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Ivo_B

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Re: The American Constitution
« Reply #140 on: June 04, 2019, 11:11:27 am »

Oh, come on Robert, we are just having fun and a friendly banter. We love you all guys, French, Dutch, Brits, even Canadians ❤️

This a severe form of discrimination.




Ivo the Gaul from Belgica

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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: The American Constitution
« Reply #141 on: June 04, 2019, 11:17:08 am »

That six-pack must be from the time before they invented beer in Belgica 😉

Ivo_B

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Re: The American Constitution
« Reply #142 on: June 04, 2019, 11:22:00 am »

That six-pack must be from the time before they invented beer in Belgica 😉

It is a kind of idealistic representation of an average Belgian Gaul, I admit.
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rabanito

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Re: The American Constitution
« Reply #143 on: June 04, 2019, 11:37:17 am »

It is a kind of idealistic representation of an average Belgian Gaul, I admit.
Axt, Sword...I'm missing the Magic Potion
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Rob C

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Re: The American Constitution
« Reply #144 on: June 04, 2019, 12:08:33 pm »

1. I think you left out an important component in the formula for pricing - women's production.   Doubling incomes for households when women went to work did not raise prices due to more income because the woman produces her share of the goods.  Her work adds to more production doubling the amount of goods a country produces which balances the prices.  (Assuming one to one man to woman production and the number of workers).  Otherwise, if you;re correct, when you double a country's population, prices would double also.  But that doesn't happen because the amount of goods a country produces doubles as well.  So the prices stay constant.


2. The problem of having to work harder today is because of the government, not private industry, not the rich.  It is that taxes have gone up enormously.  Additionally, deficit spending, debt, and money printing (inflation) raises prices.  Business owners are protected the quickest when this happens because they can raise prices.  Workers on the other hand have to wait for salary increases which follow much later.  So they feel inflation the worse. 


3. Regarding escalating high tuition mention by Roaldi, that's another government caused problem.  By guaranteeing college loans to every Tom, Dick and Harry, half who should be learning a trade rather than going to college, you have too much money chasing too little goods.  So naturally the price of tuition has gone up four fold compared to inflation for everything else.  Meanwhile, you have all these kids in debt who won;t be able to get a starter house and buy other things due to all the debt.  Another government boondoggle.   Same thing happened 15 years ago with government mandated loans to buy homes given to people who couldn't afford it.  Artificially raised the price of homes until the market collapsed and we had the 2008 worldwide recession.  Another clever government attempt at equalizing wealth and advantage that took the country off the rails.

1. The world is full to capacity with overproduction; don't you read the papers, see the ads for Black Frdays, etc, etc.? There is more crap on sale today than ever. Steel production: China makes enough to supply the whole bloody world, at prices the west can't match, and it simply doesn't matter why that's the case: it just is. We don't need more production, we need less, and stable prices where value is tied to reality, not the screw ever variable pitch, of price based on ability of buyers to pay. Milk: there is so much around that our farmers can't get a decent price for it anymore. Our supermarkets are already filled with chicken, eggs, fruit-out-of-season, vegetables and on and on, never mind the threat of a post-Brexit world and us being forced to buy American food products filled with added chemicals nobody in Europe wants... Need a car? the dealers offer all sorts of incentives; why? It's obvious: they have too many. In Britain last month, car sales dropped over 40%, which is a measure of the crazy prices for basic cars, fiscal fears of job tenure if Brexit goes sour; the mess over fuel types and the promise of pie in the sky electric vehicles only the rich can afford. We have problems producing the electricity to service our daily lives as it is; imagine if cars suddenly switched to a total reliance on the plug in the wall! We couldn't service it. The problem is the opposite of what you state: we make too much stuff and so create what used to be referred to as mountains. More hands ensuring more production is the last thing this world needs, of any gender or sexual persuasion.

As for your neat equation of more production, more hands at work balancing the prices, we have more production since at any time, massively growing populations, and prices everywhere have rocketed: your theory is filled with blissful holes.

The work many women did back then was often secretarial and admin. and they seemed to be very capable at it, too! It's my experience from the females I have known that they genuinely are better at multitasking, whatever convenient new theories come along to dispute that. Just consider the busy women you know, and be honest in your appraisal of their abilities to organise. Women used to run a household, balance the domestic budget and keep that smile on every family face; all men did was try to do one job well enough not to get fired. Those essential women at work, those doctors, nurse, lawyers, teachers, they do their jobs well, too, and we could not do without them. But they are not the ones leading to overproduction of goods.

