[Illuyankas]

They HAVE the vast majority of the wealth!

And I entirely blame you for not having the free time to expand your briefer posts to your usually not terrible opinions laid out pretty clearly, rather than lines that can be seen as disturbingly close to the generally terrible and again, FYGM crowd. I know, I know, but that acronym is a trite but still very accurate summation of a lot of right wing political views.

[Shinrei]

I can play that game too.

Why don't you all stop beating around the bush and just admit that you are communists and want to take everything the rich and middle class have and spread it equally, because that will solve all our problems and is not unfair in any way whatsoever and you believe everyone who is poor is poor because the heartless scrooge rich steal their money. [/hyperbole]

Oh, wait, that's NOT the argument you're making? But why should I give you benefit of the doubt? Maybe because I think you are all reasonable people, who just draw the line differently than I do when considering taxes/benefits/government powers.

Sometimes I'd love it if people would give ME the benefit of the doubt, despite being the only non-bunker-owning fiscal conservative on this website...

(Some of you do make the effort to understand and engage in ideas, for which I thank you. This isn't a blanket criticism. It just gets tiring to have to explain again and again that I do not believe in forcing the poor to subsist on rats and get their medical care from a discarded needle...)

[Shinrei]

Illuyankas, on 24 November 2012 - 03:34 AM, said:

They HAVE the vast majority of the wealth!

That they did NOT earn by stealing it from the poor.

I guess I should have explained that I am not necessarily supporting the idea of raising the retirement age. To be frank, I'd not really thought about that position yay or nay before reading that editorial worrywort posted.

One primary problem (among other minor ones) with the idea that the rich should pay for the shortfall is that the federal government has already shown that they use social security money for things OTHER than social security. So I have little (Read "no") doubt that they could level that tax on the rich, and then gleefully use the money for things entirely unrelated to helping the retirees.

[Illuyankas]

But that's not such an easy soundbite to be spewed back and forth by two arguing idiots! (and man oh man, I've spent too much time with said idiots and it's rubbing off on me)

On a side note, the leader of our supposed left and actually centre right Labour party (as opposed to the wait-where-did-all-these-rightwing-assholes-come-from Lib Dems and Repub Jr Tories) is comparing himself to Thatcher, so at least one part of your government isn't completely and utterly, without almost any hope of survival, supermegaultrafucked. Don't get me wrong, it's still pretty shitty, but I'm eyeing it pretty enviously from over here.

Also one fix for that last sentence that I think we can both agree on is to draw and quarter lobbyists.

[worry]

Shinrei, on 24 November 2012 - 03:26 AM, said:

What I'm trying to "defend the rich" from is not reasonable taxation, but from the suggestion that it falls to them to fund the vast majority of the "social contract", which is what was being suggested. "Look, if we soak the rich, they can pay for all of the shortfall! Lucky us!"

You will not see me coming out and claiming that the rich should pay no more than the middle class, or that they have no responsibility towards others. I think I could keep myself warm all winter just by burning all the strawmen Illy has been giving me recently...

It does fall to them, because they have the money, and since money is an imaginary entity invented by humans to lubricate economies, when it goes uncirculated it stops being money anyway. And when people go hungry for the lack of it, and we can fix that by a small tax increase (in this case SS contribution) on income, then there is no question that we should do it. Generally you may be more reasonable than 99% of conservatives, and might get unfairly made the poster boy here for a lot of their craziness because you're one of the few even near that line, and I agree it happens and I can be guilty of that and it sucks. But regardless of all that, on this specific issue regarding your opinion as you wrote it verbatim, you're still wrong.

I mean if you tax the rich, and they are still rich after you've taxed them, then you haven't soaked them. There's diminishing returns to money, and while I wouldn't say you hit that point necessarily at $110,000/year (though I would still consider that above middle class), the SS contribution on income above that point isn't gonna knock you out by any reasonable circumstance. And maybe you haven't heard of the idea to increase the retirement age, but neither I nor Klein pulled it out of the ether -- it's a real idea floated by conservatives with the weight of some policymakers behind it. And as Klein puts it, the people whose personality traits happen to favor workaholism and obtainment of vast capital are the ones suggesting this solution, at the expense of the lower and middle classes. Most people aren't workaholics, they aren't finance-minded to a skilled degree, and heck most people aren't even entrepreneurs. And I know you don't want them to subsist on dog food or anything like that -- though I mean that is a reality for plenty of elders, it's not just some hypothetical -- but you still talk like this is a hard decision to make. It's not. Use the money held by people who have an excess of it -- and a little bit more from most other fortunate people of varying degrees -- to help the people who don't have nearly enough. It's simple, it's genuinely harmless, and it's right.

