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Jilocasin
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Post by Jilocasin »

I didn't think it was a good idea. The mental image of rival shipping companies blowing each other's vessels up just struck me as absurd and amusing.
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Crissa
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Post by Crissa »

Arizona only exists because confederates colonized it. They've never recognized that they were always a minority in their own state.

Jan Brewer is going for the stupid-winger vote, I guess. But then again, she cancelled over a hundred thousand voters' registrations but found not a single case of voter fraud. (Mostly brown people and in Democratic districts, strangely enough)

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Post by Lich-Loved »

Can someone tell me the rational argument against strengthening our borders and stopping the flow of illegal immigrants? What are the benefits of keeping the status quo to our society?
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Post by Crissa »

'Strengthening our borders'? What does this mean? We've never had militarized borders. You're literally cutting communities in half. Including a library.

Stopping the flow of illegal immigrants? Sure, that would be great. But secure borders has nothing to do with it. Arresting people randomly doesn't do it, either. The number and arbitrariness of ICE raids hits less than 10% of the immigrants, while impacting some nationalities of immigrants more than others - which, btw, is illegal.

The benefits to the status quo are dollar signs. Cheap labor for farms. Cheap labor for factories. Cheap labor that cannot complain, cannot ask for OSHA, Union, and support from our labor laws.

The status quo allows employers to violate our labor laws. So they have no reason to change it. That's why they support right-winger rage: No immigration reform, no change in the status quo. We waste money of 'secure borders' and 'enforcement' that never touches any but a token number of companies that employ illegal labor.

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Juton
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Post by Juton »

Exactly Crissa,

If the states on the Mexican border wanted to cut down on illegal immigration they'd go after people hiring them. People come to the states to earn a decent living, if you make the only avenue for them to do that be through legal documented immigration then the illegal type would be much less common. Anything else is just a majority afraid of 'the other'.
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Post by Lich-Loved »

Crissa wrote:some stuff
Ok, I didn't ask the right question. What is the benefit of having millions and millions of poor and unskilled illegal immigrants in the country while at the same time increasing our spending on entitlement programs? How does allowing additional millions to enter improve American fiscal prospects given that we are going broke on entitlement spending as it is?
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Post by Lich-Loved »

Juton wrote:Exactly Crissa,

If the states on the Mexican border wanted to cut down on illegal immigration they'd go after people hiring them. People come to the states to earn a decent living, if you make the only avenue for them to do that be through legal documented immigration then the illegal type would be much less common. Anything else is just a majority afraid of 'the other'.
Yeah this is a huge issue. I would like to see an electronic means of citizenship validation (maybe birth cert, SSN, green card, passport and other docs crossreferenced and weighted for veracity) so companies would have no excuse but to hire only citizens and if they did not, they had no plausible denyability as they do now. The current system allows the laws to be bent or broken too easily.

We could then use the very same system to enforce citizenship at our polls and reduce voter fraud.
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

1) In the long run (like 40 years long run) the United States is going to need immigration anyway. Otherwise the country will end up like Japan/Western Europe where the population is steadily shrinking.

2) Entitlement spending is breaking our backs? Since when? Why don't you name these entitlement programs?

3) Entitlement spending for ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS is breaking our backs? That's even more absurd. IIs get less spent on them than legal immigrants because, you know, they're illegal and not allowed access to many services (barring public ones like roads), but still pay many of the same taxes (like Sales tax). If #2 was true you'd have a case for not making anyone legal immigrants but still keeping them around. Otherwise:

4) You need to show how illegal immigrants eat up more tax dollars than a legal immigrant.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by Lich-Loved »

Lago PARANOIA wrote:2) Entitlement spending is breaking our backs? Since when? Why don't you name these entitlement programs?
Social Security and Medicare expenditures are funded by permanent appropriations and so are considered "mandatory" spending according to the 1997 Budget Enforcement Act (BEA). Social Security and Medicare are sometimes called "entitlements," because people meeting relevant eligibility requirements are legally entitled to benefits. Some programs, such as Food Stamps, are appropriated entitlements. Some mandatory spending, such as Congressional salaries, is not part of any entitlement program. Funds to make federal interest payments have been automatically appropriated since 1847. Mandatory spending accounted for 53% of total federal outlays in FY2008, with net interest payments accounting for an additional 8.5%.

