Will Democrats Let Us Save Social Security?

[JoeB131]

BTW, Republicans have repeatedly tried to change SS so that you have your own SS account and can leave that money to your spouse or children, but Democrats have blocked it every time. I'm not talking about a private investment account with SS taxes in it, but a federal account in your name with all of your SS taxes held in it, and the ability to leave that money to someone when you die.

Yes, Republicans have been trying to murder Social Security since FDR established it.

 

[Frankenstein]

No,I mean Social Democracies. Still paying money and earn wages for most stuff. Just not for things that are essential.

Healthcare, education.

My tax rate would make your eyes water. On the other hand my standard of living doesn't drop below a certain level regardless of what happens. My kid can go to school and college without having to take on debt to do so. Paid leave. Paid sick days. Maternity and paternity leave. Free reeducation if god forbid you lose your job in any field you want to work, while getting a living wage, etc.etc.

By the way when I say "free" I mean I paid for it by my eye watering taxes.

Social democracy is another term for socialism

 

[Frankenstein]

Yes, Republicans have been trying to murder Social Security since FDR established it.

tell ya what give me everything they stole now with ten % interest we will call it a day!

 

[forkup]

Social democracy is another term for socialism

Only in your fever dreams. There isn't a concept here of pooling the means of production by the community as a whole. Just a much stronger social safety net.

The problem is that you think that throwing the word "Socialism" around gets you out of having to actually have an actual conversation. It doesn't. The only thing it shows is that you probably know that you can't talk about comparative merit of the US system vs Social Democracy.

"Socialism" is nice and easy.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

The social agendas favored color and gender. Feminism was the greatest benefactor at that time.

Pompous Privileged Princesses

The sole purpose of Feminism is so that richgirls can become bosses, just like their Affluenzist Affirmative Action brothers always have. This doubles the power of the toxic heiristocracy, the social cancer that has destroyed all previous civilizations. Even the "sexist" Playboy is run by Hugh Hefner's daughter.

Second, when these penis-envy piranhas emasculate the White working class. that scheme sets up a slavish submission to the Fortunate Sons and Daughters.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Social democracy is another term for socialism

Ideology Is a Spitball Fight at a Prep School. Silence Them!

 

[Frankenstein]

Only in your fever dreams. There isn't a concept here of pooling the means of production by the community as a whole. Just a much stronger social safety net.

The problem is that you think that throwing the word "Socialism" around gets you out of having to actually have an actual conversation. It doesn't. The only thing it shows is that you probably know that you can't talk about comparative merit of the US system vs Social Democracy.

"Socialism" is nice and easy.

Socialism, turns to communism, which is being done incrementally, name a social democracy,

 

[sartre play]

To many people do not care if their parents grandparents, unknown older people die or suffer,
they just want that small amount of dollars taken for SOCIAL SECURITY
for them self's to spend NOW on their self's.

 

[forkup]

Socialism, turns to communism, which is being done incrementally, name a social democracy,

Funny. First you claim I'm describing Socialist countries when I point out there are many countries that have a much stronger safety net. Then when I deny that I'm describing a Socialist country by pointing out that (in my case Belgium) doesn't have the concept of pooling the means of production. You simply assert that Socialism turns to Communism and ask me to name a Social Democracy.

I described the main difference. Higher taxes but much more essential services given and a higher average quality of life. Do you want to have an actual conversation about that or do you want to keep on playing the "you're a Socialist" game?

 

[Frankenstein]

Funny. First you claim I'm describing Socialist countries when I point out there are many countries that have a much stronger safety net. Then when I deny that I'm describing a Socialist country by pointing out that (in my case Belgium) doesn't have the concept of pooling the means of production. You simply assert that Socialism turns to Communism and ask me to name a Social Democracy.

I described the main difference. Higher taxes but much more essential services given and a higher average quality of life. Do you want to have an actual conversation about that or do you want to keep on playing the "you're a Socialist" game?

Cool, keep giving your money to the Government, I choose to limit the power Government as per the constitution, do you know what incrementalism is

 

[mikegriffith1]

JoeB131 said: No, you stupid Mormon idiot, he RAISED taxes on the middle class by jacking up social security payments

You have no clue what you are talking about. "Jacking up"? "Social Security payments"? You mean the SS taxes? The SS reform bill that Reagan and the Democrats agreed on raised the SS tax (OASDI) from its 1981 rate of 5.35% to 6.06% by 1989, an increase of less than one percentage point. That was hardly "jacking up" the SS tax rate.

JoeB131 said: and getting rid of a lot of middle class deductions such as credit card deductions on Schedule A.

Wow, you really think the government should subsidize everything, don't you? Why should anyone get a tax deduction for their credit card interest? Huh? Why?

JoeB131 said: The middle class declined under Reagan.

