Attention liberals…

…which means attention all of you.

What is your plan to eliminate the deficit?

Taxing the wealthy won't create enough revenue.
Neither will cutting defense.
And you are against tax cuts.

So…?

Courtesy of Ted Rall...

President Barack Obama's bipartisan Fiscal Debt Commission released a draft report that starts out with a problem: even talking about reducing spending is insane when you're in the midst of a depression. Triumphant Republicans say they want to balance the budget. So does Obama. Are they serious? Of course not.

Theoretical budget-balancing exercises help enlighten us about where our tax dollars go. So let's start some slashing.

The 2010 federal budget shows $3.6 trillion in spending and $2.4 trillion in revenues. Net deficit: $1.2 trillion. It is nearly 13 percent of GDP, the highest since 1943. The goal is to close a $1.2-trillion budget gap. Can we find at least $1.2 trillion in budget cuts?

Any serious budget cutter has to start with defense: it accounts for 54 percent of discretionary federal spending. Of that 54 percent, 18 percent is debt service on old wars.

That leaves 36 percent, or $1.3 trillion, of which $200 billion a year goes to Afghanistan and Iraq. Let's pull out. We're losing anyway.

New deficit: $1 trillion.

In 2007 Chalmers Johnson wrote a book about the costs of American imperialism. "The worldwide total of U.S. military personnel in 2005, including those based domestically, was 1,840,062 supported by an additional 473,306 Defense Department civil service employees and 203,328 local hires," he wrote. "Its overseas bases, according to the Pentagon, contained 32,327 barracks, hangars, hospitals and other buildings, which it owns, and 16,527 more that it leased. The size of these holdings was recorded in the inventory as covering 687,347 acres overseas and 29,819,492 acres worldwide, making the Pentagon easily one of the world's largest landlords."

It's time to bring those 2.3 million men and women home. At an average of $140,000 per employee we could save $322 billion annually.

New deficit: $676 billion.

After defense, the other big costs are Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The obvious place to start is with wealthy recipients. Why should Bill Gates, worth $58 billion, get Social Security or Medicare benefits? Eliminating benefits for the approximately 1 percent of families older than 65 who earn more than $100,000 a year could save $150 billion.

New deficit: $526 billion.

Now let's talk about the other side of the equation: income. How can the U.S. government scare up some extra cash?

Allowing the Bush tax cuts for the richest 3 percent of Americans to expire on schedule would bring in $70 billion a year.

New deficit: $456 billion.

When it comes to revenues, you have to go where the money is: the wealthy.

Despite the economy, there are still 2 million households earning a whopping $250,000 or more per year. (Their average income is $435,000.) If we were to increase these super-rich Americans' income tax rate from 35 to 50 percent, we'd bring in an extra $131 billion. If we raised it back to 91 percent--the rate during the boom years between 1950 to 1963--the Treasury would collect $487 billion.

Budget surplus: $31 billion. And we haven't started on corporate taxes.

None of this is possible, of course; but it's an example of how the budget could be balanced if anyone actually wanted to do so.

1: Tax increases (including uncapping social security contributions), reducing entitlement spending (raising the retirement age, means testing benefits, and lowering the benefit amounts), cutting the defense budget.

>1
"Taxing the wealthy won't create enough revenue.
Neither will cutting defense."

So....because neither will work to eleminate the problem but only serve to make the issue less severe, we shouldn't do anything ? It seems to be a popular mindset.

"And you are against tax cuts."

And what would "new/deeper" tax cuts do that Bush's tax cuts haven't done ? Don't get that at all. Things have been going steadly south and in order to turn it around we try to do again what isn't working now ?

"Taxing the wealthy won't create enough revenue.
Neither will cutting defense."

Depends on what revenue projections you're using.

I wish I knew enough to answer this! I'm trying to learn more about this topic but can't yet articulate it, can't yet even chew up and spit out what others say, but i'm sure liking Reich's ideas as presented in Aftershock the next economy and America's future. He has a few interesting suggestions e.g. increase and supplement Friedman's Earned Income Tax Credit, yes, higher marginal tax rates on the wealthy, several other great ideas regarding unemployment and retraining, all of which I THINK he believes will increase the GNP and shrink the deficit in proportion to that. AND result in a budget surplus. Anyone want to help me understand this better?

Eliminate all taxes. Then let God sort it out.

You'd assume taxes would be beside the point if you're just letting god sort them out.

8> Here is what I have in mind. After all taxes are eliminated, I'm assuming society would return to a pre-State situation, perhaps something like the territory we call Afghanistan. If this were to come to pass, then the monotheistic God(s) -- Allah, Yahweh, and J. C. -- can figure out what comes next.

Being omnipotent, you'd assume a pesky thing like taxes should hardly stand in their way, though. Any reason we're limiting this to the God of the Abrahamic faiths? I mean, what if Zeus wants to get into the swing of things?

10> If Zeus wants to join in, all the better! At least epic poetry will be in vogue once more.

In that case, forget I said anything.

Then again, I've always considered e.e. cummings to be pretty epic.

I thought Keats and Yeats were on your side.

No, Wilde is on mine.

>13 & 14

Could get interesting.....there are those who have Rand covering their backs.

One real answer, one half answer, the rest garbage. Typical.

I should add debt, not deficit. Waiting for brilliant ideas.

From a different thread:

No matter how low the tax rate for businesses OR billionaires, American businesses do not want to support American lifestyles (except as it pertains to the top 1%). If they paid NO taxes, none what so ever, why on earth would they hire people in this country for what we consider a living wage, when they can go else where and pay pennies on the dollar ? Our cost of living is much greater in comparison to many other places. We haven't invested in infrastructure that would allow us to forgo the cost of automobiles, gasoline or auto insurance. Our healthcare system is the most costly in the world and we insist that this is freedom. No...not so much, we are enslaved to a costly life style that big business isn't inclined to support any longer. Too easy to make money elsewhere without the bother of paying the American worker a decent wage or healthcare benefits (never mind that many people simply can not afford a private policy) or a pension (Social Security is a safety net but, for most, it is not enough to sustain a decent life style....if people do exist on SSI, they are not driving the economy all that much).

It would seem apparent that we can not look at our economical situation from a position that is totally from the Right nor totally from the Left. Problems are far to large and are too all encompassing to deny that we do not need to view things from a social aspect, yet we have a culture of "greed" that allows for abuse of any and all existing systems.

Don't think anyone has the answers, if they say they do well then : "

" Willard Rmoney wears magical underwear, that Rich Santorum is a closet homosexual, that John McCain is certifiable and should be institutionalized, that Mitch McConnell is part turtle, that Paul Ryan has a third eye in the back of his head and drinking water is breathing for him and his little fingers stick out at an angle."

Until we compromise, nothing is going to happen. Unless we "move" is some direction or another, things will continue as is. Don't believe anyone knows a "brilliant" solution to our problems. Some one has to make some sacrifices....who is going to be first in line ?

I'm not convinced on the sacrifice thing. Or at least that what we may THINK will be sacrifice will end up being better quality of life. The author of Straphanger, Taras Grescoe convinced me regarding public transit among other things. The more I learn about Occupy and the more I read Gene Sharp the more convinced I am we just need to start living differently, not waiting for politicians. Easy for me to say however, I'm a white woman with resources.

Also remembering Buckminster Fuller literally measuring resources and talking about, e.g. that there is enough energy available to make air conditioning available to the whole world without polluting it. Point being - not that much sacrifice involved? Unless of course you consider giving up one of five houses a sacrifice.

16> You got a real answer so what's your problem? It seems that you are less interested in an actual answer then in seeing who can pass your test.

We aren't interested in your test. Come back when you want to talk about issues.

#2:

While that is a very good post overall, I must quibble with this statement:

Despite the economy, there are still 2 million households earning a whopping $250,000 or more per year. (Their average income is $435,000.) If we were to increase these super-rich Americans' income tax rate from 35 to 50 percent, we'd bring in an extra $131 billion. If we raised it back to 91 percent--the rate during the boom years between 1950 to 1963--the Treasury would collect $487 billion.

It may just be a fluke of the exact years that you selected (and leaving aside the major capital flight that would occur if taxes were actually raised to that level), but it is a stretch to call the 13-year time period from 1950 to 1963 "boom years."

Per capita GDP (using 2005 dollars) increased from $13,224.86 in 1950 to $16,939.78 in 1963. That's an increase of 28.1%. Out of the 53 post-WWII 13-year time periods, the time period 1950-1963 ranks 35th in per capita GDP growth, or, in the middle of the 30th percentile. 28.1% is not horrible growth, but doesn't even rank in the middle of the pack.

Five worst 13-year time periods
1998-2011 14.6%
1997-2010 16.9%
1996-2009 18.1%
1969-1982 20.3%
1946-1959 23.0%

Five best 13-year time periods
1960-1973 48.1%
1961-1974 45.0%
1958-1971 43.6%
1959-1972 42.0%
1963-1976 39.2%

As you can see from this data, it wasn't the 1950s that were a boom decade, but the 1960s instead.

16> Perhaps some of the answers flew a little bit above your head.

...and keep in mind that the numbers shown in #2 (taxation as high as 91%) was implemented by Dwight Eisenhower, a REPUBLICAN president. When you say taxing the wealthy won't create enough revenue what you really mean is "taxing the wealthy at the very small rates they're taxed at right now" won't create enough revenue.

When discussions consider reductions in military and other government employment, are they able to factor in where these reductions might find new employment?

What might happen to impacted local businesses and communities?

Do economists have sufficient models to project with accuracy the impact on growth and earnings from various tax levels?

It may be that taxing at higher levels, generates more growth because the rich need to produce more to maintain their net incomes.

I wonder if the movie stars and wealthy musicians would produce movies and songs if they did not make such a big nut on a single piece?

~16

"One real answer, one half answer, the rest garbage. Typical"

It is because the ghost of Russell Kirk doesn't speak to us, deniro. You should have pity for us.

But as someone who has a Ph.D. in Economics, perhaps you could give us THE ANSWER?

The answer I'm afraid is going to be a John Boehner--Paul Ryan mix of greatest hits with maybe a smidgeon of Steve Forbes and/or Newt Gingrich--let's fire school janitors and make indigent 13 year olds do those jobs. We don't need to know--and I'm hoping he keeps it to himself.

#23: ...and keep in mind that the numbers shown in #2 (taxation as high as 91%) was implemented by Dwight Eisenhower, a REPUBLICAN president.

Yes, I'm sure you'll have no problem when a Republican comes into office and goes to war without even an authorization of force from the congress because Obama, a Democrat, did so in Libya. I realize that the Democrats and Republicans are two members of the same authoritarian tag-team each building on eachother's accomplishments, but if you're going to pass yourself off as sounding halfway well-intentioned in front of those few proles who still believe in the illusion of democracy, you could do with a couple of fig leaves. Otherwise, all ye Dems and Repubs deserve eachother.

#16: Ask a serious question, get a serious answer. Ask an aggressive hostile question, get garbage.

#24: When discussions consider reductions in military and other government employment, are they able to factor in where these reductions might find new employment?

Then the military becomes makework? If our goal is to hire people just to reduce unemployment, let's do that explicitly, weighing its importance with reducing the debt (#1 seems to think it's pretty damn important, but that's far from consensus.) There are any number of public projects that we could hire people to work on besides training a bunch of people to drive tanks they won't find in the civilian world. (Planes have more justification, but I doubt that optimal training strategy for flying a 767 has flying a F-16, or any other highly maneuverable supersonic plane, as part of it.)

I wonder if the movie stars and wealthy musicians would produce movies and songs if they did not make such a big nut on a single piece?

How many do you think actually do make money? Neither Glen Cook or Hal Clement ever bothered retiring from their day jobs. Most actors have day jobs as waiters or the like. A small percent of musicians, actors and other creative types can live on their work; a small percentage of those come anywhere near the top tax bracket.

David Brin once said that if every published author dropped dead, there would be replacements immediately. Certainly if a bunch of actors stopped working because of the tax rate, everyone from the guy who played his henchmen in several movies to the guy who played a zombie once for some film students are going to be angling for their spots. If the top 1% best paid in the music industry drop out, those mobs to audition lining up for American Idol are going to double in size.

It occurs to me that any serious suggestions on reducing our financial conundrum are always answered with theoretical assumptions of why those ideas will not work. All of the discussions are based on some analysis of data, which at best is founded on assumptions, and then projections into the future, based on theories. When I was in college, back in the middle ages, we called that "intellectual masturbation".

Solutions which have a chance for consensus agreement will not be created this way. Leadership might just choose some GOOD IDEAS and run with them, regardless of the theoretical naysayers. I think means testing reform of Social Security might be one of those good ideas. I am sure there are others.

>29
"Solutions which have a chance for consensus agreement will not be created this way. Leadership might just choose some GOOD IDEAS and run with them, regardless of the theoretical naysayers. I think means testing reform of Social Security might be one of those good ideas. I am sure there are others."

YES !!!!
Reform of Social Security should go hand in hand with a decrease in defense spending. Seems to me that the problem with such an action is that there is absolutely no desire to compromise at all. My way or the high way. So we sit and do nothing but shoot down any idea's and challange each other to come up with the perfect solution....knowing full well that nobody really knows what that may be.

Maybe the Left should all get together and sign a bill saying that we are NEVER, EVER under any circumstances going cut or change Social Security or Medicaid.....that would send a clear message.
Signing the "Norquist" thing about NEVER raising taxes again...is not a good way to come into a debate about fixing a huge deficit.

Bunch of boneheads !

Be the change you wish for....

#29: It occurs to me that any serious suggestions on reducing our financial conundrum are always answered with theoretical assumptions of why those ideas will not work. All of the discussions are based on some analysis of data, which at best is founded on assumptions, and then projections into the future, based on theories. When I was in college, back in the middle ages, we called that "intellectual masturbation".

When I was in college, I quickly learned that no matter how much I didn't like it, I had to engage in that "intellectual masturbation" every month, or I'd get a little hungry when the money and food ran out at the end of the month.

Leadership might just choose some GOOD IDEAS and run with them, regardless of the theoretical naysayers.

I suggest not doing anything; I mean, anyone saying that's not going to work is just engaging in intellectual masturbation, right?

Well, my reaction to your comment is: yes, that is what the majority of "leaders" and "politicians" and "opinion makers" all seem to be doing. Sniping does seem to be the communication mode of the day. I was "just saying" that leadership might chose a different route.

>33
Are you suggesting that leaders need to lead ? Cause that would mean that they would have to forget about the next election and make decisions based on today's issues not tomorrow's poll numbers.
What a concept :>0

I would love to see each and every single sitting member of Congress GONE in the next two elections. Would love it ! Don't care what party they are from....they did not "work" for us, so out they go. Don't care about all that "the alternative could be worse" stuff either. NO.....cause if you don't do your job as dictated by the majority of the people in this country, you too will be gone in short order. As we appear to be electing our leaders based on what benefits the minorities, be they the top 1% or the looney tunes who want us to time travel back to the 50s, while the rest of us "hold our noses" and cast a stinky vote, it seems to me that it would work. .

Have to stop being afraid and start being assertive and the only way we can assert anything is with our vote.

In that case, I suggest you run for Congress.

~29

"It occurs to me that any serious suggestions on reducing our financial conundrum are always answered with theoretical assumptions of why those ideas will not work. All of the discussions are based on some analysis of data, which at best is founded on assumptions, and then projections into the future, based on theories. When I was in college, back in the middle ages, we called that "intellectual masturbation".

"Solutions which have a chance for consensus agreement will not be created this way. Leadership might just choose some GOOD IDEAS and run with them, regardless of the theoretical naysayers. I think means testing reform of Social Security might be one of those good ideas. I am sure there are others"

So, what you have in mind is none of that egghead theoretical bullshit, but a STRONG LEADER who will MAKE DECISIONS and implement them. And, oh surprise surprise, you KNOW what GOOD IDEAS would be without any of that bullshit theory or useless facts and figures. Got it.