2. I am sure that the very rich will be the first to agree with you; especially those in politics.

Your differentiation between "workers" and business owners is mildly amusing. Both are hit hard. Those who skin the noses of the rest of us are the megas, the invisibles, the Googles of this world, the banks and the money lenders of all stripes; the financial gamblers who brought about the disaster of 2007/2008, where I found myself trying to switch banks as my wife was dying of cancer, trying to help her hold papers steady as she countersigned her name to enable the swapping of accounts in time. We, the little people, always end up in the shit. Those giving advice to governments, toothless, blind watchdogs of the institutions those are meant to oversee, seem to have retained their jobs in the Ivy League business colleges, haven't they; did any go to prison for neglect...? Those sub-primes had nothing to do with political social engineering and raising/lowering people to a common level: they had everything to do with poor surveillance that let them play the game, which was all pure, greedy, and recklessly irresponsible speculation on the part of the moneymen selling fantasies: they just passed the buck to the next guy in their chain. It was bound to crash.

3. Yes; higher education has been touted in Britain for a few years now, and anecdotal reports tell me of kids wanting to leave school earlier than allowed so that they can become plumbers or electricians like their older brothers or mates, and earn massive sums of money a week doing jobs for which there is ever a queue of waiting customers. Those cats don't give a fig for Hamlet. Shakespeare? That's a motorboat, innit? And if they want one, they will probably be able to buy it pretty damnd quickly. Instead, they have to waste a couple more years at school disturbing those who want to study and annoying the teachers. But, but, politicians aspire to being loved for providing higher education to all, even at the price of creating a sub-class of professional students wasting their parents' money or just getting laid. And even some of those who work, what do they study? Esoteric stuff that doesn't give them a snowball's of using the resulting degree to get a job. There's something far wrong with that. You don't need to fund departments that lead nowhere. If you want to do esoteric do it in your own time and wholely on your own buck.

Rob C

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Re: The American Constitution
« Reply #145 on: June 04, 2019, 12:16:50 pm »

It is a kind of idealistic representation of an average Belgian Gaul, I admit.

With so much hanging below the belt, it's a miracle people didn't keep tripping over their bits and falling onto their faces. Or perhaps they did, but kept quiet about it. Brings to mind the fall of Rome; maybe they all did it at once.

Alan Klein

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Re: The American Constitution
« Reply #146 on: June 04, 2019, 01:41:31 pm »

1. The world is full to capacity with overproduction; don't you read the papers, see the ads for Black Frdays, etc, etc.? There is more crap on sale today than ever. Steel production: China makes enough to supply the whole bloody world, at prices the west can't match, and it simply doesn't matter why that's the case: it just is. We don't need more production, we need less, and stable prices where value is tied to reality, not the screw ever variable pitch, of price based on ability of buyers to pay. Milk: there is so much around that our farmers can't get a decent price for it anymore. Our supermarkets are already filled with chicken, eggs, fruit-out-of-season, vegetables and on and on, never mind the threat of a post-Brexit world and us being forced to buy American food products filled with added chemicals nobody in Europe wants... Need a car? the dealers offer all sorts of incentives; why? It's obvious: they have too many. In Britain last month, car sales dropped over 40%, which is a measure of the crazy prices for basic cars, fiscal fears of job tenure if Brexit goes sour; the mess over fuel types and the promise of pie in the sky electric vehicles only the rich can afford. We have problems producing the electricity to service our daily lives as it is; imagine if cars suddenly switched to a total reliance on the plug in the wall! We couldn't service it. The problem is the opposite of what you state: we make too much stuff and so create what used to be referred to as mountains. More hands ensuring more production is the last thing this world needs, of any gender or sexual persuasion.

As for your neat equation of more production, more hands at work balancing the prices, we have more production since at any time, massively growing populations, and prices everywhere have rocketed: your theory is filled with blissful holes.

The work many women did back then was often secretarial and admin. and they seemed to be very capable at it, too! It's my experience from the females I have known that they genuinely are better at multitasking, whatever convenient new theories come along to dispute that. Just consider the busy women you know, and be honest in your appraisal of their abilities to organise. Women used to run a household, balance the domestic budget and keep that smile on every family face; all men did was try to do one job well enough not to get fired. Those essential women at work, those doctors, nurse, lawyers, teachers, they do their jobs well, too, and we could not do without them. But they are not the ones leading to overproduction of goods.

