To: Sig who wrote (174790 ) 5/2/2005 9:48:01 AM From: John Koligman Respond to Sig, I'm sure we can muddle through it, but right now things don't look so well as to the healthcare and retirement future of the working men and women in the US. Wage growth has been pretty stagnant over the past few years, and you basically have an elite group at the top doing extremely well, while others are struggling. Those 1-2k tax cuts Bush likes to talk about for the average family are probably more than eaten up by rising local/state/property taxes, and the inexorable increase in monthly health care costs. Throw in the ever increasing hit from the alternative minimum tax and fuel costs, and it makes it worse. I read an article in the Sunday NY Times that had a graph of how much in future obligations the country has accumulated, they were throwing numbers around in the 40T range, pretty scary. I know it's really a crapshoot trying to look that far ahead, but then again Bush has made a point of showing off that file cabinet that contains the SS IOU's, saying the cash isn't there. Can't trust the government too much, remember the recent senior prescription benefit bill and how the chief actuary was forbidden to talk to congress about how wrong the administration's estimate for the cost of this was? I'm not saying the Dems are any better, but I'm pretty disgusted as to how things work in Washington. The other thing is, if energy is really a national security issue, it should not be too difficult to rapidly cull the low hanging fruit in the way of heavy gas using SUV's and trucks. I'd guess the administration doesn't want to push it though because the two largest US automakers are on shaky ground, and they are structured to make what money they do off vehicles by selling more of those big rigs....