And while debt isn't the same anathema to me as it is to you, I do agree with you that Social Security shouldn't be a slush fund for any other thing the government wants to do. I'm also not saying that Klein's idea is the only fix necessary to reform SS. But it is a good idea, in and of itself.

[worry]

Shinrei, on 24 November 2012 - 03:46 AM, said:

Illuyankas, on 24 November 2012 - 03:34 AM, said:

They HAVE the vast majority of the wealth!

That they did NOT earn

Also, you have to stop your sentence there to get the benefit of the doubt back.

[Terez]

Shinrei, on 24 November 2012 - 03:46 AM, said:

Illuyankas, on 24 November 2012 - 03:34 AM, said:

They HAVE the vast majority of the wealth!

That they did NOT earn by stealing it from the poor.

Worry's way of putting it may be a little simplistic, but your statement is certainly debatable. The idea that wages and basic living expenses are determined by pure market forces is, at this point in history, shaky at best. And from where else is wealth extracted, if not from the productivity of the working class?

Shinrei, on 24 November 2012 - 03:46 AM, said:

I guess I should have explained that I am not necessarily supporting the idea of raising the retirement age. To be frank, I'd not really thought about that position yay or nay before reading that editorial worrywort posted.

It's been coming up more and more frequently over the last couple of years as the austerity debate has gotten more heated and the manufactured Social Security crisis has gained currency. It had faded away somewhat after Bush's failed attempt to spend his political capital of the 2004 election by privatizing it. (A move that would have exacerbated the eventual crisis to a very large degree had it been successful.)

Shinrei, on 24 November 2012 - 03:46 AM, said:

One primary problem (among other minor ones) with the idea that the rich should pay for the shortfall is that the federal government has already shown that they use social security money for things OTHER than social security.

This is not a precisely accurate portrayal of how SS works. The supposed insolvency issue has more to do with demographics than balance sheet juggling. In other words, the current workforce pays for Social Security through payroll taxes; as the baby boomers retire the current workforce doesn't quite cover the bill. SS was never intended to be a savings account, where the money isn't touched; it's guaranteed by the cash flow from payroll taxes.

[worry]

In all seriousness, and not just for the sake of trolling in the Discussion forum, we should kill every Baby Boomer.

[Shinrei]

worrywort, on 24 November 2012 - 04:45 AM, said:

It does fall to them, because they have the money, and since money is an imaginary entity invented by humans to lubricate economies, when it goes uncirculated it stops being money anyway. And when people go hungry for the lack of it, and we can fix that by a small tax increase (in this case SS contribution) on income, then there is no question that we should do it.

<snip>

but you still talk like this is a hard decision to make. It's not. Use the money held by people who have an excess of it -- and a little bit more from most other fortunate people of varying degrees -- to help the people who don't have nearly enough. It's simple, it's genuinely harmless, and it's right.

It is not this simple, and to suggest it is strikes me a s willful ignorance. If it actually were simply a matter of taking a little bit more to give it to those who need it then we'd probably be in complete agreement.

Here are just a couple of real and relative problems with your easy fix.

*Government money, taken from the people ends up going to special interests and gets tied up and squandered in inefficient bureaucracy.

*It creates less incentive for the government to cut spending and reduce its size and intrusion into our lives.

Or more simply addressed:

[HoosierDaddy]

It remains the fundamental distinction:

I trust government to see my needs more than private business. One is willing to run a debt in order to make things better. The other is beholden to private persons to never run a debt and make money for it's private owners and could give a lesser fuck about everyone else. And honestly, in the era of Citizens United, this is a battle that needs to be waged.

You can hold me up Shin, I'd put myself out there as being okay with hardcore socialism. I'll be your hyperbole if you need it.

[worry]

It's a very simple decision as far as I'm concerned. I didn't say it would fix everything (nor did Klein), but it would get us waaaaaay over the Baby Boomer bump, and that's the decision I'm talking about. I'm not saying leave it at that. I also hope once the first half of the 20th Century finally dies out we will start to see a responsible slump in opposition to practical matters like actual sex ed/family planning/etc. that will knock down average family size in future generations.