2. I am sure that the very rich will be the first to agree with you; especially those in politics.

Your differentiation between "workers" and business owners is mildly amusing. Both are hit hard. Those who skin the noses of the rest of us are the megas, the invisibles, the Googles of this world, the banks and the money lenders of all stripes; the financial gamblers who brought about the disaster of 2007/2008, where I found myself trying to switch banks as my wife was dying of cancer, trying to help her hold papers steady as she countersigned her name to enable the swapping of accounts in time. We, the little people, always end up in the shit. Those giving advice to governments, toothless, blind watchdogs of the institutions those are meant to oversee, seem to have retained their jobs in the Ivy League business colleges, haven't they; did any go to prison for neglect...? Those sub-primes had nothing to do with political social engineering and raising/lowering people to a common level: they had everything to do with poor surveillance that let them play the game, which was all pure, greedy, and recklessly irresponsible speculation on the part of the moneymen selling fantasies: they just passed the buck to the next guy in their chain. It was bound to crash.

3. Yes; higher education has been touted in Britain for a few years now, and anecdotal reports tell me of kids wanting to leave school earlier than allowed so that they can become plumbers or electricians like their older brothers or mates, and earn massive sums of money a week doing jobs for which there is ever a queue of waiting customers. Those cats don't give a fig for Hamlet. Shakespeare? That's a motorboat, innit? And if they want one, they will probably be able to buy it pretty damnd quickly. Instead, they have to waste a couple more years at school disturbing those who want to study and annoying the teachers. But, but, politicians aspire to being loved for providing higher education to all, even at the price of creating a sub-class of professional students wasting their parents' money or just getting laid. And even some of those who work, what do they study? Esoteric stuff that doesn't give them a snowball's of using the resulting degree to get a job. There's something far wrong with that. You don't need to fund departments that lead nowhere. If you want to do esoteric do it in your own time and wholely on your own buck.

Sorry, more production lowers prices and raises standards of living as money goes further.  Who argues for higher prices?  Do you shop for higher camera prices so you can pay more?  I don;t. 

If prices are going up it's due to inflation and taxes.  Both caused by stupid government practices of deficit spending and money printing.  They devalue the dollar, Euro, Pound, etc.  So what you earn doesn;t go as far as it use too.

We agree on college costs and value of higher education for many losers.   

Robert Roaldi

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Re: The American Constitution
« Reply #147 on: June 04, 2019, 01:48:09 pm »

The problem of having to work harder today is because of the government, not private industry, not the rich.  It is that taxes have gone up enormously.  Additionally, deficit spending, debt, and money printing (inflation) raises prices.  Business owners are protected the quickest when this happens because they can raise prices.  Workers on the other hand have to wait for salary increases which follow much later.  So they feel inflation the worse.   

Is it true that taxes have increased so much? How can they have with so many Republicans in office? I thought Reagan put a big stop to all that (especially high marginal rates) and that all subsequent administrations haven't tampered with the basic formula all that much. Are current tax rates higher than they were in the 1950s/1960s, a period of healthy growth at all income levels. It has been since the 1980s that middle incomes have stagnated and I find it hard to believe that's because of high taxes.

Which brings up another question. Why do Americans (in general) criticize the "socialism" of other countries if their own taxes are so high that it is crippling your economy? Are you socialists too then?
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Alan Klein

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Re: The American Constitution
« Reply #148 on: June 04, 2019, 02:16:31 pm »

Is it true that taxes have increased so much? How can they have with so many Republicans in office? I thought Reagan put a big stop to all that (especially high marginal rates) and that all subsequent administrations haven't tampered with the basic formula all that much. Are current tax rates higher than they were in the 1950s/1960s, a period of healthy growth at all income levels. It has been since the 1980s that middle incomes have stagnated and I find it hard to believe that's because of high taxes.

Which brings up another question. Why do Americans (in general) criticize the "socialism" of other countries if their own taxes are so high that it is crippling your economy? Are you socialists too then?

Republicans are just as bad as Democrats.  They also want to get re-elected.  God forbid Federal benefits are lowered.  So they spend more than they take in in taxes, and have to print money, issue bonds, etc.  Trump complains about the Fed, but then winks at them because he knows he needs them to print money and issue bonds to cover the bigger deficit caused by his new tax legislation. 

