years back. When we moved to San Diego, despite having considerable experience, first responder and training, she was told there was NO volunteer work in the San Diego Metro area.
GH
I had the same experience here in Kern Kounty, CA. When I first moved here, having long been a sheriff’s volunteer for Los Angeles County, I offered my decades of horseback mountain rescue expertise to the local department (who had neither the staff nor the animals and equipment to pull stranded or injured hikers and bikers out of the back-country.) You would have thought I’d walked into their offices waving a loaded AK-47.
We don’t DO that sort of thing here, lady.
Subtext:
Don’t even think of trying to infiltrate our Old Boy Network and pension system.
So I didn’t.
“…she was told there was NO volunteer work in the San Diego Metro area.”
Perhaps the fire fighters union had a hand in that.
No thanks on volunteer fire fighters in urban areas. Prince Georges County, Maryland (DC suburb) was an anomaly in that it was (still is?) an urban county with a volunteer fire department. The response times were very slow.
While working there in the early 1990’s just off the beltway, I saw two vehicles come off the freeway on fire (both in the daytime and during non-peak traffic times). The police showed up in 5 minutes, fire department in 15 minutes. By then it was too late. Whatever is saved by going to a volunteer force would get eaten up in higher insurance costs.
If a vehicle is on fire, you can forget about it. There is no way to salvage the car. So your point is, from 2 vehicle fires, that would not have had a larger salvage value after the fire went out, that we need a full-time, sit-on-your-butt-at-the-station fire department, that may or may not respond faster.
I was hoping for a rave report of massive fires, multiple deaths and untold horrors of people being trapped in buildings where they were left to perish. Not so much.
You must work for some government agency that gets money from the ‘real’ fire department.
“You must work for some government agency that gets money from the ‘real’ fire department.”
Not at all. The point was about the slow response times, not whether or not a vehicle would be salvageable after burning for a few minutes versus several minutes. Fifteen minutes versus 5 minutes is a big deal for a fire or life-threatening emergency.
One can legitimately argue about appropriate levels of compensation and staffing, but I don’t think there’s any good substitute for professionally staffed fire departments in urban areas.
I believe that the fire service in PG county is now a mix of volunteer and professional.
And who is going to coordinate these volunteer firemen, or pay out compensation if they’re injured or provide the latest training and equipment? No thanks, I’d rather have paid professionals.
or provide the latest training and equipment? No thanks, I’d rather have paid professionals ??
And you do…Quite handsomely I might add…
Just a few days ago we heard a lot of sirens about 5:00 AM…A lot meaning lost count…We figured a major accident on one of the expressways…A neighbor that jogs early in the morning emailed me later that same day asking if I heard the sirens..He went on to say that he jogged to the sean…Seems a BBQ or trash container in someones backyard had caught fire and had also started fire on the corner eve of the house…He said there were two firemen on the roof, six fire trucks, two battalion chefs and four police cars at the sean…
Aaaand….scene!
Yeah, who the h— is Sean?
What about eve? Who got her involved?
Yeah, sorry about the spelling…Not my strong suit even with spell check…:(
Instead of trying to get in all your kooky left wing socialist digs-in – why don’t you just stuck with the facts - it would be a pretty good article that even evil conservative wackos could agree with…
Republicans loot the treasury, then the Dems come in and make it worse trying to clean up the smoking ruins with ill-conceived fiscal dishrags.
Hahaha. Dems are cleaning up alright.
Raise gasoline taxes by 20%. Maybe you’ll think twice about driving those little TeaBaggers to school or soccer practice instead of making them walk.
Or taking your little darlings to “save the earth” concerts in your SUV. And PS - have you seen Al Gore’s house? Or the entourage that obama flys the globe with?
etc.
The above snippets (and there are many more) does not make you sound like someone to be taken seriously. Just a bitter “progressive” who NOW wants to cut spending/government after you guys lost controlled the house. BTW – the liberals controlled the house/senate/congress and could have DONE all you proposed and more. But instead they just added $2 trillion to the debt with nothing to show for it.
Nuance. It’s what’s for breakfast.
The above snippets (and hundreds of other blog posts of yours) does not make you sound like someone to be taken seriously. Just a bitter, embarrassed, angry republican hiding behind the tea party scam who NOW wants to cut spending/government after you guys lost controlled of the whitehouse, senate and house. BTW – the republican corporatists controlled the house/senate/congress and could have met every bit of their campaign rhetoric but didn’t. Instead they spent $3 trillion and murdered 700,000 human beings all to support their military masters.
See how that works?
You are the only voice of reason here! You got it right…..angry liberal losers! They had it all and they blew it with cramming a BS heathcare law we do not want on us. So we got pissed off and they still don’t get it! So they are dreaming up excuses and loathing to explain it!!!!!!!!!
Who doesn’t want healthcare?
Wow, lots of exclamation points. We coulda used those 2003-2008…just saying.
What is the federal gas tax?
I remember Ross Perot wanted to add $0.50/gal in 1992 to pay off the deficit and people freaked out about the thought of paying $2/gal for gas.
Big Changes are coming….Prepare…
Personally, a couple of years ago, I “cut a zero” off of my financial expectations and now live accordingly. That way, a mere 20% off “my” entitlements seems like a bargain ??
Doing the same for myself…I have always lived below my means so I am not worried much…I have everything really that I need or want…Being self employed my entire life, Health Care is the Elephant in my room…If I told this board what I pay a month for health care there would be a lot of key boards with the morning coffee on it…I am actually considering going to work for someone for the first time in my life (as an adult that is) just to get the security of guaranteed health care…
“If I told this board what I pay a month for health care there would be a lot of key boards with the morning coffee on it”
I’m sure it’s a king’s ransom. And with premiums going up 15% per year in just 10 short years it will cost 4X what it costs today.
I’m sure it’s a king’s ransom. And with premiums going up 15% per year in just 10 short years it will cost 4X what it costs today.
Which, IMHO, is why we will soon see the bursting of the health care bubble. Such cost increases are unsustainable.
Its been going up 10-15% per year for as far back as I can remember…Like I said, its the elephant in my room…Trying to navigate from here too Medicare, that is, assuming its still there when I arrive…
One way we’ve been collectively “buying time” to deal with the double digit increases has been with trading down to inferior plans. Anyone remember when a PPO, where you paid copays to see the Dr and get prescriptions, was considered a “junky plan”? Now those are considered “Cadillac” plans. By 2020 a very high deductible plan (5K per person or more) will be considered a “Cadillac” plan.
I think we are going to see “interesting” changes in the next 10 years. The rise of the nurse practioner (who will become the family doctor) in outlets like Walgreens and WalMart for starters. People travelling to Mexico for elective procedures.
We might even see Medicare cover procedures performed in Mexico (at a much lower schedule rate).
It’s only gonna get weider folks.
I think we are going to see “interesting” changes in the next 10 years. The rise of the nurse practioner (who will become the family doctor) in outlets like Walgreens and WalMart for starters. People travelling to Mexico for elective procedures.
I already see a physician assistant. Big part of the reason was the cost of the doctors I had been seeing. Even though I was self-paying and they didn’t have to eff with an insurance company, there were no deals for me.
BTW, I find my PA to be a much more attentive and caring practitioner than the doctors I’ve patronized locally.
“Even though I was self-paying and they didn’t have to eff with an insurance company, there were no deals for me.”
A sign that they just don’t “get it”. They’re going to wake up one morning, go into the office and find out that there are no appointments for the day, which will be sooner than most people think.
I can’t speak for every state, but in Washington State NPs and PAs are reimbursed the same as MDs & DOs. They also can practice independently. Hospitals tend to have much more limiting restrictions on what NPs and PAs are allowed to do, but with the increase in hospitalists, that also applies to community MDs.
While I am sure many want to vent their frustration at MDs along with the post office, lawyers, politicans and the general manager of their local baseball team, I think most would be shocked to find that Medicare might reimburse a physician (or NP or PA) less for an office visit than it costs to get your oil changed in your car. Despite the costs of an office, having a staff (and paying their medical insurance), and of course malpractice insurance, the increasing few primary care doctors taking medicare get the public’s ire as the cause of the health care crisis.
The solution? Allow balance billing and require all Medicare Providers to post their co-pays at the door. If you want heart surgery by the “best” (whatever some advertising firm convinces you that is) get ready to write a big check. If you want to wait in a broken down office with a ton of other patients to see a provider with minimal malpractice insurance and an overworked staff, you won’t pay much on top of Medicare.
Mexico???
After treating the gunshot wounds will the procedure still be cheaper???
