The 112th Congress - The first Orange-American to be elected Speaker

[MinnFan]

Re: The 112th Congress - The first Orange-American to be elected Speaker

The government destroyed the Social Security Trust Fund by paying for other things with it. In fact dishonest accounting seems to be the way to get things done in Washington, so much so that Bush wouldn't even put his Wars on the books.

Now we're being asked to sacrifice Social Security and Medicare when the wealthy can't be bothered with Clinton era taxation levels? Really?

See this is what makes me so angry. The conversation should have started there and worked it's way back. Instead the conversation has started with the gutting of relied upon social programs and public sector workers. Shared sacrifice? Hardly.

While its true that they raided the "lock box", SS was originally a 1% tax so they've kept it going a lot longer than it originally could have.

Also, SS was never supposed to be "relied upon"

 

[Priceless]

Re: The 112th Congress - The first Orange-American to be elected Speaker

I would add increases to the minimum wage to that.

Of course you would.

It has nothing to do with Junior having to compete with Grandma and Grandpa for the same job - and the geezers will still be around in September while Junior has to go back to school. But there's an easy fix for that...just tell Junior he doesn't have to go to school! Problem solved.

Well, except for Grandma and Grandpa, but they should be on the ice floe anyway.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: The 112th Congress - The first Orange-American to be elected Speaker

While its true that they raided the "lock box", SS was originally a 1% tax so they've kept it going a lot longer than it originally could have.

Also, SS was never supposed to be "relied upon"

You're so comical. If someone doesn't have any other money or any other income then of course it is "relied upon". Now, if you want to believe that everyone out there screwed themselves over and put themselves in that position, well fine. I don't believe that.

 

[MinnFan]

Re: The 112th Congress - The first Orange-American to be elected Speaker

Of course you would.

It has nothing to do with Junior having to compete with Grandma and Grandpa for the same job - and the geezers will still be around in September while Junior has to go back to school. But there's an easy fix for that...just tell Junior he doesn't have to go to school! Problem solved.

Well, except for Grandma and Grandpa, but they should be on the ice floe anyway.

Or it could just be that there is a correlation

More info

 

[Kepler]

Re: The 112th Congress - The first Orange-American to be elected Speaker

Also, SS was never supposed to be "relied upon"

It was supposed to be a safety net. But that was too Bolshy so it was broadened and broadened until everybody collected from it. That meant it has to be funded at a lot higher than 1%.

If you want to return it to a pure charity fund, I'm all for that and I wish you luck as you wade into that political fight. You'll be about as popular as the guy who suggests ditching the mortgage interest deduction.

 

[MinnFan]

Re: The 112th Congress - The first Orange-American to be elected Speaker

It was supposed to be a safety net. But that was too Bolshy so it was broadened and broadened until everybody collected from it. That meant it has to be funded at a lot higher than 1%.

If you want to return it to a pure charity fund, I'm all for that and I wish you luck as you wade into that political fight. You'll be about as popular as the guy who suggests ditching the mortgage interest deduction.

How about returning it back to insurance for living too long. Index it to the average life expectancy.

 

[Kepler]

Re: The 112th Congress - The first Orange-American to be elected Speaker

How about returning it back to insurance for living too long. Index it to the average life expectancy.

I think it should be indexed in some way like that, yes, taking into consideration both that people live longer and work longer.

But the real choice the public has to make is this: how much are you willing to pay to make sure your parents aren't living in your spare bedroom when they're 90? My answer to that is, quite a bit.

 

[busterman62]

Re: The 112th Congress - The first Orange-American to be elected Speaker

Well, except for Grandma and Grandpa, but they should be on the ice floe anyway.

Shouldn't be a problem since Obamacare will put them in front of the "Death Panel". If that fails there's always the new "Death Trap" in the GOP budget proposal.

With the new "Death Traps" in place, won't the Dem "Death Panels" will become obsolete and just another layer of bureaucracy? Who says the GOP isn't the party of less Gov't?

 

[bronconick]

Re: The 112th Congress - The first Orange-American to be elected Speaker

The only way to do this right is for them to trade back and forth: the GOP gets a cut in social security and the Dems get a cut in the DOD; the GOP gets to gut the schools and the Dems get to gut corporate welfare, the GOP gets a cut in Medicare and the Dems get restoration of the Clinton tax structure.

Then each side can crow that it cut the "wasteful" spending of the other side and predict dire results unless the voters give them a sweep so they can restore the "vital" spending of their own side.

Quid pro quo is the coward's path to progress, but it beats lack of any progress.

This.

 

[Slap Shot]

Re: The 112th Congress - The first Orange-American to be elected Speaker

I would add increases to the minimum wage to that.

A one-trick pony would of course say as much.

 

[Kepler]

Re: The 112th Congress - The first Orange-American to be elected Speaker

Or it could just be that there is a correlation

I see what you did there:

 

[Bakunin]

Re: The 112th Congress - The first Orange-American to be elected Speaker

If you want to return it to a pure charity fund, I'm all for that and I wish you luck as you wade into that political fight. You'll be about as popular as the guy who suggests ditching the mortgage interest deduction.

I think both of those things should be done. May as well call ourselves the "1%ers" because that's roughly the portion of the population that would agree to these things.

 

[Kepler]

Re: The 112th Congress - The first Orange-American to be elected Speaker

I think both of those things should be done. May as well call ourselves the "1%ers" because that's roughly the portion of the population that would agree to these things.

The only way to bring the budget back into line is to cut middle class entitlements and restore normal levels of taxation, particularly on the top tier. Neither party is going to back either proposition because the voters will kill the first and the bribes will kill the second. At best we'll get half- (or quarter-) measures that slightly delay the day of reckoning.

Therefore, the budget will not be balanced until there's a crash, after which everyone will dislocate their fingers pointing the blame at everyone but themselves.

