Stop all benefits for one year.

[SwimExpert]

No one can live on $7500 in a year.

Who said anything about living off of $7500 a year?

The OP did.

No I didn't.

 

[SwimExpert]

No one can live on $7500 in a year.

Who said anything about living off of $7500 a year?

Indeed.

Old folks who don't have anything else, rely upon Social Security - we've all seen it time and again.

So, now, it's proposed to stop all benefits - including Social Security - for a year, in order to give every taxpayer a $7500 check?

That's great.

What are those large numbers of old folk - dependent upon Social Security - supposed to live on, for that year?

Zero?

Sounds like you're proposing that those folks live on zero ($0.00) for a year, right?

Not $7500.

But $0.

Is this a correct interpretation of what you're proposing?

Social Security retirement does not pay out very much in the first place. The nature of the programs is such that people already need some other means to support themselves. SS retirement is merely a supplemental source of income.

Meanwhile, if people do still have trouble supporting themselves they have plenty of options available. They can move to a cheaper place to live. If they own their house they can sell it and buy something half the price. They can move in with their children. There are alot of very capable options available to them.

Ultimately, the fact of the matter is that people need to take care of themselves. It's not the government's place to be providing for their every want and need.

 

[SwimExpert]

Before we do that, why don't we just cut off ALL foreign aid for a decade or so. And, when we resume it, the money only goes to the nations that befriended/helped us during the time where there was no aid. We aren't buying friends with it, and it's stupid to borrow money in order to give it away.

I agree, we definitely should cut off the foreign aid. But the reason I brought this up is because at the end of the day things like defense spending or foreign aid are not the major sources of government spending. We're going to have to address entitlements if we want to ever make a meaningful dent in things.

 

[SwimExpert]

What will happen to the 30 million seniors who become homeless? You going to take them in?

There's no reason for them to become homeless. They will receive substantial government aid. If they want to use it to pay rent, then they can do that. Or, they can move into a cheaper place to live. Or they can move in with their children. As always, they will have decide for themselves the best way to meet their needs.

 

[Listening]

The federal government is spending roughly $1.5 trillion a year on Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid alone. That doesn't even include foodstamps and other welfare programs, pensions, etc. How much is this doing for our economy, as we sink deeper into debt? I propose we cease all spending on such things for one year. The only exception being for those are disabled. During that same time, payroll taxes be reduced by 50% for everyone.

With the money saved, every tax payer and person who receives benefits gets a check for $7500. Use it as you see fit. Use it for food, use it for health care, use it for rent, use it to start your own business. This approach will offer substantial aid for people in need, will be a lesser total expenditure, and will actually yield a lesser deficit. Meanwhile, individuals will be able to have more disposable income with which to stimulate the economy.

Why shouldn't we do this?

The money for SS is not federal government money. It is money that was paid by the workforce of America to fund their pensions. And SS is not driving the deficit. It may come as some surprise to you, but the federal government OWES money to SS.

There are many people who pull on Social Security who never paid into it.

Children are paid SS benefits. I know the argument is their parents paid into and therefor they deserve it, but that was never figured into the actuarial calculations.

They should not be paid out of SS.

 

[Cecilie1200]

The federal government is spending roughly $1.5 trillion a year on Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid alone. That doesn't even include foodstamps and other welfare programs, pensions, etc. How much is this doing for our economy, as we sink deeper into debt? I propose we cease all spending on such things for one year. The only exception being for those are disabled. During that same time, payroll taxes be reduced by 50% for everyone.

With the money saved, every tax payer and person who receives benefits gets a check for $7500. Use it as you see fit. Use it for food, use it for health care, use it for rent, use it to start your own business. This approach will offer substantial aid for people in need, will be a lesser total expenditure, and will actually yield a lesser deficit. Meanwhile, individuals will be able to have more disposable income with which to stimulate the economy.

Why shouldn't we do this?

Perhaps because the system is already so bollixed up that childishly simplistic ideas will only make it exponentially worse?

You do realize that there are already many old people who were brainwashed into putting all their eggs into the "social welfare" basket for their retirement, and now are incapable of surviving without it, right? Seventy-five hundred dollars is not going to defray their living and medical expenses for that year. I don't think anyone's interested in seeing seniors becoming homeless and going hungry, or children being taken away from the families in droves because their parents are unprepared to support them without welfare checks, just so you can pat yourself on the back and say, "See? I did something!"

This is the real world, with real problems, and requires thoughtful, long-term, real solutions created by adults. The dependency on the government to act as husband/parent/nanny needs to be ended, but it needs to be done in a positive, beneficial way that will truly end the created need for it once and for all.

 

[SwimExpert]

Anybody that has spent 20 years in the military, or 50 years in industry, deserves every penny that they get. I don't know where people like you come off trying to stiff our seniors that built the economy that you enjoy, but that bullshit won't fly. You might find it better to get a job, and earn enough that $7500 doesn't look like big money to you.