No, it did not. I cited economic stats and provided sources that refute this myth, but you just ignore facts and repeat your leftist myths. You didn't bother to read a single one of the articles I linked, did you?

Again, the net worth of families earning between $20K and $50K rose by 27%. Under Reagan, manufacturing jobs hit 18 million by 1984 and remained there until after Reagan left office, whereas under Obama manufacturing jobs hovered at around 12 million during his two terms. Under Reagan, median household income rose dramatically, going from $17,700 in 1980 to $27,225 in 1988, one of the largest increases in American history. And on and on we could go.

JoeB131 said: Of course, in your bizarre reality, OJ was innocent, Kiddy-diddler Joseph Smith was really talking to God, the Japs were justified in bombing Pearl Harbor and the Rape of Nanking wasn't that bad.

Uh-huh. Says the guy who argues that Mao Tse-Tung and Joseph Stalin were great, noble leaders. Says the guy who claims that Red China was more democratic and humane than Taiwan. It would take several paragraphs to unpack the lies and distortions in your sleazy four-line attack.

JoeB131 said: Yo, who did you think was going to control our choices? "Here's the funds of your choice you are going to be locked into while we go ahead and manipulate the market with day-trading!!!"

Again, you have no clue what you are talking about. This is juvenile, delusional drivel based on your Marxist hatred of wealth and success and capitalism.

If you're talking about Bush's SS reform plan, under that plan, the government would have selected the investment funds, and all of those funds would have been very conservative bond and stock funds.

Now, I know that facts mean nothing to your Marxist hatred of wealth and capitalism, but even during the Great Recession, conservative bond and stock funds suffered minimal losses and made up those losses within 1-3 years.

JoeB131 said: So let's talk about mortgages, shall we? What Wall Street did was take a mortgage and overstate their value, counting not only the property value but all future mortgage payments as "income", then sold these garbage mortgages as investments. When the scam fell apart, that's why we had the 2008 crash. Not to worry, the Billionaires got bailouts and the rest of us ended up with underwater mortgages and busted 401K's.

You are, again, delusional. If Freddie and Fannie and the Fed had not enabled the explosion in the issuing of sub-prime mortgages in the first place, those mortgages would not have existed and thus no one could have overstated their value. But you won't face this fact because you are determined to believe that only greedy investors and no one else caused the crash.

Furthermore, not all investment firms overstated the value of their sub-prime mortgage portfolios. Many did not, and most investment firms steered clear of sub-prime mortgage funds.

Moreover, thanks to the insane Democrat-enacted mark-to-market regulation, the financial crisis was made much worse because firms were forced to list the then-current market value of their portfolios instead of their actual intrinsic value.

Just imagine if you wanted to sell your home at the start of a recession and a government regulation came along and required that your asking price could not exceed the price that major real estate firms thought they could get for your home, even if that price was absurdly below the true value of your home?

That’s essentially what federal regulators arbitrarily did to many investment firms with funds that included sub-prime mortgages, which needlessly and recklessly caused enormous and unjustified losses for those firms, which in turn made the financial crash much worse than it otherwise would have been. (Thankfully, a few years later, that insane regulation was quietly ditched, but not before it had done great harm.)

 

[Oddball]

Again, you have no clue what you are talking about. This is juvenile, delusional drivel based on your Marxist hatred of wealth and success and capitalism.

A day that ends with a "Y".

 

[JoeB131]

You have no clue what you are talking about. "Jacking up"? "Social Security payments"? You mean the SS taxes? The SS reform bill that Reagan and the Democrats agreed on raised the SS tax (OASDI) from its 1981 rate of 5.35% to 6.06% by 1989, an increase of less than one percentage point. That was hardly "jacking up" the SS tax rate.

Point is, middle class paid more, rich people paid less. The deficit ballooned and middle class jobs vanished.

But since Reagan didn't get impeached, voted out of office or leave the country in a recession, you guys think he's awesome.

Wow, you really think the government should subsidize everything, don't you? Why should anyone get a tax deduction for their credit card interest? Huh? Why?

Why should they get one for their home mortgage?

No, it did not. I cited economic stats and provided sources that refute this myth, but you just ignore facts and repeat your leftist myths. You didn't bother to read a single one of the articles I linked, did you?

No, I don't read any of your crazy articles after you claimed that the Rape of Nanking wasn't so bad and dissed Iris Chang's scholarship on the issue.

Again, the net worth of families earning between $20K and $50K rose by 27%. Under Reagan, manufacturing jobs hit 18 million by 1984 and remained there until after Reagan left office, whereas under Obama manufacturing jobs hovered at around 12 million during his two terms. Under Reagan, median household income rose dramatically, going from $17,700 in 1980 to $27,225 in 1988, one of the largest increases in American history. And on and on we could go.