Mandatory spending is also expected to increase as a share of GDP. According to the Heritage Foundation, spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will rise from 8.7% of GDP in 2010, to 11.0% by 2020 and to 18.1% by 2050. Since the federal government has historically collected about 18.4% of GDP in tax revenues, this means these three mandatory programs may absorb all federal revenues sometime around 2050. Unless these long-term fiscal imbalances are addressed by reforms to these programs, raising taxes or drastic cuts in discretionary programs, the federal government will at some point be unable to pay its obligations.

Both Social Security and Medicare are funded by payroll tax revenues dedicated to those programs. Program tax revenues historically have exceeded payouts, resulting in program surpluses and the building of trust fund balances. The trust funds earn interest. Both Social Security and Medicare each have two component trust funds. As of FY2008, Social Security had a combined $2.4 trillion trust fund balance and Medicare's was $380 billion. If during an individual year program payouts exceed the sum of tax income and interest earned during that year (i.e., an annual program deficit), the trust fund for the program is drawn down to the extent of the shortfall. Legally, the mandatory nature of these programs compels the government to fund them to the extent of tax income plus any remaining trust fund balances, borrowing as needed. Once the trust funds are eliminated through expected future deficits, technically these programs can only draw on payroll taxes during the current year. In effect, they are "pay as you go" programs, with additional legal claims to the extent of their remaining trust fund balances.

Mandatory programs are affected by demographic trends. The number of workers continues declining relative to those receiving benefits. For example, the number of workers per retiree was 5.1 in 1960; this declined to 3.3 in 2007 and is projected to decline to 2.1 by 2040.These programs are also affected by per-person costs, which are also expected to increase at a rate significantly higher than the economy. This unfavorable combination of demographics and per-capita rate increases is expected to drive both Social Security and Medicare into large deficits during the 21st century. Multiple government sources have argued these programs are fiscally unsustainable as presently structured due to the extent of future borrowing and related interest required to fund them; here is a 2009 summary from the Social Security and Medicare Trustees:

The financial condition of the Social Security and Medicare programs remains challenging. Projected long run program costs are not sustainable under current program parameters. Social Security's annual surpluses of tax income over expenditures are expected to fall sharply this year and to stay about constant in 2010 because of the economic recession, and to rise only briefly before declining and turning to cash flow deficits beginning in 2016 that grow as the baby boom generation retires. The deficits will be made up by redeeming trust fund assets until reserves are exhausted in 2037, at which point tax income would be sufficient to pay about three fourths of scheduled benefits through 2083. Medicare's financial status is much worse. As was true in 2008, Medicare's Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust Fund is expected to pay out more in hospital benefits and other expenditures this year than it receives in taxes and other dedicated revenues. The difference will be made up by redeeming trust fund assets. Growing annual deficits are projected to exhaust HI reserves in 2017, after which the percentage of scheduled benefits payable from tax income would decline from 81 percent in 2017 to about 50 percent in 2035 and 30 percent in 2080. In addition, the Medicare Supplementary Medical Insurance (SMI) Trust Fund that pays for physician services and the prescription drug benefit will continue to require general revenue financing and charges on beneficiaries that grow substantially faster than the economy and beneficiary incomes over time.

Since the government borrowed and spent the trust funds' assets, there is no "lockbox" or marketable investment portfolio of $2.4 trillion for Social Security or $380 billion for Medicare. The trust funds contain non-marketable "IOU's" that the government is legally obligated to pay. In the absence of significant budget surpluses, the government will be required to convert these non-marketable securities to marketable securities by borrowing in the future, as trust fund claims are redeemed.
Roughly 60% of our entire spending goes to entitlements and mandatory spending (like existing debt interest payments). We ran a deficit (outlays exceeded income) of 1.5 trillion dollars in fiscal 2009. If we canceled 100% of defense and discretionary spending, we would save roughly 1.2 trillion dollars in 2009, and would still go broke as predicted above.