Mexico is a failed state that is going to fall to warlords and criminal gangs… I would not set foot there (or at least not in the border towns…)
If we as Americans would get the hell off our anachronistic, puritanical horse and just legalize all drugs then maybe the incentive of gang violence will be reduced - The War on Drugs has failed - why do we tell our population that despite booze and tobacco not to mention all the CHEMICALS in our “food” that a certain type of plant and other CHEMICALS are “bad” to put in our bodies…
I understand your sentiment. If you prefer, it could be Costa Rica.
With firms like Hospital Planet (website), who send you to safe countries for medical tourism like Brazil or Argentina, why in the world would Mexico be an option.
It might be closer, but Mexico is a scary place, with a much to be desired culture. I’d rather go to India than Mexico for a medical procedure or surgery, and that’s saying a lot.
We dumped our health insurance. If I get sick, the money goes into a separate account ($18,000) a year. If I get Cancer, I am a dual national from an EU country.
Me too! And I give thanks for that. How sad is that?
scdave
We’re small business owners too, and our health care costs are killing us also. We have Kaiser (HMO), just so we never have a Medical Bk (non-controllable events), but we DON’T TRUST THEM. $16K/yr for the 2 of us.We signed up yrs ago. We want to convert to illegal status, since they get Kaiser 100% free.
100% free=yep, not even a co-pay and free pharmacy. Ca is good to criminal invaders.
Wan’t there a news item the other day that said the the majority of K-12 students in Cali are hispanic?
We might as well return California to Mexico, or at least spin it off as an independent nation.
In Colorado,
I believe you recall that K-12 stat correctly. Even in our burb, it’s getting to look 3rd world-ish.
Different cultures view education, morals, and lifestyle different. As I am fond of saying “If you can’t feed them, don’t breed them.”
Thats a lie! And yes, I have Kaiser also!
Anyone without insurance goes to the county hospital. Kaiser and other hospitals may take in an emergency, but will move them to county ASAP.
potential buyer
Excuse me, but if you’re calling me a liar, you’re out of line and wrong. Med-ical in Ca picks up the tab for the illegals. I have friends who work at Kaiser, and filled me in. I have also seen them go free, no co-pays, and no English spoken. You’re wrong.
Next time you’re there open your eyes, ask questions. They were in the Day Surgery Dept with my Husband for Eye Surgery. The illegals were having free surgery. The Nurses were as pissed as us. Ca puts them on Med-ical, Ca’s Medicaid.
FYI, FEMA handed Kaiser over $200M towards the new Panorama City Hospital, and part of it was about the area residence.
Furthermore, there are a bunch of health clinics for the illegals all over L A County. They are taxpayer funded.
Yep.
I have gone to the Clinica Sierra Vista for medical care my Blue Cross policy has refused to cover. Not only has it been free of ANY charge, so has the prescribed medication –which at one point would have cost me $1000+ per month. (BC wouldn’t pay for that either.) So here I am paying state taxes AND an obscene health insurance premium, and I have to go to a clinic for illegal aliens to get necessary medical care.
I was never asked for a co-pay there, and neither was anyone else in the clinic as far as I could tell. (And the place was always packed.)
I DID need to have a translator, though. Fortunately, one of the girls at the front desk spoke fluent English, and so did my physician. There’s something very wrong when illegal aliens in CA have better access to medical care than the people who are paying their and their multiple children’s medical bills. (Just ask my MD-sister whose young daughter was denied admission to County SC while sis was a resident working 80 hour weeks there caring for pregnant Mexicans.)
ahansen
Thank you for that post.You and I both, are paying through the nose for health care, and people here illegally milking the system get preferential treatment free? This country is upside down and inside out.
Good for you, recycling your tax dollar back to you.
WellPoint, Dole, and a world renowned Genecist own The Ca Longevity Center in Westlake Village, and BC doesn’t want to pay claims (been there like you), but they have no problem funding some high end place that caters to corps and the rich. That’s all fine and good, but when you were attacked by a Bear, they didn’t want to pay the bills, and you continue to be denied claims.Wrong, just wrong.
(I live close to the Longevity Ctr, and it’s swank.)
I believe I posted a couple of weeks ago about the plan offered to my friend. She has to pay $43 a week, with a $5,000 deductible - through her company. What a joke! And to add insult to injury, she has a $4,000 deductible if she gets hospitalized!
$5,000 deductible!!!!
With a $5k deductible, what’s the point of having health insurance?
By way of comparison, my homeowner’s policy has a $1k deductible and an annual premium that’s well under $500.
I guess it would only be for the super catastrophic stuff. Otherwise its all out of pocket. Cost structures had better adjust, and fast, or MDs will find themselves as lonely as the Maytag repairman.
One huge reason for having insurance even high deductible coverage is to get the negotiated discounts. Uninsured people pay 3 to 4 times as much for health services as do the insured.
THAT is criminal!
High deductible is the definition of insurance. Covers you when the unexpected happens. What people consider as health insurance is actually prepaid medical. How can we keep medical costs down if you have BCBS employees writing the check for you and execs/shareholders earning a profit? The only reason for health insurance is Americans complete lack of consumption restraint.
With a $5k deductible, what’s the point of having health insurance?
You have it exactly backwards. Insurance should be for catastrophic events, not everyday expenses. A $5000 deductible will keep you from losing your life savings if you have a major medical bill.
I’m currently covered by a COBRA policy that costs $500+ a month for two people, and has a $2400 yearly deductible per family. After that it pays 90% up until we have a total of $16000 covered expenses, and then 100%.
I wish I could keep it until I get to be 65, but unfortunately it’s only until the end of next year.
Marry a Starbuck’s barista.
“Eliminate child, church, and mortgage tax credits. Period.”
I agree with that 100%. IIRC, the deal with the churches was that they’d stay out of politics and they wouldn’t get taxed. Every day I see Rev. So and So or the Pope running their mouth off telling the rest of us how to vote.
“-Establish a single-payer public health clinic system to pay for public health issues. If you want dialysis, stomach stapling, hip replacement surgery, fertility treatments, “spare-no-expense” end care for Mum, great. Pay for it yourself. People die– even Boomer people. Remove the insurance industry from public health care and put them back into private elective medicine where they belong.”
I agree about cosmetic surgery but not dialysis or hip replacement. I know a juvenile diabetic who was on dialysis for years before her kidney transplant. You can’t tell me that a civilized society would let an otherwise healthy 25 year old die from a treatable condition. Same goes for hip replacement - it makes such a huge difference to the quality of life.
I agree about end-of-life care. It’s ridiculous, the lenghts medicine goes to to keep senile 85 year olds alive.
Should the senile 85 year old get a hip replacement?
You’re probably being facetious, Polly, but few orthopods would agree to replace the hip of a senile person. Hip replacement surgery requires a dedicated post-op rehab program in order to be successful.
Hip replacement is not only for the elderly, and certainly not for the faint of heart. For many people, it makes the difference between being crippled and being able to lead a productive life.
One of my colleagues had both hips replaced in her early 60s, about a year apart. She is now of Medicare-eligible age but continues to work because her younger, self-employed husband needs the health insurance. Having watched her hobbling painfully around the department pre-surgery and now seeing her walk normally (she takes spin classes on weekends) has shown me firsthand how life-changing it can be.
My Grandma who is 99 years old (no seriously, she’s actually 99. Turns 100 in August) needs a new knee to be able to even put weight on her leg. There’s nothing left of the old joint but bone on bone. She’s willing to pay cash, but no doctor will touch her because she’s almost certain to die on the table.
Even when the money is there, it doesn’t always make sense to do the operation, and I’m glad the doctors are at least not greedy enough to kill my grandma for money. (Although I feel bad for her.)
UW Medical Center would be overjoyed to do it. They happily installed a pacemaker in my past GF’s great aunt when she was 96, and without the appropriate authorization since my GF was out of town and there was a “do not resuscitate” on file. We were told the training for the intern, I mean operation, went swimmingly. She lived another month or so.
“Hip replacement surgery requires a dedicated post-op rehab program in order to be successful.”
We have a friend who had her knees replaced. The rehab was extensive and include lots of exercise.
I know that in another 10 years or so I will need to replace my right knee. I have been giving it a lot of thought, as to when to have it done (sooner vs. later). Most likely my body will let me know when it’s time. I just hope I can pay for it.
I figure later is better. Techniques will improve and the replacement has a limited lifespan.
OTOH, with medical costs skyrocketing, sooner may be less expensive.
I wonder what the effect on costs would be if we simply made medical education free and paid off the educational debts of all doctors. Then institute a workmen’s compensation type program for victims of medical malpractice and eliminate malpractice insurance. Said compensation program should include free corrective action for said victims. For example, surgical material left in a patient after surgery should be removed for free and some compensation for lost wages and pain and suffering might be appropriate.
