Has western style socialism broken people's spirits?

[Pekelo]

Quote from oldtime:

you sure about that? It's hard to buy a team.

Read up on how the NFL divides profits and how they pick new players... To help you out:

http://www.sportsgrid.com/nfl/daily-show-nfl-socialism/

Quote from oldtime:

and as far as welfare, we kind of looked at the situation and figured babies were not vital to our national interest,

They are, but there is always immigration, so the country can easily make up the loss by the degrading birth rate. (without immigration, the USA would lose population)

 

[burn8]

Quote from failed_trad3r:

well the USA has in practice a flat tax, i dont call that high taxes

Flat doesnt mean high or low. It just means flat.

-burn8

 

[oldtime]

Quote from Pekelo:

Read up on how the NFL divides profits and how they pick new players... To help you out:

http://www.sportsgrid.com/nfl/daily-show-nfl-socialism/



They are, but there is always immigration, so the country can easily make up the loss by the degrading birth rate. (without immigration, the USA would lose population)

yes, It's the same in Italy

I'm on record, I don't like the designated hitter, and I don't like the salary cap.

If you think you are so smart (not you in particular, but you in general) let's see you buy a team. 20 million and the guys on the disabled list.

I like the free market.

I don't need rules to make it fair.

Fair is just another word for boring.

They aint gonna be happy until everybody is equal, and they don't give a shit if that is equally happy or equally miserable.

 

[piezoe]

Quote from logic_man:

The big problem is that no one pays attention to the opportunity cost of something like Social Security. Almost any investment program followed for the 50-odd years someone is in the workforce until they begin to collect SS would result in a higher post-retirement income. Instead, it's portrayed as if SS is some great kind of payoff for sending your payroll taxes to the Feds for all those years, when in reality, if you weren't in the first or second generation to collect SS, your returns are pretty meager.

Same with Medicare. If you put that money taken out of your paycheck into a Health Savings Account with some kind of investment options, you could have more money to pay for your own healthcare in old age than the Medicare program will allocate to you.

People are so stupid they buy the politicians' claims that these programs are great at face value.

I have no choice but to disagree with the contentions of your first paragraph if based on risk adjusted return. In that case your conclusion, "Almost any investment program followed for the 50-odd years someone is in the workforce until they begin to collect SS would result in a higher post-retirement income." is wrong in general, though it might be correct in specific individual cases involving high income individuals.

Among the benefits of Social Security that we all enjoy, regardless of our income, is that provided by S.S.'s shared risk and income redistribution features, the latter being a minor socialist component! Those at the low end of the income scale must contribute far less per month to guarantee a subsistence pension than they would in a private plan without the shared risk and income redistribution feature. We all benefit from not having large number of destitute people on the streets in their old age!

Politicians are not always wrong!

http://www.perfectswindle.com/?p=81

http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/NOTES/ran5/an2004-5.html

http://www.planningtampabay.org/net/gallery/files/SocialSecurityWhitePaperbyCarlson_Peter.pdf

 

[IanMacQuaide]

Socialism is an artificially enforced shared impoverishment of mind, body, and spirit.


True Liberty is the equally shared opportunity to rise or fall by your own desires and talents.

 

[oldtime]

Quote from piezoe:

I have no choice but to disagree with the contentions of your first paragraph if based on risk adjusted return. In that case your conclusion, "Almost any investment program followed for the 50-odd years someone is in the workforce until they begin to collect SS would result in a higher post-retirement income." is wrong in general, though it might be correct in specific individual cases involving high income individuals.

Among the benefits of Social Security that we all enjoy, regardless of our income, is that provided by S.S.'s shared risk and income redistribution features, the latter being a minor socialist component! Those at the low end of the income scale must contribute far less per month to guarantee a subsistence pension than they would in a private plan without the shared risk and income redistribution feature. We all benefit from not having large number of destitute people on the streets in their old age!