Let's be honest. All the generous payouts that the older generation receives now are at the expense of their children. It's stuff that they never paid for themselves, and we can't pay for now. That's why we keep borrowing money year after year to pay for it.

When the children of the older generation in our society reach retirement age, there will be nothing for them. The old people are borrowing their children's money to enjoy retirement, and forcing their children to use their retirement to pay off mommy and daddy's bills.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Nice plan.

So all you have are complaints? No alternatives on how we can reduce spending while also helping those in need?

There are lots of ideas out there for how to fix the system without puerilely insisting that a $7500 lump sum payment is exactly the same as the benefits people are currently getting through the social welfare system, and thus leaving people completely helpless and bereft because they're not prepared to take care of themselves, and you're too frigging stupid to understand how the system, or the world in general, currently works.

 

[SwimExpert]

Why should anyone end up on the street? You seem to think that people cannot survive without the government paying all their bills. That's a ridiculous idea.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Don't think of it as stopping them. They'd still get their payout, in the form of a lump sum.

Sure. We may as well also apply this to our jobs. Instead of getting our weekly paychecks at work, we would only receive a lump sum payment. Great idea.

Some jobs do it. Some pay as infrequently as once a month. Some jobs are entirely dependent on commissions that are paid at the time of work being complete. Some people have jobs that pay them $1 at the end of the year, with an assortment of bonuses. But most jobs usually operate on a biweekly pay schedule, as that tends to be the most mutually agreeable for both employer and employee.

I don't actually know of ANY job that goes from regular paychecks every month to one lump sum payment for the year that totals much less than the employee normally gets for the year, and thinks they're going to get away with it.

 

[editec]

$7500?

A year?

Who the hell could live on that anywhere in America?


What universe do some of you live in?

Not mine that's for sure.

 

[Cecilie1200]

So all you have are complaints? No alternatives on how we can reduce spending while also helping those in need?

A stupid idea like his deserves just complaints. Stop all benefits for a year? Laughable.

But since you asked, I do have an idea on how we can reduce spending while also helping those in need.

Gut the bloated defense budget, let the world know that we'll leave them alone from now on, with no more GOP-approved Globopolicing, and we'll spend all that wasted money instead on welfare benefits, education, healthcare, infrastructure and scientific research . Namely, a robust social democracy, Euro-style, right here in the good ol' USA.

If you like Europe, you're free to move there.

In the meantime, I never said anything about education, infrastructure, or scientific research. Why are you bringing those up? That's a straw man. Also, defense spending is not the large and mighty portion of our spending that you liberals like to make it out to be. If we eliminate 100% of defense spending, we still are left with a deficit.

Hey, dimwit. You said, "We have a spending problem", so it's not a "straw man" to talk about spending that can and should be cut, and a hell of a lot easier than starving out old people who actually PAID for those monthly checks.

I don't agree with gutting the defense budget at all, but I won't say that the Department of Defense, like every other government department on Earth, doesn't have a lot of blubber it could trim away.

And we have no business taking on MORE social spending in the form of glomming onto the healthcare sector.

 

[SwimExpert]

I already posted on it. SS is not the government's money. SS is the workers' money.

That can be said for any form of taxation. There is no reason to treat Social Security as some kind of special exception.

The government owes SS. So No, I don't think SS should be cut.

We can either cut social security now, or we can watch it go bankrupt. So that those currently paying into get nothing when their time comes. Seems clear that you don't really care about them. You want it for you, and screw everyone else.

I think the government should figure out a way to pay back our money they have raided and looted for the last 50 years. The percent I paid in was the percent that was supposed to be adequate for SS to pay me the concomitant benefit. SS does not drive the deficit.

This is a common myth. Social Security was never designed to pay for itself. It was designed on the assumption that receipts would continually out pace expenditures. This proved to be false, and in the early 1980s the Greenspan commission recommended a pay-for-itself approach.

And as for welfare, well, are you simply too stupid to understand that we give them the money so they won't come into our neighborhoods and raid our homes taking our valuables to sell for drugs? Seriously? You haven't figured that one out?

So are you saying that we should simply continue doing what we are doing now? Continue government spending, continue borrowing, continue racking up debt? Or do you think that these problems can be solved by simply taxing people more?

 

[Cecilie1200]

The federal government is spending roughly $1.5 trillion a year on Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid alone. That doesn't even include foodstamps and other welfare programs, pensions, etc. How much is this doing for our economy, as we sink deeper into debt? I propose we cease all spending on such things for one year. The only exception being for those are disabled. During that same time, payroll taxes be reduced by 50% for everyone.

With the money saved, every tax payer and person who receives benefits gets a check for $7500. Use it as you see fit. Use it for food, use it for health care, use it for rent, use it to start your own business. This approach will offer substantial aid for people in need, will be a lesser total expenditure, and will actually yield a lesser deficit. Meanwhile, individuals will be able to have more disposable income with which to stimulate the economy.