Where did we ever hear that before?

~33
"Sniping does seem to be the communication mode of the day."

Yes. There are those who intuitively know the GOOD IDEAS, and then there are those who "snip" at their betters who have such superior intuititions.

I bet you taught in the lower grades of grade school.

The thing is almost everyone knows what needs to be done to balance the budget. That's not in question. We need more revenue, modifications to the entitlement system so we spend less, and a lowered defense budget. Just to put the defense budget in perspective, the amount spent on the defense budget is approximately the same size as the amount spent on all of the other government agencies combined. In other words, the discretionary part of the Federal budget is about half defense, and half everything else.

The problem is that no one wants to actually do the things necessary to balance the budget. They will require that the government take more money and spend less of it. They will require that people retire later, get smaller benefits, and some people will not get benefits or will get less benefits than others. And so on and so forth. Knowing how to balance the budget is easy. Implementing that knowledge is what is hard.

lawecon, I'm sure you know you are proving my point.

In case you actually are interested, I taught grades 5, 6, 7, and 8. I mentored new teachers, and I did facilities planning which resulted in closing schools when population did not justify their continuing to operate.

Some of you are quite hostile when the tables are turned and you are forced to answer a serious question. It really was a serious question, as I am unaware of any current plan from liberals which attempts to solve the debt/deficit.

Sometimes a question is just a question. Are you so suspicious that you can't recognize one when you see it? So many nasty remarks for no reason. I wonder what else you see between the lines of my posts, few though they are. You must have a truly awful opinion of me.

I did recognize The Smith's song reference.

#38:

The thing is almost everyone knows what needs to be done to balance the budget. That's not in question. We need more revenue, modifications to the entitlement system so we spend less, and a lowered defense budget.

If by that statement you are referring to our elected representatives in Congress and members of the Executive Branch, then I would agree with you. But if you are referring instead to the average voter, I have to disagree with that.

The number of voters on both sides of the partisan divide who adhere to an ideological view on this issue is astounding. They might grant you that some little concession be given to the other side, but nothing of real consequence. They look instead for around 80 to 95 percent of the required balancing to either come from spending cuts or tax increases, depending on which side of the divide they stand, neither or which would be good for the economy.

This partisan viewpoint is what has paralyzed the situation in Washington. Members of Congress are petrified of bucking their party's supporters because it will likely get them tossed out in the next primary. Admittedly, this problem is greater on the side of the partisan divide that I sit (the Republicans, which means that most concessions so far have come from Democrats), but I've seen enough of this sentiment expressed on left-leaning websites that it leads me to the conclusion that it is a problem on both sides.

"…which means attention all of you.

What is your plan to eliminate the deficit?

Taxing the wealthy won't create enough revenue.
Neither will cutting defense.
And you are against tax cuts.

So…?"

Taxing the wealthy will create some additional revenue, cutting defense will create some more additional revenue, and reforming "entitlement" programs could create more additional revenue, and...

I think you should run for Congress, too.

#40--and you've still not offered any solutions of your own--so how serious exactly are you on this?

43 -- Because I am asking a question, not giving an answer. What answers can you give?

A rather safe way to play it. What is there to lose when all you need to do is tear down what others have to offer?

#40: Some of you are quite hostile when the tables are turned and you are forced to answer a serious question. ... Sometimes a question is just a question.

Sometimes a question is just a question, but not when the person attempts to "turn the tables" and "force" you to answer the question.

It really was a serious question, as I am unaware of any current plan from liberals which attempts to solve the debt/deficit.

Trickle-down economics doesn't work, as was proved by Reagan when he built the foundation of the current debt. You started this by dismissing key components of any modification.

#38: We need more revenue, modifications to the entitlement system so we spend less, and a lowered defense budget.

Most of Europe has more of an entitlement system then we do, so I'm sure we could fund our current one if we had the political will to do so. Of course by the same ticket, we should be able to do it by just reducing payouts and defense. But, yeah, no matter how we do it, it's not going to be pleasant and as Bretzky1 says, even if the elected officials know that, the average person doesn't seem to understand that.

#44--or in other words you're not serious at all--except to demean those who don't agree with your partisan views. So go fly a kite.

~39

The point that those who disagree with you are "sniping?" I think most of us figured that out.

Ah, an administrator as well as an elementary school teacher, can't get much more sophisticated.

~40

"You must have a truly awful opinion of me."

My opinion hasn't changed since our first encounter.

The use of the qualifier “discretionary” in some of the foregoing posts is not innocent. From Obama’s own budget figures for 2011 – page 146 (pdf):

All federal government outlays – not just outlays dubbed “discretionary” - were $3.834 trillion in fiscal year 2011. Military spending per the Bureau of Economic Analysis was $825 billion, so about 825/3834 = 21.5%. Ie., less than half of that “54%” figure. That is, military spending was about a fifth of all federal spending, not more than half, as that sneaky “discretionary” would lead a careless reader to infer.

(By the way, if you use the military figure from Obama’s own budget – see page 55 at the link above – military spending was even smaller: only slated to be $548.9 billion. That’s 549/3834 = 14.3%. However, that’s called a “base” figure, and so I’m using the larger figure.)

We are not going to solve the debt problem by calling some spending “discretionary” and some “non-discretionary.”

50: I'm sorry. I assumed that the readers here would at least understand the basics of budget language. I see that you don't. You see, discretionary and non-discretionary have meaning. The discretionary part of the budget is the part that Congress has to actively pass each year. The non-discretionary budget is the portion that is spent without an active action by Congress - entitlements and interest on the debt. That is why I said that balancing the budget would require entitlement reform and defense spending cuts.

But you didn't bother to figure that out.

Looking at the budget in #50, I think we should pull at least Social Security out of the figuring. In 2011, it gave out 730 billion and brought in 674 billion, 92% of the first value. Bringing the two values together requires work, but not extraordinary work, and that 674 billion is not general revenue; it's money brought in earmarked for a specific purpose. It's like a family bemoaning the fact that they're spending 200 dollars a month on groceries when they're getting 180 dollars a month in food stamps. We can't ethically divert SS money to different programs (and I understand the fact that we did is one of the reason SS doesn't have surplus money to work from), so it's not legit to include the 700 billion in revenue or outgo.

This is why we can't have nice things.

>40
There are answers....not the answers you want to here...hence "no answers". Maybe you should tell us what you want to here so we can answer you to your satisfaction.
Typical.

>35
You have a point. Who the heck wants the job ?

>36
For every theory, statistical list of facts and or ideas, there is one to support the opposite. Unfortunately, their is no "high judge" or "great decider" to choose who's list of facts, supporting ideas that are opposite each other, is the "true and proper" way to go. Understand that there are those who could sit and argue causes and solutions endlessly without ever moving in any direction....rather safe way to go about things. However, in order to actually accomplish something one eventually has to chose a path and take it. How one comes about that decision is another matter but there is a lot to be said for trying rather than sitting around and waiting for enlightenment.

Maggie is right, moving in some direction is better than this. We could sit and argue theories forever but it isn't going to change a thing.

~56

"For every theory, statistical list of facts and or ideas, there is one to support the opposite....

"Maggie is right, moving in some direction is better than this. We could sit and argue theories forever but it isn't going to change a thing."

You know, when Maggie first started spouting this line, I almost referred her to you. This is what you've been saying for months and months.

But of course you are right. Them there fact things is totally unreliable, as well as taking a lot of work to figure out. We should rely on our intuitions and TAKE ACTION !!!

Let's see, you want a leader who will follow this "philosophy." Have there been any examples? Well, yes, there was this guy. http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Germany/mussolini.htm

#52

Looking at the budget in #50, I think we should pull at least Social Security out of the figuring. In 2011, it gave out 730 billion and brought in 674 billion, 92% of the first value. Bringing the two values together requires work, but not extraordinary work...

The real issue with Social Security--and Medicare and Medicaid as well for that matter--however, is not the state that it is in today; the problem is where it's headed. If there is no reform of entitlement programs, by 2050 at the latest they will take up every last dollar of federal spending.

Also, if you don't do something about it now, you have no real chance of doing something about any of the other items. Real reform is going to require cuts from programs that both sides admire, not just one side.

We can't ethically divert SS money to different programs (and I understand the fact that we did is one of the reason SS doesn't have surplus money to work from), so it's not legit to include the 700 billion in revenue or outgo.

While I agree that we shouldn't have used Social Security revenues for other purposes, I hardly think it is unethical that past generations of voters felt that that money was better used elsewhere. And past voters can at least be partially excused since the primary reason that Social Security is in such a mess has more to do with demographics than it does past budgeting plans (this applies to at least those voters prior to when the demographic crunch became apparent in the early-1980s). There was a sharp fall in the birthrate that lasted from the mid-1960s into the 1980s coupled with a sharp rise in longevity that started kicking in in the late-1970s. Either one of those demographic trends would not by itself have caused so much havoc with Social Security, but their combination has really socked it to the trustfund.

And even if one thinks that it was unethical to do so, I don't see how that justifies not dealing with the problem today. It would be more unethical to roll this particular snowball down the mountain. Some combination of benefits reductions, means-testing of benefits, and tax increases will have to be applied if these programs are to remain viable beyond more than just the next two decades. The longer we wait, the harder that job will get.

I just want to say that this is the first time I have ever found someone (#57) who seems to be calling me a fascist. I've always been called a communist, or socialist, before. Nevertheless, being an "elementary school teacher" I usually do not pay attention to name calling.

So the original question is actually:

"Now that 40 years of conservatism has broken America, how do liberals intend to fix things?"

40 years of conservatism?

Er...yeah...right. You've been paying attention, I see.

I still await idiot Obama's brilliant plan.

#58: The real issue with Social Security--and Medicare and Medicaid as well for that matter--however, is not the state that it is in today; the problem is where it's headed. If there is no reform of entitlement programs, by 2050 at the latest they will take up every last dollar of federal spending.

Medicare and Medicaid are horses of a different color. Social Security is a self-paying program, and should be handled that way. Again, we can box up and balance Social Security today and for the immediate future. Once it's been boxed up, it can no more take up every last dollar of federal spending then Switzerland can. It's easier to balance an income of 674 billion and outgo of 730 billion and whatever's left of the federal budget, then to try and balance the whole thing. Divide and conquer is a valid, often very useful strategy.

While I agree that we shouldn't have used Social Security revenues for other purposes, I hardly think it is unethical that past generations of voters felt that that money was better used elsewhere.

It's frequently illegal to use money that someone has given you for something for something else. If they're taking money from my paycheck in the line labeled "Social Security" (as opposed to the line labeled "Tax"), they damn well should be using it for Social Security.

And even if one thinks that it was unethical to do so, I don't see how that justifies not dealing with the problem today. It would be more unethical to roll this particular snowball down the mountain.

I'm not proposing that. I'm proposing that we pay for Social Security (and only Social Security) out of Social Security taxes (and only Social Security taxes). Any adjustments get made inside that, but the issue of whether we raise Social Security taxes or reduce Social Security becomes a separate one from balancing the budget. Any concerns that it will take up every dollar of federal spending become null and void.

#62: 40 years of conservatism? Er...yeah...right. You've been paying attention, I see.

Nixon, Nixon/Ford, Carter, Reagan, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Clinton (where the federal budget was balanced), Bush, Bush, Obama. So at least 28 years out of 40, Conservatives have held the veto button. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Budget_Deficit_1971_to_2001.png is an interesting graph; it unfortunately only goes up to 2001, but it shows how the US under Nixon, Ford and Carter were spending slightly above their means, then Reagan and Bush Sr. start having 200, 300 billion dollar deficits, which Clinton got in the black in his second term. Blame the liberals for the deficit is a terribly annoying game.

>38, 51
Just to put the defense budget in perspective, the amount spent on the defense budget is approximately the same size as the amount spent on all of the other government agencies combined.
That doesn’t put it in perspective. It’s a distracting irrelevancy that destroys perspective. Admitting that it’s currently only a fifth of federal spending would be putting it in perspective.

Actually, the entitlement situation is even worse than that, since it’s not the state, but the trend. Military spending is a fifth of federal spending now, but growth in entitlement spending will make it smaller than that, proportionally, in the future. (Cf post 58.) I think you know this but chose not to mention it. Or maybe you didn’t know it.

We need to cut entitlement spending, alright, which you admitted, but you used a figure - military spending as a fraction of discretionary spending - that masked just how much more of a problem entitlements are going to be in the foreseeable future.

>62
Social Security is a self-paying program

This statement could be taken in different ways. In what sense is it true?

#65: We have a Social Security tax that brings in money earmarked for Social Security. It historically has brought in more than enough; it's currently bringing in 90% of what's outgoing, a problem fixable by increasing income by 10% or reducing outgo by 10%.

#62: You've been paying attention, I see.

Well, I'll ignore deniro's snide insult and attempt to educate him:

- 1) The Nixon/Ford administrations were more conservative than LBJ, yes?
- 2) Carter moved it back a notch, but the Carter policies were still far more conservative than LBJ.
- 3) the Reagan/Bush administrations were more conservative than Carter.
- 4) Clinton moved it back a notch, but was still more conservative than Carter.
- 5) Bush the Lesser was conservative, yes? Far more conservative than the moderately conservative (NAFTA, welfare "reform") policies of Clinton.
- 6) Obama moved it back a notch, but was still more conservative than the Clinton administration .

So yes, the past forty years has seen a generalized rightward motion, such that today's "scocialist" Obama is still far to the right of, say, Nixon.

"Forty years of conservatism" is a fair description of recent American political history. Just as the era after 1932 was broadly "liberal", it's fair to say that the era after 1969 has been generally "conservative". (And of course a disaster for America, but that's probably another thread.)

#63

Medicare and Medicaid are horses of a different color. Social Security is a self-paying program, and should be handled that way. Again, we can box up and balance Social Security today and for the immediate future. Once it's been boxed up, it can no more take up every last dollar of federal spending then Switzerland can. It's easier to balance an income of 674 billion and outgo of 730 billion and whatever's left of the federal budget, then to try and balance the whole thing. Divide and conquer is a valid, often very useful strategy.

Before I address that statement, I must say that I was thinking one thing and typing another in my previous post. I meant to say that by 2050 at the latest they {Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid} will take up every last dollar of federal revenue, not federal spending.

Now, my point in the previous post (although not well stated) was, essentially, that it is politically impractical to just deal with Social Security by itself, at least insofar as you would be reducing benefits. It is, after all, the third rail of American politics. And constantly raising taxes to support the program is simply not a viable strategy as it, along with the other programs, will force the government to basically drastically cut back on everything else it does.

By the way, Medicare is actually funded in the exact same way that Social Security is: through the FICA tax. The current FICA rate is 7.65%; 6.2% is for Social Security and 1.45% is for Medicare.

It's frequently illegal to use money that someone has given you for something for something else. If they're taking money from my paycheck in the line labeled "Social Security" (as opposed to the line labeled "Tax"), they damn well should be using it for Social Security.

American taxpayers haven't given this money to the federal government; it's not a donation or an investment. This is money that the government has taken as a tax. As such, the government has the legal power to do whatever it wants with it, so long as that use is itself legal. That is, the government is under no obligation to do anything in particular with the money it takes as a tax.

Again, it would be nice if they reserved this money for Social Security, but it's not unethical for them not to do so because they have no recognized obligation to do so.

I'm not proposing that. I'm proposing that we pay for Social Security (and only Social Security) out of Social Security taxes (and only Social Security taxes). Any adjustments get made inside that, but the issue of whether we raise Social Security taxes or reduce Social Security becomes a separate one from balancing the budget. Any concerns that it will take up every dollar of federal spending become null and void.