Regarding taxes, yes they have gone up.  When I was a teen and working at my first job in 1962, Social Security deduction from my salary was 3%.  There were no Medicare deductions.  Now, combined Social Security and Medicare deductions are 7.65% or 2 1/2 times as much.  Also, the employer has to match the 7.65%.  So the actual "tax" amount is really 15.30%. This really hurts low income people the most because these are mandatory deductions most felt by poorer people.  (Just like the VAT in Europe). Also, Federal taxes are only one component of taxes generally.  There are also State and Local taxes, sales taxes, property taxes.  All these have gone up by huge margins since the 1950's and 1960's.  I'm paying $10,000 in property taxes in New Jersey and I have an average house.  2/3's of those taxes go for local schools to educate kids I don;t have here.  ($18,000 per child)  Sales tax is around 7%, all much higher than it use to be.  So between foreign competition and all sorts of new and increasing taxes, the average worker is squeezed.  I'm sure it's similar in Europe and elsewhere where VAT taxes were added around 1985.  Frankly you can't blame the politicians.  The voters demand all sorts of "freebies" but don;t you dare raise my taxes to pay for them.  Now the Dems are demanding free college education for kids who can't read, $1.7 trillion for climate control, etc. So they'll issue more bonds and print more money.  Who pays for this stuff?  The chickens are coming home to roast.

Also, the 1950's and 1960's were very good for America.  We were the only country left standing after WWII.  We switched our dynamic war production to civilian use and the economy boomed.  Cars instead of tanks.  We were the world's biggest creditor nation producing 40% of the world's production.  Today we are the world's largest debtor nation. We owe everyone.   As nations throughout the world built up their post war economies, we started to have major competition.  Jobs fled overseas as did manufacturing. 

Robert Roaldi

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Re: The American Constitution
« Reply #149 on: June 04, 2019, 02:26:31 pm »

Republicans are just as bad as Democrats.  They also want to get re-elected.  God forbid Federal benefits are lowered.  So they spend more than they take in in taxes, and have to print money, issue bonds, etc.  Trump complains about the Fed, but then winks at them because he knows he needs them to print money and issue bonds to cover the bigger deficit caused by his new tax legislation. 

Regarding taxes, yes they have gone up.  When I was a teen and working at my first job in 1962, Social Security deduction from my salary was 3%.  There were no Medicare deductions.  Now, combined Social Security and Medicare deductions are 7.65% or 2 1/2 times as much.  Also, the employer has to match the 7.65%.  So the actual "tax" amount is really 15.30%. This really hurts low income people the most because these are mandatory deductions most felt by poorer people.  (Just like the VAT in Europe). Also, Federal taxes are only one component of taxes generally.  There are also State and Local taxes, sales taxes, property taxes.  All these have gone up by huge margins since the 1950's and 1960's.  I'm paying $10,000 in property taxes in New Jersey and I have an average house.  2/3's of those taxes go for local schools to educate kids I don;t have here.  ($18,000 per child)  Sales tax is around 7%, all much higher than it use to be.  So between foreign competition and all sorts of new and increasing taxes, the average worker is squeezed.  I'm sure it's similar in Europe and elsewhere where VAT taxes were added around 1985.  Frankly you can't blame the politicians.  The voters demand all sorts of "freebies" but don;t you dare raise my taxes to pay for them.  Now the Dems are demanding free college education for kids who can't read, $1.7 trillion for climate control, etc. So they'll issue more bonds and print more money.  Who pays for this stuff?  The chickens are coming home to roast.

Also, the 1950's and 1960's were very good for America.  We were the only country left standing after WWII.  We switched our dynamic war production to civilian use and the economy boomed.  Cars instead of tanks.  We were the world's biggest creditor nation producing 40% of the world's production.  Today we are the world's largest debtor nation. We owe everyone.   As nations throughout the world built up their post war economies, we started to have major competition.  Jobs fled overseas as did manufacturing.


Hang on a minute. You're saying that deductions have gone up to pay for all these additional services (Medicare, Social Security), so it's not as if the money is disappearing, you're just buying yourselves insurance for your old age. Are you saying that's a bad thing?

And I believe you when you say that your property taxes have gone up, but have they gone up relative to inflation?

You criticized deficit spending. How else can you build the interstate system, public transit, schools, laws, police, essentially all infrastructure. Those aren't costs, over the long run they return far more than what they cost, no different than any investment. Did you think Amazon could deliver stuff to your door so cheaply if they had to build their own private road system? Your categorizing of all government spending as "costs" is absurd. You need to account for the "costs" of NOT doing those things.




