DescentBB

Here's a link to show what happens when one of the two big party's decides that what's right for america isn't what's right for their party because, in this case, what's right is an idea championed by the other side. So rather than allow the other side to achieve something positive it uses it's two-party-campaign-finance-system-stranglehold--muscle on it's own members to keep the good idea from becoming a reality and serving the good of the people!

Basically because of the current system no one can afford to go against either of them and get elected so we get stuck with the shi7 that squeezes out from between them! It's like being force fed from a toilet bowl and 66% of you people think you know which part of the bowl has the good food! 33% prefer the lumpy bottom and 33% prefer bobbing for floaters.

If you frickin people don't rise up and demand a real reform of the process you don't deserve to be Americans!

Alot of the framers were big fans of a no party system. They were right.

I see your point and feel your angst Will. I think you are absolutely right.

However, concerning the SS system, I don't belive that there is anything that can be done to fix it short of scrapping it all together.

It is based on a model that is so prone to failure that you or I would be put in jail if we started an investment program based on it. It is called a ponze scheme. I always thought it was amuzing that the same people (the feds) that would put me in jail for running such a program my self, REQUIRE me to participate in theirs.

You gotta love it

funny how the both the house and the senate have opted out from SS. Maybe the answer is to make the legislatures have the same retirement plan as us'n po folk.

woodchip wrote:funny how the both the house and the senate have opted out from SS. Maybe the answer is to make the legislatures have the same retirement plan as us'n po folk.

How about we limit their payroll and benefits to the national average! Now that's what I'd call incentive!

If I remember right I called for exactly that just a few threads ago. That would get them to fix the system allright....if they had to live with it too.

Well, I'm no authority, but the link here seems germane to the SS topic. See Myth #2.

No disagreement with the main thesis of this thread. Americans need to get up and be heard; in civil discussion, of course, much like we do here on the dbb.

dissent wrote:Well, I'm no authority, but the link here seems germane to the SS topic. See Myth #2.

No disagreement with the main thesis of this thread. Americans need to get up and be heard; in civil discussion, of course, much like we do here on the dbb.

Hate to break it to you *but*...

Myth #1 on that page is no myth. If it was a real fund, like any legal fund described by the governments rules of accounting, the rules all other institutions must abide by they wouldn't be able to hold their own liability as an asset! If CitiBank, for example, had a trust fund or retirement plan and just wrote itself a loan to cover the money it took out of the employee's paycheck that was supposed to be invested in the fund....well they would go to jail for doing it!

Common sense would tell you if you stop to think about it. What has the stock market as an index done since the begining of the SS "fund"? What would the balance be right now if they had put all they took into some kind of diversified fund? It would be overflowing like a politicians pocketbook.

Myth #2 that you mentioned is also not a myth. You might read it again and see that, yes, congress did change the law but notice they never claim that current congressmen don't have accounts that *include* the very private sector investments Bush is suggesting we should have access to. Yes they now don't have the 100% gravy train that they used to have *but* they also *do* have a better deal than we do and it's funded by our hard earned dollars!
That page is very slick with what it actually says to back up it's so called myth busting! It reads like a Bill Clinton testimony before a grand jury...."well that depends on what is is..."
Congress 'is' participating in SS but 'is' congress also participating in the stock market...mutual fund...thrift funds...etc. etc.
They conveniently don't mention that do they? The answer is yes, they do get to have their retirement fund mixed into much higher yielding funds than the rest of us.

The attempt under Myth #4 is so lame I wont bother...

not much disagreement here, Will. I think your posts and this article go to the same point - that there is no big fund, a honeypot of money out there just waiting to satify the needs of future seniors. ...would be overflowing like a politician's pocketbook. Ha, absolutely. But the pols just couldn't keep their grimy mitts off that 'fund' once they saw it. You'd think politicians might have a better sense of history (or the future), but seems they can't care too much about anything past the next election.

As for myth 2, I imagine you're right; and I think they hope the less known about this in the general public, the better.

Sux.

Raise income taxes to meet the obligation of making good on the trust fund.

Vander wrote:Raise income taxes to meet the obligation of making good on the trust fund.

No thanks. I pay too much as it is.

Then cut spending the meet the obligation of making good on the trust fund.

Vander wrote:Then cut spending the meet the obligation of making good on the trust fund.

You'll get no argument from me on that one.

However, another solution may be to restructure the system altogether into something other than a ponze scheme.