Author Topic: Question for all Getbiggers on this Board?  (Read 3408 times)

Soul Crusher

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Question for all Getbiggers on this Board?
« on: July 27, 2009, 08:02:05 AM »
Serious question for all of you. 

Why is it that Obama spent more time trying to figure out what dog he wanted (4 months), than he wants to allow on the takeover of the govt of the entire health care system?   

drkaje

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Re: Question for all Getbiggers on this Board?
« Reply #1 on: July 27, 2009, 08:09:33 AM »
Serious question for all of you. 

Why is it that Obama spent more time trying to figure out what dog he wanted (4 months), than he wants to allow on the takeover of the govt of the entire health care system?   

One of his kids is allergic so picking out a poop machine dog took lots of time.

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Re: Question for all Getbiggers on this Board?
« Reply #2 on: July 27, 2009, 08:14:32 AM »
Serious question for all of you. 

Why is it that Obama spent more time trying to figure out what dog he wanted (4 months), than he wants to allow on the takeover of the govt of the entire health care system?   

because he's not trying to take over the entire health care system

frankly - I wish he was pushing a single payer system or some kind of hybrid.

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Re: Question for all Getbiggers on this Board?
« Reply #3 on: July 27, 2009, 08:45:51 AM »
because he's not trying to take over the entire health care system

frankly - I wish he was pushing a single payer system or some kind of hybrid.


Yes,because government can run health care the same way they run social security,the post office,medicaide,medicare.Pleae name ONE thing the government has EVER run well.

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Re: Question for all Getbiggers on this Board?
« Reply #4 on: July 27, 2009, 09:36:48 AM »
Yes,because government can run health care the same way they run social security,the post office,medicaide,medicare.Pleae name ONE thing the government has EVER run well.

things the govt does a good job running are:  social security, the post office, medicare, etc...

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Re: Question for all Getbiggers on this Board?
« Reply #5 on: July 27, 2009, 09:40:29 AM »
things the govt does a good job running are:  social security, the post office, medicare, etc...

Social Security is going broke and there will soon be 2-1 ration of worklers to retirees.

Post Office loses billions a year.  They are closing offices all across the nation because they lose money. 

Medicare is going broke and has an unfunded liability of trillions of dollars.


Sure you can do better than this Straw. 

   

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Re: Question for all Getbiggers on this Board?
« Reply #6 on: July 27, 2009, 09:52:17 AM »
Social Security is going broke and there will soon be 2-1 ration of worklers to retirees.
Post Office loses billions a year.  They are closing offices all across the nation because they lose money. 
Medicare is going broke and has an unfunded liability of trillions of dollars.

Sure you can do better than this Straw. 

Listen Chicken Little, I know you think the sky is falling but there are many things that our govt. does right and that includes social security.   The only problem with SS is that Reagan cut taxes on the rich and raised them on the working class in order to create a surplus which he could then borrow to offset the lost revenue from his tax cuts on the rich.  Krugman explain it better than I ever could:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/about-the-social-security-trust-fund/
Social Security is a government program supported by a dedicated tax, like highway maintenance. Now you can say that assigning a particular tax to a particular program is merely a fiction, but in fact such assignments have both legal and political force. If Ronald Reagan had said, back in the 1980s, “Let’s increase a regressive tax that falls mainly on the working class, while cutting taxes that fall mainly on much richer people,” he would have faced a political firestorm. But because the increase in the regressive payroll tax was recommended by the Greenspan Commission to support Social Security, it was politically in a different box - you might even call it a lockbox - from Reagan’s tax cuts.

The purpose of that tax increase was to maintain the dedicated tax system into the future, by having Social Security’s assigned tax take in more money than the system paid out while the baby boomers were still working, then use the trust fund built up by those surpluses to pay future bills. Viewed in its own terms, that strategy was highly successful.

The date at which the trust fund will run out, according to Social Security Administration projections, has receded steadily into the future: 10 years ago it was 2029, now it’s 2042. As Kevin Drum, Brad DeLong, and others have pointed out, the SSA estimates are very conservative, and quite moderate projections of economic growth push the exhaustion date into the indefinite future.

But the privatizers won’t take yes for an answer when it comes to the sustainability of Social Security. Their answer to the pretty good numbers is to say that the trust fund is meaningless, because it’s invested in U.S. government bonds. They aren’t really saying that government bonds are worthless; their point is that the whole notion of a separate budget for Social Security is a fiction. And if that’s true, the idea that one part of the government can have a positive trust fund while the government as a whole is in debt does become strange.

