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

To: RetiredNow who wrote (540000)	1/1/2010 12:40:12 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1574784

But when the gov't tells me that I MUST contribute to social security for my retirement and I MUST contribute to Medicare for my own health, then I demand that they commit to me a return on my investment. They DID commit. But they didn't KEEP the commitment (and now, cannot possibly, it would appear). Tim made a good point on this. They can just change the commitment if they choose to do so. Politically, one would think it would be difficult. Of course, one would think it was difficult to get 49 states to agree to cancel Medicare Advantage while PAYING $30 Billion FOR Medicare Advantage in Florida. Yet, they did it. So cutting other benefits could be just around the corner.

To: RetiredNow who wrote (540000)	1/1/2010 12:54:07 PM
From: longnshort	Respond to of 1574784

I pay taxes to get my trash picked up but the gov dosen't pick it up so I also have to pay a private firm to pick it up. Ain't democracy great

To: RetiredNow who wrote (540000)	1/1/2010 4:11:53 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1574784

Sure I do. For my tax money, I get to live in a country that keeps me relatively secure and provides me the societal infrastructure that allows me to have a steady job at good pay. 1 - You don't need, three or probably soon to be four trillion dollars of federal government spending to get that. You don't need real per capita spending going up by almost 50% in the last dozen years to get that. 2 - Again that's not the type of return that where talking about, you don't get a direct financial return, like is apparently expected by you considering your statement - "So I think it is ridiculous for someone to tell me that I should pay into the gov't for social security and medicare and the gov't doesn't owe me anything in return, so they can just legislate the debt to me away." It simply isn't a debt to you, its a tax just like the income tax you pay, they didn't borrow it, they took it. If the taking was legitimate it isn't owed to you. The government takes lots of money from you for purposes that don't have any return to you, esp. such a direct financial return, like you expect from SS, but in many cases not even the other type of return, something that contributes to you living in "a country that keeps me relatively secure and provides me the societal infrastructure that allows me to have a steady job at good pay", or even that helps get in the way of your security and wealth.