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

To: i-node who wrote (613854)	5/30/2011 7:13:47 PM
From: TopCat	5 Recommendations Respond to of 1577143

"At least you're admitting there is a problem" In case you haven't noticed, it has now become "fashionable" for Democrats to agree there is a problem....so long as they blame the Republicans. Hypocrisy reigns....still.

To: i-node who wrote (613854)	5/31/2011 10:51:52 AM
From: Alighieri	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1577143

There is no contradiction. It isn't remotely possible the benefits are going away. If there were, you'd have a point, but there isn't, and you don't. You see the problem with you guys is that you are binary thinkers, or at least you use the technique to lure gullible people into your ranks...the benefit is not going away but neither does it need to in order for the program to become fiscally sound. That's progress; a couple years ago you were denying the very existence of it. Another lie Pinocchio...I have never denied that medicare needed to be put on fiscal track, or SS for that matter...find a link. Al

To: i-node who wrote (613854)	5/31/2011 1:17:12 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1577143

It isn't remotely possible the benefits are going away. But it is possible that they might not grow as fast as the plan calls for. It also isn't remotely possible that defense spending is going to go away (it could grow slower, and its remotely possible it could actually seriously shrink, but its still going to be large). The problem isn't that we don't have enough funds in a nominal trust fund (government debt to itself), to cover the projected future value of the spending. The problem is that the payments are too high, no matter what the status of the "trust fund". If the SSA had that many bonds the government would still have to tax the money with non Social Security taxes to "pay back" the money in the "trust fund". Even with a real trust fund (assets owed by something or someone outside the government to the government) would be problematic. The financial value of the assets doesn't necessarily represent real value. For a small debt (relative to the world economy, so it could still be large by normal standards) it wouldn't matter much, but for something as big as the future SSA payments, pulling the resources from the rest of the economy, even the world economy, will be problematic (esp. since other countries have similar problems with retirees, if it was just the US then we could have lent money to other countries in the past, and pull resources from the rest of the world in the future to fund the retirement of Americans). When you have something as big (again compared to the world economy) as the baby boom retiring, you can't just look at it through an accounting lens. You have to consider the economics. Even if the accounting did line up and there was no "unfunded liability", the fact that there will be fewer workers to support each retiree would still be a problem, unless we get some rather serious productivity growth.