But you can't treat them separately as if what you do with Social Security has no effect on the rest of the budget. Even if you completely fund Social Security and Medicare via payroll taxes, every dollar that you take in taxes for them is one less dollar you have for something else. This isn't two separate pots of money that the taxes are being drawn from, they are the same pot: taxpayers' wallets.

Dealing with them separately stacks the deck in the arena of public discourse because there is no way that Social Security and Medicare can realistically be continued in their current forms, and unless you tie them to the other budgetary issues, the general public is always going to have the same response to any effort to rein in their unsustainable expenditures: Hands off! You have to show them rather bluntly that those programs are unsustainable by showing them how they affect things like defense spending and poverty reduction programs.

~60

"I just want to say that this is the first time I have ever found someone (#57) who seems to be calling me a fascist. I've always been called a communist, or socialist, before. Nevertheless, being an "elementary school teacher" I usually do not pay attention to name calling."

Yes, indeed. More of those pesky facts and people doubting your intuitions. It is good that you have the strength of your convictions.

60 - Yes - I have often thought if grade school teachers and "just moms" were in charge, things might get done. We might ignore the silly name calling and we all know the way to have dealt with Iraq would have been to send Bush and Hussein to a room together and don't let them out till they solve the problem. Quit involving the rest of us in your petty greedy bullshit. Too much analysis and intellectualizing can easily muck things up when we all know the reality - things simply aren't fair in our system. That is pretty clear and pretty simple. Yes our moms said life isn't fair, and Jesus said "The poor you will always have with you." but as one bishop in Texas said, "He didn't say you have to have so many." We need to share.

#68: But you can't treat them separately as if what you do with Social Security has no effect on the rest of the budget. Even if you completely fund Social Security and Medicare via payroll taxes, every dollar that you take in taxes for them is one less dollar you have for something else.

No, it's not. If you have a separate Social Security tax and income tax, increasing the amount of Social Security tax does not reduce the amount of income tax coming in. They're not completely independent, but there's no stress about Social Security robbing other programs; it can't.

Dealing with them separately stacks the deck in the arena of public discourse because there is no way that Social Security and Medicare can realistically be continued in their current forms, and unless you tie them to the other budgetary issues, the general public is always going to have the same response to any effort to rein in their unsustainable expenditures: Hands off!

If it stacks the deck against your designs, good. Dealing with them separately means that the American public can look at Social Security and ask whether the amount coming from their paychecks to support Social Security is an acceptable thing. If American citizens are willing to accept the amount that they are paying to Social Security, then it is sustainable. If American citizens want to say Hands off! and understand the price that's getting paid, that's their choice.

You have to show them rather bluntly that those programs are unsustainable by showing them how they affect things like defense spending and poverty reduction programs.

There's a budgeting practice, for people who are running out of money at the end of their paycheck, of taking envelopes, marking them with categories, putting the budgeted money into them and taking money only out of the appropriate envelope when paying for things. If you do that successfully, you know exactly where the money's going and you can decide for yourself whether paying $400 a month for a nice car is a luxury you're willing to pay for or simply unreasonable.

That's what we're doing here. We're putting money in envelopes so (if we obey our self-set rules) we don't rob the Social Security budget to pay for other things, and vice versa, and so that it's entirely clear what we're spending on Social Security and what we're spending on other things. If the American pubic thinks it's unsustainable, they can demand a reduction in Social Security taxes. If they think that defense spending and poverty reduction programs need more money, they can demand that (hopefully understanding that calls for a raise in the general tax rate.)

American taxpayers haven't given this money to the federal government

I'll call this out as political language manipulation.. The word "to give" in the English language is used all the time for cases where there's coercion involved. People talk about giving kidnappers money all the time.

#70: I have often thought if grade school teachers and "just moms" were in charge, things might get done.

Yeah, who needs vaccinations anyway? Let's get rid of those pesky scientists and doctors, and let people who "know" that vaccination causes autism take over.

we all know the way to have dealt with Iraq would have been to send Bush and Hussein to a room together and don't let them out till they solve the problem.

I.e. practice extraordinary rendition on Hussein? What do we do if Hussein comes out with Bush's head impaled on a chair leg? What if they do come to an agreement, and Hussein II has taken over and sees no need to honor it? Hell, even "just moms" know better; every day some of them look at their husbands and boyfriends, decide not to go into a room and talk to them, and instead run for the lives and hope the abusive SOBs don't find them.

This reminds me of http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2556 ; the same reductionist "no problem is hard and why are people who are working on them making them so complex" idea.

#67: So yes, the past forty years has seen a generalized rightward motion, such that today's "scocialist" Obama is still far to the right of, say, Nixon.

This is one of those "Left vs Right" statements that don't mean anything. It's a way of blaming the Repocrats for the crap done by the Demoblicans, a two-party shell game. One could just as easily say that there has been gradual left-ward trend seeing as healthcare, finance and higher education have steadily fallen under the control of the government to the point that the Republicans are the biggest fans of military and corporate welfare and government under their rule grows as much, if not more, than under Democrats.

Stop pretending your two teams are any different like some hackneyed "good cop, bad cop" routine. They both have the same singular goal: To buy off constituents with bread and circuses and ginning up their fear of the "opposing" party.

#71

If you have a separate Social Security tax and income tax, increasing the amount of Social Security tax does not reduce the amount of income tax coming in. They're not completely independent, but there's no stress about Social Security robbing other programs; it can't.

That's not what I'm saying. What I am saying is that if the government raises one tax, it makes it extremely difficult to maintain the same tax take from the other tax. If my total federal taxes are $20,000 and my Social Security portion of that is raised by $1,000, then that raises my effective income tax rate (Social Security taxes are, after all, merely a regressive form of income tax), which reduces my ability to pay my total tax bill. The higher you put Social Security taxes, the lower you have to put income taxes because there is only so much money you can take from a person before you make it difficult for them to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves. And for a large number of Americans, we've already reached that point.

Dealing with them separately means that the American public can look at Social Security and ask whether the amount coming from their paychecks to support Social Security is an acceptable thing. If American citizens are willing to accept the amount that they are paying to Social Security, then it is sustainable. If American citizens want to say Hands off! and understand the price that's getting paid, that's their choice.

But that means that they will be making that decision without all of the necessary information. That is, whatever you do with Social Security (or Medicare for that matter) affects what you are able to do with the rest of the budget.

Dealing with them separately is like buying a car that fits into your budget without first checking to see if it has all of the options that you want/need. You get the car home and realize that it doesn't have airbags. But had you properly investigated the car first, you would have realized that and gone on to some other car if airbags were essential to you.

If you deal with Social Security without any reference to other programs that might be important to you, you might pick a funding level for Social Security that prohibits you from funding them. And, quite frankly, my suspicion is that the American people would do exactly that because that's what we've been doing for the last 60 years: piling on program after program without regard to how much it really costs.

There's a budgeting practice, for people who are running out of money at the end of their paycheck, of taking envelopes, marking them with categories, putting the budgeted money into them and taking money only out of the appropriate envelope when paying for things. If you do that successfully, you know exactly where the money's going and you can decide for yourself whether paying $400 a month for a nice car is a luxury you're willing to pay for or simply unreasonable.

As someone who worked in the federal government budgeting process for a little while back in the mid-00s (on the program side, not the Congressional side), let me say that government budgeting is nothing like personal family budgeting. There are too many people, too much money, and too many programs involved to be able to effectively do things the way a family would. It might be a nice idea to neatly place things off in envelopes for separate uses, but the amount of money that the government would spend implementing such a system would eat up a huge chunk of our taxes to begin with. The reason that the federal budgeting process is such a mess is because the amount of money it would take to straighten it out is prohibitively high. The size and complexity of the federal government's budget dwarfs anything else out there.

I'll call this out as political language manipulation.. The word "to give" in the English language is used all the time for cases where there's coercion involved. People talk about giving kidnappers money all the time.

And try not paying your taxes this year and see what happens. The government isn't just going to say, "That's alright. We're good." No, they're going to track you down and take the money from you. Unlike with paying a kidnapper, you don't have a choice in paying your taxes. The government will turn you upside down and shake the money from your pockets if it has to. You no more give your money to the government than you do to someone who pickpockets your wallet. In both cases you don't have a say in the matter.

~70

Perhaps we could all just yell in unison "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more." and then march on Rome, errr, I meant Washington. It would give the politicos and bureaucrats a good laugh, and one should always try to please one's masters.

#75: The higher you put Social Security taxes, the lower you have to put income taxes because there is only so much money you can take from a person before you make it difficult for them to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves. And for a large number of Americans, we've already reached that point.

I'm not buying that, that one of the lowest tax rates in the world is a crushing burden for a large number of Americans.

If you deal with Social Security without any reference to other programs that might be important to you, you might pick a funding level for Social Security that prohibits you from funding them. And, quite frankly, my suspicion is that the American people would do exactly that because that's what we've been doing for the last 60 years: piling on program after program without regard to how much it really costs.

I don't get the impression you have any interest in giving Americans the option of picking a funding level for Social Security at all. At a certain point, if the American public wants to fund Social Security at the cost of everything else, that should be their choice.

Unlike with paying a kidnapper, you don't have a choice in paying your taxes. The government will turn you upside down and shake the money from your pockets if it has to.

Yes, you can let a kidnapper kill your family member. And armed robbers will shoot you unless you give them your wallet. "give" is used all the time in English for people who choose to hand something over instead of having something bad happen to them and it get taken from them.

60 and of coure, teachers need to be very good with budgets, right?

#72: My experience is that teachers know a great deal more about the scientific basis for vaccinations than the average American; and, have dealt with more individuals on the Autism spectrum than almost any other profession, save perhaps the Medical professions. Vaccinations do not cause Autism; being a teacher does not mean you are stupid, uneducated, and biased.

BTW, I rely on my intuition frequently but not to the exclusion of my reasoning capabilities. Do you?

38> http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard190.html

>80

There are a few hidden assumptions in that article.

"...governments began sobbing about the plight of the unfortunate debtors, ignoring the fact that the insolvent debtors had gotten themselves into their own fix, and they began to subvert their own proclaimed function of enforcing contracts..." And creditors conveniently, in complaining about this, forgot about who was on the hook for jailing the debtor. Far from being encourage to repay the debt, the debtor incurred further expenses to the creditor (via taxation for maintenence of the jails).

"The very fact that a corporation is insolvent demonstrates that its managers have been inefficient, and they should be removed promptly from the scene." And shareholders could do this, if they wanted to. So, blaming the laws for laziness on part of the owners seems a bit much.

"...unlike the rest of us, government sells no productive good or service and therefore earns nothing. It can only get money by looting our resources through taxes..." I think providing for common defense and domestic tranquillity qualifies as a service.

"The United States government should be forced to disgorge its assets, sell them at auction, and then pay off the creditors accordingly..." Could I buy a nuclear device at the sale, then? I've always dreamed of being a nuclear power...

It would be possible to pay off the national debt, albeit it taking a few years, without such drastic measures. Merely reducing our current defense budget by eliminating large numbers of our nuclear devices, overseas bases, and military toys designed to fight a war that will never happen (the massive struggle between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R) would go a considerable ways towards that end. Rall's plan was perhaps not entirely accurate as to the numbers, but it showed how such a thing could be accomplished...

If anyone really wanted to do it, that is.

#79: You said "just Moms"; just moms are the leading force behind the anti-vax movements.

My experience is that teachers know a great deal more about the scientific basis for vaccinations than the average American

Your experience? One person's experience is always a little questionable, but here ... have you really been running around asking random people about vaccination?

In any case, with all due respect to grade-school teachers, their education does not include advanced study of meteorology, climatology, economics, engineering, sociology, or any other discipline that would help them understand why global warming is happening, how this is connected to the world economy, what engineering can do to overcome this, and how people will respond to it. Which is why we have teams of experts who can hopefully guide us through that, not grade-school teachers. Which is why we hopefully elect people who have been trained in fields that give them some insight to the issues, not elementary education. I'm not abusing teachers; I'm abusing the idea that all we need to solve the problem is have untrained people replace the experts.

Edit: Sorry #70 and #79 were different people, so "you" didn't say "just Moms". In any case, #72 which I replied to, did say "just Moms".

prosfilaes, you are mistaken in assuming elementary teachers do not have advanced degrees. I know several retired military people, with advanced degrees, who teach today. I also know people from many differing academic backgrounds who have moved into teaching: law, sociology, engineering, chemistry. I went to school, probably for far too long, and have too many degrees to qualify me for teaching middle school students, nonetheless, I did.

I think generalizing and deciding who can and who can not solve a complex problem before discussing the problem, and the possible solutions, is a little like putting the cart in front of the horse.

I am thinking you would prefer to live in a country where experts are running the place rather than one where reliance on the wisdom of the people, all the people, is valued. I expect you think people should have to show valid, current, picture I.D. before they are allowed to vote, too.

#83: I am thinking you would prefer to live in a country where experts are running the place rather than one where reliance on the wisdom of the people, all the people, is valued.

It's amazing; when it comes to our problems, we go to experts. We expect that our doctors have years of education in medicine, we ask that our teachers have been taught to teach. But when it comes to our nation's problems we know it all and need no help.

A democracy gives a lot of power to the people. It doesn't mean they should be imagine that they are infinitely competent in all things. It is always your decision what medical decisions are done to you, but wise people, even when they disagree with the doctors, have the wisdom to listen very carefully to what they say. Wise people also remember that it's one thing to disagree on matters of policy with an expert, but quite a more arrogant one to disagree with them on matters of fact.

I expect you think people should have to show valid, current, picture I.D. before they are allowed to vote, too.

Would you change your opinion if the "wisdom of the people" approved of that? Is this the way that the wisdom of all the people is valued, by putting forth positions without argument but with the clear implication that they're bad people if they disagree with it? I could discuss the nuances of this issue, but apparently "the wisdom of the people" has one opinion on this and it needs no discussion.

#77,

At a certain point, if the American public wants to fund Social Security at the cost of everything else, that should be their choice.

I agree. But any decision that is made outside of the context of its effect on the overall budget is necessarily not a choice to fund Social Security at the cost of everything else. It is simply a choice to fund Social Security at "X" level without an appreciation of what it will do to everything else. Choices have consequences, and we live in a world of scarcity. Making a decision without an appreciation of that is no decision at all.

prosfilaes, It is my thought that "the people" do listen to experts, they do consider information from many points of view, they do not imagine themselves as being automatically competent in all things, and, then they chose to express their judgments as to what is their preferred course of action. "The people" also are capable of changing course - "throw all the bums out" and start afresh, or make course corrections.

Unfortunately, it seems today that the minority of "the people" who express extreme views in dramatic manners are given free publicity via corporate media.

The tragic truth is that today the distinctions between FACT and OPINION or INTERPRETATION is highly blurred. One of the reasons I find discussions here frustrating is that so many who post assert their positions are FACTUAL without any evidence.

It is not a fact that "The People" do not consult experts in considering how they might vote. How people arrive at their decisions is not a simple matter and I will not discount the voters' decisions by claiming that they are all "know nothings" who vote from only emotions, prejudices, and superstitions.

But that said, I will try to disengage from this conversation and hope that those who want to talk about "what is your plan to eliminate the deficit" can carry on with that discussion.

>86
"It is not a fact that "The People" do not consult experts in considering how they might vote. How people arrive at their decisions is not a simple matter and I will not discount the voters' decisions by claiming that they are all "know nothings" who vote from only emotions, prejudices, and superstitions."

