Don’t worry, just a little bump - $70 is just around the corner. Short traders just keep making those margin calls, mortgage the house if you have to. Fortunes await you! PO is for pansies and doomers. At $70 short some more ..... it is going back to $22 .... the world is awash with oil ........ reality has nothing to do with it, its all in those charts!!!!!!!!!!
I meant rather to drill down on your point about the requirement for our culture to have a large manual labor support base to work. "Somebody has to do the work..."
Not necessarily who makes what $'s, but how many are involved in manual vs desk type work.
I don't know if there are any stats on that. It would be too difficult to decide which is which. Besides, I wasn't speaking of only manual work. Work in general. Our tax system taxes income from work - salary and wages - at a higher rate than income from investing. That's why "experts" like Kiyosaki say working is a stupid way to make money.
Our tax system dates from the 1930s. It's really not suited to the new, global economy.
Speaking of which...that really has to be included in any estimate of how much manual labor is required to support our standard of living. We buy clothes made in China, cars manufactured in Mexico, computers assembled in Taiwan. Could we afford all this stuff, if we had to pay what it would cost to manufacture it in the U.S.?
Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2004 4:13 pm Post subject: Social Security Reform = Peak Oil Red Flag !
"Every worker in America will have a vested interest in a growing economy," Ryan said of those who would opt for the personal investment accounts: Link
The harder they push economic expansion (in any way, shape, or form) the harder we will all fall in the end.
Again, social security is a mandatory government owned, government operated retirement fund that boxed out alternative private funds because after most of you paid social security tax, you had nothing left to put into your own private plan.
This is a plan for Fark, since no rational human being would buy such a plan.
So now that the social security Ponzi deal is about to be found out as a scam, the people who want to maintain power over you slaves for thier own benefit, have a way to say "nevermind" and stick it up your asshole.
Just when the bulk of the population must be paid the benefits they were promised, (with all the money haven been stolen by politicians) they want to offer you the option of taking care of yourself and giving up what they have promised you.
I once thought that just old people with poor circulation to their brains were subject to con men. I now know that all you need to have to be subject to con men is to be an American Taxpayer.
Sometimes I think that that which is received is deserved.
Joined: Aug 10, 2004 Posts: 1104 Location: San Diego, CA, USA
Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2004 8:39 pm Post subject:
For those who investigate this issue, they'll find that in fact Social Security is not in danger. A few adjustments and it will be just fine. Social security has allowed grandmothers to avoid starving many times in the past.
It's medicare that is the problem.
And it is not a peak oil red flag. People have been talking about reforming social security for years. Bush first f**ked up medicare by increasing the costs. Now he apparently wants to Fark up social security. I think the reforms will fail. Bush is fast losing credibility. Even though he squeeked through the election (with due help from the poor campaing of the Democrats), Bush is going to lose support as Iraq continues to fall apart, Americans die, and the dollar/budget problems become a crisis.
Joined: Nov 28, 2004 Posts: 11866 Location: Neither Here Nor There
Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2004 9:56 pm Post subject:
Social Security would have worked out fine along with everything else if we could have just kept expanding forever. Its too bad the Star Trek thing didn't work out. Now there's hell to pay because the whole Show is based on expansion.
Joined: Oct 26, 2004 Posts: 305 Location: US Empire
Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2004 10:11 pm Post subject:
trespam wrote:
For those who investigate this issue, they'll find that in fact Social Security is not in danger. A few adjustments and it will be just fine. Social security has allowed grandmothers to avoid starving many times in the past.
That's presuming that the 'trust fund' is actually there. Tell me Trespam, when is the point (year) that SSI payouts overshoot payroll taxes? That's the year that the 'trust fund' must kick in. Investigate where that money is 'invested'.
Merry Christmas. _________________ Gary Malcolm
US Empire
There is no alternative source for our gluttony. Power down or die.
First of all the US government is a corporation by entity type.
I know you mindless Fark hate corporations, but you your big daddy government that is going to take care of you for life, right.
This biggest of the big corporations forced you to contribute to their scam pension plan that gives you about what Enron gave to their shareholders. (And I am a former Arthur Andersen man myself, so I knot the scam.) Yet you needy f**ks suck up to the powers that be cause you think you are going to be taken care of into infinity or death, whichever comes first.
You deserve the corporate screwing that you are going to get. One day either when that check does not arrive or it arrives but it is only enough to buy you one propholactic that you can't even use cause you can't get it up, then will you realize that you are not doing the screwing, but you have been screwed.
