Budget talks: This is getting nasty

LOL...I see where the House is going to vote on a package soon, the one the President told them not to call his bluff with. This is going to get really nasty.

 

Meanwhile, he's bending, again, and again, on Medicare and SS.

Give and give and give and give. The goalposts moved back yard by yard to your own 20 yard line.

And the screeching lunatic economic-terrorist teabagger hordes haven't given up one god damn mother fucking thing.

I'll be digging ditches until I drop dead at 87 years old (I'll be dead long before then because my Medicare will be cut off) so Donald Mother Fucking Trump can continue to wipe his ass with $1000 bills.

 

Debt in the past has always been debt because presidents could pass it along to the next guy and build his library, write his books, do his speech tour, attend ball games the world over, and not really give a shit. Today's debt is a collection of all that shit coming home to where the chicken once stood.

 

In 1935, life expectancy was 61.7, retirement age was 65.

In 2011 life expectancy is 79.4, retirement age is 67.5.

What did you expect re: Social Security?


You shouldn't have to dig ditches until age 87, but as the benefit was originally intended you should have to dig them until age 83.

 

Well, they're trying to right the situation by taking away senior health care so they'll die earlier...and once they start dying earlier, they can revert the age qualification to more realistic levels.

America, in its own way, is pitching its own version of the Chinese population control. Only at the other end of life.

 

I have a fix for Social Security and Medicare.

 

This is one of those "lying with statistics" things. The figure that always gets quoted is life expectancy at birth. While life expectancy has improved dramatically over the last forever, most of the strides were made in eliminating childhood deaths. If you made it out of childhood, you had only a slightly worse chance of making it to 80 than someone today.

Life expectancy at 65 was about 12 years in 1940 - it's about 19 years today. That's not nothing, but it's clear that the difference in life expectancy is not due just (or even mostly) to people living to be ancient, and it's also clear that people were expected to live many years past their retirement age when social security was implemented.

 

Understood. But life expectancy at 65 is meaningless --- you are not putting anything into the pot at age 65.

What's important is life expectancy when you start working (when you start paying), to see how the numbers balance.

In 1940, a 22-year-old could be expected to live 5 years past retirement. Not 12.

Today, a 22-year-old can expect to live 14 years past retirement.

 

I honestly don't believe there's a plan that can pass both the House and Senate without ripping one or both parties in two, which pols regard as far more scary than a mere financial and economic collapse. I suspect the White House Counsel's Office is doing extensive research on the 14th Amendment. Just in case.
Since we know voters hold the President responsible for economic conditions, any President, Republican or Democrat, who's seeking a second term will do whatever they have to to improve or at least ameliorate economic conditions.
Or, to quote 1930s Senator William "Alfalfa Bill" Murray "What's the Constitution among friends?"

 

Fair enough. I've just seen it claimed many times, using life expectancy as evidence, that when SS was enacted that they expected that hardly anyone would collect on it.

 

I think they thought a lot of people would collect it. I don't think they thought so many would collect it for so long.

 

Don't touch the marginal tax rates.

Make FICA a straight 6.2 (or 4.2) percent on everything earned --- with no cap. Income of $9.7 million would not pay the same FICA as income of $102,000 (as he does today).

Nobody's lifestyle is wrecked, and oh how I would love to see how much revenue would flow in.