I also think public health clinics for treatment of infectious diseases, maternity and infant care, and minor injuries are a good idea. Public trauma centers for major injuries should be included. These are things for which either the cost/benefit ratio makes sense or for which there is no meaningful opportunity for choice.
Probably not when a boob-job and a Jazzy-power-chair would represent better value.
“..You can’t tell me that a civilized society would let an otherwise healthy 25 year old die from a treatable condition,”
That otherwise healthy 85-year old’s life is less valuable than the 25-year old’s? Let’s say the 85-year-old was a retired missionary-physician, and the 25-year old is in prison for armed robbery?
The sad truth is that we MUST make across the board cuts if we’re to afford any semblance of MediCare for the upcoming generation of seniors. In an ideal nation, we wouldn’t have to decide who gets care and who does not. But we’re no longer in a position not to limit our severely diminished re$ources– we need to pay for our little wars and “free market” oligarchy instead.
Unless you want to pay for that 25-year-old’s dialysis yourself–in which case, you’re free to do so and bless your heart.
Sooner or later, someone has to make the decision
Do we spend the $100k and replace the hip of
senile 85 year old lady?
Do we spend $250k on a baby born three months
pre-mature that has a 1 in 10 chances of living?
What happens on that day when we look in the paybook and the money is just not there. It becomes a question of who lives or dies.
Rancher -
A 28 week premature infant has a 90% chance of surviving now days with the vast majority having a “Normal” long term outcome.
Even at 24 weeks (4 months early) survival is 60-70% with at least half of the survivors having a “normal” long term outcome.
Now it gets a little harder to pull the plug, especially if it was your family member, no?
I would cut ALL medical from the 535 idiots in DC as well as their staff.
Nothing will change until change is forced upon us. Then, as usual, the prudent will be expected to bailout the imprudent. Retirement accounts will be taxed out of existance or confiscated to pay for those that didn’t save. A currency reform will confiscate all savings. Property taxes will rise to pay for lavish benefits of the politically well connected.
It is extremely difficult to plan with this much uncertainty. To avoid confiscation, by tax or outright, it is important to hide your assests from government. You can’t hide:
a. retirement accounts
b. real estate
c. savings accounts, stocks, bonds, etc.
You can hide:
a. PM bullion
b. guns ‘n ammo
c. cash
Of course government knows this. To conduct effective wealth mining operations the assests of citizens need to be easily accessible. I would expect for that reason alone that we will see several cashless currency ideas being floated. Only electronic money since government will have easier access to your money. Ownership of various precious metals might become illegal. Any attempt at some parallel currency/exchange system will be cracked down upon.
We will see more efforts at gun control.
Other countries either don’t permit immigration or as in as bad or worse shape than the US.
Allana, kudos for having the, erm, guts to suggest in print that the gubmint should agree to subsidize no more than one child per mother. Will our politicians have the guts to do it?
As for healthcare: before extending govt-paid care to all Americans–a plan that I support wholeheartedly–the problem of Medicare fraud has to be effectively addressed. Fraud alone costs us billions every year.
Medicare fraud, DoD fraud, tax fraud, FED fraud, REIT fraud, Pharma fraud….
Basically, anywhere large stashes of public money are to be found, so, astoundingly is the human tendency to appropriate them to one’s own devises.
Would be interesting to see if having less public money available correlates with a higher or lower incidence of misappropriation.
+1
Not to mention all the jobs gained if we actually hired people to investigate all the fraud. Its goes on in every town in America.
I’d like to see a Medicare fraud hotline. Something like 1-800-MED-FRAUD. Or something like that.
It should be open to anyone to use. Say, you’re in the hospital and a doctor appears your doorway, ostensibly to check on you.
The doctor doesn’t even come into your room, but Medicare gets rung up for $500. Or some other outrageous amount.
Well, that sure smells like fraud, doesn’t it?
And you’re probably not the only patient who’s getting doorway hellos from this doctor. So, you should be able to call it in.
It is very easy to catch and report Medicare fraud. Looking at the statement and picking up the phone is all it took my mother. The folks on the phone are very eager to set things straight.
Well, talk about reinventing the wheel!
Guess who’s not old enough for Medicare, and, thus, has never seen a Medicare billing statement?
One child per father might be even more effective - though somewhat more difficult to verify/enforce.
As a Boomer myself (I was born in 1947), we should see living in austerity now as a good thing. After all, didn’t we preach anti-materialism back then? I live on about $500 a month (no mortgage, no car payments, no CC payments) and manage to have a few bucks left over for beer. Ditto for my wife.
We certainly have cut our expenses. Of course by doing so, (not kidding) we eliminated some $25,000 a year in taxes (Less income to live on, hardly any sales tax, old car with low road tax etc).
This means California is suffering a lot more than we know, because a lot of previously high roller income earners are doing the same thing. Getting by with less and not needing to earn as much leading to a low stress better quality life.
This means California is suffering a lot more than we know, because a lot of previously high roller income earners are doing the same thing. Getting by with less and not needing to earn as much leading to a low stress better quality life ??
Ding, Ding, Ding, we have a winner…This is exactly what I see going on…
+1
+1
I wish I could agree. Here in the bay area, all I see is cars with new dealer plates and if this past weekend was anything to go by, no parking at the mall.
No austerity in my area.
There’s no sign of a recession in the Willow Glen suburb of San Jose, CA. Lots of BMWs, Benz, etc., and packed restaurants too. They can afford to sit this out while the wheels fall off of the ethnic gravy train.
Very true. Just took a drive through Orinda, Fayetteville, Moraga. Beautiful country, beautiful homes, and people galore walking dogs, playing tennis and sipping lattes during the middle of a work day. Maybe they had the day off, like me, who knows. Seemed like an alternative reality…move along folks, no recession to see here. Since Congressmen live in similar comfy conditions I do wonder how they have any concept of what ails the huddled masses.
The silver lining in ZIRP: no income generated for the tax man. This must be how the russkis felt in WW2 when they torched their grain stores, etc. so the nazis couldn’t appropriate the resource for *their* war machine. A bitter victory, deny the enemy via your own starvation. Hard core.
What you hear out of Washington is the opposite of what you suggest. All you get are assurances that no one age 55 or over will have to give up anything in any plan. The reason nothing has happened yet is because they are waiting for a majority of those who matter and are paying attention to hit age 55.
They can’t just eliminate old age benefits for those coming after, because then those coming after will refuse to pay in, and eventually outnumber the beneficiary. So I expect something like the Ryan plan:
No changes for those 55 and over, even if the debt explodes.
Those coming after will get some subsidy in place of of SS and Medicare, but only of federal spending — including all that soaring interest burden — is less than 19 percent of GDP. Which would never happen.
But they’ll have to give the young a reason to pay in. One way to do it is that if there isn’t enough money for you to get SS and Medicare when you are first eligible, you never get it, you just go away and die. Those who become eligible later get priority, so those younger could be promised that when the debts are repaid they will eventually be taken care of.
I have several issues with your viewpoint. First, you can’t refuse to pay in. I’ve been paying in since I was 14 years old, when i got my first part-time job. The government TAKES the money in payroll taxes.
The only way to avoid this is to work “illegally” and hide the income.
Second, we have a huge influx of “illegal” aliens. I have been paying all my life for a system I never wanted to be a part of. When illegals come over, and even “legal” immigrants, lots of them and their families get government subsidies.
If you start working in America legally at age 40 or later, you still get FULL benefits. Most of the pay is based on the last few years, even if you put in NOTHING for 20 or 30 years.
How about a MINIMUM number of years beyond 20. Say 35 years or more to collect, regardless of age. That should have happened to ALL government pension plans. The problem right now is so many people collecting entitlement benefits, double and triple-dipping, at age 50.
Some are collecting full retirements at age 40, with 20 years service.
The government “promises”, made by bureaucrats, not the people, need to END. Now.
So, if you start paying into SS at age 40, you can collect a “full” benefit at age 75. If you have been paying 35 or more years, then you can collect at 65. That would be much more reasonable.
“First, you can’t refuse to pay in.”
When the generations that are told they were getting nothing vote in large numbers than the generations that voted to give themselves everything, they could vote to terminate the SS and Medicare programs. Which is why I predict Generation Greed will seek to screw a specific subset of those coming after.
So, if you start paying into SS at age 40, you can collect a “full” benefit at age 75.
Isn’t SS based on your highest 35 years of earnings? There is a minimum, but it’s only $300-400/mnth.