In fact one could safely say that some voters consult/study the experts to the point where there are so many conflicting "opinions" offered up that it becomes impossible to make a decision at all.
Just as frustrating to me as those who vote without taking anything into account other than their own emotions prejudices and superstitions.
Would venture to make a guess that there are a fair amount of both types of voters.
What the governing body seems to have forgotten is that , at some point in time one has to MOVE.....often this takes more courage than sitting and waiting for the "perfect" solution ! (or spending four years trying to prove why someone else's solutions are complete bunk...never mind that we have none of our own)

#86: It is not a fact that "The People" do not consult experts in considering how they might vote. How people arrive at their decisions is not a simple matter and I will not discount the voters' decisions by claiming that they are all "know nothings" who vote from only emotions, prejudices, and superstitions.

Please stop beating on strawmen.

The context in which I was writing was a reply to #72. I believe 100% of experts disagree that the solution to Iraq was to put Bush and Hussein in a room and not let them out until they came to an agreement. Once again, I do not discount the voter's decisions; I discount the attitude that our problems are solvable by replacing experts with elementary school teachers and just moms.

#87: What the governing body seems to have forgotten is that , at some point in time one has to MOVE

Every year, people die in National Parks because they don't understand that sometimes the worst thing you can do is keep moving. Today may be the worst time to stress about the national debt; we need to do what we need to do to get the economy started and then worry about the debt.

----

Let me express once again how much it pisses me off that a conservative is trying to poke at liberals over this. The last time we had a balanced budget was under Clinton, and Republicans demanded tax cuts, not paying down the debt. This monster, by and large, was produced under Reagan, Bush Sr., and Bush Jr.

My bad.

#88: The last time we had a balanced budget was under Clinton, and Republicans demanded tax cuts, not paying down the debt. This monster, by and large, was produced under Reagan, Bush Sr., and Bush Jr.

Not that I can see much difference between your teams, but you do realize that budgets are more than just an executive branch kind of thing. Here's the breakdown on which parties controlled the presidency, senate, and house of reps by year. For those of you who believe party matters, the facts (or as maggie might have it, the stuff she ignores so she can pretend she's the only one with facts) are a lot more checkered than you might like to think.

People make decisions for a lot of complicated reasons. It's a mixture of values and research. But when it comes to the unaccountable exercise of power that voters have, it's more likely they'll just stick to a the handful of information that conforms to their favorite narrative and discard the rest. Like whether the one guy sitting in a particular eliptical room somewhere is on team Red or Blue.

"(or as maggie might have it, the stuff she ignores so she can pretend she's the only one with facts)"

No one ignores facts, they just chose which ones they repeat.

Thanks for the attention.

The Social Security Administration itself says (p. 36):

"Social Secuiry is not sustainable over the long term at current benefit and tax rates. By 2036 it is estimated that the trust funds will be exhausted. (Note about a week ago they moved that date up to 2033.) ... At that point, payroll taxes and other income will flow into the fund but will be sufficient to pay only 77% of program costs."

Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system, a common misconception to the contrary notwithstanding. Here's the SS Administration itself (p. 34): "Social Security is largely a pay-as-you-go program. Most of the payroll taxes collected from today’s workers are used to pay benefits to today’s recipients."

Accordingly, one of the problems is the change in the ratio of workers to retirees, from more than 8 in 1955 to about 2 soon and, eventually, less than 2 (see p. 35).

One solution to the Social Security problem might be collecting a bit more from the higher income earners, and not paying benefits to those who's retirement incomes are (pre-Social Security) above average.

Social Security was conceived as a "safety net" so that old people were not starving to death or living in the "poor house", or being an unsustainable burden on younger families. It was not thought of as a savings account.

IF ONLY there were some simple way to increase funding to Social Security that didn't involve inconveniencing rich people.

Free the rich from the tyranny of taxation, and milk and honey will flow throughout the land.

#94-#95--something like that.

Let's see the top 1% already own about half the nation's wealth. They need more--they're an endangered species.

>96
Soon they will have to resort to cannibalism. How long will it take the 1 to become .05 ?

Poor, poor rich people.

Yes, poor rich people. Even the rabid Left has more sympathy for the overtaxed wealthy person than for the low-income black man who's lower life expectancy means he's probably going to collect less social security money than had been stolen from him. Maybe even nothing. It's not like the Left would bother giving up screwing Kunta Kinte if it also meant giving up their pogroms against those evil Jewish bankers. They're an equal-opportunity hate group.

#99--and sadly I think you take out the 'rabid' part anyway and you're right.

>99
Oh, I favor social security because I hate blacks and Jews? Hmmm...

101. thats the republican message as I understand it krolick.

#92: In other words: "In twenty years, by current predictions, if we don't do anything, everybody on Social Security will have to take 25% pay cut." That's not good, but at the same time, what does it have to do with the deficit? Why should it be a hot-button political issue, instead of something quietly being worked on between now and then?

"Social Secuiry is not sustainable over the long term at current benefit and tax rates. By 2036 it is estimated that the trust funds will be exhausted. (Note about a week ago they moved that date up to 2033.) ... At that point, payroll taxes and other income will flow into the fund but will be sufficient to pay only 77% of program costs."

The hidden truth about Social Security is that it is entirely a pay as you go system, because the "trust fund" consists of IOUs from the general fund. When the fund was established, it needed to invest the excess funds into something. So Congress decided that the trust fund should lend money to the government and the government would give back nice shiny promises to pay. As a result, when the trust fund needs to be tapped, the repayments will be made out of current taxes.

The trust fund is like "saving" money by putting some IOUs from yourself to yourself into a box. You can't "box off" the social security system because there's nothing to box off - the only question is whether future benefits will be paid out of dedicated social security taxes or out of general taxes that are paid over to the fund.

Right, so the year when the trust fund is exhausted is irrelevant. The event to watch out for is when the trust fund has to start being tapped because SS taxes aren't enough to pay for SS payouts because that's the point that the gov't will have to start paying back those IOUs. That point has already been reached, hasn't it?

105: The point hasn't been reached quite yet, but it's coming.

But the fact that the social security trust fund is made up of special issue treasury bonds (and thus, promises from the general fund to pay for future benefits) is why it matters when discussing the deficit.

The story of the twentieth century is one of greater centralization of power in hands of the federal government. I don't think anyone can dispute that. More and more tasks were taken up by government due to liberal politicians. This should make a liberal's heart happy because his party, the Democrat, ruled most of that century and instituted these programs.

But they all forgot one thing. How to pay for all these programs? They were short-sighted. We got Medicare and Medicaid under LBJ. That is a liberal president, and a rotten one at that, even for a liberal. Look at what we got under FDR. We are still wrestling with that. How to pay for all this?

The debt is a liberal problem, caused by liberals, unable to be solved by liberals. And idiot Obama has done nothing to alleviate the problem.

By the way, the rich already pay a great deal in taxes, and if you taxed them more you still wouldn't have enough revenue to pay off the debt.

#107--right--and the republicans and conservatives never did a thing to consolidate power--Okay--if you say so.

A good part of this debt they you're laying on the current administration was money borrowed against the future to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by the previous administration.

"The debt is a liberal problem, caused by liberals, unable to be solved by liberals. And idiot Obama has done nothing to alleviate the problem."

I believe that if you look at the history of the debt, it has increased more under Republican administrations than under Democratic ones. That's simplifying things a fair amount, because an administration only has negative power with respect to the debt, but it does run counter to your silly notion that the debt is a "liberal problem, caused by liberals, unable to be solved by liberals".

>107

Perfect example !! We ALL need to take a look in the mirror !

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-talk-huppke-obit-facts-20120419,0,80...

108 -- Defense is a legitimate use of government funds. I consider those wars to be in our national interest, as well as the rest of the world's.

111: You can't complain about debt and then turn around and say "Oh, but the things I think we should overspend on are okay." At least not without looking somewhat hypocritical.

There are legitimate uses of government and illegitimate uses. It is the latter which have gotten us into trouble.

113: In your view. You don't object to overspending, you just object to overspending on things you don't like. If the U.S. had chosen not to involve itself in Iraq, then the debt would be far smaller. This increase in the debt was a "conservative problem, caused by conservatives". That you consider it to have been a legitimate expense does not change this.

#111--funny--the Bush administration passes these huge debts they can't pay for along to Obama's administration and you blame Obama for it.

Maybe you could explain how the pre-emptive strike 'served our national interest?' What exactly did we gain from that?

As long as we're generalizing, I think I'd characterize it as liberals instituting programs that were for the good of the country and paying for them and it's the conservatives who decided to cut taxes but didn't have the guts to actually cut the programs that caused the deficit problem.

From Tom Coburn:

"The senator brushes aside the simplistic notion that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Bush tax cuts are the driving forces behind our debt. As he explains, the average annual cost of the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan during the height of those wars was $123 billion, while the cost of fraud alone in Medicare is $100 billion each year. The Bush tax cuts are projected to “cost” $3.5 trillion over the next decade, but entitlements will cost $23 trillion over the same time period. This is not to say these costs shouldn’t be offset with cuts to other programs, but to ignore the driving force behind our nation’s massive expenditures — namely, entitlements — and simply blame tax cuts or military engagements would be misguided."

http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/27/the-debt-bomb-a-page-turner-about-the-federal-...

117 -- It's not a question of "what programs I like." It's a question of what is an established proper use of government. Defense is a proper use of government.

>113
Well, I say that education is part of our over all national defense and that we spend too much of the money on weapons and wars, when we should be spending it on education. This is a legitimate use !

Who defines what is legitimate and what is not ? Can I ??

>118
Again....define "defense"
Education, general overall physical health of it's citizens, a healthy distribution of wealth, I look as all of those as adding to the defense of one's country.

"Any serious budget cutter has to start with defense: it accounts for 54 percent of discretionary federal spending. Of that 54 percent, 18 percent is debt service on old wars.

That leaves 36 percent, or $1.3 trillion, of which $200 billion a year goes to Afghanistan and Iraq. Let's pull out. We're losing anyway."

A budget expenditure of more than 50% has to be seriously looked at in terms of its value, and, if one is cutting the budget, in terms of what we can do without.

The attitude that 'these expenses are unimportant; but what I what to see paid for is important' is exactly why the budget issue will not be resolved until it absolutely has to be dealt with.

#107: How to pay for all these programs? They were short-sighted. We got Medicare and Medicaid under LBJ.

So if a president doesn't foresee a problem that will come 50 years down the road, they're short-sighted? Ronald Reagan couldn't see that weapons sold to Afghanistan would be turned on us 20 years down the road; does that make him blind as a bat?

idiot Obama

Seriously? Do you think it really encourages anyone to listen to you to call Obama an idiot? It's clearly false; it's hard to become president if you're not of at least average intelligence, and Obama's accomplishments before presidency indicate some level of intelligence. Whether you're accusing him of being something you know is false, or just tossing a generic pejorative at him, neither way does it advance the discussion.

#113: There are legitimate uses of government and illegitimate uses.

The line between the two is drawn by each person differently. I do not regard it as legitimate for my government to engage in regime change in foreign countries. I do regard it legitimate for my country to support its citizens when they are sick or old.

It is the latter which have gotten us into trouble.

Economics, like physics, is stubbornly immune to our opinions about right and wrong. A trillion dollars spent helping the sick is just as spent as a trillion dollars spent providing personal planes, trains and automobiles to everyone in Congress.

#118: It's not a question of "what programs I like." It's a question of what is an established proper use of government. Defense is a proper use of government.

It's been 70 years since Social Security went in, and similar programs exist world-round. It's now established. If you insist on going further back, I'll remind you the founding fathers didn't want a standing army; they apparently didn't think your type of defense was a proper use of government.

Iraq had nothing to do with defense. Iraq never posed a credible threat to us.

"It's not a question of "what programs I like." It's a question of what is an established proper use of government. Defense is a proper use of government."

Sure. And if we wanted to we could spend $100 billion on defense instead of $800 billion. The fact is you like spending lots of money on defense, but want to whine and shift blame when the bill comes due.

Well, I disagree about Iraq, but I'm not going to fight that battle again. I have fought it too many times already. We and the world are safer today because of George W. Bush—the person you all called an idiot.

I believe the Constitution establishes what is or is not the proper use of government. What you or I want government to do doesn't matter. It's what is constitutional. Defense is constitutional.

On being an idiot: I know Obama is an Ivy league lawyer and a millionaire. But he is an idiot for trying things which in the past have not worked. He is an idiot for not seeing what will work when it is right in front of him. He doesn't compromise. He doesn't put up reasonable plans. But that is nothing compared to his arrogance, ignorance, and narcissism. And, perhaps most of all, he had almost no leadership experience before taking office and he has proven to be in way over his head.

On being shortsighted: Yes, it's possible Reagan, or whomever came up with the plan to arm mujahadeen, was shortsighted. I wonder if it would've been better to let the Soviets try to keep or even let them have Afghanistan and let them deal with it. But that's hindsight. FDR and LBJ should have known that the programs they instituted would eventually bloat because that's the way government programs are—as presidents they should have known the nature of government programs to become counterproductive, unworkable, and too costly. In the words of John Stossel, government can't, individuals can.

Now…Did anyone read the quote about Tom Coburn's book that I pasted?

#118--Odd that you would call the pre-emptive strike on Iraq as 'defense'.

Yes, sometimes a pre-emptive strike is defense. I have no problem with that. Perhaps you would rather wait for an attack to take place, nuclear attack, a biochemical attack, or perhaps another 9/11—allowing people to die—before fighting back.

Jihadists have been at war with us for decades. It wasn't until George W. Bush that we began fighting back. Saddam Hussein was a threat, so we took him out. A success.

107> The story of the twentieth century is one of greater centralization of power in hands of the federal government. I don't think anyone can dispute that.

Like all metanarratives, this one can be disputed. As always, the devil lies in the details. The USA is not France; nor is it Russia circa 1918.

1. centralization: state power, which is not the only site of power, has been expanded, but not necessarily centralized. The divisions of federal, state, and local, and legislative, executive, and judicial, mitigate against centralization at all times. Public law expands with legislation enacted at multiple levels, not only the Federal one. One cursory glance at the U. S. Constitution or any acknowledgment whatsoever of the well honored "state's rights" tradition would suffice to undermine the metanarrative of uninterrupted centralization of power at the Federal level.

But that is not all. Along side the state there has been an expansive institutionalization of knowledge and practices that intersect with, but are not determined, by the state. This is the domain so lovingly described by Foucault: the clinic, the psychiatric session, the asylum, the school. Power circulates through these institutions and their subjects that is not the result of the sovereign decision of the state. So, for instance, the federal government is concerned with education of children, but then so is the child psychologist whose expertise on pedagogy influences classroom practices; social workers are also concerned with the family and exercise a certain power of defining normal and abnormal family life; this power may intersect with the state (e.g. resulting in the removal of children from the home) or not (e.g. in the form of family therapy contracted privately). And on and on.

For your indisputable story to be more than mere speculation, you'll need to define more specifically what you mean by power, differentiate it by its sites and modalities. Then we'll be able to assess whether the federal government is in fact the center of centralized power.

2. militarization: one can argue that power (physical violence) has been militarized, both metaphorically and institutionally, during and since WWII (Michael Sherry, In the Shadow of War).

More and more tasks were taken up by government due to liberal politicians

This is a useful fiction, the fairy tale of some variant of lazy conspiracy thinking. Just one counterexample explodes it: Herbert Hoover's activities as Secretary of Commerce. Was Hoover a "liberal"?

>125

Yes. Here's the counter-argument

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget#Total_spending

(I didn't have the time at work to wade through several thousand pages of documents relating to our budget.)

Note that Defense spending is listed as 'discretionary'. Which means it can be lowered without having to pass a lot of laws to get around debt obligations. That's not counting the other discretionary items on the budget, or the hidden expenses (the black budget) of our national intelligence agencies. Or raising taxes.

Bush Jr. made the U.S. less safe, and endangered our national security (not to mention our civil rights) to an unprecendented degree. Obama has carried on those ideas, which doesn't make him any great prize either.

Defense may indeed be constitutional; however, blatant agression and acts of war carried out without prior authorization by Congress (whcih still has that pesky power to declare war; not the Executive) is not.

