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Post by the sandman on Aug 8, 2011 8:28:13 GMT -5
So does this mean that Social Security and Medicare are still gonna get cuts, cause that sucks. Hopefully in the next elections people will see the fiasco that the Republicans have done with the debt ceiling and get smart and vote Obama back in, because honestly, I think that man is trying his hardest and damndest to get this shit straightened out but is surrounded by a bunch of water heads that oppose him at every chance. Well, there are three ways to fix this situation: 1. MASSIVE cuts to sacred-cow entitlement programs, mainly Social Security and Medicare. And I do mean MASSIVE. As in damn near eliminating them. 2. MASSIVE revenue increases across the board. Businesses, the wealthy, the middle class, pretty much everyone. 3. MASSIVE cuts to Federal discretionary spending. Military, infrastructure, environmental maintenance, pretty much everything. Now, there are problems with all of these. Politicians are too frightened to really take on option 1, because that would fuck over millions of old people, and old people vote. A lot. Alienate that group and you don't get re-elected. That's why Bush pushed through a massive, unfunded prescription drug benefit for them when he knew it could not be paid for. He was just pandering for votes. The Teatards are going after it because A) they are too politically naive to realize it's political suicide, B) half of them swear they don't give a shit if they don't get re-elected, C) they are too stupid to realize what cutting off the income of 51,000,000 Americans would do to the economy, and D) they honestly do not seem to give a shit about anyone but themselves. Yay, Tea Party! The Democrats were going after option 2, but the suicidal Teatards blocked it and the moderate Republicans who could have stepped up and done the job refused. Option 3 would be a disaster on the scale of the Great Depression. Almost 1/4 of all economic activity in the United States is in some way tied to Federal spending, mainly military and infrastructure related. Cut that off and watch the entire economy go into free fall. You know the only thing worse than Soviet style socialism? Unfettered, unregulated capitalism, and that's precisely what we would get with option 3 as all of the Federal regulatory agencies pack up shop and go home for lack of funding. We would have to start boiling our drinking water and buying our food only from local sources we have inspected and trust personally. See, what S& P realizes, and what all the economists realize, is that to tackle this problem, we must dip into all three options. Relying on only spending cuts (like the Repubs and Teatards are absolutely insisting on because they simply will NOT allow the wealthy to be held accountable for their fair share of the tax burden) will tank the economy. Relying only on revenue increases (which NO ONE is advocating, despite what the Repub/Teatards are screaming) would ALSO take the economy. There must be a balanced approach between spending cuts and revenue increases. S&P knows this. Anyone with half a brain knows this. But until the Repubs and Tea Party assholes stop trying to force economic suicide down the throats of the American people just to spare the rich from tax increases, we will never get this thing under control. Yes, there will be cuts in Social Security and Medicare. There have to be. The system as it currently exists is unsustainable even in the medium run. But there also must be substantial revenue increases. The Bush tax cuts to the rich MUST be allowed to expire, but next year when they are set to do so, the Teatards & their Repub bitches will once again hold the nation hostage to prevent that from happening, and we will likely have our credit downgraded AGAIN....and those fucknuts will once again blame Obama for it in defiance of all logic and reason. Here's what MUST happen: 1. Large entitlement programs like SS & Medicare MUST be re-evaluated and reshaped into a sustainable model. That is going to mean cuts. Not elimination or privatization (which is the same as elimination), but there are going need to be cuts. This is painful and unpleasant, but it is absolutely necessary. 2. The Bush tax cuts MUST be allowed to expire. This is non-negotiable, and Obama should make that clear. They were a horrible idea in the first place, and to a large extent, along with Iraq/Afghanistan, they are directly responsible for our current mess. Refusing to let these asinine tax cuts (which have never created a single job, just accelerated the widening of the gap between rich and poor) is akin to a man with lung cancer insisting that the only thing that will cure him is to smoke more.3. New revenue sources MUST be found. Idiotic corporate tax loopholes and corporate welfare for billion dollar industries like oil must be ended. Corporations must be held accountable for their financial and tax responsibilities, and those corps which deliberately flout them must be penalized. It really pisses me off when I realize that the part-time janitor at my school paid more in Federal taxes last year than Haliburton did, while Carlos made $11,000 and Haliburton made somewhere north of $3,000,000,000. That's fucked up right there that the Repubs believe it is right and proper for Carlos to bear more of a tax burden than goddamn Haliburton. 4. Government discretionary spending MUST be examined and made more efficient and effective. There is enough redundancy and waste in the system to shame even the most jaded of bureaucrat. There is a lot of savings to be had without reducing effectiveness, and we have to do it. Only with a balanced and all-inclusive plan will we get out of this. S&P knows this, and when the Teatards refused to allow that to happen, S&P downgraded us. They were absolutely right to do so, and it is all the fault of the Republicans and the Tea Party. |
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Post by Art Vandelay on Aug 8, 2011 8:36:36 GMT -5
Sandman, I don't suppose you'd be willing to run for president?