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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: The American Constitution
« Reply #150 on: June 04, 2019, 03:05:32 pm »


Hang on a minute. You're saying that deductions have gone up to pay for all these additional services (Medicare, Social Security), so it's not as if the money is disappearing, you're just buying yourselves insurance for your old age. Are you saying that's a bad thing?

And I believe you when you say that your property taxes have gone up, but have they gone up relative to inflation?

You criticized deficit spending. How else can you build the interstate system, public transit, schools, laws, police, essentially all infrastructure. Those aren't costs, over the long run they return far more than what they cost, no different than any investment. Did you think Amazon could deliver stuff to your door so cheaply if they had to build their own private road system? Your categorizing of all government spending as "costs" is absurd. You need to account for the "costs" of NOT doing those things.

1. Whether it is a good or bad thing is utterly irrelevant for the initial question whether taxes went up: what matters is that they were doubled in Alan's example.

2. Yes.

3. You don't need a deficit for all those purposes. Just a (balanced) budget. Deficits increase interest rates.

Alan Klein

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Re: The American Constitution
« Reply #151 on: June 04, 2019, 03:44:27 pm »


Hang on a minute. You're saying that deductions have gone up to pay for all these additional services (Medicare, Social Security), so it's not as if the money is disappearing, you're just buying yourselves insurance for your old age. Are you saying that's a bad thing?

And I believe you when you say that your property taxes have gone up, but have they gone up relative to inflation?

You criticized deficit spending. How else can you build the interstate system, public transit, schools, laws, police, essentially all infrastructure. Those aren't costs, over the long run they return far more than what they cost, no different than any investment. Did you think Amazon could deliver stuff to your door so cheaply if they had to build their own private road system? Your categorizing of all government spending as "costs" is absurd. You need to account for the "costs" of NOT doing those things.






To add to Slobo's succinct response, Medicare and Social Security are good thing for people who are collecting, like me.   I'm 74.  But if you're just a young, poor schnook, trying to raise a family, SS and Medicare deductions take a huge amount out of your disposable income, money you might rather have for your kid's education, or camp, or clothes, or whatever.  And the money has been disappearing.  The government has been taking the surplus of Social Security collections and spending it on other government expenditures rather than setting it aside for downstream Social Security payments.  So now, the program is going prematurely broke.  Good luck to those young schnooks paying in now when they get old enough to collect.  They'll be getting nothing back as I'm spending it all up with the payments the government is making to me now.

Also, I could of had a lot more if I was allowed to save the money on my own rather than giving all that money over the years to SS.  Plus, if you die before collecting, your heirs get nothing of what you gave all your life.  That happened to my mother and sister-in-law both who died in their 50's.  With private savings, you could leave your money to your children.  Also, Medicare payments do not end when you become a senior and collect.  You have to pay roughly $1500-$3500 annually for Medicare depending on your income.  They deduct it right out of your Social Security payment which by the way 85% of which gets taxed as regular income.    So you really don;t get the SS payments they promised you as it's taxed too. 

Alan Goldhammer

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Re: The American Constitution
« Reply #152 on: June 04, 2019, 04:05:03 pm »

The problem of having to work harder today is because of the government, not private industry, not the rich.  It is that taxes have gone up enormously.  Additionally, deficit spending, debt, and money printing (inflation) raises prices.  Business owners are protected the quickest when this happens because they can raise prices.  Workers on the other hand have to wait for salary increases which follow much later.  So they feel inflation the worse. 
I believe the total tax burden has gone down since the Reagan years with the exception of a few states who raised their state and local taxes.  Our tax burden in Maryland has been pretty much constant for as many years as I have been doing my own tax returns.  Inflation has been non-existent since the housing collapse in 2008.

Quote
Regarding escalating high tuition mention by Roaldi, that's another government caused problem.  By guaranteeing college loans to every Tom, Dick and Harry, half who should be learning a trade rather than going to college, you have too much money chasing too little goods.  So naturally the price of tuition has gone up four fold compared to inflation for everything else.  Meanwhile, you have all these kids in debt.
The real problem is that there are too many students for too few places at the existing colleges.  This sparked a rise in the new on-line and "trade" schools many of which were just scams and the Department of Education just stood by not saying anything.  Take the eight Ivy League schools as a simplistic example; the number slots in their freshman class has been constant and applications are through the roof.  At my undergrad school, UC Santa Barbara which is public, it's the same story.  They can only admit about 20% of the qualified applicants.  Also, nobody is forcing any student to take out a loan.  there are ways to go to college cheaply - two years at a community college and then two years at the state college or university.