I also have no doubt that if Obama gets to replace at least one conservative SCOTUS judge -- Scalia for instance is 76, and pretty much public enemy #1 -- Citizens United will be overturned. And while I don't think Obama's been perfect on special interests, next to Bush he's an ascetic.

And yah, red tape sucks, but I think people have a near-cartoonish view of bureaucracy. Generally speaking, all it means is specialization. The DMV is wonky because a lot of people use it everyday and there aren't enough of them, not because DMV employees like making people wait in line. And Medicare, as an example, runs at like 1.5-2% overhead, whereas private insurers run several times that (like 10-30% depending on the size of the firm). The $600 hammers bought by the Pentagon were a myth. The $16 muffins for Congress were a myth. Inefficiencies exist, but good and great ideas need funding too. And for the record, the national deficit has shrunk during Obama's presidency at the fastest rate since post-WWII demilitarization, and is continuing to fall. I would not be shocked if we reached surplus some time during his next four years (in terms of annual deficit, not debt -- but that's how you pay down the debt).

I find Penn & Teller occasionally charming and amusing, but they subscribe to the same libertarian claptrap that IMO gives lip service to social issues to con college kids into voting for "reasonable" fiscal conservatives. If Teller had eaten all the pie he could, and then wanted to keep the rest -- even to throw it down the garbage disposal -- in the face of Penn's hunger, that would be a more honest metaphor. If that leftover pie spontaneously spawned a multitude of new pies like a wet mogwai without the need for Teller to bake them himself, more pies than anyone could eat in one lifetime, and Teller still didn't want to share any -- well then you'd have the philosophy of basically every single member of Republican and Libertarian leadership since, I dunno, Reagan. LGBTQs, minorities, women, elderly, students, the public sector, the ill, the mentally ill, the disabled, labor both public and private -- they'd all have it worse off. But at least...they'll never...take...OUR FREEDOM! The government has to be turned into an infantile caricature and a shambling boogieman to even pretend its intrusions balance out all the good it does, and I'm not saying that campaign hasn't worked (or that reasonable caution and a smart eye for efficiency aren't necessary), but it's still pretty goofy.

This post has been edited by worrywort: 24 November 2012 - 11:28 AM

[Shinrei]

HoosierDaddy, on 24 November 2012 - 09:17 AM, said:

It remains the fundamental distinction:

I trust government to see my needs more than private business. One is willing to run a debt in order to make things better. The other is beholden to private persons to never run a debt and make money for it's private owners and could give a lesser fuck about everyone else. And honestly, in the era of Citizens United, this is a battle that needs to be waged.

You can hold me up Shin, I'd put myself out there as being okay with hardcore socialism. I'll be your hyperbole if you need it.

Hey, if it's not my money and I can always get more from some rich guy or a central bank and not be held legally responsible for how I waste it, I might be happy to run a debt too. I trust politicians to act in their own best interests (legislate for their special interest friends, and spend the rest of their time kissing babies). I trust the government to create a maze of rules and regulations that are difficult and expensive to follow.

You fail to mention how corporations make the money for their private owners - by providing a product or service that people need/want and therefore buy. OH NOES HOW EVIL !!! If they sell dogshit and give crappy service, they don't last long. If they engage in sketchy practices, they can be shamed and boycotted. (And they should be allowed to fail.) Whereas the government has the power to force dogshit on you, and if you don't like it you can go get stuffed or worst case they can toss you in jail.

For what it's worth, I'm with you in that Citizens United is shit and should be overturned.

[Shinrei]

worrywort, on 24 November 2012 - 11:24 AM, said:

And yah, red tape sucks, but I think people have a near-cartoonish view of bureaucracy. Generally speaking, all it means is specialization. The DMV is wonky because a lot of people use it everyday and there aren't enough of them, not because DMV employees like making people wait in line. And Medicare, as an example, runs at like 1.5-2% overhead, whereas private insurers run several times that (like 10-30% depending on the size of the firm). The $600 hammers bought by the Pentagon were a myth. The $16 muffins for Congress were a myth. Inefficiencies exist, but good and great ideas need funding too. And for the record, the national deficit has shrunk during Obama's presidency at the fastest rate since post-WWII demilitarization, and is continuing to fall. I would not be shocked if we reached surplus some time during his next four years (in terms of annual deficit, not debt -- but that's how you pay down the debt).