Yeah, entitlements are killing us, and these estimates do not reflect national health care.

Edit: to put the above into perspective, here are a couple of results I found through google:
Greece:

National debt, put at €300 billion ($413.6 billion), is bigger than the country's economy, with some estimates predicting it will reach 120 percent of gross domestic product in 2010. The country's deficit -- how much more it spends than it takes in -- is 12.7 percent.


US:

At the end of first quarter of 2010, the gross debt was 87.3% of GDP (a measure of the size of the economy), composed of debt held by the public (56.6%) and of intra-governmental debt (44.4%).

The White House has forecast a $1.6 trillion budget deficit this year, or about 10.6 percent of gross domestic product, the highest level since World War Two.
Greece is now at "junk bond" status and lending them money is going to be painful or impossible (right, Germany???). The US isn't as bad off, yet.

So what happens when there is no more of someone else's money to spend and the masses still want their free lunches?
Last edited by Lich-Loved on Thu Apr 29, 2010 1:21 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Lago PARANOIA
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

LL are you aware that illegal immigrants:

A) Generally pay payroll taxes (or rather, their employer pays them) but aren't entitled to Medicare or Social Security and

B) Medicaid is paid to hospitals, not to illegal immigrants? So like, they get double the not-amount of money.


This would be an argument to ban them from becoming legal (because then you'd have to pay them back, sigh) but it's not an argument for kicking them out since they put money into these programs without getting anything back.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Juton
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Post by Juton »

Lago PARANOIA wrote:LL are you aware that illegal immigrants:

A) Generally pay payroll taxes (or rather, their employer pays them) but aren't entitled to Medicare or Social Security and
In Canada to be employed you have to show proof of citizenship, I'm assuming you have to do something similar in the States. So any illegal immigrant can't show that because they don't have it. Since the employer knows this why would they deduct payroll taxes when the worker is undocumented? In fact wouldn't there be incentive not to pay payroll taxes, because if the IRS sees you employing X citizens but you are paying payroll tax for X+Y employees that's going to look suspicious.
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Post by Lich-Loved »

In the US one of 26 documents is allowed to show right to work. I am away so i camt link atm but can do so later. Also employers do pay some taxes b/c their workers are nominally legal using this easily spoofed system. Many others do not pay any tax at all for the workers - this is very common in texas where i have family but it happens everywhere.

Lago, my main concern is that eventually we will not be able to make all of these entitlement payments and every poor unskilled person is going to suffer disproportionate hardships. The more poor unskilled people we have the worse the suffering is going to be. We still pay for schools, medical care , police and rescue services, water and power and like services for everyone. Also, to think illegal immigrants do not receive food stamps (either directly or on the black market) as well as other social services is niave. Finally the poor are disprortionately involved in crime esp violent crime.

I am dtill not seeimg a list of benifits, just problems.
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Post by Crissa »

Lich-Loved wrote:
Crissa wrote:some stuff
Ok, I didn't ask the right question. What is the benefit of having millions and millions of poor and unskilled illegal immigrants in the country while at the same time increasing our spending on entitlement programs? How does allowing additional millions to enter improve American fiscal prospects given that we are going broke on entitlement spending as it is?
Same answer: Lots of people that cannot get government aid or vote. Illegal immigrants do not get social security, they don't ask for police aid, they don't get medicaid, unemployment, or workman's compensation. They also do not get grants for healthcare, education, or the Earned Income Tax Credit.

The Republican answer to the immigration question is 'temporary work visas'. The Democratic answer is 'path to citizenship'.

The nativist answer is the status quo. I don't know what you intend to ask.

Legal or illegal immigrants still pay taxes (at least, the majority of their employers do and businesses that sell to them do) and buy things. This increases economic activity. Immigrants of all types are less likely to request government aid or become in trouble with the law than those brought up in the US. They have more children, open more businesses, and are more fiscally mobile.

