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

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (361199)	12/3/2007 1:51:21 PM
From: combjelly	Respond to of 1588471

" Perhaps the dire consequences of that $9 trillion isn't so dire after all, as long as we can get our net finances back into the black." You did see the part where it talked about the next 75 years? Note that the shortfall won't occur until sometime in the future, assuming it happens at all. The $9 trillion is a reality now.

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (361199)	12/3/2007 8:56:16 PM
From: Alighieri	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1588471

Great Al. So an increase of 5.01 percentage points in taxes, or a cut in benefits by 22 percent, can make up for the $45 trillion shortfall. The solution to these issues will not make everyone happy and will have to be a compromise. The 5.01% and 22% are the extreme solutions....but one thing is for sure, the system is not bankrupt as some would have us believe. That tells me that the $9 trillion debt can easily be paid off with less. Perhaps the dire consequences of that $9 trillion isn't so dire after all, as long as we can get our net finances back into the black. You are paying 1/2 trillion dollars in interest TODAY, in today's dollars...and still the debt continues to escalate. Instead of speculating, show us a numerical solution to that problem. And the first step towards achieving that would be to not include the SS surplus as part of the general budget. Do that first before increasing the SS payroll tax or reducing benefits, or else future administrations will claim the same kind of fake "surplus" that Clinton did three out of his four years in his second term. As i read the article I posted, the two are separate...theoretically. In the sense that the US borrows from itself and the so called SS trust fund accrues IOUs as time passes, including interest on the IOUs. In practice, if you had to borrow from yourself to pay the bills and had no future prospective windfall to pay yourself back, you'd be in financial trouble. And that is the real problem...not your kakamamie Clinton reference. I showed you that the total budget surplus in the last of Clinton's years was greater than the sum of two surpluses from SS and Medicare. Which should tell you that Clinton did in fact achieve a true surplus in 2000...or came very close. The difference is partisan semantics. I believe that money was used to pay down the debt, which results in a reduction of the liability of the government towards the trust funds. The big picture here seems lost on you...that is to say, this is a significant achievement, particularly contrasted to the performance of bush and the gop controlled houses after Clinton. Al