Wives are the only ones that get SS having paid in nothing. Eliminating payments to widows would probably not float very far.
Mind you, this is not what I would propose.
Social Security could be easily fixed by eliminating the fixed retirement age and payout altogheter. Simply decree that the ratio of those working to those collecting shall be three to one, with people permitted to retiree in birthday order as existing pensioners die and workers come along to replace them. And divide up whatever is collected by formula — if workers earn more, they pay more taxes, and the retired share the benefits — but also the sacrifices when workers earn less.
For Medicare, it could be divided into two programs, both of which would only be permitted to have public costs that remain constant as a share of personal income. Recipients would be asked if they were worried about “death panels” to decide which plan to put them in.
In the first a medical board would divide up the money available among medical services based on what they believe is fair and medically reasonable.
But anyone who said they were worried about death panels would be put in a second plan with no cost controls at all — but with all costs in excess of the limited public contribution paid by the beneficiaries.
WT….agree with you that there is something wrong with making the younger pay for something they will never get.
I was looking at old FDR tapes last night because I was curious about
the logic that they had when they put into law the SSI system and
unemployment insurance .
Basically in the mid 30’s they would of had such a large % of the senior
population going into abject poverty or starving at the time while at the
same time they wouldn’t be able to work to survive and families would not be able to fill in the gap.At the time many seniors lost their life
savings with the run on banks also because of the stock market crash of 1929 .
First, SSI is a insurance system ,not exactly a welfare payment ,but in theory a insurance system that pays off after years of paying in . Likewise ,unemployment insurance is a insurance system ,not exactly
welfare because your paying into it .
Again the medical system is a Insurance system whereby people pay into
for their whole life when they are healthy to get some benefits when they are older when they need to collect .
Aside from the corruption of Congress robbing the SSI funds ,inflation and monopoly price fixing and a number of other factors have created a challenge to the promises that were paid for by seniors during their
working lives .
Nobody would say that we should burn people on their unemployment
insurance if they qualify by saying they need to compromise .
If you promise people benefits by a forced insurance plan for their whole working lives how can you just come along and say “suffer” ,who cares . Now medicare ,thats another matter ,that is a welfare program
that was designed because Insurance Companies didn’t want to insure
people after a certain age in spite of them paying in during years of health in their younger days .
So,my point is the concept of Insurance that doesn’t want to pay the claims after amassing all the money and profits from that money
for years is really at issue here .You have to add in whatever social benefit the USA got when the Congress stole the money from the
SSI funds .
A 20% reduction in SSI benefits would throw a lot of people into abject poverty . Also ,without a careful analysis of the cost of living in the USA
and how the monopolies play into this increase in cost of living ,just cutting benefits without looking at cost of living by price fixing monopolies and insurance companies is a issue here .
Its just like Industry thinking it can cut wages but raise prices at the same time .
As far a military spending goes its clear that we don’t have the luxury of
being the Police dogs of the World any more ,not while we have this kind of debt anyway .
No increase in SS payments to seniors for two years. Obama gave 9% raises this year to his staffers. Don’t you love this hope and change ? NOT
Here’s the 2010 Federal Budget picture:
http://tinyurl.com/ygrbrf3
Economics of this post, while tad stridently phrased, carry some merit. But this was unclear…
—what every credible PhD climatologist and astrophysicist for the last thirty years has deemed obvious,—-
You mean the global cooling they’d been afraid of back then. Or global warming. Or nondescript “climate change”. All of which feeds bucks to high priest Algore?
Let’s not mix pseudoscience into fundemental economic issues, ok?
No need to comment on what you cannot understand.
“Let’s not mix pseudoscience into fundemental [sic] economic issues, ok?”
Saying that economics is a science and climatology is not? That’s some hilarious unintentional comedy. Confusion runs exceedingly deep here.
Uhhh sonny…
Where did I say economics is science?
Apparently, your reading skills are subpar.
So, is it global cooling, global warming, climate change, or the Gore syndicate profit plan that appeals to you?
A whale is too a mollusk!
I won’t tell you how to do an angio, how about you don’t tell JPL how to interpret thermohaline-inversion charts? (As long as we’re keeping pseudoscience out of it….)
I don’t recall telling JPL how to interpret anything.
Global cooling is a scary concept, i concede
Of course, the whole “global” thing is just a distraction from the real environmental threat… too many people… but go try to push population reduction.
“…push population reduction.”
Vocal ZPG advocate since the 1960’s here. One way to do so is to limit the “benefits” to one’s citizenry. Say, by 20%?
(Key word=”citizenry.”)
But But But Ahansen what would we do with the Kardashians, they cant live on a budget or work, even?
Let’s add some more draconian views…
#1 We have to force all people yes even minorities to read write and speak English, no more hip hop ghetto ….Will the teachers Unions go along with this let alone Jesse Jackson?
#2 Bring back Dr Kevorkian…..the end of life issues must be dealt with….I personally don’t want to pay someone $8 hr to wipe my butt, If i get to that point I want to be able Legally to say enough is enough and let me go….no one gets arrested or sued….Polly are you listening?????
#3 of course we should legalize possession of drugs….but still make it a crime to sell it.
And lastly no more Anchor babies…..you are not born an American if your parents are here Illegally……but leave a carrot you can apply for citizenship when you are 18 and not a criminal….
dj,
You will note that people who are fortunate enough to either be wealthy (Mrs. Onasis) or have clear opinions about what they want and kids or other relatives who will help them get it (my Aunt Ruth) get to die at home. Aunt Ruth had bone cancer and refused aggressive treatment. She lasted a few more months than expected while doing hospice at home. My mother thinks that she was “helped along” at the end by being given enough pain killers to keep her comfortable - that dose also being enough so that her breathing stopped a few weeks before it might have if she had been kept on Advil. Mom is still very upset at this. I am delighted. She was a great old lady and I would have been devastated if someone had tried to keep her alive for a few more days or weeks by keeping her in pain. She made her choice and got to stick to it. Just like she chose to shovel snow and sit down by the lake and cook for her family well into her 80’s. (I’m also glad I sent her a giant bunch of flowers for Passover a few weeks before she died. People had stopped sending her flowers months earlier. She deserved flowers.)
I’m afraid that giving people the right to do that, to refuse agressive treatment and die at home with enough drugs to keep comfortable is all we are likely to be able to get in the near future. It doesn’t help folks whose minds go before their bodies. I don’t see that changing. Not that it shouldn’t, but I just don’t see the politics working. Don’t look to the Supremes for a right to commit suicide. Not their style at all.
Hi Polly, I am glad that the hospice benefit was used. I am a RN team leader for the largest non-profit hospice the US. We wish there was more acceptance of hospice and increased utilization. It is a wonderful service. The comment regarding Advil caught my attention. Yes, if there is pain, the body will fight the pain and this can look like a life extension. When you use opiates which are very effective at controlling the pain, the body can relax and let the natural dying process take effect. Unless the opiates were administered IV, there is very little chance that the oral route will cause breathing suppression leading to death. Respirations will slow, but not stop. There is a lot of guilt around the use of opiates as the perception exists that they hasten death. I am sorry for your loss. By the way, I walk the talk, my mother also died on hospice.
Thanks Polly……but what if I don’t want hospice? And what if my mind goes….can I still say enough is enough, or will i be forced to be a burden on the taxpayers and family by “living”?
“And lastly no more Anchor babies…..you are not born an American if your parents are here Illegally……but leave a carrot you can apply for citizenship when you are 18 and not a criminal….”
They are crankin’ those babies out like nobody’s business. This alone is breaking the backs of American taxpayers.
Another way to help solve the social security retirement funding problem would be to delay retirement benefits for all public gov’t employees (including police and firefighters and teachers) to the same age that social security benefits kick in. For those in physically demanding jobs, let them rotate to desk type jobs during the final years of their careers. If they want to retire in their mid 50s, benefits aren’t paid until their mid 60s.
I am thinking more along the lines of means testing social security, and treating it more like insurance than a right. My grandmother collected Social Security, a 1/16 share on an oil well ($1800 /MO), several rental properties (paid for in full) etc. Now she was right that she did indeed pay into Social Security, but she did not need it either.
The bigger issue is medical costs which are out of control for seniors. End of life care costs are huge.
so.. people who positively will never need it shouldn’t have to pay into it.. right?
And if i believe I’ll never need it, mistakenly or not, I should be able to opt out of the system..
No, I am thinking about it more as insurance against the possibility you mess up and your 401K is raided or the likes.
So, in this game, the winners lose, and the losers win. Deliberately losing is the winning strategy.