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Post by Armand Tanzarian on Aug 8, 2011 9:04:39 GMT -5
Which does she want? Recovery and employment or austerity? You can't have both. Nope. What she and most tea partiers want is government demolished. What they want to replace it with, they haven't decided. Frankly they're too short-sighted too to see beyond "kill Obama's socialist government". gawker.com/5828556/tea-partiers-celebrating-us-credit-rating-downgrade |
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Post by nickiknack on Aug 8, 2011 9:48:42 GMT -5
Sandman for president
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Post by the sandman on Aug 8, 2011 9:59:13 GMT -5
Sandman, I don't suppose you'd be willing to run for president? Hell no. I have too much integrity for that. Plus there are a LOT of photos out there of a drunken Sandman.....a LOT. Oh, and there's also the problem that I would be Constitutionally prohibited from being President in the first place. |
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Post by MaybeNever on Aug 8, 2011 10:49:03 GMT -5
Social security, I hear, could be made solvent in perpetuity by simply raising the cap from $106,000 to something more sensible.
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Post by Vene on Aug 8, 2011 11:11:10 GMT -5
Social security, I hear, could be made solvent in perpetuity by simply raising the cap from $106,000 to something more sensible. I have seen that cited elsewhere too. And, to a certain extent, I'm not worried about the nation having debt, as long as the interest on it is able to be paid off indefinitely. There is also this:  Public debt is basically the inverse of private savings. I think that private savings are more important than a public surplus. |
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Post by canadian mojo on Aug 8, 2011 12:30:16 GMT -5
Sandman, I don't suppose you'd be willing to run for president? Hell no. I have too much integrity for that. Plus there are a LOT of photos out there of a drunken Sandman.....a LOT. Oh, and there's also the problem that I would be Constitutionally prohibited from being President in the first place. How about Prime Minister of Canada then? |
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Post by nickiknack on Aug 8, 2011 14:12:22 GMT -5
So this is what the Founders had in mind, celebrating a credit downgrade?? This is just low, even for the baggers...for some reason I feel the founders would like to tar & feather these fucks, and then have them tried for teason. |
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Post by ltfred on Aug 8, 2011 16:57:42 GMT -5
So does this mean that Social Security and Medicare are still gonna get cuts, cause that sucks. Hopefully in the next elections people will see the fiasco that the Republicans have done with the debt ceiling and get smart and vote Obama back in, because honestly, I think that man is trying his hardest and damndest to get this shit straightened out but is surrounded by a bunch of water heads that oppose him at every chance. Well, there are three ways to fix this situation: 1. MASSIVE cuts to sacred-cow entitlement programs, mainly Social Security and Medicare. And I do mean MASSIVE. As in damn near eliminating them. 2. MASSIVE revenue increases across the board. Businesses, the wealthy, the middle class, pretty much everyone. 3. MASSIVE cuts to Federal discretionary spending. Military, infrastructure, environmental maintenance, pretty much everything. None of these even address the actual primary concern, which is depressed demand in American households who have overleveraged their bank accounts (in an attempt to maintain their standard of living while their wages plummeted). In fact, austerity would further depress public demand, worsening unemployment and causing another recession. There's no evidence austerity could reduce government or private debt even in the short-run, let alone over the next decade. America's long-term debt problems are, basically, private health insurance inefficiency. Cutting even one cent from medicare, the most efficient insurance provider, will worsen that. That's untrue. Social Security is totally sustainable for at least three decades, and it's sustainable for eternity with minor reform (taxing everyone, not just the poor and middle class). Medicare's problem is that it has to provide services in an inefficient market. Cutting medicare spending, the most efficient insurer in the country, will worsen the crisis. Clearly the solution needs to be more substantial and fundamental, and it needs to attack the real problem- the private sector. |