So before that happens, and in the full knowledge that it won't do anything but give a chance to say "I told you so," speaking to my side: if we don't trade cuts in social security and Medicare, we're every bit as guilty as the bad guys. I understand we have to take a hard line in negotiating and undo as much of the last 30 years' damage as possible, but at the end of the day unless the country gets a lot better at math and a lot more progressive overnight, we're going to have to make cuts that will make Reagan's and Clinton's look bleeding heart.

The numbers don't give a crap that people will suffer, and NOTHING I see on the left indicates more than a handful of people, none of them powerful, admit this. Yeah, it's galling that in large measure this was all engineered to force this result and the people who did it are beyond the reach of both punishment or even conscience, but at the end of the day are we going to let the whole thing collapse for spite?

 

[MinnFan]

Re: The 112th Congress - The first Orange-American to be elected Speaker

A one-trick pony would of course say as much.

That what I like about you. You never let the facts get in your way.

Riddle me this. If the minimum wage doesn't affect unemployment then why don't we raise it to $50/hr? Think about it, we could wipe out poverty.

 

[Kepler]

Re: The 112th Congress - The first Orange-American to be elected Speaker

That what I like about you. You never let the facts get in your way.

Riddle me this. If the minimum wage doesn't affect unemployment then why don't we raise it to $50/hr? Think about it, we could wipe out poverty.

Is there room in this argument for the hypothesis that the minimum wage is one factor, hardly deterministic but also not completely irrelevant, to employment rates, and it should be part of the much more complex balance between a society that demands a basic level of dignity for workers and one that also allows businesses to flourish?

Or is that too much of a shade of grey?

Repeat also for: taxes, social programs, heath care, unemployment benefits, and everything else that is presented as a white hat vs black hat narrative by all partisans (including me).

 

[MinnFan]

Re: The 112th Congress - The first Orange-American to be elected Speaker

Is there room in this argument for the hypothesis that the minimum wage is one factor, hardly deterministic but also not completely irrelevant, to employment rates, and it should be part of the much more complex balance between a society that demands a basic level of dignity for workers and one that also allows businesses to flourish?

Or is that too much of a shade of grey?

Repeat also for: taxes, social programs, heath care, unemployment benefits, and everything else that is presented as a white hat vs black hat narrative by all partisans (including me).

Which is why my original post said "I would add" and not "no, this is why".

 

[unh_hockey]

Re: The 112th Congress - The first Orange-American to be elected Speaker

Is there room in this argument for the hypothesis that the minimum wage is one factor, hardly deterministic but also not completely irrelevant, to employment rates, and it should be part of the much more complex balance between a society that demands a basic level of dignity for workers and one that also allows businesses to flourish?

Or is that too much of a shade of grey?

Repeat also for: taxes, social programs, heath care, unemployment benefits, and everything else that is presented as a white hat vs black hat narrative.

agreed. Min wage might be a factor in increasing unemployment amongst one demographic. its hardly the root cause. None of us can tell from that figure how statistically significant the interaction is without knowing the interactions with other variables, thus its inconclusive beyond stating that minimum wage and unemployment have both increased in the last 3 years. Its best to leave it at that and let the BLS lie to us...err give us the real picture.

The numbers don't give a crap that people will suffer, and NOTHING I see on the left indicates more than a handful of people, none of them powerful, admit this. Yeah, it's galling that in large measure this was all engineered to force this result and the people who did it are beyond the reach of both punishment or even conscience, but at the end of the day are we going to let the whole thing collapse for spite?

How many wall street execs have been thrown in jail? Charged? Actually one might argue many are better off now than before. Its not as if this type of behavior isn't chronicled in the past such as in Machiavelli for example. Why would anyone with power opt to give it up? Nothing in the USA is going to get any better before it gets worse. Since my birth year of 1980, policies of all administrations have contributed towards the events which have lead up to now. Be it significant tax cuts, lax wall street regulation, botched inflation figures. Whats interesting is one can find instances where such policies were faught against ( the regulation of derivatives pre 1998 and LTCM for example), but get got squashed with steadfast determination..

I really admire those who still care. I am beyond this. if it was up to me, in the next 5-10 years, I will be blissfully ignorant of the US policies on another continent without my debt, college loans, Social security and the like. Every time I read about X budget being slashed, or POMOs pumping billions into the financial system, its infuriating but expected. I hate saying it, but ignorance really might be bliss...

 

[Kepler]

Re: The 112th Congress - The first Orange-American to be elected Speaker

How many wall street execs have been thrown in jail? Charged?

You know how Large Corporate Capitalism works. If you steal a hundred dollars from one family you're a criminal. If you steal a hundred billion dollars from a hundred million families you're the next Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

 

[Priceless]

Re: The 112th Congress - The first Orange-American to be elected Speaker

Washington - Should the federal government shut down Saturday, the ramifications could become incredibly personal to Rep. Jason Chaffetz. And everyone around him, for that matter.

Chaffetz is among a handful of House members who sleep in their congressional offices, and if a budget impasse continues, those representatives might find themselves without a place to shower.

A House Administration committee spokeswoman confirmed Thursday that the House gym, where the office crashers go to wash up, would shutter during a government shutdown. It’s a small inconvenience compared to the tribulations a closed-up government would mean to Americans, especially federal workers who might find themselves furloughed.

Isn't his staying in the US Capitol considered government welfare? Shouldn't he have to find other accommodations during a shutdown?

 

[Kepler]

Re: The 112th Congress - The first Orange-American to be elected Speaker

From those of us staring down the barrel of going from two to zero incomes if those TP halfwits get their way, they can all kiss my grits. No more rural electrification for those morons. Hopefully we'll overturn abortion too so they'll be knee-deep in their derp offspring.