But there are two problems with their position.

The lesser problem is that if you say that there is no link between the payroll tax and future Social Security benefits - which is what denying the reality of the trust fund amounts to - then Greenspan and company pulled a fast one back in the 1980s: they sold a regressive tax switch, raising taxes on workers while cutting them on the wealthy, on false pretenses. More broadly, we’re breaking a major promise if we now, after 20 years of high payroll taxes to pay for Social Security’s future, declare that it was all a little joke on the public.

The bigger problem for those who want to see a crisis in Social Security’s future is this: if Social Security is just part of the federal budget, with no budget or trust fund of its own, then, well, it’s just part of the federal budget: there can’t be a Social Security crisis. All you can have is a general budget crisis. Rising Social Security benefit payments might be one reason for that crisis, but it’s hard to make the case that it will be central.

But those who insist that we face a Social Security crisis want to have it both ways. Having invoked the concept of a unified budget to reject the existence of a trust fund, they refuse to accept the implications of that unified budget going forward. Instead, having changed the rules to make the trust fund meaningless, they want to change the rules back around 15 years from now: today, when the payroll tax takes in more revenue than SS benefits, they say that’s meaningless, but when - in 2018 or later - benefits start to exceed the payroll tax, why, that’s a crisis. Huh?

I don’t know why this contradiction is so hard to understand, except to echo Upton Sinclair: it’s hard to get a man to understand something when his salary (or, in the current situation, his membership in the political club) depends on his not understanding it. But let me try this one more time, by asking the following: What happens in 2018 or whenever, when benefits payments exceed payroll tax revenues?

The answer, very clearly, is nothing.

The Social Security system won’t be in trouble: it will, in fact, still have a growing trust fund, because of the interest that the trust earns on its accumulated surplus. The only way Social Security gets in trouble is if Congress votes not to honor U.S. government bonds held by Social Security. That’s not going to happen. So legally, mechanically, 2018 has no meaning.

Now it’s true that rising benefit costs will be a drag on the federal budget. So will rising Medicare costs. So will the ongoing drain from tax cuts. So will whatever wars we get into. I can’t find a story under which Social Security payments, as opposed to other things, become a crucial budgetary problem in 2018.

What we really have is a looming crisis in the General Fund. Social Security, with its own dedicated tax, has been run responsibly; the rest of the government has not. So why are we talking about a Social Security crisis?


grab an umbrella

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Re: Question for all Getbiggers on this Board?
« Reply #7 on: July 27, 2009, 02:27:06 PM »
Listen Chicken Little, I know you think the sky is falling but there are many things that our govt. does right and that includes social security.   The only problem with SS is that Reagan cut taxes on the rich and raised them on the working class in order to create a surplus which he could then borrow to offset the lost revenue from his tax cuts on the rich.  Krugman explain it better than I ever could:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/about-the-social-security-trust-fund/
Social Security is a government program supported by a dedicated tax, like highway maintenance. Now you can say that assigning a particular tax to a particular program is merely a fiction, but in fact such assignments have both legal and political force. If Ronald Reagan had said, back in the 1980s, “Let’s increase a regressive tax that falls mainly on the working class, while cutting taxes that fall mainly on much richer people,” he would have faced a political firestorm. But because the increase in the regressive payroll tax was recommended by the Greenspan Commission to support Social Security, it was politically in a different box - you might even call it a lockbox - from Reagan’s tax cuts.

The purpose of that tax increase was to maintain the dedicated tax system into the future, by having Social Security’s assigned tax take in more money than the system paid out while the baby boomers were still working, then use the trust fund built up by those surpluses to pay future bills. Viewed in its own terms, that strategy was highly successful.

The date at which the trust fund will run out, according to Social Security Administration projections, has receded steadily into the future: 10 years ago it was 2029, now it’s 2042. As Kevin Drum, Brad DeLong, and others have pointed out, the SSA estimates are very conservative, and quite moderate projections of economic growth push the exhaustion date into the indefinite future.

But the privatizers won’t take yes for an answer when it comes to the sustainability of Social Security. Their answer to the pretty good numbers is to say that the trust fund is meaningless, because it’s invested in U.S. government bonds. They aren’t really saying that government bonds are worthless; their point is that the whole notion of a separate budget for Social Security is a fiction. And if that’s true, the idea that one part of the government can have a positive trust fund while the government as a whole is in debt does become strange.

