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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (181506)	1/26/2004 2:51:29 AM
From: Amy J	Respond to of 1574262

John, RE: "But if they don't spend, they stifle commerce, and subsequent profits and employment." I agree there's downstream costs. But these can be managed by incrementally changing the system - possibly by allowing the transition to occur incrementally by percent, or by age, or some other incremental way. I think the costs of not taking action, exceed the downstream costs. A downstream cost is short-term. The cost of not taking action, could put a lot of future seniors into poverty. If it weren't for SS, half of all people over 65 would live in poverty. RE: "I agree in principle, as long as it is a replacement for SS." Agreed. Don't need yet another SS tax. But I don't think they should replace the entire thing. I like their proposal, where it's only a portional replacement and it's optional. It gives a person the feel of what it would be like. RE: "But the Devil is in the details. A huge amount of thought would have to go into deciding how the government would determine where investment dollars landed. " The problem isn't the details or the lack of thinking, the problem is the lack of action. They've already spent decades thinking about the details - every administration that's taken over this country (of either party), has requested report after report, study after study. But no action. We just don't hear about the studies, because they are never published in the mainstream news - though you can learn of it at any DC pub by the Capital. At most, a one line proposal is floated into the news by an Administration, but such a proposal is generally backed up by some long policy study and a plethora of supporting data from BLS and other Departments. So an Administration floats a one line description of an idea, but it stops dead if media polls don't show its favored. So the details never come out, and a public discussion never ensues. It's extremely difficult to give this country good medicine, because Administrations (of either party) are fearful to promote good policy at the risk of voter rath. That's just how it is, unfortunately. Policy people seem to imply the change will happen under the watch of Gen Y due to their volume of voting power, but hopefully the change is sooner so it's not a train wreck, but rather a constructive transition that also has the interests of the current retires at heart. RE: " One other point. Right now, if you take out the SS payments from the government revenue, the deficit probably doubles (WAG). The plan would require a degree of fiscal spending discipline that hasn't been demonstrated." I don't know if 100% of the SS revenue immediately gets redirected as a current distribution (outlay). If so, then they'd probably have to float some bonds, but at these interest rates, now is a good time to do that. It's a short-term transition problem. RE: "It appears to be a simple, logical idea, but there are a lot of ramifications. John " The policy people always have it all thought through to exhaustive detail. But this info isn't shared with us, if the one liner doesn't pass the media polls. Other than the one liner, the Administration just doesn't talk about it to the media, so we never find out about the details. And this is true for both political parties. Public is always kept in the dark on the details of any policy proposal it seems, unless the one liner sale pitch makes it in the polls. There's never a deep policy discussion if the one liner doesn't float well in the media polls. Stops it dead. Meanwhile, we keep taking bad medicine. Foolish system, if you ask me. Regards, Amy J