"I believe the Constitution establishes what is or is not the proper use of government. What you or I want government to do doesn't matter. It's what is constitutional. Defense is constitutional."

Yes it is. And so are all those "liberal" programs you are complaining about. Like I've said, you don't dislike overspending, you just dislike overspending on things that you disagree with. And then you whine and try to shift the blame for the bill when it comes due.

"He doesn't compromise. He doesn't put up reasonable plans."

Ah, like putting forward a health care proposal that is almost identical to a plan that the Republicans proposed themselves in the past? That kind of refusal to compromise?

Yes, sometimes a pre-emptive strike is defense. I have no problem with that. Perhaps you would rather wait for an attack to take place, nuclear attack, a biochemical attack, or perhaps another 9/11—allowing people to die—before fighting back.

Yeah, good thing that we got rid of those WMD's!

"He doesn't compromise. He doesn't put up reasonable plans."

Define reasonable.

Define compromise.

Get the feeling that "reasonable" and/or "compromise both mean : my way or the highway.

Thing Republicans don't understand is the fact that they are going to stay put in this mess with the rest of us until they show some accountability. Have to change the way they do things and in order to do that, they will have to take some of the heat. They will also have to REdefine compromise and reasonable....four years of playing games is not what constitutes hammering out a government that works best for the majority.
Doesn't sound like too many are ready for that.

#125: I believe the Constitution establishes what is or is not the proper use of government.

Wrong. Completely and utterly wrong. At best, the Constitution of the United States tells us what is legal for US government to do. It says nothing about government can be used for; it is completely constitutional for us to attack the UK, no matter how unjustifiable it would be as defense. Letting the law say what is proper is putting the cart before the horse. And in any case, it says nothing about government in general; it only speaks on US government.

He doesn't compromise.

By which you mean he doesn't compromise as much as you want. Every liberal knows he's compromised; most of us have screamed at him for doing so.

And all that misses the main point of what I was saying. If you want to have a discussion with people who disagree with you, labeling the president an idiot is not a productive thing. And, no, saying that some liberals did it to Bush doesn't make any more productive in communication.

FDR and LBJ should have known that the programs they instituted would eventually bloat because that's the way government programs are—as presidents they should have known the nature of government programs to become counterproductive, unworkable, and too costly.

Except, of course, when it comes down to the military, which is apparently exempt from the nature of government programs because the Constitution mentions it--among other things, trying to prevent there from being a standing army.

In any case, at a certain point, you fix things for today and let tomorrow handle its own problems. Why should the people of the 1930s be deprived of Social Security because the people of the 2010s can't handle government programs responsibly?

Jihadists have been at war with us for decades.

In the 1990s, jihadists killed 18 Americans ... 7 more then bears killed that same decade. Yosemite killed roughly five times that over the same period. The worst terrorist attack on American soil in the 1990s killed 168, yet somehow we figured out that Arizona didn't have WMD. In the same decade, 400,000 Americans died to car accidents. I'm thinking that stressing about jihadists was not a rational choice.

In 2001, 9/11 happened, and killed 3,000 people. The Iraqi war killed 4,500 Americans, so if attacking Iraq saved us from another 9/11, it was a bad trade-off measured in American life. Measure in human life, the Iraq war has killed over 50,000.

#129: acts of war carried out without prior authorization by Congress (whcih still has that pesky power to declare war; not the Executive) is not.

One of my frustrations is that Congress has never put its foot down and insisted it and it alone has the right to declare war.

#127--Right again I guess--okay--so Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were second cousins plotting sneak attacks together?

Anyway calling Hussein a Jihadist is a stretch. He was a military dictator (one we were happy with for a long while) who was a Muslim more or less by default--that was one of the big critiques about him in the Muslim world--that he really didn't give a shit about his religion. He cared about one thing and one thing only--staying in power. He was a tinpot dictator and no real threat to us. There is no real evidence supporting Iraq's involvement in the 9-11 attacks. Colin Powell's address to the United Nations turned out to be the biggest embarrassment of his life. Given another choice I think he would rather shown up in high heels and a tutu than make that speech again. We got to Iraq--hunted all over the place for the biological weapons and the WMD's. Nothing. What gives Deniro? Have you been keeping up at all? We've spent a good $trillion +. We've had a lot of our own soldiers killed and maimed--many many more Iraqi's. We've sown much unnecessary misery over this for ourselves and for others. And you can still point to this as some kind of success? You make me feel sorry for you. Truly.

I am struck dumb by the assertion that making war is somehow the legitimate creator of the deficits when making healthy and educated Citizens is not. But then I guess some of you would cheer that I'm not weighing in on this absurd discussion.

#135--not sure where you're coming from on this. Anyone should feel free to weigh in. Sometimes I know one can feel like they're being twisted around in circles. An individual is almost always inconsistent in some way or another. We're fallible. We fuck up. We still learn from each other--even those we disagree with the most. Have to let your vulnerabilities ride sometimes. I always kind of look at it this way--I'm one voice (as far as this country of ours) out of over 300 million (though maybe in my own way a really annoying voice at least for some)--or out of an ocean of humanity.

>111

Debatable about "our", isn't it? But let that one slide, for the moment. Maybe we can sort that one out over the dinner table. Maybe...

But the rest of the world?

Really? It's a pretty big world out there, man.

Hubris?

>136: Sorry. Need to take a recess. Didn't like being called one who ignores facts, which obviously I am not as I function in this world relatively well, nor did I like being accused of being a fascist, as I've pretty much spent my entire political life opposed to fascism, domestic and foreign. Sorry if my thin skin is showing. Maybe later....

>136
Think in the case of Iraq one can be justified, when regarding it's "rightness", in voicing distaste, it is also possible that one could be struck dumb when thinking there are those who support the amount of debt it has incurred for this country. Iraq, after all, is new territory for the United States. A premptive war (Iraq was a premptive war !) is new and some of us have lived a long time in a country that wasn't prone to "attacking" other countries based on "implied or preceived threats. Not much different than the new "Stand your ground gun laws" We are killing others based on perceptions which may or may not be true. It is entirely up to the individual/country with the finger on the trigger.
Of course, one has the freedom to weigh in and argue that this is a good idea but then no one should be surprised by the reaction to such a belief. A reaction which in many cases would cause one, not only to be struck dumb, but also to feel a sense of despair over the loss of a standard which we, as a country, have held until 2003.

Before I forget, I just want to mention that the Obama budget I linked to above is not actually a budget. Washington hasn't actually passed a budget in like a thousand days now. So these recent documents are "budgets" only in some loose sense.

Regarding the notion that taxing the rich will solve this problem:

Here’s the Government Accountability Office’s Citizen’s Guide to the 2009 Financial Report of the Federal Government. Look at Chart 9 on page 11. Revenue without policy changes is expected to be 20% of GDP into the future. By 2050, spending is set to be 40% of GDP. So the taxes on the rich are going to be increased by an amount equal to 20% of GDP to fill the gap? Good luck with that.
By 2080, spending is projected to be 68% of GDP, with revenue still 20%. We’re going to pay for this, apparently, by jacking up taxes on the rich by the amount of the gap, half of GDP? Er, okay.

The Guides for 2010 and 2011 present a less catastrophic more optimistic picture (cf. their Chart 2's, which show the same thing as 2009's Chart 9), but that is principally due to one changed assumption: That the Affordable Care Act will improve the government's budget position.

Correct accounting reveals that the ACA (assuming the Supreme Court lets it stand) will worsen the government’s fiscal position, not improve it. Washington Post story from April 9: Health-care law will add $340 billion to deficit, new study finds.

Since the ACA will make the federal government’s budget position worse, not better, the 2009 projection should be understood as overly optimistic.

142: Claiming that anyone here has suggested that taxing the rich will close the budget deficit is a straw man argument at best. What has been suggested is that a combination of increased taxes and reduced spending is required to accomplish a balanced budget.

I should also point out that even if the Supreme Court invalidates the provision at issue in the case before it, the ACA contains a saving clause meaning that invalidating one portion of the law will not invalidate any other part of it. Imagining that if the Supreme Court rules against the individual mandate that the ACA will go away is indulging in fantasy.

Media note: The Washington Post is... well, the Washington Post. First they identify the author of the study as a Republican and a "conservative policy analyst." Only after that do they mention that he's an Obama appointee and also that (paragraphs 10-12) CBO and Medicare actuaries acknowledge the issue he raises. The WaPo mentions "Medicare actuary Rick Foster" as agreeing with the analysis. I had to Google him to learn that he's not just any old actuary for Medicare, but in fact its Chief Actuary.

>143 Claiming that anyone here has suggested that taxing the rich will close the budget deficit is a straw man argument at best.

See messages 94 - 98.

Imagining that if the Supreme Court rules against the individual mandate that the ACA will go away is indulging in fantasy.

I have no idea what the SC will do. Nor did I limit my conjecture to the notion that the Court might only strike down the individual mandate. In any case, the Obama Administration itself has said that without the individual mandate, huge chunks of the ACA are unworkable.

Talk about straw men arguments!

>103 I didn't mean to suggest that Soc. Sec is the entirety of the problem. (We should be so lucky.)

146: The only question before the Court right now is the individual mandate, so for the Court to extend their ruling beyond that provision would be quite remarkable, since the Court has an established policy of ruling on the narrowest grounds possible in a case.

While some parts of the ACA may become unworkable without the individual mandate, none of the purportedly unworkable parts are parts that affect the Federal cost of the program.

See messages 94 - 98.

At what point in those posts do you see anyone arguing that simply taxing the rich will close the budget deficit?

#101: It's a racist program that steals from people of lower life-expectancy (who tend to be of lower income and of minority groups) and gives it to people with a high life-expectancy (financially well-off white dudes). It's not rocket science.

#127: "Yes, sometimes a pre-emptive strike is defense."

Kind of like how economic regulation is a pre-emptive strike against "social injustice." You may be tilting at a different set of windmills than the Left does, but if it walks like a duck...

#142: By 2080, spending is projected to be 68% of GDP, with revenue still 20%.

Right now, according the 1928 projections of 2012, we all live in huge mansions with two maids. According to the 1932 projections, we're all unemployed. Who honestly thinks that any projection 68 years into the future means anything? Moreover, who cares? We can and should look 20 years ahead for something like this. If there's going to be a problem in 2080, surely they can adjust the programs in 2060 to fit the needs. Surely our adjusting to handle the problems in 2040, our adjusting in 2040 to handle the problems in 2060, and our adjusting in 2060 to handle the problems in 2080 will be a better solution then trying to predict what's going to happen in 2080 today.

And there's a fact that people are dodging. That 68% of GDP is the amount that the government would have to pay out to keep our senior citizens alive and well. If you drop that, it's got to come from somewhere. What those numbers really say is that 68% of GDP will be necessary to keep our senior citizens alive and well. I believe there's also some numbers behind that about the ratio of retirees to workers that are pretty scary. If 2080 is a serious worry of yours, then stop futzing with the government budget and start worrying about how our society as a whole is going to handle the issues.

BTW, small comment on the margin of the discussion.l Many "senior citizens" who do not feel economically secure are extending their working life. If one has the health and the skills that's a happy solution. Many enjoy work and consider "retirement" to be a bad alternative, especially if food and healthcare cost too much.

"Keeping senior citizens alive and healthy" is a goal which many families share with the government. There are many ways to solve this problem and Social Security is not alone in providing resources; but it is an important part and should be managed intelligently.

<>If one has the health and the skills that's a happy solution.

Not so happy for other people who need a job perhaps.

>153
Many people who are retired and still need to work are actually taking the jobs that our young people used to perform.
Some retirees are not suited to the job market, construction workers, stone masons, over road truck drivers or those who stock the semi trucks at loading docks. Not only do they have no skills in retail they are physically worn out. When they discuss raising the retirement age, these workers come to mind. To continue to lay stone or brick till you are into your 70s is not a realistic expectation.
High stress jobs such as nursing are not always realistic for individuals either, as we age we are not always able to multitask as well as when we are younger nor do we have the physical strength needed to perform some of the tasks that need to be done.

I am always a bit slack jawed when I see the men in suits and ties discussing raising the retirement age to 70 or above....they have no clue what they are asking of some of our work force.

I think we can all think of exceptions to a general idea. But I think sometimes solutions are hiding behind all the exceptions. I've read that many employers have moved to hiring part-time workers in order to survive in the tough competitive market. Older workers may suit this situation. So the thinking of exceptions can work both ways.

I am pretty sure "the market" has many opportunities which can find the right solution (person, product, service) but I also believe that government (which is us, the taxpayers) expresses our best natures when it works to protect those who are failing in strength and health.

#155--I don't know--there seems to me a kind of vagueness to your use of the term 'government'.

Maybe it's just me that thinks this--but it seems to me that if an individual has the wealth and/or influence (usually they go hand in hand) you can buy your own brand of justice--that you can manipulate a government that best suits you regardless of those who equate being a taxpayer with being part of a broad ranging decision making process of the masses, for the masses, by the masses.

I guess maybe it should be the way but I'm too cynical at this point in time to believe it.

My use of the word included government as found in the United States: village, town, city, counties, states, and federal. Wherever, and whenever, citizens choose to act in concert for their chosen purposes.

>156 & >157
Agree with you both, however I feel that Iriley is addressing the trend of our current government, while maggie is giving voice to a time when people had a sense of control over more of their own decisions.
Big government has made it more difficult for villages, towns, cities and states to make their own choices.
Having said that it is important to point out that this is a fact because somewhere someone has abused their freedom and disregarded those around them, which makes for a stronger bigger federal influence.

There have always been politicians who could be "bought" but, the recent actions of the Republican members of Congress suggest that an entire Party can now be purchased. A lot of power is being exerted by someone and the statics would show that it isn't the majority of this country.

I believe that part of the frustration in this country is the feeling of a loss of control.

I think the feelings of powerlessness, and loss of control, have been strong during the majority of my life. (1944-now) I think we first saw the drama of that during the civil rights "movement" and the anti-war protests during Vietnam. It continues today during the May Day protests.

I don't deny my descriptions are idealized. Nonetheless, I believe each of us chooses to view reality and make powerful decisions: to vote or not, to cheat on income taxes or not, to discuss politics or duck all discussion of difficult topics. I don't think I am being completely retro in my person choices.

>148: 146: The only question before the Court right now is the individual mandate, so for the Court to extend their ruling beyond that provision would be quite remarkable, since the Court has an established policy of ruling on the narrowest grounds possible in a case.

Maybe you should ask the justices themselves what they think of that. Some of them disagree with you:

On the final day of arguments...justices struggled over what to do with the rest of the Affordable Care Act if they also rule that its central provision is out of bounds.

The question dealt with whether the entire health care law should stay or go or be revised if the so-called individual mandate -- the requirement that everyone buy health insurance -- is struck down. That, and a debate over the law's Medicaid requirements, filled the last day of discussion in the landmark hearings.
...
"This is really a case of first impression," Scalia said. "I don't know another case where we have been confronted with this decision. Can you take out the heart of the act and leave everything else in place?"

To that end, Scalia made specific mention of a notorious provision of the law, dubbed the "Cornhusker Kickback," which along with other sweeteners were added to gain votes. That sort of legislative wheeling and dealing made it difficult for some justices, especially Scalia, to see how the rest of the ACA could survive without the mandate.
...
Justice Anthony Kennedy (said) it might end up worse for insurers who would still need to cover customers added on to their roles.

"We would be exercising the judicial power if one act was stricken and the others remained to impose a risk on insurance companies that Congress had never intended," Kennedy said. "By reason of this court, we would have a new regime that Congress did not provide for, did not consider. That, it seems to me, can be argued at least to be a more extreme exercise of judicial power than to strike the whole."

>149 "See messages 94 - 98."