But there are two problems with their position.

The lesser problem is that if you say that there is no link between the payroll tax and future Social Security benefits - which is what denying the reality of the trust fund amounts to - then Greenspan and company pulled a fast one back in the 1980s: they sold a regressive tax switch, raising taxes on workers while cutting them on the wealthy, on false pretenses. More broadly, we’re breaking a major promise if we now, after 20 years of high payroll taxes to pay for Social Security’s future, declare that it was all a little joke on the public.

The bigger problem for those who want to see a crisis in Social Security’s future is this: if Social Security is just part of the federal budget, with no budget or trust fund of its own, then, well, it’s just part of the federal budget: there can’t be a Social Security crisis. All you can have is a general budget crisis. Rising Social Security benefit payments might be one reason for that crisis, but it’s hard to make the case that it will be central.

But those who insist that we face a Social Security crisis want to have it both ways. Having invoked the concept of a unified budget to reject the existence of a trust fund, they refuse to accept the implications of that unified budget going forward. Instead, having changed the rules to make the trust fund meaningless, they want to change the rules back around 15 years from now: today, when the payroll tax takes in more revenue than SS benefits, they say that’s meaningless, but when - in 2018 or later - benefits start to exceed the payroll tax, why, that’s a crisis. Huh?

I don’t know why this contradiction is so hard to understand, except to echo Upton Sinclair: it’s hard to get a man to understand something when his salary (or, in the current situation, his membership in the political club) depends on his not understanding it. But let me try this one more time, by asking the following: What happens in 2018 or whenever, when benefits payments exceed payroll tax revenues?

The answer, very clearly, is nothing.

The Social Security system won’t be in trouble: it will, in fact, still have a growing trust fund, because of the interest that the trust earns on its accumulated surplus. The only way Social Security gets in trouble is if Congress votes not to honor U.S. government bonds held by Social Security. That’s not going to happen. So legally, mechanically, 2018 has no meaning.

Now it’s true that rising benefit costs will be a drag on the federal budget. So will rising Medicare costs. So will the ongoing drain from tax cuts. So will whatever wars we get into. I can’t find a story under which Social Security payments, as opposed to other things, become a crucial budgetary problem in 2018.

What we really have is a looming crisis in the General Fund. Social Security, with its own dedicated tax, has been run responsibly; the rest of the government has not. So why are we talking about a Social Security crisis?



Would it be a crazy notion to think that social security should pay for itself?

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Re: Question for all Getbiggers on this Board?
« Reply #8 on: July 27, 2009, 03:37:55 PM »
You're turning into an annoying version of 240.

headhuntersix

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Re: Question for all Getbiggers on this Board?
« Reply #9 on: July 27, 2009, 03:43:59 PM »
Gee Paul Krugman....never met a tax or social program he didn't like...another douchbag lib.
L

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Re: Question for all Getbiggers on this Board?
« Reply #10 on: July 27, 2009, 03:56:23 PM »
Serious question for all of you. 

Why is it that Obama spent more time trying to figure out what dog he wanted (4 months), than he wants to allow on the takeover of the govt of the entire health care system?   

You are CT-ing yourself again.

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Re: Question for all Getbiggers on this Board?
« Reply #11 on: July 27, 2009, 07:25:49 PM »
Listen Chicken Little, I know you think the sky is falling but there are many things that our govt. does right and that includes social security.   The only problem with SS is that Reagan cut taxes on the rich and raised them on the working class in order to create a surplus which he could then borrow to offset the lost revenue from his tax cuts on the rich.  Krugman explain it better than I ever could:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/about-the-social-security-trust-fund/
Social Security is a government program supported by a dedicated tax, like highway maintenance. Now you can say that assigning a particular tax to a particular program is merely a fiction, but in fact such assignments have both legal and political force. If Ronald Reagan had said, back in the 1980s, “Let’s increase a regressive tax that falls mainly on the working class, while cutting taxes that fall mainly on much richer people,” he would have faced a political firestorm. But because the increase in the regressive payroll tax was recommended by the Greenspan Commission to support Social Security, it was politically in a different box - you might even call it a lockbox - from Reagan’s tax cuts.

The purpose of that tax increase was to maintain the dedicated tax system into the future, by having Social Security’s assigned tax take in more money than the system paid out while the baby boomers were still working, then use the trust fund built up by those surpluses to pay future bills. Viewed in its own terms, that strategy was highly successful.

