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

To: Alighieri who wrote (678649)	10/12/2012 6:24:41 PM
From: i-node	Respond to of 1573073

>> dems have arranged these constituencies around payoffs blah blah blah....are you saying that SS is not an earned benefit? The first Social Security beneficiary, Ida May Fuller, paid in $22.75, and received $22,888.00 in benefits over her lifetime. Would you say SHE earned her benefit? Of course, it is more complicated than the results for one person can suggest. The question, as it turns out, isn't whether any group "earned" their benefits. The question is whether the SS trust has the money to pay them. And it doesn't, and it won't. There is a deficit in SS as of today of approximately $8-9 Trillion. And there is no money with which to fund that deficit. Now, these are the facts, and they are the cold, hard reality we have to come to terms with. >> OR medicare? Medicare is a far more difficult problem. In part because the deficit is more like $60 Trillion as of right now, and we have no chance of coming up with that money. These fools in Washington DC aren't even LOOKING at the realistic numbers; they're just dealing with current cash demands. Everyone on Medicare feels they've "earned" the benefit. But that is just so out of touch with reality it is just insane. Even though Medicare underpays providers for their services (which drives up the cost of private insurance and self-pays), it still cannot come close to making ends meet. Obamacare exacerbates the problem in multiple ways. So, I've learned over the years not to tell anyone they didn't "earn" it (long story). But that means avoiding reality. On average, people have NOT earned the benefit, they haven't even come close. And unfortunately, as you look into the future, you find that actuaries are not being realistic about the demands Medicare will have for dollars over the coming 50 years, let alone the longer term. or special treatment for military? I do believe veterans/military deserve special treatment. But that doesn't mean all special treatment for veterans/military makes sense. As an example, a month or so ago there was a veterans jobs program rejected by the House, and they were correct for doing so because of funding issues. My liberal friend told me, "Dave, it is about VETERANS! I know that's near and dear to your heart, and here you are saying, 'No Way!'". He missed the point. It is about veterans but that doesn't make bad legislation good, or even acceptable. We're broke. Totally. And we have to have a serious discussion about what our priorities are. Do we want to pay for Big Bird, or do we want to pay for veterans jobs programs? We can't have it all.