Immigration is great. What's not great is predatory practices and temporary work visas.

LL, your quote about SS is informed but highly ignorant. SS does not pay out more than it takes in - in fact, it pays out less than it pays in. There is a 'flaw' in it that it is all current-account; in other words, the current workers produce and pay for current retirees. However, aside from rising medical care costs, Social Security has never, ever been less than forty years from insolvent. You're worrying about a problem that never, ever gets closer. It's the same number of years from today until it goes insolvent as the day you were were born.

More immigrants mean more workers, not more people pulling Social Security. Immigrants can't pull Social Security - it's based off of years worked in the US, not your age.

Yes, IRS and labor are generally overloaded. But they will cry foul if more work (such as a factory) is done than you have employees on record. So it would only be possible to eliminate a few jobs at a time and retain the same production.

However, because we don't have a national ID system, it's pretty easy to use a fake SS number - easier for an employer than an individual, actually - as there's an expected number of errors.

The same people who argue for border security, AZ 1070, and voter ID requirements are the same ones who refuse free national identification for all. Just because you think it would be a good idea does not mean you can get a majority of Republicans to vote for it.

-Crissa
Last edited by Crissa on Thu Apr 29, 2010 2:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Lich-Loved »

Crissa wrote:
Lich-Loved wrote:
Crissa wrote:some stuff
Ok, I didn't ask the right question. What is the benefit of having millions and millions of poor and unskilled illegal immigrants in the country while at the same time increasing our spending on entitlement programs? How does allowing additional millions to enter improve American fiscal prospects given that we are going broke on entitlement spending as it is?
Same answer: Lots of people that cannot get government aid or vote. Illegal immigrants do not get social security, they don't ask for police aid, they don't get medicaid, unemployment, or workman's compensation. They also do not get grants for healthcare, education, or the Earned Income Tax Credit.

The Republican answer to the immigration question is 'temporary work visas'. The Democratic answer is 'path to citizenship'.

The nativist answer is the status quo. I don't know what you intend to ask.
The problem with 'path to citizenship' is it instantly makes all of these workers useless. The only way these guys get useful work is because no one has to provide minimum wage, taxes, workman's comp and other insurance, social security benefits and the like AND businesses get to make money and pay a little tax on the side. Make them all citizens and you have an instant underclass that is no more useful to America than the millions on the government dole right now in cities across the country. I know of people in Texas that would fire (tomorrow) their landscapers and housekeepers if they had to pay minimum wage + expenses to some company. Some of my family is in construction there and while they do not have any workers/laborers (they are in design, not actual labor), they see that ALL the construction companies there hire illegals, no one even speaks English on the job site. This works ONLY because the labor is cheap. Make all these people citizens and you have a huge underclass that is not employed. "Path to citizenship" is a boondoggle that might as well be "path to unemployment" which is a very short path to "vote Left!!11!!" so that benefits continue to flow long after the people are useful to society. Hence my point about entitlement programs going broke.

Crissa wrote:Legal or illegal immigrants still pay taxes (at least, the majority of their employers do and businesses that sell to them do) and buy things. This increases economic activity. Immigrants of all types are less likely to request government aid or become in trouble with the law than those brought up in the US. They have more children, open more businesses, and are more fiscally mobile.
This sounds surprisingly supply-side. Interesting.
LL, your quote about SS is informed but highly ignorant. SS does not pay out more than it takes in - in fact, it pays out less than it pays in. There is a 'flaw' in it that it is all current-account; in other words, the current workers produce and pay for current retirees. However, aside from rising medical care costs, Social Security has never, ever been less than forty years from insolvent. You're worrying about a problem that never, ever gets closer. It's the same number of years from today until it goes insolvent as the day you were were born.
Sorry I forgot to add the source. Its wikipedia. There is no serious debate on this issue except from the extreme left that can't afford to have it be true. Our spending and demographics patterns alone tell the tale. Can you link up some CBO reports or a source more credible than the 2009 summary from the Social Security and Medicare Trustees that prove your claim?
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Post by Crissa »