But then, con men could not exist, but for a gullible public, you Trespam. You think these politicos are going to suffer thru the demise of this once great economy. They will be laughing their asses off in their comfortable privat enclaves while you are shitting on yourselves. This is because the know the deal and you mostly are dumb f**ks.
To quote my greatgrandaugher, "Duh."
My view is that what will be, will be, and I think that what will be is that you dependent, collectivist, Bush sucking, Kerry sucking rubes will continue to be scamed till the elite have sucked the life out of you and then you will die from lack of food or shelter, or at the end of a rifle while you try to steal sustinance from those who have prepared for the future, just like you are living now by stealing the fruits of anothers labor. If you were not living off the work of others now you would not be an appologist for the current slave system.
It is a sadness, and a pervesion of thought that you consider yourselves to be the same catagory as we independent humans.
This is the second time someone has threatened me with bodily harm on this forum. Be advised if you think you can come and knock me off my homestead you will be sent back packing your balls in your front pocket.
Another paranoid perceiving a threat when none as made.
Highlight where a threat was made against you if you are able.
If you cannot, then I point out your dementia. Of course, under psychiatric dogma, if one confronts a persons delusions, it rarely does anything buy drive them deepen into their delusion.
So I guess you will again see a threat in this post and now claim that your life has been threatened three times and that you will indeed defend it as you previously indicated.
What has been threatened is you ego, not your life, and just to make it more bizarre, you probably aren't competent to defend either.
Joined: Aug 10, 2004 Posts: 1104 Location: San Diego, CA, USA
Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2004 1:06 am Post subject:
gary_malcolm wrote:
trespam wrote:
For those who investigate this issue, they'll find that in fact Social Security is not in danger. A few adjustments and it will be just fine. Social security has allowed grandmothers to avoid starving many times in the past.
That's presuming that the 'trust fund' is actually there. Tell me Trespam, when is the point (year) that SSI payouts overshoot payroll taxes? That's the year that the 'trust fund' must kick in. Investigate where that money is 'invested'.
Merry Christmas.
I understand that. That is not a social security problem. That is a problem with our governments inability to balance its books. Don't call it a social security problem though. The govt is obligated to pay Social Security just as it is obligated to pay you if you own a treasury.
Completely different issue. A problem? Yes. But not a social security problem. Social security, in investing in govt bonds, must receive payment back from the govt. If taxes have to go up for the govt to pay its bills, that's the way it goes.
But, and I repeat myself, we cannot call that a social security problem.
Whoa guys... settle down a bit.
Nobody is threatening anybody.
We don't allow personal threats here @ PO.com
In fact, the only threats which actually mean anything in here... are mine.
Just FYI... _________________ "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F Roberts.
Joined: Oct 26, 2004 Posts: 305 Location: US Empire
Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2004 10:17 am Post subject:
trespam wrote:
Social security, in investing in govt bonds, must receive payment back from the govt. If taxes have to go up for the govt to pay its bills, that's the way it goes.
What bonds? Those promissary notes are NOT interest bearing. In fact, they're not TBills. Simple IOU's.
This is not an SS problem... if you aren't dependent in SSI. The idea that the US gov't would have to pay out SSI benefits from the common fund may seem normal to civilians but it is a gigantic nuclear size bomb to the OMB. These monies are from two very different pots. Future budgets absolutely do NOT count paybacks to the SSI trust fund.
Current projections on when SS is in trouble look toward the point where the trust fund reaches zero (2050)... but that is an explicit denial of reality. Those projections fully expect a trust fund replete with hard currency from decades of payroll tax payments. (About a third of all taxes collected!) Unfortunately those monies have long since been rolled into past budgets to make up for shortfalls without issuing further unsupportable TBills. Think about this in an Alan Greenspan kind of way.
Real tax revenues will have to make up shortfalls when payroll taxes can not cover payouts. If other threads are to be believed, there is already a gap between issued treasuries and purchased treasuries as of last month.
The cause may not be internal to the SS system but it will definitely affect those who collect SSI... better clear out that guest bedroom!
Suppose a tanker is hit in the gulf next month. Oil rockets to $85... GM and Ford shut down 20% of operations. Malwart raises prices by 10%. Unemployment hits 10%. Guess what... payroll taxes decline. Soup kitchen time.
Aside: Silverhair - mellow out, you're sounding like a nut ball
Happy Holidays _________________ Gary Malcolm
US Empire
There is no alternative source for our gluttony. Power down or die.
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