The date at which the trust fund will run out, according to Social Security Administration projections, has receded steadily into the future: 10 years ago it was 2029, now it’s 2042. As Kevin Drum, Brad DeLong, and others have pointed out, the SSA estimates are very conservative, and quite moderate projections of economic growth push the exhaustion date into the indefinite future.

But the privatizers won’t take yes for an answer when it comes to the sustainability of Social Security. Their answer to the pretty good numbers is to say that the trust fund is meaningless, because it’s invested in U.S. government bonds. They aren’t really saying that government bonds are worthless; their point is that the whole notion of a separate budget for Social Security is a fiction. And if that’s true, the idea that one part of the government can have a positive trust fund while the government as a whole is in debt does become strange.

But there are two problems with their position.

The lesser problem is that if you say that there is no link between the payroll tax and future Social Security benefits - which is what denying the reality of the trust fund amounts to - then Greenspan and company pulled a fast one back in the 1980s: they sold a regressive tax switch, raising taxes on workers while cutting them on the wealthy, on false pretenses. More broadly, we’re breaking a major promise if we now, after 20 years of high payroll taxes to pay for Social Security’s future, declare that it was all a little joke on the public.

The bigger problem for those who want to see a crisis in Social Security’s future is this: if Social Security is just part of the federal budget, with no budget or trust fund of its own, then, well, it’s just part of the federal budget: there can’t be a Social Security crisis. All you can have is a general budget crisis. Rising Social Security benefit payments might be one reason for that crisis, but it’s hard to make the case that it will be central.

But those who insist that we face a Social Security crisis want to have it both ways. Having invoked the concept of a unified budget to reject the existence of a trust fund, they refuse to accept the implications of that unified budget going forward. Instead, having changed the rules to make the trust fund meaningless, they want to change the rules back around 15 years from now: today, when the payroll tax takes in more revenue than SS benefits, they say that’s meaningless, but when - in 2018 or later - benefits start to exceed the payroll tax, why, that’s a crisis. Huh?

I don’t know why this contradiction is so hard to understand, except to echo Upton Sinclair: it’s hard to get a man to understand something when his salary (or, in the current situation, his membership in the political club) depends on his not understanding it. But let me try this one more time, by asking the following: What happens in 2018 or whenever, when benefits payments exceed payroll tax revenues?

The answer, very clearly, is nothing.

The Social Security system won’t be in trouble: it will, in fact, still have a growing trust fund, because of the interest that the trust earns on its accumulated surplus. The only way Social Security gets in trouble is if Congress votes not to honor U.S. government bonds held by Social Security. That’s not going to happen. So legally, mechanically, 2018 has no meaning.

Now it’s true that rising benefit costs will be a drag on the federal budget. So will rising Medicare costs. So will the ongoing drain from tax cuts. So will whatever wars we get into. I can’t find a story under which Social Security payments, as opposed to other things, become a crucial budgetary problem in 2018.

What we really have is a looming crisis in the General Fund. Social Security, with its own dedicated tax, has been run responsibly; the rest of the government has not. So why are we talking about a Social Security crisis?



Paul "we need another stimulas" Krugman?

 lol

Straw Man

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Re: Question for all Getbiggers on this Board?
« Reply #12 on: July 27, 2009, 09:29:40 PM »
Paul "we need another stimulas" Krugman?

 lol


yes

Paul "we needed more stimulus in the first place" Krugman


24KT

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Re: Question for all Getbiggers on this Board?
« Reply #13 on: July 27, 2009, 09:36:33 PM »
Yes,because government can run health care the same way they run social security,the post office,medicaide,medicare.Pleae name ONE thing the government has EVER run well.

The psy op for the manipulation of your mind towards rampant paranois & xenophobia.
They knocked it out of the ball park in your case.

I know, I know Billy, ...your government can hit a baseball better than my government.  ::)
w

24KT

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Re: Question for all Getbiggers on this Board?
« Reply #14 on: July 27, 2009, 09:38:49 PM »
Social Security is going broke and there will soon be 2-1 ration of worklers to retirees.

Post Office loses billions a year.  They are closing offices all across the nation because they lose money. 

Medicare is going broke and has an unfunded liability of trillions of dollars.


Sure you can do better than this Straw. 