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who won;t be able to get a starter house and buy other things due to all the debt.
In our area there is pretty much no such thing as a starter house.  One or two bedroom condos in the suburbs are the starter homes of today. 

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Same thing happened 15 years ago with government mandated loans to buy homes given to people who couldn't afford it.  Artificially raised the price of homes until the market collapsed and we had the 2008 worldwide recession.  Another clever government attempt at equalizing wealth and advantage that took the country off the rails.
this is a total misreading of history.  What happened is the shadow banking industry made NINJA loans to lots of people and then used Wall Street to package these into collateralize securities which few people other than those documented by Michael Lewis in "The Big Short" could understand.  The same thing is happen today as loans to dicey corporations are now being packaged in the same manner and nobody seems to care as they are all chasing yield.
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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: The American Constitution
« Reply #153 on: June 04, 2019, 04:24:16 pm »

And the money has been disappearing.  The government has been taking the surplus of Social Security collections and spending it on other government expenditures rather than setting it aside for downstream Social Security payments.  So now, the program is going prematurely broke.
You are wrong.  Social Security can only invest in special interest bearing government securities.  It is not going prematurely broke.  I think you are confusing Medicare which has more immediate solvency problems but could be easily corrected if the US moved to some form of national health care be it single payor or government regulated private insurance as is the case in several European countries.  Social Security can also be fixed in a number of ways as well.

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Also, I could of had a lot more if I was allowed to save the money on my own rather than giving all that money over the years to SS.  Plus, if you die before collecting, your heirs get nothing of what you gave all your life.  That happened to my mother and sister-in-law both who died in their 50's.
You are presuming that you are a knowledgeable investor, perhaps you are; the vast majority of American are not.  the number of people who rely 100% on Social Security is extremely high.  Also, if you have other retirement income up 85% of your Social Security income is taxed and goes back into the trust fund (we pay such a tax).  I don't know the particular case that you cite, but there are survivor benefits under Medicare for both spouse and children.

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Also, Medicare payments do not end when you become a senior and collect.  You have to pay roughly $1500-$3500 annually for Medicare depending on your income.  They deduct it right out of your Social Security payment which by the way 85% of which gets taxed as regular income.    So you really don;t get the SS payments they promised you as it's taxed too.
As I noted above, you only pay tax on your Social Security earnings if you have additional retirement income.  People who only have Social Security are not taxed at all.  Yes, there is a Medicare premium you have to pay for both Part B and D, what's the big deal.  If Medicare did not exist, you would have to get private insurance and think about what the market rate for a private policy for someone in there 70s would be!!!  Most of us also have Medigap insurance to cover the Medicare co-pays and deductibles; this adds additional cost in retirement.
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: The American Constitution
« Reply #154 on: June 04, 2019, 04:38:03 pm »

When it comes to the housing crisis, both Alans are using a binary approach, that is the extremes. It is neither exclusively Clinton's housing initiative to push banks to lend to less qualified buyers, nor exclusively collateralized securities, but both, on top of several other reasons.

However, the chain reaction could not possibly start at the end of the chain (collateralized securities) but at the beginning, at the colletteral level (people unable to pay off their mortgage they shouldn't have gotten in the first place). The securities just multiplied the effect and spread the initial ignition across the world like a wildfire.

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Re: The American Constitution
« Reply #155 on: June 04, 2019, 07:41:17 pm »

1. You are wrong.  Social Security can only invest in special interest bearing government securities.  It is not going prematurely broke.  I think you are confusing Medicare which has more immediate solvency problems but could be easily corrected if the US moved to some form of national health care be it single payor or government regulated private insurance as is the case in several European countries.  Social Security can also be fixed in a number of ways as well.
2. You are presuming that you are a knowledgeable investor, perhaps you are; the vast majority of American are not.  the number of people who rely 100% on Social Security is extremely high.  Also, if you have other retirement income up 85% of your Social Security income is taxed and goes back into the trust fund (we pay such a tax).  I don't know the particular case that you cite, but there are survivor benefits under Medicare for both spouse and children.
 3. As I noted above, you only pay tax on your Social Security earnings if you have additional retirement income.  People who only have Social Security are not taxed at all.  Yes, there is a Medicare premium you have to pay for both Part B and D, what's the big deal.  If Medicare did not exist, you would have to get private insurance and think about what the market rate for a private policy for someone in there 70s would be!!!  Most of us also have Medigap insurance to cover the Medicare co-pays and deductibles; this adds additional cost in retirement.
1. I am right.  Money is fungible.  The government investing in secial government securities still means the government has to come up with the money.  They still owe it and will have to print it, raise taxes or issue more bonds to get the money.  Yes, they can fix it.  One way is to reduce the payout or start paying out when you get older.  That was my point.  The youngsters today will never see full payments made to them.