It’s a government sponsored incentive to fail in life, and retire without adequate means of support..
Not really, unless you think retiring with $1,000 a month is the way to go… The big problem is that people are living too long and costing too much at the doctor. Either we need to pay in a LOT more or start making cuts. Taking out more than goes in just does not work.
And only the dumb people will have income at age 67. The smart ones will have converted to hidden assets or blown it on a big house. Means testing will never work.
I bet 90% of food stamp recipients smoke.
Cut this, cut that..
These current economic difficulties have not changed anyone’s opinion about where money is being “wasted”. We might go back anywhere in time and see the exact same arguments coming from the same people.
But since money is tight, those same people with the same arguments think this is an ideal time to push their same old stale agendas a little harder than before.
In the end, those special interests with the most political power and influence will suffer the least, and those with the least influence will suffer the most.
It’s business as usual… the same old game.. except that there are fewer dollars to play with.
Thank you for the thoughtful post Ahansen.
I am also a member of the “take off a zero” club. On a personal level this equates to a great measure of much welcomed personal freedom.
In my experience it usually takes a major trauma to bring an individual to such drastic change. Grampa used to say that for a person to change more than 10% took a miracle. I rather suspect a steam roller. Not looking forward to the event traumatic enough to bring this nation to such radical change, but it is needed.
LOL on the PhDs.
-Reduce Social Security by 20%, across-the-board, effective immediately. Eliminate it completely for those with retiree incomes over 50K/year, and raise the retirement age to 70, with no phase ins. Sorry, but it’s not like we didn’t see this coming all our lives.”
Raise the Social Security tax threshold limit from 120K to 1Million
Sorry, but it’s not like we didn’t see this coming all our lives.”
The Government spent the surplus so its not our fault. It was a goofy tax that Government loved as long as it surplused but now we are supposed to feel bad about bankrupting the government as we get old , no I don’t think so.
“The Government spent the surplus so its not our fault.”
Yeah, it took all those $100 bills and burned them. Acutally, it didn’t.
I actually looked at federal revenues and expenditures by category in the best economic year (to avoid cyclical factors like booms and recessions) of every Presidency since Carter. I took the revenues and expenditures as a share of GDP. So what changed?
Three things mostly.
The regressive payroll tax went up at first, then trended down as more income was at the top and exempt from it.
The progressive income tax went down a lot under Reagan and under Bush II, more than the regressive payroll tax went up. Income taxes were a higher share of GDP under Clinton.
Federal spending on health care, particuarly on the elderly, soared.
There it is. That’s where the surpluse went. Sorry conservatives, it isn’t going to the illegals and the poor. Sorry liberals, even in 2007 with two wars raging defense spending was lower as a share of GDP than it had been under Carter after the post-Vietnam defense cuts.
Thanks for this, WT.
Eliminate child, church, and mortgage tax credits. Period.
Cut all credits as far as I care we can all file a one page tax return nice and simple.
Childless atheist renters who hate bookkeeping… Unite!
LOL!
Church deductions should have ended decades ago (1980) when these fundie/extremist unChristian cults began popping up all over. You know who I mean…. the “family research council”, Dobson, Perkins and the rest of the evangelical hate machine.
Yeah - and all those deductions for the ACLU, NPR, unions dues…
oops - wait a minute
First ACLU Church, NPR Church, Union Church?
oops - wait a minute
“Given its civic incuriosity and intellectual limitations, it’s not surprising that America’s vast and amorphous TeaParty refuses to confront its ideological inconsistencies.”
I’m an elitist, you’re an elitist, wouldn’t you like to be an elitist too?
Thanks for the laught today, I needed it.
My pleasure, Ed.
Poor righties…. still attempting to portray themselves as vicitims by falsing accusing others of intellectual snobbery.
You guys really need to update your play book.
This woman is now a hardline tea party supporter. Remember her?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YIq5Q15L1o
Well, Hwy’s family must have a Social Security jinx/vodoo going on…
Note:
(My Big Brother & Big Sister may or may not collect SS, but they’re in the Millionaies club, still they “talk worried” about their ability to maximize what they hope to collect)
Fact:
“When you die, all of the money you and your employer paid into the fund becomes the property of the Social Security Administration.”
Well, my lil’ sis, passed away on Saturday, age 55, worked for 40 years.
No Social Security benefits for her or her x2 adult children
My middle Sis passed in 1993, age 47, worked for 30 years.
No Social Security benefits for her or her x3 adult children
My Pa, farmer/carpenter/WW II Veteran, retired age 67, died age 71
50+ years working,…Collected SS for 4 years
My Mother, died age 45.
No Social Security for her either.
Wow - imagine if they had their own accounts (funded with part of their SS “contributions”) that they could pass down or use how they see fit in retirement.
If was suggested by the evil genius Bush II - only to be shot down almost immediately.
The government really likes folks to work for 40 years, pay all their taxes and then die without collecting a cent. It makes it much easier to bribe the others with their hands out.
<”The government really likes folks to work for 40 years, pay all their taxes and then die without collecting a cent.”
So do most corporations.
ecofeco ..you just summed up the real problem in a nutshell .
If you talked about taking 20% from the ill-gotten gains from the wealthy that was made off the backs of the working class there would be a cry so loud of unfair by the Fat Cats that it wouldn’t be funny . Yet the working class should have this collective guilt and beg for these creeps to honor some meager SSI retirement benefit .
Suffice to say that the actions of people would of been different
had they known that they would of been deprived of their benefits
to the point that Industry would not of made the profits they did
had people known they would be robbed when they went to
collect while Industry thinks they get to keep the benefits that
those promised benefits produced for industry .The spending habits would of been different had people known that there would
be a attempt to steal the benefits in the end . In other words the fat cats became wealthy based on people spending because they
had a false assurance of a benefit in old age .
And while Industry further erodes the tax base by outsourcing jobs and manufacturing in other Countries the working class is suppose to feel collective guilt and turn over their salary benefits that
were suppose to go to retirement . The other ploy is to scream fire
and you get TARP bail outs in the amount of trillions .No we shouldn’t tax the wealthy ,that wouldn’t be fair ,and by God the taxpayers should pay for their Ponzi schemes also .
Because most people are so good at picking stocks….
If you eliminate the social insurance part of Social Security, most people will have to save even more during their working years in order to have enough money to live on in case they get lucky and live to be 100 or longer. If they actually do that additional saving (because they won’t have even that one safe annuity to fall back on), it collapses current demand and economy goes down the drain. If they don’t, it leaves society letting senior die of starvation or not taking their medication or becoming homeless OR paying for them through social poverty programs.
Having a social insurance program means that the entire economy together doesn’t have to save as much for the collective post working years. Law of large numbers. Individuals don’t have the luxury. Of course, if you happen to be the kid of a really good stock picker with bad health you might get to “win the lottery.” I don’t see that as great policy.
I think Polly you understand what I was trying to say .There is no analysis what-so-ever in these proposals as to what the entire
gain was to Society for 70 years regarding the assurance of the
safety nets of retirement programs . People were willing to spend more so the economy benefited and gains were made by Industry
because of the effect that produced ,sort of a wealth effect .
The fact that they put FDIC Insurance on saving accounts made it possible for people to put money back in banks again after they folded with runs on the banks after the Great Stock market crash of 1929 .
Society reaped numerous benefits from the Social Security safety
nets that are not measurable by just looking at the analysis once the receiver collects the benefits .
Oh, Hwy.
I’m sorry to hear about your sis. And yes, life ain’t fair, and that’s the Truth.
Thanks for reminding us that who wins and who loses is ultimately a matter of chance–and perspective….
no.. everyone loses.. and it’s only a matter of time.
Define lose.
I refuse to lose. So I redefine it so that I always win.
If “always” is that cosmic blink of an eye commonly referred to as one’s lifespan, I suppose it’s possible to always win.
Sorry to hear that, Hwy. My little sister died at age 39 this summer.
“We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun…”
Hwy, my deepest condolences on the death of your sister. Your family seems to have had an abundance of bad luck and sorrow.
Sorry about your Sis, Hwy.
Yes Hwy and Grizzly sorry for your loss .A younger sister of mind died
at 42 .
Hwy ,you never said anything until now about your sister .In my view 55 is pretty young to die .I’m sorry for your loss .
Want a great laugh? Watch this one. This beaut is the depth of tea party foreign policy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nokTjEdaUGg&NR
Every single one of these cuts, taxes, etc. could be instituted tomorrow, and it would not impact my life one bit, except for improving my future. I’d just drive less to absorb the cost of fuel. Fine by me, and maybe it would mean less single occupant cars clogging up the freeways systems. I’d like to cut EVERYTHING to the bone.