At what point in those posts do you see anyone arguing that simply taxing the rich will close the budget deficit?

They're saying (as I read them) that Social Security's problems can be fixed by taxing the rich.(*) But (even assuming that's true) Soc Sec's problems are not the entire problem.

------------

(*) Though actually, only 94 explicitly limits itself to Soc Sec.

>151 Who honestly thinks that any projection 68 years into the future means anything? Moreover, who cares?

Ouch; that was painful. Did you really just say that?

161: That is the most moronic reading of posts 94-98 that is possible. The idiocy of your response is simply staggering in scale.

~163

JGL is that you? I've been wondering where you were.

*big sigh* >161: Did you really think those "sarcastic" comments were a part of a rational discussion of how to reform Social Security so that it is solvent for future retirees; and less, onerous for current working people? Really? You think someone on this set of comment thinks the entire problem is solved by "taxing the rich"? Even I, who am filled with simplistic ideas and cliches know better than that.

>159
No, not entirely retro. Was born in 50. I remember very vividly the Kennedy election. My father was totally convinced that once Kennedy was in office the Pope was going to be running the country. However, once he was elected, I got my first lesson, from my father, in respect for the office of President. When Kennedy was assassinated, I learned what it was to feel a loss as a country. Not saying there were not those who didn't give a rip, but for the most part, this country was united in a feeling that something like this should not have happened.
Much like 9/11. However, leadership on 9/11 chose to use the event as a dividing tool rather than an event to unint a country.

Not sure this would be the case any longer. See a level of disrespect not seen previoulsy. Not only for the President but for each other. I believe another post RIP is about the loss of "facts" in our discussions. When nothing and I mean NOTHING needs to be factual.....how frustrating ? How does one go about uniting a country that doesn't care what is true and what is not ?

Guess I am meaning that more than anything. Live in Wisconsin, Walker is either a hero or an ass.....he ran dishonestly, doesn't seem to matter to those who think he is right....staggering really....cause what does one stand for if it doesn't have to mean anything.

Maybe I am alone in feeling a greater loss of power, but I lived through the 60s and the civil rights uprisings. Those protests were accomplished without a civil war, primarly I believe, because we felt we had a voice....Do you feel that the current Occupy movement has the same power ?

>166 - I think your question is very worthy of some deep thought. I witnessed the May Day protests in Seattle, via TV watched in the safety of the suburbs, and wonder the same. Anarchists who probably agree that facts are beside the point did cause some significant property damage in downtown Seattle, but the bulk of the protestors walked their talk.

Will things change? Will more be hired? Will fewer people who look like undocumented workers be harassed? I think, on the margin, yes. There will be some change. I noticed that the Seattle Police Department and the Office of the Mayor were a great deal more measured and strategic in their responce to the anarchists. Fewer "innocent bystanders" and "members of the media" were swept up in police actions, unlike several years ago when the city experienced "Battle in Seattle" during the WTO conferences.

It is really early here this morning and I have not the time to go further, but I do continue to hope respect for others, and respect for researching facts, will survive.

#162: Did you really just say that?

Why, yes, I did. I guess maybe I was wrong; I mean 1944, they had no idea about computers, but maybe if they had worried about 58 years later a decade later, they could have fulfilled Asimov's vision of the government having one computer that any member of the public could go to a public office and access after standing in line by now.

So, prosfilaes, were you responding to my comments?

I did not have a problem with #151. My take is that it is human nature to not be able to project accurately into the far future so it is pretty normal for most to not concern themselves over much with it. However, I have heard that some Native American philosophies exhorts all to think of their actions impact for 7 generations into the future. Might be good to try.

Here's a picture of why liberals want to "tax the rich": http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/pacificnw/2018066438_pacificp99percent06.h...

169: I can't speak for prosfilaes, but it seems likely to me that he was responding to Carnophile.

>169
"I have heard that some Native American philosophies exhorts all to think of their actions impact for 7 generations into the future. Might be good to try."

Had to chuckle at this one, because actually, we, as a society have turned the Native way of life almost to the opposite. Starting with birthdays. On a child's birthday, in many Native tribes, the child made gifts and presented them to their parents, grandparents or other elders who where active in their up bringing. This was a sign of respect and gratefulness because without the support of those around them, the child would not survive.
The tribe members as they aged took less and less from their society...if food was short it was given to the children or the younger tribe members first. When an elder became a drain on the tribe as a whole....they did not hang around long, it was the honorable thing to do in the interest of their children and grandchildren. (I am NOT advocating death panels here ! There were NO death panels. Individuals made up their own minds on these matters and death was just as much a part of life as was birth) Essencially they thought in terms of the future in most things. They had to in order to survive. Couldn't take more than they needed, had to respect the role of EVERY tribe member and were more than willing to sacrifice what ever it took to keep the young as healthy as possible.

Don't believe we are much different, in that our future needs to be protected in some way, shape or form but, too many have lost touch with how interdependant we really are and see themselves as almost infallible ,an attitude which doesn't lead to much respect for what the future may bring or how we are impacting that future for those who are going to be around longer than we are.

The Republican's give lip service to the idea of what we are leaving our children, pull the old "Think of the children" line out of their rear ends when it comes to the national debt but care little if our grandchildren have clean air to breath or clean water to drink.

>163 moronic... idiocy...

Heh. You're really stung by the Supreme Court thing, huh?

Just remember which one of us decided to make an issue of it.

>165
Obviously they're sarcastic, Maggie. I mean, yes, when people fret that the rich might be forced to resort to cannibalism, I think we can safely read them as sarcastic. That's the point.

You think someone on this set of comment thinks the entire problem is solved by "taxing the rich"?

Two of them, Bob and theoria, have said nothing about any proposals in this thread other than to advocate taxing the rich. (Or to be precise, to make sarcastic remarks that amount to that.) Jesse basically hasn't, either. In 5 he quoted someone else on revenue through rich-taxing and cutting defense spending, but his response only mentioned the revenue side. lriley mentioned cuts in 26, but only to say that he's "afraid" of them.

So when people advocate taxing the rich and nothing else, they've... advocated taxing the rich and nothing else.

#167: I do continue to hope respect for others, and respect for researching facts, will survive.

These aren't mutually dependent. The fact is that the guys who take their turns sitting in the White House are no more respectable than crime bosses. Real adults realize that respect is earned and all this ring-kissing is for the medieval-minded peasants who weren't even allowed to build their own private ovens to bake their own bread. If a mafia boss gets killed, the proper response is "What did you expect?"

#169: Here's a picture of why liberals want to "tax the rich"

Yes, they're very disappointing. It would be one thing if they were genuinely upset about "rich" people with ill-gotten gains. That's something I can get behind. But as with the article you linked to, it's mostly a bunch of whining by "liberals" about how upset they are with what they don't realize are the effects of their own policies upon the deterioration of healthcare and the economy and they want someone else to bail them out. It's one thing to be electorally disempowered. It's another thing to be electorally deluded. This is what they voted for. For decades the Left has voted for more and more economic interventionism to the people's own detriment. They got what they wanted and this is what it looks like. What did they expect?

Lunar, I am stumped at your interpretation of history. #167 - I said nothing about the two wishes being dependent on one another. Wishing people to be respecting is good all by itself. Wishing people would research facts is good all by itself, too. End of this moment of wishful thinking.

I'm sorry I don't have the time right now to go back to the article and find all the ways I disagree with your reading of it. Maybe later today....

>173. Ah, no. a. The real tax rate of the wealthiest 10 percent in the US is little over 9 percent, and proportionately less in places like Greece and Italy. b. Concentration of resources leads to inefficient aggregate demand c. Taxing, that is increasing the rate on taxes actually paid by the wealthy while lowering it on others leads to an increase in demand, and hence a more vibrant economy. Then, d., investment - in basic research and education, something that was once a hallmark of the US, leads to future growth, new industries, but most importantly something more akin to the relative meritocracy which used to distinguish and made the US such a relative success.
>174 What are you talking about? See deregulation accelerated by the Reagan administration and then worsened yes by Clinton - with a rightist congress. We got...derivatives. 50-to-1 leveraged ratios. 120 percent lending. Wall street fraud. Production relocation overseas -without corresponding access to other markets or copyright infringement protection. Off-shore banking corporate tax evasion. More importantly, federal government spending has actually risen more under Republican than Democratic administrations post war (pre crises.) The left's emphasis on education and basic research instead resulted in things like, oh, this web site. Or one of the personalized drugs you'll eventually take. I take you imagine the scandinavian countries and Germany have, ah, fascism to explain their relative outperformance?
Rightist invented wars instead have resulted in...death and decline.

#173--I look at it as a starting point. So?

Very little doubt in my mind that the GOP wants everyone but the rich to pay for everything. Interesting as well that Paul Ryan's economic plan (one in which he says he devised leaning on his Catholic faith) was recently chastised by American Catholic bishops as targeting the poor, the jobless, the most misfortunate at the expense of the wealthy. The Catholic church at least as most people know it is extremely conservative at least on most things.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/story/2012-04-17/catholic-bishops-paul-rya...

#176: See deregulation accelerated by the Reagan administration and then worsened yes by Clinton - with a rightist congress. We got...derivatives. 50-to-1 leveraged ratios. 120 percent lending. Wall street fraud. Production relocation overseas -without corresponding access to other markets or copyright infringement protection. Off-shore banking corporate tax evasion.

And rain dances control the weather. Sorry, but "deregulation" isn't the big bad monster hiding under your bed that the left-wing echo chamber keeps harping on. You only blame deregulation because you don't have a clue how these financial messes come about and so you make up an explanation to fit your narrative like some tribal shaman ignorant of meteorology. All the things you worry about happen despite all your regulations. Take Enron as an example. You had all your regulators all in a row looking the other way while Enron cooked the books. The IRS even got information back in 1999 from an Enron whistleblower about how they faked income with off-shore accounts. How confident do you think any whistleblower would be about approaching the IRS or the SEC? They probably wouldn't have as much fun as the oil regulators did in the lead up to the Deepwater Horizon spill.

More importantly, federal government spending has actually risen more under Republican than Democratic administrations post war (pre crises.)

It's always amusing when lefties pretend that spending is bad... but only when Republicans do it. I'm not exactly sure what your point here is except maybe you think this would somehow make me "see the light" when I haven't ever voted for a Republican in my life anyway. Newsflash: The left and the right are the same. Don't pretend the left is any better.

The left's emphasis on education and basic research instead resulted in things like, oh, this web site.

Well, I should warn you that this isn't a comedy forum. If government researchers had their way, websites like this one wouldn't even exist. The luddites went kicking and screaming to prevent legislation in the 1980s to allow for the commercialization of the internet. I'm actually surprised the left doesn't hate the internet more than they do. As for "education," you've messed that up too. The K-12 public education system is perhaps one of the most inequitous institutions in the country and the price of higher education has ballooned out of control with all the federal student loans and grants being poured into the system. Please stop "helping." You're making it worse.

I take you imagine the scandinavian countries and Germany have, ah, fascism to explain their relative outperformance?

Oh, crikey. Just read this.

>178 Yes, indeed, Mr. Volker was and is one red commie. Yuk-yuk. Banking deregulation has resulted de facto in a mess. The issue is neither left nor right and, as the effect of greenhouse gases on temperature, is only an issue of measure, not of validity.

You seem to mistake me for a leftist. Leftist tend to want centralized, state-controlled spending. Concentration of wealth leads to a fall in aggregate demand and inefficient economy, even if that concentration is the national government of a large population. Regarding spending: There is a considerable difference between investment and spending even in accounting terms, though perhaps some who vote on the right don't, in their turn, have a clue. The point: 'righttist' governments fundamentally have been less conservative fiscally than 'leftist' ones, there and in Italy, factually, despite the rhetoric and cliche to the opposite. The left and right in that regard have factually not been the same.

The article you link to is a nice example of of selective, out of context data. Place a direct compare and you don't have a myth, but individual national outperformance and well-being. Moreover include Germany, Norway, etc. and the picture is more than a little clear. That isn't at all saying any system haas been perfect for it's citizens. But relatively, those models have been working better than the US for the last quarter century.

Basic research and regulation are different subjects, as are efficiency of educational systems vs access to them. Italy had universal access to universities and through the 80's was considered the best in the world overall, now in decline - due to a lack of spending. The US had and still has a chain of exclusive universities which remain the best, not overall. And that lack and excessive cost had and has much to do with private industry. Ie, even in health care, the best system in the western hemisphere remains Cuba. The US is the best in the world only if you have oodles of money. But the result of research, the cures for the wealthy, came and come from everyone - it's absurd that a person gets the best health care that others effectively have paid for.

"Heh. You're really stung by the Supreme Court thing, huh?"

Only in your imagination. I guess we will have to file that under "more stupid things Carnophile has said in this thread". If you paid any attention, you'd notice that my response in 163 was a response to 161, which had nothing to do with the Supreme Court but rather your idiotic interpretation of posts 94-98. But as we'll see shortly, reading comprehension seems to elude you.

"Just remember which one of us decided to make an issue of it."

I was going to let this lie, since you had already embarrassed yourself sufficiently on the topic, but since you want to go over it: I pointed out that for the Supreme Court to extend their ruling beyond the individual mandate would be extraordinarily unusual. And then you posted a rebuttal that consisted of Supreme Court justices...talking about how extraordinarily unusual it would be to extend their ruling beyond the individual mandate. In short, you attempted to "refute" me in some way by providing quotes that say exactly what I had said. The fact that you think you've scored some sort of point with this is pathetic.

Not only that, the quotes are so facile that it becomes obvious that the court is highly unlikely to extend their ruling beyond the individual mandate. For example, Kennedy's quote:

"By reason of this court, we would have a new regime that Congress did not provide for, did not consider. That, it seems to me, can be argued at least to be a more extreme exercise of judicial power than to strike the whole."

Is easily answered by noting that if Congress did not want the remainder to survive the potential overturning of the individual mandate then they would not have included a saving provision in the legislation. For the Court to extend their ruling beyond the mandate they would have to hold the mandate unconstitutional and overturn it, and then also overturn a perfectly constitutional savings clause.

The real indicator of the nonseriousness of the Court on this issue is Scalia's quote. Trying to cast doubt on the legitimacy of legislation because it was passed via vote trading would put the court in an entirely new and unprecedented position. And it would call into question most of the legislation that is passed by Congress. Vote-trading is how legislation gets done. Some would argue that leveraging once's vote for the benefit of one's own constituency is the duty of a legislator. By bringing this up as a reason to extend the ruling past the individual mandate, Scalia highlights how desperate the position in favor of doing so truly is. And he probably sank any chance of doing so by making the argument, since it is so very extreme in nature, making it likely most of the other justices will turn the other direction.

Just remember, you're the one who decided to continue along this line and get embarrassed in public.

Lunar, this comment demonstrates some misunderstanding of how K-12 education is funded: "The K-12 public education system is perhaps one of the most inequitous institutions in the country..." The vast majority of funds for K-12 education comes from local taxes and the largest reason for the inequities is the disparities in local wealth. Communities which have economic diversity and larger population bases have more tax revenues, per child, to spend on K-12 education. Smaller school districts with predominately "bedroom" communities, and a lack of industrial base, frequently have difficulty fully funding their schools.

Another historical reason for inequities is the historical racism in the USA which has concentrated racial minorities and poverty in some communities where lack of tax base also makes the school districts struggle for full funding.

I am sure we all support efforts to eliminate the inequities which make it difficult for individuals to succeed after completing the free, universally available, K-12 education.

>181

Savage Inequalities or really, almost anything by Kozol is a good place to start as to the whays and hows of school funding.

yes, I agree. Although I have a hard time reading his work as it makes me so angry.

#179: The left and right in that regard have factually not been the same.