2. Relying on SS 100% means you are going to live poorly in retirement.  You can't get enough from SS to live on.  Investing in simple and risk free 2-3% insured bank account over your life would probably double what you would get from SS.  And if you die, unlike SS which the government keeps, your estate and savings go to your family.  Survivor benefits would only help your spouse if they make less from SS then you do.  Then they get the additional difference.  But the rest of the dead person;s SS goes back to the government.  They keep the SS money you and your employers contributed all your life.  How's that fair? 

3. Also, 85% of my SS is taxed and goes back to the government.  What sense does that make? 
  So my wife and I pay over $5000 to Medicare although we're retired and do not work.   Me and my employers have also contributed to Medicare since Medicare was conceived decades ago.  Most people think Medicare is free.  It's not.    That's the main point I was making.

RSL

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Re: The American Constitution
« Reply #156 on: June 04, 2019, 07:46:09 pm »

You are wrong.  Social Security can only invest in special interest bearing government securities.

Securities secured by the taxpayers, who will have to cough up the money when these "securities" are cashed in.
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Alan Klein

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Re: The American Constitution
« Reply #157 on: June 04, 2019, 07:53:15 pm »

When it comes to the housing crisis, both Alans are using a binary approach, that is the extremes. It is neither exclusively Clinton's housing initiative to push banks to lend to less qualified buyers, nor exclusively collateralized securities, but both, on top of several other reasons.

However, the chain reaction could not possibly start at the end of the chain (collateralized securities) but at the beginning, at the colletteral level (people unable to pay off their mortgage they shouldn't have gotten in the first place). The securities just multiplied the effect and spread the initial ignition across the world like a wildfire.


That was my point. Another government boondoggle, all with good intentions, started by the government that caused a world-wide recession.  Wasn't it Pogo in the comic strip who said, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

Rob C

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Re: The American Constitution
« Reply #158 on: June 05, 2019, 04:54:44 am »

What it all boils down to, then, is that your health care is woefully inadequate, and to be worth squat, is confined to the rich who don't feel the pinch of the annual cost of buying it.

I don't see it so much as a political issue of left v. right, but as a total lack of moral, civic responsibility. A state unwilling to consider its people's health a primary concern is not fit for purpose; it's the single most important thing upon which depends everything else about the nation. Far from showing some sense of justice, some vaunting of self-reliance as guiding principle, it reveals an absolute lack of it or of respect for one's fellow human beings.

Self-reliance is all fine and good, but sick people are not in any position to play that game. To be self-reliant, to strike out into the world in some meaningful way and mark your territory requires that you be fit and able to fight the many fights you will inevitably face.

One could touch upon the hypocrisy of nations driving propaganda about tobacco and cancer, fast food and sweet drinks and other rubbish that both fattens into obesity and deprives kids of their natural teeth before they hit their teens, but does absolutely nothing to ban that shit, just keeps on collecting the sales tax on the one hand and putting more and more pressure on health services to cope with governmental cowardice to do the right thing. Why doesn't it do anything? Popularity! The great television charade that politics has become.
« Last Edit: June 05, 2019, 07:35:41 am by Rob C »
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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: The American Constitution
« Reply #159 on: June 05, 2019, 07:12:28 am »

That was my point. Another government boondoggle, all with good intentions, started by the government that caused a world-wide recession.  Wasn't it Pogo in the comic strip who said, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
That is really not true as anyone who has read in depth about the financial crisis knows.  Adam Tooze in his fine book on the financial meltdown and aftermath, "Crashed:  How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World" that is well worth reading.  Well known investment manager and Bloomberg columnist, Barry Ritholz, skewers the idea that the Community Reinvestment Act had anything much to do with the meltdown.  Unlike the Tooze book, this will only take you about three minutes to read.
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