Like the illusion of Wall Street, with its vast and powerful investment banks, now shuttered, China too is an illusion perpetuated by the Globalists that gave us the 15,000 mile Caesar salad, poisoned cat food and lead based paint on babies' pacifiers. Like the illusion that money would come from thin air to always push housing prices higher, China has spent a generation pursuing its illusion. Pursuing an unattainable dream to be like the West, while 6000 years of its carefully shepherded top soil blows into the sea.
IN THE debate over Social Security, US President Bush’s handlers have already won, at least in the short term. Bush and Karl Rove, his deputy chief of staff, have succeeded in convincing most of the US population that there is a serious problem with Social Security, which opens the way for considering the administration’s programme of private accounts instead of relying on the public pension system.
The public has been frightened, much as it was by the imminent threat of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction
_________________ "The age of excess is over. The age of entropy has begun"
Chomsky has a good point, but he is missing the most critical factor in the health care costs problem. He seems to advocate socailized medicine as the best systematic solution for health care, and in that I agree with his assessment.
However, he's missing the real underlying problems with health care. The problem is Joseph Tainter style diminshing returns. Health care will get more and more costly as we struggle to fight ever more difficult illnesses. The low hanging fruit of health care such as penicillin and blood transfusion is long gone, and any steps forward now require a prohibitive amount of effort.
That's what's going to bring social security (and perhaps our entire society) to it's knees, and it would even if we enacted socialized medicine tomorrow.
PhilBiker,
You nailed it. Health Care costs are going to go up because this world doesn't have the resources to fund premium health care for everyone.
If you look at socialist health care, they can get good quality, but not the best. They also spend less on research and development versus US and it has to do with amount of spending US consumers spend.
Social Securities is going to go bankrupt unless they make changes. For anyone to say otherwise, are just willing to wait for it to go bankrupt or think they will be dead by then, so who cares.
Joined: Dec 06, 2005 Posts: 886 Location: Stopped at the border.
Posted: Wed Mar 08, 2006 4:26 am Post subject: Social Security and the Housing Bubble
Are we facing a boomer retirement crisis vis a vis savings that can only be averted by rash action on the part of the Fed? In other words is trashing the housing ATM the only way to get Americans to change their borrowing habit?
In the wake of Ruppert's book it is essential to look further into a future dominated by the new themes that will emerge after the world has experienced peak oil. That world cannot afford an entire generation that has no retirement savings.
Everyone is curious as to why the Fed is hiking rates while at the same time pumping up the money supply. I think it is to kill the housing market while at the same time keeping business supplied with money. Business can pass along the higher cost of borrowing as long as there is a buying public willing to pick up the cost. Americans have been borrowing to consume for a long time. The crashing of the housing market might seriously imperil consumption. Eventually large cash rich corporations will be able to buy up the small indebted corporations that theretofore will have been suppliers or sub-contractors to the much larger corporations around which the small businesses have been formed. The long term theme will be consolidation. Good things like living room technology convergence will emerge. The bad news is that no body will be able to afford it. Well, not it and the weekly supply of Alpo that many will be reduced to.
Joined: Aug 13, 2005 Posts: 603 Location: BlueRidgeVA
Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 1:16 am Post subject: Re: Social Security and the Housing Bubble
evilgenius wrote:
Are we facing a boomer retirement crisis vis a vis savings that can only be averted by rash action on the part of the Fed? In other words is trashing the housing ATM the only way to get Americans to change their borrowing habit?
Rash action from the Fed? Wasn't Greenspan the guy who was urging US consumers to refinance to adjustable rate mortgages right before interest rates started to rise? He planned to keep economic growth(broad definition) going by encouraging chump homeowners to rifle their home equity and go on a wild spending spree.
Sounds like the head of the Columbian cocaine cartel lecturing school children on the evils of drug use.
Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 9:29 am Post subject: THE Social Security Thread (merged)
I was thinking about how social security is basically a big pyramid scheme with each generation's benefits being payed for by the next generation, requiring ever larger numbers of people to pay, mostly immigrants. It seems that the obvious solution would be for each generation to pay for its own benefits. Say, every 20 years a new social security fund is created to pay out benefits for those born in that 20 year period. This would probably require far greater social security taxes or deep cuts in benefits, but at least would be sustainable. Does anyone have an idea how large the funding gap would be on such a system? _________________ One of these now am I too, a fugitive from the gods and a wanderer, at the mercy of raging Strife.