Lich-Loved wrote:The problem with 'path to citizenship' is it...
I think you should rewrite everything that comes after this part.
Lich-Loved wrote:...instantly makes all of these workers useless.
So, status-quo == useful. No immigrants, no useful work, and so... Why should we secure our borders? If we do that, then we won't get useful work. Or something. I don't follow this 'logic'.
Lich-Loved wrote: "Path to citizenship" is a boondoggle that might as well be "path to unemployment" which is a very short path to "vote Left!!11!!" so that benefits continue to flow long after the people are useful to society. Hence my point about entitlement programs going broke.
So, illegal workers are needed because they displace other workers who then are on the dole.

Are you an American at all? There are no public 'dole' programs in the 60% that you've listed. Social Security is paid by workers, for workers. Medicare is paid for by those who use the program. Medicaid... Only provides a minority of funding for medical care, not 'dole'.

There are often state programs that help - reduce the cost of health care for children, pay for health care for those injured and unable to pay, and pay for those unable to help themselves.

Unemployment, food stamps, WIC, etc do get some federal funding, yes, but they're a tiny portion not included in your numbers. None of these are you allowed to use more the for n weeks out of your entire life, due to laws passed in 1995.

You've probably never encountered them, because you never needed them.
Lich-Loved wrote:
Crissa wrote:Legal or illegal immigrants still pay taxes (at least, the majority of their employers do and businesses that sell to them do) and buy things. This increases economic activity. Immigrants of all types are less likely to request government aid or become in trouble with the law than those brought up in the US. They have more children, open more businesses, and are more fiscally mobile.
This sounds surprisingly supply-side. Interesting.
No, Keynesian. Each person only consumes so much; so having more individuals increases consumption. This is why it's better to have things like progressive taxation and food stamps than it is to have lower taxes across the board.
Lich-Loved wrote:Sorry I forgot to add the source.
...Nothing I said denied your evidence. Nothing in your quote comes close to dealing with my assertion. Please re-read what I said about the solvency of Social Security.

There's no argument about this information because only stupid right-wingers make the assumption that the insolvency date is always the same. It's not. It moves outward. Nine years ago you would have been whining about 2030, not 2037. Some years it goes out a year, some years it goes out two. This last year, it actually went backwards.

But it's still some date thirty years in the future.

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Post by Username17 »

Entitlements are not making us go broke. We spend a lot on them, but they generally make up the difference in economic stimulation. The Iraq War cost $720 billion dollars, the Bush tax cuts cost $2.48 trillion. Public debt is currently $9.9 trillion. If we had just not done the two grossest pieces of financial incompetence of the Bush administration, we'd be in a totally fine financial position right now.

Yes, taxes have to rise. But we really don't need to cut entitlements. We would benefit from increasing entitlement spending. We could be as rich as Norwegians.

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Crissa wrote:So, status-quo == useful. No immigrants, no useful work, and so... Why should we secure our borders? If we do that, then we won't get useful work. Or something. I don't follow this 'logic'.
Sorry, I am not being clear. Here is the issue:

Status Quo Approach:
1. Allows ever more illegals, some of which are workers into the country.
2. This is sorta-kinda ok for now, because the US has jobs that we can put these workers in if we pay them next to nothing and give them no protections.
3. As more workers pour in and we have no protections, the workers all work for less (ref The Jungle by Upton Sinclair).
4. Workers working for less cannot consume indefinitely. Many go without work. Do they pack up and go home? No, they stay because a bad day in the US is a good day anywhere else. There is crime, poverty.
5. Illegal immigrants vote thanks to the anti Jim Crow laws. The average illegal immigrant voter is not going to vote out legislation that means he gets less of any sort of cash or services and votes for increased cash and services. The lawful taxpayers now have to foot an ever-increasing social services bill
6. The country goes bust.