Arguments may be made on which of the two is better or worse on an issue-by-issue basis. At any given point in time, the Democrats might be slightly worse on some issues and the Republicans might be slightly worse on other issues. But these are differences of degree, not differences in direction. They both make it worse. For example, on military issues McCain would probably have been worse than Obama, but Obama has been worse than Bush.

The article you link to is a nice example of of selective, out of context data. Place a direct compare and you don't have a myth, but individual national outperformance and well-being.

Comparing countries is tricky because there are so many differences that would have to be taken into account. On the broader level, one reason comparisons can be unfair comes from the fact that European countries benefit from not wasting money on "defense." Also, dismissing a country's individual history is disingenuous. If you could cite outside factors for why a country fares the way it does, that's one thing. But to say you can ignore the actual policies being enforced at the ground level in favor of broad generalizations about which countries are more or less "leftist" or "rightist" is to be willfully ignorant about how they each got there. I know, you still think the difference between right and left matters and that's the only way most regular people can think of how to compare countries since they can't be bothered to look past skin-deep. But such facile simplicity is not a virtue. As for your adoration of Cuba, again, sweeping genreralities will do you in. Amazing geriatric care? Maybe that's because the members of the regime are all geriatric themselves and the healthcare system has been molded to the regime's benefit? Cuba's amazing infant mortality rate? Hard to compare honestly since they euthanize feotuses with health conditions and even infants that die in their first few months after birth are not counted. Really, expecting honest healthcare statistics from the Cuban government is like expecting honest crime statistics from the NYPD. Oh, yes, and when the outside press tries to interview Cubans about the healthcare system, they're afraid to be critical and will only speak anonymously because of the fear of the Cuban police state (doctors in Cuba are also forbidden to speak with the press). I mean, I'm sure your remark about fascism earlier was just a joke, but I have to wonder if you realize that that's exactly what you're asking for.

#181: Smaller school districts with predominately "bedroom" communities, and a lack of industrial base, frequently have difficulty fully funding their schools.

I see. This explains why inner-city schools in large metropolitan areas are bastions of academic excellence. Maybe we should make the US just one big monopolistic school district? Or maybe you get diminishing returns when government decides how to spend money instead of the poor people you've stolen it from? And school systems out west don't have the deep history of segregation to lean on and make excuses with... well, except for the institutionalized geographic segregation that your government still loves so much. They don't put that one in the government-issued history books, do they?

>184. There is certainly no praise from me for left or right governments in the US or Italy. Still, significant fiscal differences have been evident in both places. The general idea responding even to your second response remains, for me and not only, that any hyper-concentration of resources ends up causing inefficiencies (capitalism within free markets works rather well and should nearly always be the pursuit, seeing as free markets like straight lines don't and cannot actually exist in the real world but approaches to them can and do. The adjective, though, is determinate of relative success, whereas the emphasis has been on the noun in gatt and bilateral/multilateral. But not at all the other way around, capitalism which contains free markets, which is what has happened. Globally, there has been and is a push for a de facto form of socialism for the wealthiest, whereas everyone else is increasingly regarded as devalued free market capital.) How you can say Obama has been somehow worse than Bush on military spending is odd, unless you intend to say that he should have simply unilaterally withdrawn the occupation in Iraq, in which case a very convicing argument be made with which I, and many, would agree.
Comparing results of national economic systems on median citizens therein isn't so tricky as you present, even differing systems within the same country. Ie, Argentina has done quite better once it told the US, world bank, imf, etc., to go screw, allowed for local occupation of industry and the spontaneous local socialist forms of community to prosper by allowing a more true internal free market capitalist market economy. As for Cuba, I don't adore it at all. But market distortions in the US have made healthcare in the US ridiculous, with some individual procedures costing literally 900 percent more than in public systems that it appears you would call 'liberal'. Yet, they are by and large better. And yes, of course, the fascism remark was comic, but no, that isn't what is asked for at all. A form of fascism is instead what has developed because liberals - the Sachs, Krugmans, Stiglitz, Buffets' of the world - have in fact had very little determinate influence relative the Koch brothers and Bushes, despite your and others - for whatever reason - rhetorical attempts at mystification. There is effectively no representation of them politically.

>184, Lunar, I did not undertake explaining why racial minorities are concentrated in some schools, and experience substandard education in many cases. I was explaining why poor educational outcomes can not be accounted for by looking at the federal government's educational programs, solely.

my response in 163 was a response to 161, which had nothing to do with the Supreme Court

Er, yes, I know. The question was what prompted the over-the-top hostility in 163.

>143 invalidating one portion of the law will not invalidate any other part of it.

Supreme Court justices Kennedy and Scalia, at least, disagree with you. See the quotes in 160.

Imagining that if the Supreme Court rules against the individual mandate that the ACA will go away is indulging in fantasy.

As I said, I don’t know what the SC will do. But “fantasy”? Seriously, fantasy? It’s not even remotely possible? Again, Kennedy on striking down only the individual mandate: “That, it seems to me, can be argued at least to be a more extreme exercise of judicial power than to strike the whole.”

And the patented StormRaven analysis is that those quotes... “say exactly what I had said.”

Okay. Wow.

Then, to make matters worse, you slag the justices’ quotes for their “nonseriousness.” So let’s get this straight: The official StormRaven position is:

(1) The justices’ quotes agree with StormRaven.

(2) The justices’ quotes aren’t serious.

Heh. Shouldn’t you pick one or the other?

To get back on topic:

The federal government's problems are not the extent of the problem, since we also have state government problems. As just two examples, California and Rhode Island.

There are also federal employee pensions, which are liabilities of the federal government that are omitted from many discussions of the fiscal picture.

#185: the Sachs, Krugmans, Stiglitz, Buffets' of the world - have in fact had very little determinate influence relative the Koch brothers and Bushes

While you pay some lip service to the notion that the Left has its own warts, the central thesis you keep coming back to and which I have been trying to debunk is "Left is good, Right is bad." You believe that the reason that things are the way there are is because the Right has had it's way and the Left hasn't. And then when idiots like Paul Krugman get the housing bubble they always wanted, the Left looks the other way and rewrites their history again (just like the right-wingers do). It's like listening to a bunch of Christians rant about how they're so persecuted and have no influence when the actual history has been the opposite. And when the facts don't agree with them, they dismiss it as "rhetoric" or "mystification." Or better yet, their magic sky pixie is just testing their blind faith.

Arguing with the faithful is pointless. No one in their right mind would think that a president who starts wars without even congressional approval and targets citizens for assassination is better than a president who hadn't. You might want to google the phrase "worse than Bush" and see what news stories come up on all sorts of issues. There's even a Noam Chomsky link in the results, but I don't expect you to learn anything.

Please, at least qualify the 'you believe' stuff, at least with a perhaps, and the personal provocations. I, personally, don't believe or think left-good, right-bad at all. Indeed, I voted for and was quite pleased with a local Republican, (George Voinavich) and like others argue that both as mayor of Cleveland and senator of Ohio did a relatively fine job. But more importantly, I don't imagine to 'know it all absolutely'. Neither do most of those 'warts'. It was one of those warts, (keynes) who mentioned 'When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?' It appears, instead, that at least here you filter and select facts to fit your thoughts instead of the other way around. Which is a hallmark of religious belief, (and most of the right and radical left.) There are real, physiological (biological) correspondents to those tendencies, and my thoughts, not belief, has to do with our evolution as a species - most importantly from around 19,000 years ago. But that is a longer and perhaps more explanatory discourse not for this thread.

Since you insist on mis-interpreting, either purposefully or for other reasons, others' central thesis, I'll repeat mine again directly and simplified: over concentration of resources tends to lead to 'bad', dispersion of resources tends to lead to 'good'. That concept was once more a bit more 'right' than left. The right, but with the opposite of that concept and objective, has been largely increasingly in power in the US in politics and mature industries since WWII. The left, as you seem to imply, has largely disappeared at the national level, ex what's his face, Bernie something, form the Northeast. Not surprisingly, in areas where the US has remained excellent - like the exclusive chain of universities it maintains, or in young industries, the 'left' is more present, as are immigrants.

If you favorably argue for the actions of President Bush in Iraq or his relative overall record in office, well, there probably really isn't and never was much to discuss then. It would be like 'arguing' about women's rights with a conservative Saudi Mullah. That is, only one very right and self-referring of mind would argue so seriously. Lying to congress on national affairs - in Bushes' instance, justifying a calamitous, unprecedented pre-emptive war unrelated to other events - is a constitutionally impeachable offense. His disastrous administrative results are evident to the rest of the world, and we will be paying for them for generations while generations of Bushes get wealthier. I don't approve at all of the current administration, and regret since the the day the President announced his staff of having voted for him (better then not to vote for the less poor of two,) but by compare with the preceding - only by compare with that one - the Obama administration has been overall objectively measurably better.

Regarding links and Chomsky, you might be right that I would learn little, though it's been awhile I also used to read relatively frequently Noam's usually lucid commentary, (I think, instead, he may have missed some crucial aspects on linguistics, understandable give the lack of data at the time.) I read a critical article of his on a host of foreign policy issues some months ago and fully agreed with his criticism, if that is the link you refer to. But I don't expect you care for, or perhaps can even distinguish, subtlety. Ho-ho. yuk-yuk.

>191
The problem with Lunar's posts , the contents of which would give one reason to deduce, that his attitude, like most of the rest of this country, leaves no room for those who are not "either"/ "or" ...."yes"or "no", "left" or "right"
Absolutely no room for compromise.
Though this may be perceived as revolutionary or taking a firm stand on this or that....it is an attitude that has been adopted by far too many American's and rather than aiding in any type of solution, it only adds to the problems we are experiencing. In reality, this attitude speaks of no compromise, no solutions and says nothing of what it took to make this country what it once was, a place for opportunity and freedom.
To say we have a deep seated problem within our current government and/or issues within our society is stating the obvious, to try to come up with solutions is much more difficult than simply stating that it all stinks !

I bought and am reading: It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How The American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism because I read that the authors were not partisans, had a reputation for honest research, and offered some solutions as well as a definition of our current political dysfunctionality. Any one read it, already? Any one going to read it, too?

>193
Just read the blurb about the book on Amazon. Doesn't say much for my idea of "throwing the bums out". Would agree that perhaps this would just cause a recycled problem rather than a true solution. However, without some fear of consequence, I see no way to teach the old dogs new tricks. Perhaps one could dock the pay of our Congressional members until the puplic's approval rating for their job performance is at 50% ?

190 -- "I don't expect you to learn anything"

Why, then, do you mention it? What do you see as your purpose in participating in these forums? You claim to take no sides, yet you seem to be making a positive remark regarding Noam Chomsky (I couldn't quite tell). You criticize the left and right. But that is not the same thing as not taking sides. It does not prove one's independence. It merely suggests a cranky approach of "burn it all down." No one claims either the left or right is perfect, but they do make claims, on certain issues or on certain instances, that one is right and one is wrong. I don't see a problem with that so long as their view is well-founded and coherent and rooted in reality. I find dubious any claims to be above it all. Do you vote? Are you trying to discourage the rest of us from voting?

>194 Though it couldn't be done in the US, in a parliamentary system one could allow 'no vote' votes. That is, if there are 435 or so seats in a congress and 51 percent of voters choose 'no vote', then only 217 seats would be distributed to elected parties. Of course, in places like Italy and Greece that might lead to an utterly vacant congress, which actually wouldn't be a bad thing. At least we'd save on electricity. A more direct way would be to allow a revolving citizen oversight panel with full enforcement power, and full public access and disclosure of all government business as in Sweden. Another would be to simply equate corruption over a defined level as state treason and treat it juridically as such. Real prison, real confiscation of property.

But the problem with any such utopic thoughts (which really shouldn't be considered so,) now remains how entrenched, vast and uncontrollable corruption has become. With off-to-off-shore banking, (skewed) globalization of markets, wealth concentration and digitalized finance literally you can point and click and through an instantaneous series of transfers deliver any amount to anyone (any number or shell) and no one else will ever be able to prove it. Most people don't realize just how large the sums have become, and how much a single governmental decision can be worth. Sure, an Afghani minister can be bought out for the license on a copper mining contract for only 30 million USD. (And was. Who knows how much others got. That was, though large, merely one contract.) But in Italy, a western country, official estimates are 60 billion Euros stolen every year. Though relatively more corrupt than the US, it's also much smaller and poorer. How much more then is it in the US? What's the price of, say, a clause in a bilateral trade deal? Or not doing anything to legally make trading partners respect the written, agreed upon terms? Or the contract for local water rights to, say, Coca Cola? Or a US supreme court judge ruling....

Hollande 51.9%

>197
Am glad Sarko lost but Hollande is vanilla pudding, and a careerist hack..but not stupid. In the wake of the DSK scandal, it's sort of as if Radar O'Reilly somehow stepped into the breach and got elected. It's been good theater, but I'm not sure it's good politics. Who knows? I certainly don't. I just watched his acceptance speech minutes ago. Dull. But after Sarkozy's histrionics and DSK's mess, dull was a major factor in getting this guy elected. We shall see for the rest.

The stakes now are the upcoming parliamentary elections in June, which will decide whether or not he has a party majority behind him at the legislative level, or whether there will be "cohabitation" between the branches. A lot of policy will hinge on that outcome.

#196: if there are 435 or so seats in a congress and 51 percent of voters choose 'no vote', then only 217 seats would be distributed to elected parties.

Where's the victory? If you keep the quorums the same, they can't do anything; if a majority of the vote is victory, none of the parties that have made it into parliament have lost anything.

198> To be sure, the French electorate could have taken flight to the dull and normal as relief from Sarko's relentless political kitsch. But it seems reasonable to interpret the result there and in Greece as a rejection of economic austerity imposed from the top down (at least in part). So there will likely be a test of wills, of the political order and of the financial order. It is said that democracy is trumped by the interests of capital markets; we shall see whether the market will merely react negatively, cutting off its nose to spite its face. When the stick of downgrades does not engender the desired political response, it is bad for business.

#191: If you favorably argue for the actions of President Bush in Iraq or his relative overall record in office, well, there probably really isn't and never was much to discuss then.

That's the thing. You keep bragging about your universities (whose educational value is grossly overestimated and who even censor views that aren't lefist enough as the firing of Thaddeus Russell attests) because Leftists think they're so well educated and yet they can't understand a simple phrase like "worse than Bush," so let me parse it out for you. I didn't say that Obama has worsened things more than Bush did. I'm saying that if Bush made things, let's say, 10% worse than Clinton and Obama made things 5% worse than Bush, Obama would still be worse than Bush. Maybe you could brag that Obama hasn't killed quite as many people as Bush did, but it's not like Obama hasn't done anything that Bush didn't do (like lying us into a pre-emptive war in Libya).

The other interesting thing is the way you pretend the Left is not in power in order to evade blame for their policies. First you drew the line at the Paul Krugman's of the world and now you're drawing the line at... Bernie Sanders? Really? It's the No True Scotsman argument. A terrible way to pretend that the left is any better than the right. And you pretend that the right is has been steadily gaining power since WW2? Again, these are just labels meant to distract us from policies and their consequences, from the ghettos created by LBJ's "Great Society" to Obama's buddies getting billions of dollars for failing green energy ventures. This is what power looks like and it doesn't matter if those in power happen to be of the "left" or the "right." Being on the left doesn't mean you're more special or more intelligent or more informed. It just means you have different ideas about how to screw things up.

#195: You criticize the left and right. But that is not the same thing as not taking sides. It does not prove one's independence.

They say that doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. I'm in a better position to complain about the state of affairs when I'm not voting for the same ol' Left and Right while 90% of voters will continue to do so over and over again expecting a different result.