Which is meaningless with the hyperinflation that happened at the beginning of his term.

 

[Frankenstein]

You have no clue what you are talking about. "Jacking up"? "Social Security payments"? You mean the SS taxes? The SS reform bill that Reagan and the Democrats agreed on raised the SS tax (OASDI) from its 1981 rate of 5.35% to 6.06% by 1989, an increase of less than one percentage point. That was hardly "jacking up" the SS tax rate.



Wow, you really think the government should subsidize everything, don't you? Why should anyone get a tax deduction for their credit card interest? Huh? Why?



No, it did not. I cited economic stats and provided sources that refute this myth, but you just ignore facts and repeat your leftist myths. You didn't bother to read a single one of the articles I linked, did you?

Again, the net worth of families earning between $20K and $50K rose by 27%. Under Reagan, manufacturing jobs hit 18 million by 1984 and remained there until after Reagan left office, whereas under Obama manufacturing jobs hovered at around 12 million during his two terms. Under Reagan, median household income rose dramatically, going from $17,700 in 1980 to $27,225 in 1988, one of the largest increases in American history. And on and on we could go.



Uh-huh. Says the guy who argues that Mao Tse-Tung and Joseph Stalin were great, noble leaders. Says the guy who claims that Red China was more democratic and humane than Taiwan. It would take several paragraphs to unpack the lies and distortions in your sleazy four-line attack.



Again, you have no clue what you are talking about. This is juvenile, delusional drivel based on your Marxist hatred of wealth and success and capitalism.

If you're talking about Bush's SS reform plan, under that plan, the government would have selected the investment funds, and all of those funds would have been very conservative bond and stock funds.

Now, I know that facts mean nothing to your Marxist hatred of wealth and capitalism, but even during the Great Recession, conservative bond and stock funds suffered minimal losses and made up those losses within 1-3 years.



You are, again, delusional. If Freddie and Fannie and the Fed had not enabled the explosion in the issuing of sub-prime mortgages in the first place, those mortgages would not have existed and thus no one could have overstated their value. But you won't face this fact because you are determined to believe that only greedy investors and no one else caused the crash.

Furthermore, not all investment firms overstated the value of their sub-prime mortgage portfolios. Many did not, and most investment firms steered clear of sub-prime mortgage funds.

Moreover, thanks to the insane Democrat-enacted mark-to-market regulation, the financial crisis was made much worse because firms were forced to list the then-current market value of their portfolios instead of their actual intrinsic value.

Just imagine if you wanted to sell your home at the start of a recession and a government regulation came along and required that your asking price could not exceed the price that major real estate firms thought they could get for your home, even if that price was absurdly below the true value of your home?

That’s essentially what federal regulators arbitrarily did to many investment firms with funds that included sub-prime mortgages, which needlessly and recklessly caused enormous and unjustified losses for those firms, which in turn made the financial crash much worse than it otherwise would have been. (Thankfully, a few years later, that insane regulation was quietly ditched, but not before it had done great harm.)

Facts confuse them!

 

[mikegriffith1]

Why should they get one for their home mortgage?

Because we want to encourage home ownership, you Marxist loon.

On the other hand, we do not want to encourage credit card debt. It is scarry that people like you are allowed to vote.

No, I don't read any of your crazy articles after you claimed that the Rape of Nanking wasn't so bad and dissed Iris Chang's scholarship on the issue.

I never said that the Rape of Nanking "wasn't so bad." How often are you going to repeat this scurrilous lie? Anyone can go back and read our exchanges on the subject and see that I never said any such thing.

Iris Chang was a mentally ill apologist for Communist China. She suffered from paranoid delusions and eventually killed herself. She believed that the CIA or some other group was trying to recruit her without her realizing it, and that some group was trying to kill her.

And, as I've explained to you before, many scholars, solidly mainstream scholars, have pointed out severe problems with her book on the Nanking Massacre.

So because you're upset that I don't accept Communist China's propaganda line about the Nanking Massacre, you won't read any of the scholarly articles that I've linked on Reagan's economic record. Wow, makes total sense, huh?

Which is meaningless with the hyperinflation that happened at the beginning of his term.

Huh? Reagan slashed inflation from 13.5% down to 4.1%! Sheesh, can you read? Check the annual inflation rate for yourself:

Consumer Price Index, 1913- | Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

Historical data from the era of the modern U.S. consumer price index (CPI)

www.minneapolisfed.org

And, no, Republicans have not been trying to "murder" Social Security for many decades. They've been trying to reform it so that it is solvent in the long term and so that retirees have more money.

 

[JoeB131]

Because we want to encourage home ownership, you Marxist loon.

On the other hand, we do not want to encourage credit card debt. It is scarry that people like you are allowed to vote.

What's scary is clowns like you keep voting to screw the working class, which you are no doubt part of.