--Empedocles
Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 9:40 am Post subject: Re: Social security
That may sound good, so how is the government going to reimburse the current receipients for their money that has already been taken and given to the prior generation of receipients? Where does a generation start and end, anyway?
Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 10:04 am Post subject: Re: Social security
Even more fundamentally, 'money' and 'funds' are just symbols of value. When you are old - what do you need? Food, clothing, housing, often household and medical services. Except for housing (which is the one thing you can by decades ahead), who is to produce and distribute the goods and services you need? Of course the working generation. You can not really pay those things ahead of time. No matter how much you put into the funds, there is a limit on how much work can be done by a young generation to support on older generation.
Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 10:49 am Post subject: Re: Social security
Is not your argument if carried to its logical conclusion in favor of individual retirement accounts. Why should there be an interpersonal transfer of wealth any more than an intergenerational transfer? Certainly if we each contributed to and managed our own retirement, then the government would have more trouble ripping off our funds as they have now done. There is nothing of significance in the Social Security trust fund that has not been loaned to the general government fund and spent.
Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 4:44 pm Post subject: Re: Social security
Gideon wrote:
Get ready to watch your fat slob of a neighbor eat, smoke, laze, and consume excessively and beyond his means for 40 years so that, when he turns 70, he can draw benefits while you don't qualify because you are "priveleged" or "well off" or whatever - make me puke.
Wrong. A person has to work a total of 40 quarters, or 10 years, to qualify to for SS, and then you will only qualify for a very low benefit.
If you work less than 10 years you can only qualify for SSI, which is an outright welfare program, and is means tested. So if a person who would normally qualify for SSI lives in a household with an income above guidelines, then the person would not collect any benefits.
An example: A disabled person who does not qualify for SS, but would qualify for SSI if living alone, lives in a household of three, who have a total income of more than $1290USD a month. The disabled person is NOT eligible for any SSI benefits or Medicare benefits ever.
Also, the SS tax is nothing but a regressive income tax. In the early 1980’s, when Reagan, with complete cooperation of Tip O’Neal and the Dems, realized that the ‘Reagan Tax Cuts’ combined with Congresses inability to cut spending were about to send deficits soaring. So someone came up with the idea to ‘Fix SS’. The fix ended up being a regressive tax on the middle and lower working classes that the good folks in Washington used to shore up the fed’s shaky finances. _________________ I'd rather get my brains blown out in the wild than wait in terror at the slaughterhouse.
Craig Volk, Northern Exposure, A-Hunting We Will Go, 1991
Joined: Sep 25, 2004 Posts: 4722 Location: Boston, MA
Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 5:11 pm Post subject: Re: Social security
I know that I will never collect a penny in Social Security and it doesn't sit well with me.
If you want to make a welfare program for old people, fine, but don't lie and call it retirement insurance.
I'm sorry, but stealing a big piece of my paycheck and telling me it's so that I won't be eating catfood at age 70 isn't fair and doesn't make logical sense.
At the very least, we need to raise the retirement age. People used to collect money for maybe a couple years before dying. Now we have people collecting for several decades. How is the program going to manage that?
Move the retirement age up to 70 or 71 and then see what the numbers look like. _________________ "www.peakoil.com is the Myspace of the Apocalypse."
Joined: Jan 03, 2005 Posts: 1212 Location: western Wisconsin
Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 7:07 pm Post subject: Re: Social security
The age of retirement to receive full SS benefits is increasing, but not to 70 or 71 yet. If you were born in 1937 or earlier, the age is 65. It increases gradually until if you were born in 1960, the age is 67. Not a big difference, but it may be changed again to a higher age: Chart
Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 9:06 pm Post subject: Re: Social security
I believe there is an entirely logical reason for social security as opposed to IRA type savings. That reaons is simple enough - we live idfferent life spans. Actuaries can calculate the funding required to support a defined level of payouts and in turn the proper premiums ot be paid.
IT happesn oin all kinds of places, such as pension plans. But, one big advantage of social security is that it applies to everyone, its not employer dependant.
The big "but" here is proper premium calcuations. It happened in Canada, our system had to be reworked due to a combination of things - government using the CPP fund as itw own piggy bank, longer life spans and the like. That was done, and it hurt somewhat, our deductions increased. The fund is no longer under the direction of the government but an independent investment board. Deductions used to max out at about $2600 a year, and now it goes right up to $4300. But, it makes sense. I am sure with the enormous wealth of the United States by comparison, it would not be so bad there.
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