As far as I am concerned, it is the older, greedy generations which have screwed, and continue to screw, me and everyone else in my generation. We’re watching our jobs disappear as they are outsourced, or replaced by the importation of cheap, oftentimes illegal, labor to benefit some fat@ss good ol’ boy who sticks the money in his tight pocket and then goes golfing with his merry band of nation destroyers. At what point does someone grab some cold blue steel, and head out to the golf course for some target practice?
HAH!
Good query Griz, and one more than a few of my more demographically-oblivious acquaintances are about to have answered for them in the most dispiriting way possible.
Try telling a Chicago gazillionaire that his destiny lives about four blocks down the wrong way of the Avenue, and that those well-dressed weekend shoppers clogging the luxury storefronts do NOT represent the end of the recession for most of us the rest of us….
scary stuff..
Do you own a gun?
As a matter of fact I do, Joey. What’s your hometown country club? Only joking- I know you don’t have a pot to piss in. You’re merely a pawn in the game. In fact, Bob Dylan sang a song just for you.
ziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiingggggggggg!
Why do those who don’t have a pot to piss in (or a window to throw it out for that matter) pander for the wealthy elite?
you been asking yourself that same question for years now, and the answer has yet to dawn on you..
it’s sorta like watching a kitten trying to escape from a grocery bag.. i could help you out, but it’s so cute and funny to see you struggle a bit.
No RunJoeyRun….. We’re waiting for a potless windowless type to answer.
Proceed.
I refuse to answer on the grounds that it would only aggravate your inferiority complex.
As if you weren’t going to run. Why run Joey? What is it about being one of the peasant class makes you so embarrassed?
If any law enforcement is watching this thread, I swear to God this character doesn’t know me and i sure don’t know him.
It comes as no surprise that hyperbole is completely lost upon you given that “blindingly” was beyond your grasp.
I can guarantee your “hyperbole” is completely lost on the cops.
You’ll just have to depend on their marginal literacy.
I’d gladly give up what I have paid into SS over the past 24 years, if they would let me opt of paying anymore - and they’d never hear from me again.
Ahansen!
Good to see you back and writing again, and I agree right down the line with you.
Sicko.
mwah, lavi
The Social Security system was an offshoot of the Townsend Old Age Pension Plan. This was incorporated into FDR’s New Deal and was the beginning of American entitlement psychology. Even FDR noted that SS would have to be supplemented by annuities to work.
Without digressing into political partisanship, what can be done?
Here are several suggestions:
1. Have each State pay its share of the Federal budget based on the number of representatives it has in Washington, DC. .
2. Require a balanced Federal budget and have each State determine how it will pay its share.
3. Open up the healthcare system to interstate competition.
4. Have an immigration policy similar to other developed nations, but not as evil as the Mexican immigration policy.
5. At all levels of government, offer workers 10% of one year’s savings for any cost/reducing idea. I’ve seen this work, but it would have to be paid like the secret witness program. Examples? More efficient use of labor, elimination of duplicate positions, more efficient use of vehicles,etc., etc..
(Just think what 10% of these ideas would be: Remove our troops from Korea, Japan and Germany. Or, abolish the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services and The EPA. Or, have every Nation in the UN contribute equal amount of yearly dues. Or, repeal the Davis-Bacon Act. Or, make politicians pay for their own transportation and security. Or, take control of the nation’s money out of the hands of a private corporation and back in the hands of the US treasury.
Maybe it’s all for nothing and we should all just gear up for the disintegration of the Great American Experiment into a smaller collections of independent States and City States.
“we should all just gear up for the disintegration of the Great American Experiment into a smaller collections of independent States and City States.”
Greece, BC, here we come!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Spartans or Athenians?
“…Have each State pay its share of the Federal budget based on the number of representatives it has in Washington, DC….” .
Interesting ideas here, as always, Zeus. We get into sticky issues on the above, though. Connecticut and Mississippi paying in similarly? Not likely.
Some states have strategic value, some natural resource, some labor, some who-knows-what-they’re good for? Then there are things like natural disasters, population and industrial migration, gerrymandering….
Are you suggesting we apportion representation to reflect wealth?
What happens when California gets to dictate social policy to Montana. Or Kansas school boards get to teach kids that dinosaurs walked with Adam and Eve? We’re Balkanized enough by our oppositional political parties without bringing further divisions into the system by codifying an oligarchy, neh? Although at this point, it might just be finally calling a spade a spade
“…Have each State pay its share of the Federal budget based on the number of representatives it has in Washington, DC….”
Actually, this is how the Federal government was financed before the 16th Amendment (Income tax). And before the 16th, the US Treasury printed and regulated the currency. At the same time as the 16th was being passed, Congress gave control, via the Federal Reserve Act, to the Federal Reserve Corporation. The same folks that thought these were good ideas also gave us the 17th amendment. Until 1913, the Electoral college elected the Executive ( which eliminated large cities from dominating), the representatives were elected by the electorate at large, and the Senators were elected by State legislatures ( which diminished lobbyists/ special interests’ influence). All this changed after 1913 and we began our trip down Mr. Slippery Slope.
I once was logging some trees that were seriously damaged by bark beetles and a sawyer marked one out that I wanted saved. “What’s wrong with that one?’sayeth I. “ ‘Cause it’s dead and it just don’t know it yet.”
Sometimes I get the feeling the good ol’ USA is like that old fir.
Jessie Jerkson would cry criminal if you called a ‘Spade a Spade’. hahahahahaha
Just wondering, the post mentions the sh*tty education of citizens, maybe we should eliminate the Department of Education and let folks do what they used to do back in the day, community got together and hired a teacher for their kids, built their own school facilities, etc.
Getting rid of the DOE would be awesome, especially since it’s doing such a lousy job. Sure would free up a lot of bux and put an end to state sactioned pedophilia and arguments about whether kids should be allowed to fly the American flag and such. Not to mention ending the ADHD med dispensaries, top heavy school board administrations, teaching kids in 30 languages, etc. But the best thing is, doing away with the DOE would eliminate a cash cow for lawyers to milk to the max. And perhaps get kids in touch with their parents again and parents in touch with each other to figure out the best way to educated their kids, either at cooperative community schools, home schools, etc.
Oh, did I mention eliminating the DOE would eliminate vast venues for bullies?
“…let folks do what they used to do back in the day, community got together and hired a teacher for their kids, built their own school facilities, etc.”
Exactly… and the first thing to do is give parents vouchers so they can send their kids to a school they KNOW is best for their children.
I’ve always been perplexed by the government policy of warehousing thousands of “headstrong” children in big boxes operated by government employees. The same government that has so little faith in its abilities that they have to contract out the buildings’ construction and the roads and bridges necessary to get to the boxes.
At some point we’ll realize that the government education system is broken and that education should be put out to bid in the private sector. The government then would do as it does with the bridge and building construction: make sure the standards are met or the private sector company loses the contract and gets sued.
[BTW- “I fought the Paw and the Paw won“ wrote another fluid and cerebral post that makes this blog exceptional. Compliments, m'dear]
Pure Communist propaganda. Instead of assisting in the attempt to overthrow the US Constitution, why do you not just immigrate to Cuba or China? Or better yet, move out of the sticks, get a job with benefits like the rest of us and stop begging for “free” healthcare. Maybe then you will have less time to spend dreaming of the good old days before that monster Ronald Reagan came along and put the tip of the dagger in the heart of your glorious revolution. The tea party movement is just pushing that dagger a bit deeper.
Death panels!!! Oh Martha….. the death panels!!!
Lessee…
-Tax the poor.
-Rein in the FED
-Cut funding for NPR.
-Phase out Social Security and Medicare.
-Eliminate public financing of private medicine.
-Limit welfare to one child per family
-Eliminate the mortgage interest deduction
-Cut public pensions by 20% to start and limit them to one per recipient.
If this sounds “Communist” to you, one shudders to think of what you might consider reactionary. Just a suggestion here, but maybe you should consider actually reading what you’re commenting on before your knees start jerking. That way you won’t come off sounding like an uncomprehending douche.
Seriously, hon. This post doesn’t even play as satire and does nothing to inform the conversation we’re having around the pile in the road that is your commentary. If you’re gonna troll, at least try to make it relevant?
We’ve read your stuff. You’re better than this.
Brilliant, AHansen. Everybody sacrifices in this scenario, but maybe we can save the Republic after all.
I would add, take away the right to vote and breed from manifest cretins and parasites.
“… maybe we can save the Republic after all.”