Citizen Approach:
1. We make a "path to citizenship" for all the illegals
2. The illegals become citizens and price themselves out of the sharecropper and other markets because we *still* have illegals entering the country that do that work OR because we only have so many of those jobs available at any wage, fewer at minimum wage.
3. Prices rise on all kinds of things where they are suppressed now because of the new labor costs, making the things illegals did cheaply (help grow food and build things) more expensive for everyone, even for the immigrants themselves, which gives them less them even less purchasing power.
4. Illegals continue to enter the country because now they can be citizens and get social services paid for by lawful taxpayers.
5. The new citizens vote left so social programs expand
6. We go broke.

The voucher plan:
I won't talk to this because i have no idea how it would work. Maybe it is used to limit the number of "temporary workers" to something the economy can sustain or maybe it is a pile of crap. I have no idea.

To me, the only real way to address this issue is we haul all of the illegals out and stop them from coming in, we make it hell on businesses to employ them, and the people here start paying a fair wage to get the things done they want done, by using US citizen labor. We have a huge unemployment rate in the cities. Maybe states can offer continued state benefits to anyone that wants to leave their porch and go pick strawberries. Maybe the state sends the welfare checks to the farmers and builders, and to get your dole, you show up and swing a hammer or pick a basket of apples and you get your check. I don't know, but it is a hella lot better than paying people to sit on their asses AND having a flood of illegal immigrants in the country that is unsustainable in the long run.
Are you an American at all? There are no public 'dole' programs in the 60% that you've listed. Social Security is paid by workers, for workers. Medicare is paid for by those who use the program. Medicaid... Only provides a minority of funding for medical care, not 'dole'.
Holy crap where do YOU live? In 2009, the US Government took in 891 billion in Social security/social insurance receipts and spent 1300 billion on social security and medicaid/medicare alone AND spent an additional 650 billion on other "mandatory programs". Social security and MediX are paid for on the backs of the American taxpayer. Of course, since 47% of the US pays NO federal income tax and yet federal income tax is the single largest contributor to US federal revenue (just a bit ahead of - you guessed it, social insurance receipts again paid in vast amount by the same people paying taxes), we honest taxpayers are very much funding these public dole programs. This viewpoint is further backed up by SCOTUS in 1938 where the court ruled that social security was not a "contributory insurance program" and further that "The proceeds of both [employee and employer] taxes are to be paid into the Treasury like internal-revenue taxes generally, and are not earmarked in any way". Thus it is hardly any surprise that the life expectancy when the program was created in 1935 was 61years (basically only white men were initially offered the benefit) - when benefits began after that. Yeah that's right, the government never intended to pay a great deal out,it was a tax raising plan that was specifically NOT earmarked for any particular use. The federal government and has been struggling ever since to find a way to make it work.

Self funded? You are living in a dream world.
There are often state programs that help - reduce the cost of health care for children, pay for health care for those injured and unable to pay, and pay for those unable to help themselves.


Unemployment, food stamps, WIC, etc do get some federal funding, yes, but they're a tiny portion not included in your numbers. None of these are you allowed to use more the for n weeks out of your entire life, due to laws passed in 1995.
Well about 40% of state funding comes from federal sources today, and we all know the states are going broke one by one and are running way in the red (the more liberal ones first of course). So yet again, the people paying taxes to the federal government are footing these state programs as well. Not to mention the same people are paying state income tax and local income tax.
Lich-Loved wrote:Sorry I forgot to add the source.
...Nothing I said denied your evidence.
So we agree it is going broke...

wait for it....
.
.
.
There's no argument about this information because only stupid right-wingers make the assumption that the insolvency date is always the same. It's not. It moves outward. Nine years ago you would have been whining about 2030, not 2037. Some years it goes out a year, some years it goes out two. This last year, it actually went backwards.