Heh, again, if only it were that simple....

Quote

Again, not true. First of all, the notion that Medicare has “less bureaucracy” than private insurers is deeply confused That sort of argument is often based on the claim that Medicare’s ratio of administrative costs (the money it spends on things other than care) to health costs is lower than those of private insurance companies. But this misses some key facts.

To begin with, many of Medicare’s most significant administrative costs are just covered by other federal agencies, and so don’t appear on Medicare’s particular budget, but are still huge costs of the program. The IRS collects the taxes that fund the program; Social Security collects many of the premiums paid by beneficiaries; HHS pays for a great deal of what you would think of as basic overhead, but doesn’t put it on the Medicare program’s budget. Obviously private insurers have to pay for such things themselves. Medicare’s administration is also exempt from taxes, while insurers pay an excise tax on premiums (which is counted as overhead). And private insurers also spend a great deal of money fighting fraud, while Medicare doesn’t. That might reduce the program’s administrative costs, but it greatly increases its overall costs. Some administrative costs save money, after all: The GAO has estimated that a $1 investment in pre-payment review of claims, for instance, would save $21 in improper Medicare payments.

Moreover, because Medicare covers older (and therefore sicker) patients than most private insurers (who are locked out of that market), the ratio of its spending on coverage to its spending on overhead is very different from the one most private insurers have — if administrative costs for managing two patients are both $100 but one patient has $200 of health expenses in a year and the other has $2,000 of health expenses, the insurer that covers the first patient will have a far higher administrative-cost ratio, even though both have the same administrative costs. On a per-patient basis, Medicare’s administrative costs most years are actually higher than those of private insurers, even though the program has all the enormous advantages just described in averting such costs and keeping them off the books. Robert Book has done great work on this subject, for instance here.

Finally, what Krugman calls negotiating power is just the power of price controls — Medicare doesn’t negotiate, it dictates prices, and when those are below the providers’ costs then providers have to either increase the volume of services they provide (which increases Medicare’s overall costs) or shift costs to other payers (which increases other people’s costs). They generally do both.

Source: http://www.nationalr...an-yuval-levin#

[Terez]

Are my points just not worth addressing or something?

[worry]

That read to me as since the government has such a wide base of revenue and multiple interactive agencies that spread out the costs of functioning, even gigantic programs like Medicare outperform the sluggish, stupid, profit-mongers in private insurance -- but since I don't like government, I will frame that as a bad thing.

This post has been edited by worrywort: 24 November 2012 - 09:16 PM

[Shinrei]

Terez, on 24 November 2012 - 07:11 PM, said:

Are my points just not worth addressing or something?

There isn't really anything there I disagree with, other than perhaps your assertion that SS is a "manufactured" problem.

[Terez]

Shinrei, on 25 November 2012 - 01:30 AM, said:

Terez, on 24 November 2012 - 07:11 PM, said:

Are my points just not worth addressing or something?

There isn't really anything there I disagree with, other than perhaps your assertion that SS is a "manufactured" problem.

Thanks, I was starting to feel invisible. I didn't say it was a manufactured problem; I said it was a manufactured crisis. The problem, such as it is, is relatively easy to fix; the 'crisis' is being used, along with other things, to justify devastating austerity measures.

[worry]

Terez, on 25 November 2012 - 02:13 PM, said:

Shinrei, on 25 November 2012 - 01:30 AM, said:

Terez, on 24 November 2012 - 07:11 PM, said:

Are my points just not worth addressing or something?

There isn't really anything there I disagree with, other than perhaps your assertion that SS is a "manufactured" problem.

Thanks, I was starting to feel invisible. I didn't say it was a manufactured problem; I said it was a manufactured crisis. The problem, such as it is, is relatively easy to fix; the 'crisis' is being used, along with other things, to justify devastating austerity measures.

For instance: http://www.huffingto..._n_2185585.html

[Brujah]

As far as taxes go,I believe in the flat tax. I believe everyone, no matter the income, should all pay X percent of all income in taxes.

As far as Big Government vs Big Business - we're screwed by either. There's just too much greed and corruption in them both like a cancer. Nothing is going to change until it all implodes, and then and only then can a fair balance be re-achieved.

Everything dies and is reborn, expands and collapses. Our government follows in the footsteps of Rome, except we achieved our peak and will hit our fall in half the time.

[worry]

No.