Thanks, Sammy, for seeing through the partisanship and the ideological blinders to confront the social and geo-political realities far too many of our fellow citizens prefer to shunt away under the guise of their (often laughably erroneous,) presumptions.
Patriotism is not a matter of who can yell the loudest or beat their breast the most convincingly. Patriots don’t need to create strawmen or resort to name-calling when asked to confront our nation’s inconvenient truths and philosophical inconsistencies. Rather, patriotism requires our critical analysis and willingness to look beyond our own preconceptions and surface explanations to make reasoned political decisions in the best interests of our country– with open minds and fearless hearts. In short, to examine our national issues “liberally,” (as Daniel Webster defined it, anyway….)
There are millions of us who have nothing left TOO cut. Who’ve opposed the insane polices of the last 30 years that got to where we are today. That have been on the direct and immediate receiving end of offshored jobs and a roller coaster economy with ever moving goal posts and changing rules. Who fell in that gray area of not poor enough to qualify for any type of welfare, but too poor to save any money. Who have ventured and lost and ventured again and lost again, and tried yet again.
But too bad for us, eh?
You sacrifice all you want. I literally have nothing left to lose and will NOT go quietly unto that good night.
Dead,
With all due respect for your eloquent and impassioned argument, you wrote this (in mostly grammatical English,) on a computer, and sent it electronically through the ether for us to digest. This alone puts you in a position of privilege over half the planet–and certainly all who came before us. You apparently had a middle-class job to lose, in a sector that granted you the once-middle-class lifestyle you lament. You obviously had an good education, one that gave you the intellectual background to realize that you were being manipulated throughout this era. And by your own admission got to venture and lose and re-venture again and again by virtue of this country’s market systems. You are still lucid enough to be angry. You still have enough spirit left to fight. You are not broken, just discouraged by relative circumstances.
Of course it’s not fair– either by America’s standards, or from the other end of the spectrum, by the rest of the world’s. You and I and the rest of this blog are going to bear the brunt of our nation’s cumulative bad choices over the last 40 years. And many if not most of us here have been screaming the same bloody murder as you have about those bad choices for the duration.
Those who can least afford the drain on our small legacies will, of course, be the ones to shoulder the bulk of the burden for those who never tried, or didn’t have to. So what’s new? Visit Central Darfur and see what “nothing left to lose” really means. Walk into your nearest pediatric oncology ward, or take a stroll along a highway underpass. Those are the ones for whom it is all “too” bad. Not us. Not really.
Our best hope is that we can channel our anger here into constructive political policy so those who come after us don’t have to endure what’s on the deck for us over the rest of our lives. Fat chance, one fears, for we didn’t listen to our antecedents either, but we’d be remiss not to try.
Please hang in there and keep writing. You are soooo not alone.
Pax,
a
DM,
Hang in there brother. That is no solace I know but Alena is right…. there are many many more just like you. Some understand the facts like you but many have yet to realize how they were robbed of their good middle class job, robbed of their comfortable middle class lifestyle yet still blame unquantifiable, barely identifiable nonsense. There own offspring were robbed of the very same thing and they have NO opportunity.
Why not tax or outright take the wealth of the rich / People seem to think that taking entitlements that were paid into by people are not simply stealing their promised wealth of some meager SSI benefit .
The only difference is the wealthy culprits have all their ill=gotten
gain in Bank accounts and assets while Main Street was stupid enough to think they would get some meager SSI check to
get them by in old age .
Could you imagine how much the rich would squawk if anybody suggested they give up 20% of the wealth they accumulated ,yet people actually think they can cut 20% of the merger
wealth from SSI that was to prevent poverty in old age simply because it’s handed out in a check monthly .
What is with this collective guilt that the working glass needs to pay
for the robbery of the fat cats . This reminds me of the logic when
the great deceivers wanted the Majority to pay for the bail outs for
the bankers by Tarp and other programs that added up to trillions by now .
Why can’t people afford Health care ,isn’t that a more meaningful
question than throwing collective guilt on the masses and say everybody has to pay ,except the wealthy who of course have already taken their money and ran .
“What is with this collective guilt that the working glass needs to pay for the robbery of the fat cats… Why can’t people afford Health care, isn’t that a more meaningful
question…”
This is brilliant.
I never made it to middle class. The education I have is by own means, either the library or OJT. There was never any money to BE saved.
I’m still making payments on my computer. A purchase that many people could just pay cash on. My connection is courtesy of a friend and I do my damnedest to utilize, exploit and capitalize on it for all I can. I have to. It’s part of the deal my friend made with me.
By “venture” I meant swallowing the damned bull about retraining for a better job and more education. A job that always seemed to end up being offshored or requiring more (unaffordable) training in addition to the training already taken. I truly live right in the twilight zone of not poor enough to get any kind of help.
We have Dafur in our own cities. I know. I lived there. And I too have been homeless.
I appreciate your post. Thank you. My post was only mean to convey that I’m still not that far from the “mean streets.” And while I finally have a used car and can rent a decent room, I cannot afford a doctor, dentist, an education or to move where opportunists “might” be and I will NOT go back to poverty I’ve seen.
Because I am NOT the cause of the problem.
As for the rest of the world, I don’t live there. I simply, and I mean this without anger, cannot afford to worry about anyone else’s life. I can barely keep my own life together.
Thats right Brother…. you are NOT the problem. Please stick around here if you would. :handshake:
deadmeat ,your posts really get to me because your the person
that is being forced into a box by a Society and Political system
that caters to the top money 15% of the population . As you said ,
your the person that makes enough not to qualify for welfare but never enough to break out of a trapped economic class .I hope you
get further breaks economically on your pathway in life . When I think about the proposals of taxing people like you that are just getting by barely on your incomes considering the high cost of living these days I want to vomit .
“. Pet-free communities. By this, I mean places where people can live where they don’t have to deal with cats roaming around everyone else’s yard — and leaving deposits. And barking dogs. I would love to live in a place where I don’t have to hear yip, yap, and woof 24/7.”
Pure heresy, Arizona Slim. Don’t you know that pets are more important than people?
Seriously, I keep reading these accounts of people who are homeless because no landlord will allow pets, but won’t get rid of their ‘pooties’, and I’m talking about families with small children. God forbid they put Fido or Mr. Fluffy in the pound and put a roof over their kids’ heads.
I’ve gone door to door for community stuff and couldn’t believe all the dogs these young families were keeping in their vinyl shacks with no fenced yard. Never just one dog, it has to be multiples…and in large sizes too.
Seriously, I keep reading these accounts of people who are homeless because no landlord will allow pets, but won’t get rid of their ‘pooties’, and I’m talking about families with small children.
It sure makes you wonder about the parents’ priorities, doesn’t it?
If you’re in a dodgy/high-crime neighborhood a couple of big dogs are good for security.
Only problem with that idea is that the dogs are left outside to bark at anything and everything that goes walking or bicycling by. Which means that they end up preventing just a little crime while creating a lot of noise pollution.
And, I’m sorry if this offends any big-dog-ophiles, but a seven-year-old kid walking to the school bus stop is not a threat to anyone’s property. And that child doesn’t need to be threatened by aggressive barking.
And, with all of the sound and fury, and brilliant ideas, craziness, and crud posted on the board, nothing will get done, because , no matter what we say we will do, or accept, it makes not one bit of difference to the world, the nation, and the politicans of the country!
Global warming will happen, or not happen, no matter what we do , as the world is too big for the humans to affect it in the long run. In the short run , we will live , die, or adjust to the conditions.
The big lie is what sustains us, and the big lie is INSURANCE.
We have been overwhelmed by the sale of insurance so that now we think we need to pay $15,000 a year to hope we can get some medical treatment, we pay 8% of our salary to hope we can get some assistance in retirement funding, and why do we do this?
Because the insurers have persuaded so that we need to do just that!
Your mothers and fathers may have lived their lives without having any insurance at all, unless you are a young person!
But, now, we all all persuaded that unless we have insurance we will lose everything we hold dear, even our life!
And we seem to refuse to see the strangeness of our beliefs.
The Babylonians developed a system which was recorded in the famous Code of Hammurabi, c. 1750 BC, and practised by early Mediterranean sailing merchants. If a merchant received a loan to fund his shipment, he would pay the lender an additional sum in exchange for the lender’s guarantee to cancel the loan should the shipment be stolen or lost at sea.
The Greeks and Romans introduced the origins of health and life insurance c. 600 AD when they organized guilds called “benevolent societies” which cared for the families and paid funeral expenses of members upon death. Guilds in the Middle Ages served a similar purpose. The Talmud deals with several aspects of insuring goods. Before insurance was established in the late 17th century, “friendly societies” existed in England, in which people donated amounts of money to a general sum that could be used for emergencies.