Why shouldn't we do this?

You really think it will take them that long to die?

Or, put it another way -

The spending problem we have is not "how much". Its "on what".

Oh yeah, its "ideas" like this one that have earned the Repubs the title of The Party Of Stupid.

If you really think that's a Republican, you're even dumber than I normally give you credit for, Dud.

 

[Cecilie1200]

The federal government is spending roughly $1.5 trillion a year on Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid alone. That doesn't even include foodstamps and other welfare programs, pensions, etc. How much is this doing for our economy, as we sink deeper into debt? I propose we cease all spending on such things for one year. The only exception being for those are disabled. During that same time, payroll taxes be reduced by 50% for everyone.

With the money saved, every tax payer and person who receives benefits gets a check for $7500. Use it as you see fit. Use it for food, use it for health care, use it for rent, use it to start your own business. This approach will offer substantial aid for people in need, will be a lesser total expenditure, and will actually yield a lesser deficit. Meanwhile, individuals will be able to have more disposable income with which to stimulate the economy.

Why shouldn't we do this?

What will happen to the 30 million seniors who become homeless? You going to take them in?

They'll hobble their walkers down to the nearest shelter and soup kitchen - of which there won't be near enough for the new influx of wrinkled homeless folks - or they'll starve and die of exposure. And then, hey! We won't ever have to pay them again, will we?

 

[Cecilie1200]

Don't think of it as stopping them. They'd still get their payout, in the form of a lump sum.

That's one of the most far fetched ideas I've heard yet. NO, it's not feasible or workable and no congressman would ever vote for it.......

Hey this sounds like standard repub wish list stuff. You sure no Rethugs would vote for this idea? I'm not.

No, it doesn't. It sounds like a standard liberal "I can't be bothered to listen or think, so I'll just assume this is what my enemies stand for" list. When we need stupidity refuted with even more stupidity, we'll call you. At the moment, I think we have a surplus.

 

[SwimExpert]

Why shouldn't we do this?

Well for one because we'd be renigning on the debts we owe to SS recipients.

You DO understand that they ALREADY paid for the pittance they get, right?

No, they paid for the the money they already spent. The people who are working now are paying for the pittances being received currently. And when the current working population reaches retirement age, there will be nothing left for them.

YOu DO understand the concept of paying your debts, right?

Of course. We have $17 trillion in debt. We need to pay it off. And the only way that is going to happen is to tackle the largest expenditures.

Well, lad, what you just proposed was that the USA NOT pay what it OWES to those who paid their SS taxes all their lives.

I have news for you, lad. You're not going to get paid when your time comes, even though you'll be paying your SS taxes your entire life.

 

[Cecilie1200]

The federal government is spending roughly $1.5 trillion a year on Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid alone. That doesn't even include foodstamps and other welfare programs, pensions, etc. How much is this doing for our economy, as we sink deeper into debt? I propose we cease all spending on such things for one year. The only exception being for those are disabled. During that same time, payroll taxes be reduced by 50% for everyone.

With the money saved, every tax payer and person who receives benefits gets a check for $7500. Use it as you see fit. Use it for food, use it for health care, use it for rent, use it to start your own business. This approach will offer substantial aid for people in need, will be a lesser total expenditure, and will actually yield a lesser deficit. Meanwhile, individuals will be able to have more disposable income with which to stimulate the economy.

Why shouldn't we do this?

^^^^Moron. It's this kind of stupid shit that the cons would do, that would totally wreck everything in this country. If this happened, there would be 100 million people out on the street, or in prison just to get something to eat and a place out of the cold.

Paying $15k to keep a elderly person on Social Security, or paying $40k to keep that person in prison, which one is cheaper? Which one is dumber?

Do tell. You are free to look up and post any thread by a conservative that has said this.

Or reference any mainstream conservative (I'm really not interested in fringe Internet kooks no one's ever heard of, thanks) who has articulated this position, for that matter.

 

[BobPlumb]

Shouldn't this thread be in the satire section?

 

[Cecilie1200]

What will happen to the 30 million seniors who become homeless? You going to take them in?

There's no reason for them to become homeless. They will receive substantial government aid. If they want to use it to pay rent, then they can do that. Or, they can move into a cheaper place to live. Or they can move in with their children. As always, they will have decide for themselves the best way to meet their needs.

Really? You're going to cut off social welfare benefits for a year, but they're going to receive "substantial government aid"? What aid would that be, precisely, that's going to take up the slack for what they're dependent on now, and how is that then going to reduce government spending? Furthermore, what makes you think they're living high on the hog and have the ability to downsize even more? Or that their children are any more prepared to abruptly take on that responsibility than the seniors are to abruptly fend for themselves?

You're talking nonsense.