I never said that the Rape of Nanking "wasn't so bad." How often are you going to repeat this scurrilous lie? Anyone can go back and read our exchanges on the subject and see that I never said any such thing.

That you make ANY excuses for the Japanese in that situation is kind of horrific. The Japanese in WWII were as bad as the Nazis, it's just that the Chinese don't run Hollywood to remind us every five minutes.

Iris Chang was a mentally ill apologist for Communist China. She suffered from paranoid delusions and eventually killed herself. She believed that the CIA or some other group was trying to recruit her without her realizing it, and that some group was trying to kill her.

Wow, really. The story her family told was that she was depressed, probably from years of researching Japanese atrocities in China.

And, as I've explained to you before, many scholars, solidly mainstream scholars, have pointed out severe problems with her book on the Nanking Massacre.

Again, Japanese apologists. Not Scholars.

Japan still hasn't taken responsibility for the shit they did in WWII.

So because you're upset that I don't accept Communist China's propaganda line about the Nanking Massacre, you won't read any of the scholarly articles that I've linked on Reagan's economic record. Wow, makes total sense, huh?

Naw, it's because most of the stuff you post is crazy.

OJ Killed Nicole and Ron
Joseph Smith wasn't talking to God
The Japanese were simply awful in WWII.
Patton was an anti-Semite and fascist.

Huh? Reagan slashed inflation from 13.5% down to 4.1%! Sheesh, can you read? Check the annual inflation rate for yourself:

I lived through the Reagan years (and sadly, voted for him twice). Inflation was bad, until he combated it with double digit unemployment.

And, no, Republicans have not been trying to "murder" Social Security for many decades. They've been trying to reform it so that it is solvent in the long term and so that retirees have more money.

Here's how you make it solvent.
Make the rich pay their fair share.

 

[Frankenstein]

What's scary is clowns like you keep voting to screw the working class, which you are no doubt part of.


That you make ANY excuses for the Japanese in that situation is kind of horrific. The Japanese in WWII were as bad as the Nazis, it's just that the Chinese don't run Hollywood to remind us every five minutes.




Wow, really. The story her family told was that she was depressed, probably from years of researching Japanese atrocities in China.


Again, Japanese apologists. Not Scholars.

Japan still hasn't taken responsibility for the shit they did in WWII.


Naw, it's because most of the stuff you post is crazy.

OJ Killed Nicole and Ron
Joseph Smith wasn't talking to God
The Japanese were simply awful in WWII.
Patton was an anti-Semite and fascist.


I lived through the Reagan years (and sadly, voted for him twice). Inflation was bad, until he combated it with double digit unemployment.



Here's how you make it solvent.
Make the rich pay their fair share.

Does that include rich politicians? They allow those lobbyists to put in loopholes for themselves, and their rich donors you simp!

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Socialism, turns to communism, which is being done incrementally, name a social democracy,

Capitalism Quickly Reverted to Feudalism

It's not the opposite of Capitalism; it is the usurpation of Capitalism by its heirs. Until we silence the same class that runs both, we will have no useful discussions if they reference anything we've been told by either of the twin sides of the road back to serfdom.

 

[d0gbreath]

Blindly partisan radicals like you are the reason we have not fixed SS.

I guess you didn't notice that in my OP I propose making all payroll income subject to the SS tax, not just the first $165K. I guess you didn't notice that I also propose a means test that would severely cut or end SS payments to people with retirement incomes above a certain threshold.

But I guess you had so much foam frothing out of your mouth over the unthinkable idea that a 25% cut be made in SS benefits that you missed everything else.

If we don't cut benefits now for ages 54 and younger, we will be forced to cut them later because we won't have enough money to pay for what we've promised.

If we did your second paragraph, we wouldn't have to do the third paragraph.
No one 54 and younger collects SS. You probably meant to type 64.

 

[mikegriffith1]

To many people do not care if their parents grandparents, unknown older people die or suffer,
they just want that small amount of dollars taken for SOCIAL SECURITY
for them self's to spend NOW on their self's.

This paragraph comes close to indicating illiteracy. "them self's"? "their self's"? "their parents grandparents"? Among other errors. Did a fifth grader write this?

What all rational, sensible people want is for Social Security to be placed on a sound fiscal footing so that it will be there for decades to come. Again, the Social Security Administration itself has admitted that by 2035--in just 11 years--SS revenue will only cover 75% of SS benefits. ELEVEN YEARS.

We can make the system solvent for the long term by recognizing that we have overpromised on benefits, by reducing the benefits by about 25%, by imposing a means test for receiving benefits, and by removing the cap on income subject to the SS tax.

These steps would preserve 75% of the current benefit levels, adjusted for inflation, and would make the system solvent for the long term. And notice that none of these reforms involves allowing any SS taxes to go into any kind of private investment accounts.