>199. It would open space for other movements or movements within parties before more ominous changes perhaps will do so anyway. Obviously none of any such kind of proposition would be accepted. But the victory would be to find a way to reduce the now relative determinate dominance of self-referring abstracted manipulation on individual behavior (governmental or executive) vs contextual meaning and consequence by introducing formal social punishment on the former or rewarding the later. Ie, in a direct way, any, or overwhelmingly, congressperson right or left already is aware that much deeper trade, banking and financial market reforms would benefit the overwhelming majority, move toward truer competitive free markets and avoid other crises going forward. But nothing substantially has been, nor most likely will be, done. And that, straightforwardly, has much to do with immunity, money and individual/group identification. It's relatively easy now to determinately influence a few key people, men almost always, at or near the top of hierarchical groups, who in turn command larger groups within governing organizations, i.e., like political parties. But if all those less influential components were to face real, perceived, personal risk by continuing to follow command instead of simply put doing what's right (identifying at least personal consequences with larger whole judgements instead of the smaller, self-referring groups now effectively in command,) that system of concentrated power would break down, and rapidly so, at least on a governing level to start. To maintain the worst of those systems currently in place in Europe, for example, formal national and local democracy is being largely suspended. You can vote, but the majority of even marginal policies (resource management) is being determined elsewhere.

"Supreme Court justices Kennedy and Scalia, at least, disagree with you.

Actually, no they don't. Go back and read the quotes again. They acknowledge that invalidating the individual mandate will not invalidate other portions of the ACA. They are discussing the implications of that.

I was wrong in 163. You have made a more moronic reading of my post in 188 than you did in of the posts you referenced in 161. I'll let the stupidity of your argument speak for itself. The idiocy you have displayed in this thread reminds me why I don't usually bother to read any of the drivel that flows from your keyboard.

201 -- So you are attempting to achieve some kind of superiority or one-upmanship? You would rather complain than make a commitment and vote?

#204--Or looking at off the beaten track candidates. I suspect Lunar would love to see Ron Paul make an independent run. I think there is some merit in the second paragraph of #201 (though I'm pretty sure I disagree with him about LBJ"s Great Society policy) but then again I've voted for 3rd party candidates several times. And Bernie Sanders is an off the beaten track political figure at least IMO.

>203
“Supreme Court justices Kennedy and Scalia, at least, disagree with you.”

Actually, no they don't.

Actually, yes, they do. That is plainly why you tried to dismiss them as “nonserious.”

They acknowledge that invalidating the individual mandate will not invalidate other portions of the ACA.

They are talking about striking down the whole ACA, a notion you dismissed as “fantasy.”

You have made a more moronic reading of my post in 188 than you did in of the posts you referenced in 161. I'll let the stupidity of your argument speak for itself. The idiocy you have displayed in this thread reminds me why I don't usually bother to read any of the drivel that flows from your keyboard.

My favorite word in that passage is “drivel.”

#204: It's no more one-upsmanship to be a political atheist than it is to be a religious atheist. I can criticise religion without having to propose one of my own. Same with politics. I can say there should be a wall of separation between bedroom and state or between church and state without having to provide political "alternatives." Why should it be different on any other issue?

#205: Sure, it would be nice if Ron Paul ran for president. But at the end of the day it's like nominating an atheist for the papacy. Like any protest vote it may help send a certain message for him to acquire a lot of supporters (and he's definitely the most promising protest vote), but it may not do much to reduce the perceived "necessity" for the papacy/presidency.

206: Clearly you love drivel, since that's what you tend to write.

And, no, they don't disagree. The problem here is that you aren't understanding what Scalia and Anthony are saying. They are saying that invalidating the individual mandate won't invalidate the rest of the ACA, because it has a saving clause. They then talk about the implications of that. They then engage (in Scalia's case) in a nonserious speculation about how the law might be invalid somehow because it was passed via vote trading.

Indiana Republicans dump Lugar for a Tea Party candidate. Are there any grown ups left in the Republican Party?

Yes, there are. And they chose the better man.

>210
The better man just doesn't win the race :>0

"The truth is that the headwinds in this race were abundantly apparent long before Richard Mourdock announced his candidacy. One does not highlight such headwinds publically when one is waging a campaign. But I knew that I would face an extremely strong anti-incumbent mood following a recession. I knew that my work with then-Senator Barack Obama would be used against me, even if our relationship were overhyped. I also knew from the races in 2010 that I was a likely target of Club for Growth, FreedomWorks and other Super Pacs dedicated to defeating at least one Republican as a purification exercise to enhance their influence over other Republican legislators...

If Mr. Mourdock is elected, I want him to be a good Senator. But that will require him to revise his stated goal of bringing more partisanship to Washington. He and I share many positions, but his embrace of an unrelenting partisan mindset is irreconcilable with my philosophy of governance and my experience of what brings results for Hoosiers in the Senate. In effect, what he has promised in this campaign is reflexive votes for a rejectionist orthodoxy and rigid opposition to the actions and proposals of the other party. His answer to the inevitable roadblocks he will encounter in Congress is merely to campaign for more Republicans who embrace the same partisan outlook. He has pledged his support to groups whose prime mission is to cleanse the Republican party of those who stray from orthodoxy as they see it. This is not conducive to problem solving and governance. And he will find that unless he modifies his approach, he will achieve little as a legislator. Worse, he will help delay solutions that are totally beyond the capacity of partisan majorities to achieve....

Legislators should have an ideological grounding and strong beliefs identifiable to their constituents. I believe I have offered that throughout my career. But ideology cannot be a substitute for a determination to think for yourself, for a willingness to study an issue objectively, and for the fortitude to sometimes disagree with your party or even your constituents. Like Edmund Burke, I believe leaders owe the people they represent their best judgment." Richard Lugar http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/us/politics/prepared-statement-of-senator-rich...

There are, and were, very few 'better men' in the U.S. Senate than Lugar.

But this is the same state that elected Dan Quayle, so I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised...

I continue to hope that the futility of being a "true believer" and following some party line, any party line, 100% of the time becomes more clear to more people. A country as large as ours, as diverse as ours, and as potentially powerful as ours does not deserve to be led by those unwilling or unable to think and make independent judgments.

No doubt that Lugar is disappointed with the result. It's what it is--and more truthful than not but he pulls his punches in the end--falling back on the loyalty at any cost theme. Really the two major political parties have in the eyes of a large segment of the population failed and demagoguery comes to the forefront. One could see the future when McCain--having won the republican nomination--chose Palin--an obviously unqualified partner to be his vice presidential running mate. Palin quickly overtook McCain in popularity despite the fact that no amount of crash courses in domestic and foreign policy could get her up to speed to make her look even semi-viable. The tea party movement was an almost immediate result of that and a collapsing economy and anger over an incoming minority president--or someone of the wrong race--this thing about his birth certificate just being another way of disrespecting. And FWIW Obama has not accomplished a lot that I would consider worthwhile and he's done a lot that I don't like at all. He did have a majority in both houses on arrival. Those first two years seemed to exacerbate public anger--like you might think the aftermath of an economic collapse would and the tea party has grown out of that anger. The Republican opposition stiffened and now those of its politicians worst fears are not from the opposition but within their own ranks. Purging and litmus tests. It's sad.

>214
While I agree with you Maggie, I would venture to guess that more Democrats have voted Independant or Republican at times, based on who is running, than the other way around.

Since I do not know ALL Republicans I can not speak for the many but I live in a primarly Republican area and the sentiment amongst those who I am familiar with is: "rather vote for someone we can not stomach than lose to the other party" Often it doesn't matter what the issues are....just have to win !

Heck, I live with one. He can not stand Mitt Romney. He will be voting for Mitt Romney. (ever see the movie The War of The Roses ? Election time at my house !)

Perhaps our young people will not view things in this way ?

>215
"Those first two years seemed to exacerbate public anger--"

It is hard to compare Obama's record with a prior administration. The wars, the economy, his ethnic back ground and the deep division in this country (made far more definitive by the prior administration) are all unprecidented in recent history. He was young, untested and lacked experience but, at the time, what was the option ? McCain the war hawk and Ms Palin, a joke . This country was broken by the war both in it's divisiveness and it's monetary cost...we didn't want another "war President" and though many didn't see it coming, the financial crash was no surprise to some. Those who actually understand that you can not spend tons of money, decrease income and come out ahead, knew that we were going to hit a wall sooner or later. And that was not exclusive to the government, it was everywhere from the unethical behavior on Wall Street to the over extended credit for many many American citizens.

It would seem to me that the public anger has been used to accomplish not much of anything other than generate more anger. Not sure why people can't see that the problems we are facing now can not be fixed over night, nor can they be fixed by those who deny responsibility in creating those problems. AND, nobody really knows a sure way to fix our issues, it may be a long time of trial and error but we have to at least give something a trial. (I don't count lowering taxes on the wealthy as proposed by those who are, in part, responsible for this miserable situation, as a trial.....more of the same is not going to fix our immediate problems)

Even today, the Republican Party hasn't offered up a candidate that most thinking Republicans can really get behind. I don't know many who like him. The strongest message they could send is to not vote....but then they would have to accept a loss. However, after the past two (some would say three) lousy choices for candidates, they need to demand more from their own party in some fashion.

>208 Clearly you love drivel, since that's what you tend to write.

You haven’t even decided whether the quotes I provided totally support you, or don’t support you but aren’t serious. Advice: First make your own position coherent, then call other people's posts "drivel."

>143 the ACA contains a saving clause meaning that invalidating one portion of the law will not invalidate any other part of it.

>208 you aren't understanding what Scalia and Anthony are saying. They are saying that invalidating the individual mandate won't invalidate the rest of the ACA, because it has a saving clause.

Actually it doesn’t.

(1) http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/06/01/ken-klukowski-obamacare-severability/
(2) http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/03/va-ag-ken-cuccinelli-dems-removed-severa...
(3) http://hotair.com/archives/2011/02/02/video-lack-of-severability-in-obamacare-a-...
(4) http://healthcarelawsuits.net/detail.php?c=2390395

From the first link:
"Obamacare has no severability clause. That means is that if any one part of Obamacare is found unconstitutional, then the entire law might be thrown out in court by a single decision. It doesn’t mean that it would definitely happen, but it might."

Aside from the lack of a saving clause... If the severability issue isn’t serious, why was the entire morning session of the third day of oral argument devoted to it?

Give up, StormRaven. There’s a time and a place for “The best defense is a good offense.” However, when you’ve gotten carved up and hung out to dry, it’s time for “When you’re in a hole... stop digging.”

I think the general trend of this thread is that the government COULD solve the deficit problem and reduce (or eliminate) the debt; but that it probably won't until it's forced to.

I anticipate a mix of all the possible ways of dealing with the mounting debt: Raising taxes, decreasing spending on other things to pay for entitlements, but also cuts to entitlements, default on the debt, and inflation.

I'm not sure whether the default will be de jure or will only happen in a stealth way by inflation. The great thing about money creation, from an indebted government's point of view, is that it's a two-fer: First you print money and use it to pay for expenditures, then the resulting inflation lowers the real value of your debts. Dude, total bonus!

(Some Treasury is debt is inflation-protected, but not enough to prevent this from being an attractive option from the government's point of view.)

"However, when you’ve gotten carved up and hung out to dry, it’s time for “When you’re in a hole... stop digging.”"

Then maybe you should put down the shovel, since you are living in a fantasy land:

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/the-glitch-that-allows-the-supreme-co...

http://www.medpagetoday.com/Washington-Watch/Reform/31785

http://www.hfma.org/Templates/Print.aspx?id=24263

"So far only one federal trial court judge — Judge Roger Vinson of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida — has ruled that the entire law must go on the basis of his determination that the mandate is unconstitutional.

“I think that it’s almost inconceivable that they would strike the entire statute,” said Timothy Jost — a legal scholar, and supporter of the health care law. “It would be a major threat to the legitimacy of the court.”

There are important signs that he’s right. Vinson’s determination was reversed by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which also found the mandate unconstitutional, but held that it could be stricken without disturbing the rest of the law. The bathwater, but not the baby.

As Samuel Y. Sessions and Allan S. Detsky wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine recently, “Many ACA provisions are already in effect and thus clearly can function without the mandate, which becomes effective in 2014.”"

As I've noted before, the nonserious argument is Scalia's claim that a provision passed via vote trading was somehow legally suspect. But you appear to be having troubles following what has been written here, so I'm not surprised that you don't understand that.

~220

Actually, this is largely mythology. Most of the money stock is "bank money." The base money, what the government creates and spends, is about one-sixth of the total in "normal" times.

Of course, in times like this there is no "money multiplier," since banks are not lending. Just wait until you see what happens when they start. You'll love it.

>221

Wow, when the main pillar of your argument, a wholly fictitious saving clause, is shown to be an illusion you dreamt up, you just keep on coming.

"So far only one federal trial court judge... has ruled that the entire law must go on the basis of his determination that the mandate is unconstitutional.

Oh dear! What does the actual Supreme Court think?

“I think that it’s almost inconceivable that they would strike the entire statute,” said Timothy Jost — a legal scholar

Oh my gosh! Meanwhile, noted Supreme Court experts known as "actual Supreme Court members" scheduled half a day of argument to discussing this matter. Hence, not a “fantasy.”

I'm not sure why you're citing a "legal scholar" on the topic of the Court instead of just observing the Court. Is this the same information-gathering strategy that told you about the imaginary saving clause? But if you insist on citing such, okay:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/03/opinion/joondeph-supreme-court-risk/index.html

Bradley Joondeph is a professor of constitutional law at Santa Clara University and a former clerk to Sandra Day O'Connor, who served on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1981 to 2006.

(He writes:)
Like everyone else who listened to the arguments at the Supreme Court last week, I have no crystal ball for predicting whether the justices will uphold or strike down the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act... several of the justices also seemed inclined to strike down the entire law, all 2,700 pages of it.

He goes on to call this "surprising." But that he's surprised that they seem inclined to strike it down doesn't change the fact that they seem inclined to strike it down.

>221 you appear to be having troubles following what has been written here, so I'm not surprised that you don't understand...

Apparently I'm better at reading comprehension on the basics of the ACA than a certain lawyer, so I'm feeling pretty good. I'd like to replay "StormRaven's greatest hits" on the subject of the savings clause. I think these quotes will speak very plainly on someone's reading comprehension when he was reading up on the Affordable Care Act.

>143 even if the Supreme Court invalidates the provision at issue in the case before it, the ACA contains a saving clause (Oops!) meaning that invalidating one portion of the law will not invalidate any other part of it.

>180 the quotes are so facile that it becomes obvious that the court is highly unlikely to extend their ruling beyond the individual mandate. For example, Kennedy's quote:
(Quote elided.)
Is easily answered by noting that if Congress did not want the remainder to survive the potential overturning of the individual mandate then they would not have included a saving provision in the legislation. (Oops!) For the Court to extend their ruling beyond the mandate they would have to hold the mandate unconstitutional and overturn it, and then also overturn a perfectly constitutional savings clause. (Oops!)

>208 The problem here is that you aren't understanding what Scalia and Anthony are saying. They are saying that invalidating the individual mandate won't invalidate the rest of the ACA, because it has a saving clause. (Oops!)

Looks like I understood it better than you did.

#225--not unusual for corporations to have more than one set of books though. And working for USPS--semi-governmental if you like--we're this or that depending on how whoever (in house or not) wants to construe us in whatever way that's most convenient to them at any particular time-- the way they show profits and losses. For instance--they've not been paying their mandated FERS retirement payments but are still counting it like they are--even though they can't pay it let alone have any intention of paying it. But as I say they count it anyway as paid.

Anyway the ridiculousness of our situation Carnophile is probably not uncommon. Why would it be? Figures lie and liars figure. Who is going to go to jail for it?

>226
If you're saying that accounting fraud is common, I'm sure we agree that's a bad thing.

The unfortunate truth is that the laws around accounting do not make defining the difference between fraud/common business practices obvious to the ordinary viewer.

As well as a federal debt problem and a state debt problem, we have a city, etc., debt problem.