But it's still some date thirty years in the future.
Seriously? Well of course it is always "30 years or so in the future" because exactly like the article you link to says:
The most important thing to remember about social security is that it is a government handout, and the terms of that handout are decided through politics. Government, moreover, is continually revising the various rules and payment schedules, with the changes in 1984 being but one illustration. Every time social security changes its benefit schedule, changes its tax rates, changes its retirement age, or changes anything else, politicians are breaking past promises. Indeed, the whole concern about social security and its long-term viability is a result of politicians making grossly inconsistent promises to different people.[/b]

Even with the current massive build-up of surpluses, it is widely acknowledged that by 2030 the trust fund will be gone and payments will be hugely in excess of revenues. In other words the political promises that were made to beneficiaries are inconsistent with the commitments that were made to taxpayers. The two sides don't add up. There was massive lying to the public throughout our political system.
So the fucking government has kept the fail date out far enough in the future so it always seems like a distant problem by changing the fucking rules of how and when payments are going to be made. The retirement age has gone up two years (from 65 to 67) and the tax rate was raised up to 4% in 1950 and now stands at a cozy 15%. Eventually the congress is going to run out of tricks to play and it will go broke.


You should seriously go back to not linking articles to accompany your wild claims, you are Doing It Wrong.
Last edited by Lich-Loved on Thu Apr 29, 2010 6:00 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Lich-Loved »

FrankTrollman wrote:Entitlements are not making us go broke. We spend a lot on them, but they generally make up the difference in economic stimulation. The Iraq War cost $720 billion dollars, the Bush tax cuts cost $2.48 trillion. Public debt is currently $9.9 trillion. If we had just not done the two grossest pieces of financial incompetence of the Bush administration, we'd be in a totally fine financial position right now.

Yes, taxes have to rise. But we really don't need to cut entitlements. We would benefit from increasing entitlement spending. We could be as rich as Norwegians.

-Username17
Well I think the Bush tax cuts were wildly irresponsible. We need all the revenue we can get. The war is, well the war, and if you argue against it, then I won't jump up and down in a thread on fiscal policy.

But our government is wildly lopsided toward entitlement spending. We can't cut enough spending, even if we eliminated all other programs, to anything more than to barely balance the budget if the budget for entitlements never increased beyond the rate of inflation. Additionally revenues are falling as fewer and fewer people actually pay federal taxes. The solution I most often hear: increase taxes, *might* actually be palatable if we also slash all kinds of federal spending.

As far as Norway, I guess it is how you measure wealth. Norway seriously has a population of a middling US city and vast natural resource wealth. You might as well mention Kwuait or some other tiny country with disproportionate resources, landmass and population figures. And wikipedia points out there there as many Norwegians living in the US as there are in Norway (wonder what that signifies) and if they should all return to their prosperous homeland, it would cut the GDP per capita in half, placing it well below the US. Nah, Norway isn't a very good example. Try another big country comparible to ours in landmass, resources, population and mixed ethnicity, like China or Russia. Maybe the entire EU might be an example, but then again, they are not doing so well at the moment financially.
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Post by Username17 »

Lich Loved wrote:Eventually the congress is going to run out of tricks to play and it will go broke.
No?

The population isn't going to age indefinitely. As the baby boomers die out, out population will even get a little younger for a little bit. But yes, the reality is that as we live longer lives, our retirement and medical costs are going to rise, and taxes will have to rise to pay for that. But why the fuck would that mean that the government is going to go broke? That doesn't even make any sense.

When Social Security was first created back during the depression, the payouts were non-zero and no one had put any money into the system, and yet the government managed to not go broke. The government really is very rich and very resilient. And they can totally pay for the retirements of every single American. Especially if we have young guest workers.
Lich Loved wrote:But our government is wildly lopsided toward entitlement spending. We can't cut enough spending, even if we eliminated all other programs, to anything more than to barely balance the budget if the budget for entitlements never increased beyond the rate of inflation. Additionally revenues are falling as fewer and fewer people actually pay federal taxes. The solution I most often hear: increase taxes, *might* actually be palatable if we also slash all kinds of federal spending.
So? Why would we slash spending? On anything? Taxes are in a slump right now because of the second great depression, but do you seriously think that decreasing federal spending is the solution to anything? How is your 1937 history?

Yes. Spending has to rise. Taxes have to rise too. Increases in taxes correspond very well with economic growth. The richest country on the planet has a tax burden that would make Teabaggers explode with rage. Why is this a problem?