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Post by the sandman on Aug 8, 2011 17:48:30 GMT -5
Fred, I'm afraid I was guilty of oversimplification. Of course the issues are much more complex than I describe; I am no Tea Party irritant who believes massive, complicated issues like this can be reduced to single paragraphs. I was trying to express how a balanced approach of both spending reductions, efficiency improvements, and new revenues should be used.
As for Social Security, in my opinion, the best way to make it solvent is to tax everyone equally on it. As it currently stands, isn't it only the first 125K of income taxed for social security? Eliminate that cap and BAM! Social Security is solvent for a considerable time, as long as Congress keeps its goddamn fingers out of the account. It does only seem fair that the wealthy should pay the same percentage of their income to FICA that the rest of us do.
Of course, the Tea Tards & Republicans would INSTANTLY scream that that would be a "job killing tax increase on Americans"....seriously, do they really think the wealthy sit around counting their money and going "OK, we have enough to create six more jobs!"
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Post by tolpuddlemartyr on Aug 8, 2011 18:08:38 GMT -5
Sandman, I don't suppose you'd be willing to run for president? Hell no. I have too much integrity for that. Plus there are a LOT of photos out there of a drunken Sandman.....a LOT. Oh, and there's also the problem that I would be Constitutionally prohibited from being President in the first place. There's your problem, those without that integrity (the ones who'll end up being president) would never dare pissing of the legions of special interest groups whose screaming would make the caterwauling of the teatards sound like a Gregorian chant should any president be brave enough to propose Sandman's suggestions as policy. |
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Post by Vene on Aug 8, 2011 18:13:41 GMT -5
As for Social Security, in my opinion, the best way to make it solvent is to tax everyone equally on it. As it currently stands, isn't it only the first 125K of income taxed for social security? Eliminate that cap and BAM! Social Security is solvent for a considerable time, as long as Congress keeps its goddamn fingers out of the account. It does only seem fair that the wealthy should pay the same percentage of their income to FICA that the rest of us do. I'm pretty sure the cap is lower than that. Wiki leads me to believe it's at $106,800. |
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Post by the sandman on Aug 8, 2011 18:24:18 GMT -5
As for Social Security, in my opinion, the best way to make it solvent is to tax everyone equally on it. As it currently stands, isn't it only the first 125K of income taxed for social security? Eliminate that cap and BAM! Social Security is solvent for a considerable time, as long as Congress keeps its goddamn fingers out of the account. It does only seem fair that the wealthy should pay the same percentage of their income to FICA that the rest of us do. I'm pretty sure the cap is lower than that. Wiki leads me to believe it's at $106,800. that's bloody disgustin', mate. |
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Post by Mlle Antéchrist on Aug 8, 2011 20:01:03 GMT -5
Hell no. I have too much integrity for that. Plus there are a LOT of photos out there of a drunken Sandman.....a LOT. Oh, and there's also the problem that I would be Constitutionally prohibited from being President in the first place. How about Prime Minister of Canada then? There's still the integrity issue  |
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