   

Is the Post Office going broke due to bad management, ...or have technological advances made them obsolete?
w

Straw Man

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Re: Question for all Getbiggers on this Board?
« Reply #15 on: July 27, 2009, 09:56:00 PM »
Is the Post Office going broke due to bad management, ...or have technological advances made them obsolete?

the US Postal Service is probably just fine

I'd buy stock if I could

Soul Crusher

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Re: Question for all Getbiggers on this Board?
« Reply #16 on: July 28, 2009, 04:20:13 AM »
You are CT-ing yourself again.

It was not a CT - is a statement going to how insane this govt is in ramming through crap that no one understands, reads, and explains to the taxpayer. 

windsor88

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Re: Question for all Getbiggers on this Board?
« Reply #17 on: July 28, 2009, 04:35:38 AM »
It was not a CT - is a statement going to how insane this govt is in ramming through crap that no one understands, reads, and explains to the taxpayer. 

sort of like the patriot act?

Soul Crusher

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Re: Question for all Getbiggers on this Board?
« Reply #18 on: July 28, 2009, 04:40:04 AM »
sort of like the patriot act?

Yes! 

We are supposed to learn from our mistakes, not double down in the face of their failures. 

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Re: Question for all Getbiggers on this Board?
« Reply #19 on: July 28, 2009, 07:52:47 AM »
the US Postal Service is probably just fine

I'd buy stock if I could


If the whole idea is to lose money then it's  Amtrak fine.

The Postal Service lost $2.8 billion last year (2008) and is facing even larger losses this year, despite a rate increase — to 44 cents for first-class mail — scheduled to take effect May 11.




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Re: Question for all Getbiggers on this Board?
« Reply #20 on: July 28, 2009, 09:14:40 AM »
the US Postal Service is probably just fine

I'd buy stock if I could

ABSOLUTELY FALSE I dont know where you heard this or who told you this but you got lied to straw...

My father is a letter carrier, they are severely understaffed but the post office wont hire due to operating way in the red. They are severely overworked, my dads leaves at about 5:30 or 6 and at times doesnt get home till 7 or 8 ARE PUSHED(forced) TO WORK THEIR OFF DAYS

I could go on and on bro the post office as with most govt programs is horrible run...again how can a company that must make a profit compete with a company offereing supposedly the same product that can operate in the red? It cant and is a falacy to obamas idiotic representation of his health plan.

tonymctones

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Re: Question for all Getbiggers on this Board?
« Reply #21 on: July 28, 2009, 09:17:56 AM »
Is the Post Office going broke due to bad management, ...or have technological advances made them obsolete?
bad management jag also they compound problems, they have a shortage of carriers but cant/wont hire b/c of the amount of money they are losing, which causes the carriers to carry more then they should 10-12 hour days, leads to more ppl either transfering stations or quiting, causing an even bigger problem with the shortage of carriers etc...and so on and so on...

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Re: Question for all Getbiggers on this Board?
« Reply #22 on: July 28, 2009, 09:20:31 AM »
bad management jag also they compound problems, they have a shortage of carriers but cant/wont hire b/c of the amount of money they are losing, which causes the carriers to carry more then they should 10-12 hour days, leads to more ppl either transfering stations or quiting, causing an even bigger problem with the shortage of carriers etc...and so on and so on...

The poor bastard who delivers mail to my office must have ten hernias with the loads he has to carry.  A lot of junk mail and garbage. 

tonymctones

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Re: Question for all Getbiggers on this Board?
« Reply #23 on: July 28, 2009, 09:28:15 AM »
The poor bastard who delivers mail to my office must have ten hernias with the loads he has to carry.  A lot of junk mail and garbage. 
my dad has a bad back(from lifting weights), bad knees and has already had one of his hips replaced and the other one is getting worse and they still work him 10-12 hours a day...

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Re: Question for all Getbiggers on this Board?
« Reply #24 on: July 28, 2009, 11:39:26 AM »
The agency is facing a potential nearly $7 billion loss this fiscal year despite a 2-cent increase in the price of stamps in May, and cuts in staff.


The post office issued a statement saying: "The GAO High Risk List announcement accurately reflects our current financial reality. Securing the fiscal stability of the Postal Service will require continued review of retiree health benefit prefunding, as well as gaining flexibility within the law to move toward five-day delivery, to adjust our network as needed, to develop new products the market requires and to work with our unions, mailers, stakeholders and Congress to meet the challenges ahead."