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Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

It's funny. If lich-loved had ever taken even a 100 level econ course, he'd realize how stupid what he is saying is and probably commit seppuku to hide his shame.
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Post by Crissa »

Lich-Loved wrote:Seriously? Well of course it is always "30 years or so in the future" because...
...Then you quote something irrelevant. In 1984 they thought the go broke year was 2011.

The wikipedia you linked to has it at 2037. The article I linked to (written in 2001 and using data from that year put it at 2030.

Are you fucking incapable of doing math?

2011 - 1984 = 27
2030 - 2001 = 29
2037 - 2009 = 28

Strange! You'd think it would get closer over the last thirty years, not stay the same distance in the future. Sure in 1985 they started charging more SS tax on earners under 100K. They haven't changed anything in SS in fifteen years.

The sky isn't falling. It's the same distance away it always has been.

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Last edited by Crissa on Thu Apr 29, 2010 12:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Murtak »

Lich-Loved wrote:But our government is wildly lopsided toward entitlement spending. We can't cut enough spending, even if we eliminated all other programs, to anything more than to barely balance the budget if the budget for entitlements never increased beyond the rate of inflation. Additionally revenues are falling as fewer and fewer people actually pay federal taxes. The solution I most often hear: increase taxes, *might* actually be palatable if we also slash all kinds of federal spending.
Why do you believe that "entitlement spending" loses the state money? Do you think people living on welfare will actually stash those dollar bills and sit on them, essentially taking them out of circulation? Of course they won't - they can not afford to save money. They will spend those dollar bills, and in doing so allow others to produce goods and provide services, meaning they get a share of that money and in turn put it to the same use.

Think about from the perspective of society: You can not actually lose money. You can only have it stashed in safes or bank accounts, where it does nothing, but you can not really lose money, only redistribute it. All the value created by our society lies not in money, but in the production of goods and services. So you should not care about who gets the money, but about what they will do with it. And by that maxim, handing homeless people money is the same as handing it to liquor and food stores. Handing poor families money is the same as giving it to supermarkets. And so on. Except, if you hand it to companies directly they also have the option to instead stash it, benefiting nobody. By handing it to poor people you guarantee it will spent at least once. And with every spending comes the creation of goods and services, and hence value to our society.

I can understand not wanting to borrow money. The interest on that money is after all going to be stashed somewhere, again benefiting no one. But I don't believe money spent on the poor will actually be lost to the government. And what's more, increasing poverty is guaranteed to decrease your tax base.

If you want to balance your budget, look towards slashing defense budgets and increasing taxes for the rich / for large companies. The US defense budget is absolutely ludicrous and what is purchased with it will never be of value to society. And with the money recently handed to large companies you could finance a lot of "entitlement spending" or if you prefer, build a lot of schools, rails and highways and other infrastructure improvements. As is, that same money gets invested again, sucking even money out of circulation and incidentally crashing markets.
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Post by Koumei »

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:It's funny. If lich-loved had ever taken even a 100 level econ course, he'd realize how stupid what he is saying is and probably commit seppuku to hide his shame.
All in favour of this happening?
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Post by Neeeek »

Lich-Loved wrote:
Well about 40% of state funding comes from federal sources today, and we all know the states are going broke one by one and are running way in the red (the more liberal ones first of course).
Well, you started off completely insane, and have now just gone to crazy town.

Here's the truth: The less "liberal" states have been living off the more "liberal" states for decades now. California is in a bit of a budget crisis right now. Because it pays for the budget short falls of about a third of the red states, and has for years. California generates more than enough tax revenue to support itself. It's federal tax burden minus what it gets from the federal government in return is bigger than the state's shortfall by a rather large margin. All CA needs to do to not have fiscal problems is cede from the Union. Same goes for most of the states people think of as left-wing.

The fact is, the US would be fiscally much better off without the red states, and it would have long since collapsed without the blue states. The right in the US lives off a generous grant from the left, and thinks it's making it on its own. Then again, these are people that use a phrase that was invented as a description of something that is literally impossible to do as something to aspire to, so introspection probably isn't their strong suit.
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