I have a post above that talks about insurance also .
“…refuse to see the strangeness of our beliefs.”
Until we run into one of life’s little vicissitudes.
Which having insurance tends to mitigate.
Somewhat.
Our city is running a deficit of about $10,000,000 more or less, and they are trying to figure out how to cut the deficit.
Turns out the salary figure in our budget is a about $115 million.
Now when I suggest that they just cut the salaries by 10% for everyone they say they can not do that!
So what do they do?
‘
They set up unpaid days off to lower the salary costs.
Meaning, of course, that the workers get 5% less, but perform 5% less work, leaving the city to have work un-performed.
When I suggest that is not very productive and that it would be better to cut salary 5% and have all of the work done, they don’t seem to understand why that would not be a better solution.
LOL
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/8135582/Contagion-hits-Portugal-as-Ireland-dithers-on-Rescue.html
Eurozone “contagion” rearing its ugly head again. Debt- and credit-based “prosperity” is a dangerous delusion, a reality finally dawning on the citizenry of Europe.
Interesting post, ahansen. I tend to agree with your assessment that we need to prepare for an era of diminished expectations and austerity.
However, I also believe that our national psyche is poorly prepared to come to terms with that, and that our national political system in entirely incapable of it. So instead, we will flail, bluster, and do nothing until it truly reaches a head and we have a real crisis to galvanize action.
One particular item that I wanted to respond to:
“Establish a single-payer public health clinic system to pay for public health issues. If you want dialysis, stomach stapling, hip replacement surgery, fertility treatments, “spare-no-expense” end care for Mum, great. Pay for it yourself.”
I would argue that there is very little that our medical system treats today that actually falls in the “public health” category. Vaccinations, TB, strep throat, STDs, etc are all things that I could consider “public health” to have testing and treatment for.
But most of the things that our system treats are non-communicable. For example, can I catch your cancer? Um, nope. Does that really mean everyone should be strictly on their own for dealing with it?
Drawing the line between elective and non-elective is not nearly as easy as you suggest.
Absolutely agree with you on this one, Prime. Bio-ethics, I.E.; “where do we draw the line?” will be THE political issue of the 21st century.
Just as I’m sure representatives of every discipline, special interest, and philosophy will weigh in ad nauseam in determining parameters and protocols, I’m equally certain the deciding factor will ultimately be…cost benefit to society, not “moral” imperative.
I totally agree, Allena—medical ethics is likely THE political issue of the 21st century.
Cost-benefit to society makes sense in theory, but I fear it may prove quite an unwieldy yardstick in practice.
For example, does benefit to society mean that we have to put a value on the probable future contribution to society of a person? So, the nobel laureate gets their cancer treatment, but the checker at the drug store does not?
I can see making a distinction between public health (e.g. things others can catch vs not), and private health (everything that affects only you). At least there, the line is relatively. But cost-benefit is much fuzzier—and results vary dramatically with how you choose to define/measure benefit. Prenatal vitamins are a no-brainer in terms of low cost and high benefit to the individual, but does it benefit society if we weren’t going to pay for the future medical costs related to their birth-defects anyway?
I would also warn against assuming that those whose specialty is ethics will behave at all ethically; my fun, ironic, relevant anecdote: it was his side-interest and study of ethics by a local alternative-medicine practitioner that intrigued an ex-girlfriend of mind so strongly that she started teaching at his school, and then…….they hooked up. While we are living together, of course.
My point, though, is this: the scary thing about cost-benefit-based care decisions is who is doing the analysis, and what their agenda is.
Who will watch the watchers?
Who will watch the watchers?
Why, WE will, of course. And Sarah Palin.
Long ago I realized that obnoxious and unjust as it is, society reward$ our contributions to it in direct proportion to our value to society as a whole. Thus the professional baseball pitcher is deemed to be worth far more than the special ed teacher, and the autistic child of the celebrity is worth more than the starving crack baby without arms.
The logical conclusion is that those with money will live longer and better through modern medicine thus perpetuating their aggressive/successful genes, and those of us who are merely kind, thoughtful, and unassertive will be the genetic losers. Many good souls will be lost along the way, and the peacemakers will inherit nothing but the earth they are buried in, but the genepool will filter and the strong will survive. And we will continue to gnash our teeth at the essential unfairness of the cosmos.
That’s why I married a doctor.
“and the peacemakers will inherit nothing but the earth they are buried in”
LOL!! Not quite what they thought they were promised, but somehow fitting nonetheless.
“That’s why I married a doctor.”
Good planning there, Allena. Similarly, that’s why I chose to be born to one.
My long resposne has shown up after quite a while; will check back later to see if it eventually does, and repost if not.
My own wish list is to limit defense to “D”efense only on US properties and territories. Last time I checked, “Provide for the common defense” is in the constitution, but welfare and social security are not in the constitution. Nor is “single payer health care.”
No entitlements at all. Pay back everyone what they currently paid into Social Security and stop social security taxes altogether.
Establish a flat sales tax of 10% and eliminate the income tax, capital gains tax, dividends tax, and so on. There will automatically be no tax deductions - no mortgage interest credit, no dependents, whatever.
Cut spending 5% per year and cut my proposed 10% federal sales tax 1% per year until the tax rate is 5%. If there is money left over after financing the court system and national defense and infrastructure, cut taxes more. Make a Constitutional amendment that taxes cannot be raised except by a 90% vote of Congress.
“Pay back everyone what they currently paid into Social Security and stop social security taxes altogether.”
Can’t do that, Bill—that money was spent long ago, either on SS benefits, or on off-budget expenses.
Blasphemer! Sure you can. Print, baby, print!
Funny, sleepless—I almost said that, then held back.
Sure we could repay it, as long as we are willing to print all the $$$s needed. Other than that, good luck finding them.
It will be really interesting to watch the SS trust fund action in the near future; will the Treasury just have to start floating more normal Treasury bonds as the SS trust fund bonds start to be drawn down?
Enquiring minds want to know.
Ok , I was all for National Health care mainly because the private Insurance Companies had become so greedy and bad faith in their practice already forcing rationing by bulldozing the Doctors around .The high cost of health care is in part due to Monopolies and price fixing ,not to mention the extra costs of protective medicine to prevent lawsuits ,and all the costs involved
with the billing on health care . I saw more people in the hospital filling out paper work than people actually attending to patients .
Health care costs are so high that the employers don’t want to give this
benefit to employees any longer ,or they simply can’t afford to .I can just imagine what the policy would cost if they raised the Medicare age from
65 to 70 .These people aren’t even insurable because it would cost about 4 thousand a month or more for a private insurance policy . Medicare doesn’t pay for long term care in a old age home that amounts to high costs that are paid for by the person . I know a guy that was paying 50k a
year to have his wife taken care of for 10 years before she died .Long term
chronic care is one of the most costly aspect of older health care ,but Medicare does not pay for that .
I just think that a government system for all might lower the costs overall ,
but like any industry fraud is a issue that creates higher costs as well as
people overusing insurance systems by going to the Doctor to much because its covered .
We could go a long way to closing the budget gap if we just collected the income tax on forgiven mortgage debt. That’s a trillion dollar middle-class handout that nobody seems to complain about.
The only fair way to cut Social Security is to raise the retirement age until it’s solvent again.
The scary thing is that people want to “means test” it, along with Medicare. This means a frugal person who saved a couple of million by retirement may be NO BETTER OFF than a person who saved NOTHING.
Until this year, I was paying the maximum into the Social Security system since 1984. Last year, I reorganized as an “S” corporation so I could (legally) beat that, by paying myself a salary below the maximum. Of course, BHO wants to stop people from doing this LEGAL operation. (But his mortgage-fraud friends at Acorn can keep right on frauding.)
The scary thing is that people want to “means test” it, along with Medicare. This means a frugal person who saved a couple of million by retirement may be NO BETTER OFF than a person who saved NOTHING.
Exactly. I was forced to pay into “Social Security” for the last 40 years, and I want my money back.
The fact that I have saved all my working life should not be used as a reason to refuse to pay me back under the guise of “means testing” or for any other reason.
If the government wants to return my SS contributions, including the “employer share”, I’ll take it, even though inflation has greatly reduced the value of the money I put in decades ago. Otherwise, I’ll fight tooth and nail to get those “entitlements” that I paid for at gunpoint.
does anyone know, for example, that we are not only subsidizing American companies to produce insane amounts of cotton but now are paying Brazilians $150 million a year to make cotton?
Check this out. Evidence this country is nuts.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/11/09/131192182/cotton