Politicians are not always wrong!

http://www.perfectswindle.com/?p=81

http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/NOTES/ran5/an2004-5.html

http://www.planningtampabay.org/net/gallery/files/SocialSecurityWhitePaperbyCarlson_Peter.pdf

yeah, I would agree with that, for crying out loud, it's just a 65 year game. It would be no fun if I was still playing monopoly with my older sister and still paying her (by now I would be borrowing and deep in debt) every time I landed on Park Place.

Every 65 years, we give everybody their monopoly money back, and if they turn in the little ship we break out the shuffleboard.

But we could be doing a lot better. When I was a broker, I could be subject to some kind of mismanagement investigation if I took a 35 year old mans savings and just put it all in bonds.

I don't know where you come off with this "Wall Street is just waiting to get their hands on Social Security"

How would that be bad?

And how would it not be better than the way we are doing it now?

When people are finally complaining that social security benefits are just totally outrageous, and old people are living like kings, then you will know we did it right.

 

[logic_man]

Quote from piezoe:

I have no choice but to disagree with the contentions of your first paragraph if based on risk adjusted return. In that case your conclusion, "Almost any investment program followed for the 50-odd years someone is in the workforce until they begin to collect SS would result in a higher post-retirement income." is wrong in general, though it might be correct in specific individual cases involving high income individuals.

Among the benefits of Social Security that we all enjoy, regardless of our income, is that provided by S.S.'s shared risk and income redistribution features, the latter being a minor socialist component! Those at the low end of the income scale must contribute far less per month to guarantee a subsistence pension than they would in a private plan without the shared risk and income redistribution feature. We all benefit from not having large number of destitute people on the streets in their old age!

Politicians are not always wrong!

http://www.perfectswindle.com/?p=81

http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/NOTES/ran5/an2004-5.html

http://www.planningtampabay.org/net/gallery/files/SocialSecurityWhitePaperbyCarlson_Peter.pdf

The risk adjusted return trend is down, down, down, and already negative for some earning classes and birth years. Eventually, it will be negative for all of them except the lowest earners and SS will be revealed as yet another welfare program only benefiting the least capable and taking capital away from the productive economy.

Looking at history, the benchmark should be "Is this program sustainable for hundreds of years?". If the answer is no, why bother putting it in place? It's just a waste of time and resources.

 

[Pekelo]

Quote from oldtime:

I like the free market.

Me too. So you don't like the US system I guess? After all, all those banks should have gone down, not to mention automakers. And Dow 3000 here we come!

I don't need rules to make it fair.

If we are talking about the NFL, the fairness of the picking new players make the system interesting, a bad team can build a new one in just a few years.... Unlike baseball....

 

[trefoil]

Quote from oldtime:

yeah, I would agree with that, for crying out loud, it's just a 65 year game. It would be no fun if I was still playing monopoly with my older sister and still paying her (by now I would be borrowing and deep in debt) every time I landed on Park Place.

Every 65 years, we give everybody their monopoly money back, and if they turn in the little ship we break out the shuffleboard.

But we could be doing a lot better. When I was a broker, I could be subject to some kind of mismanagement investigation if I took a 35 year old mans savings and just put it all in bonds.

I don't know where you come off with this "Wall Street is just waiting to get their hands on Social Security"

How would that be bad?

And how would it not be better than the way we are doing it now?

When people are finally complaining that social security benefits are just totally outrageous, and old people are living like kings, then you will know we did it right.

SS is insurance, with a massive risk pool that makes it quite solvent if it's funded as it's supposed to be.
It includes disability benefits as well as retirement benefits.
It's meant strictly to keep you out of poverty, not provide a good return. The latter is up to you in your individual retirement program. The gov't is just making sure being old doesn't automatically mean being hungry and homeless.

 

[oldtime]

Quote from IanMacQuaide:

Socialism is an artificially enforced shared impoverishment of mind, body, and spirit.


True Liberty is the equally shared opportunity to rise or fall by your own desires and talents.

we all voted on it. We decided that we would help you when you fell on hard times. Nobody enforced that on us. We when we were of sound mind and body we made that decision.

Everybody likes democracy until most people vote the other way.

If you don't like it, don't bitch about socialism. Bitch about democracy.

People like to talk about how capitalism will eventually fail, a better discussion is about how democracy will eventually fail.