Maine kicks lazy bums off of public assistance
- Thread starter gwb-trading
- Start date
Yes, we all know they would. They would scream "vote suppression" and all sorts of other stuff. This is why I never expect this common sense measure to move forward.
Keep in mind that the social security retirement age for most of the posters on ET is 67.
I agree with Simpson-Bowles, the U.S. has a significant budget problem we are not properly addressing. As outlined in their report, the only possible fix is to both raise taxes and cut spending. Their plan was an excellent starting point for addressing the issues, however it has unfortunately been ignored in Washington because raising taxes is toxic to one party and cutting spending is toxic to the other. Apparently no compromise is possible.
Possibly going as far as letting tax paying female property owner vote as well, though obviously there are risks involved..
Lol, yes, the risk of hystericus.Possibly going as far as letting tax paying female property owner vote as well, though obviously there are risks involved..
handouts should only be giving to "the too big to fail"
Now that's the spirit! The big banks thank you!
The reality is that the U.S. government demonstrated very poor policy in the bank bailout. The should have let the over-leveraged large banks fails why assuring the counter-parties that the U.S. government would meet all financial obligations while the banks were wound down - this would allow the overall financial system to remain stable. All the banking executives should have been shown the door and be unemployed. "Government socialism" should not bail out failed capitalism.
Instead the banks are still in existence and the executives are taking more obscene bonuses than ever.
Possibly going as far as letting tax paying female property owner vote as well, though obviously there are risks involved..
Don't get carried away!
Loyek, something important I wanted to mention. It is common to lump social security and medicare together when speaking of the problems associated with future entitlement payments. We really shouldn't do it though! These programs have separate trusts . The S.S. old age retirement trust is sound as long as Congress follows the Trustees recommendations, which are the actuaries recommendations passed along.. (Wall Street wants to kill Social Security, for reasons we all understand, and so the Republicans want to kill Social Security, and so therefore the Republicans drag their heels whenever approval of the Trustees recommendations is needed. Furthermore it serves the intentions of Wall Street, and therefore the Republicans, to lump Social Security in with Medicare.) The separate S.S. disability trust is in some difficulty, because more people are claiming disability than was anticipated -- I would guess lying, cheating, and lawyers' livelihoods are at the root of the problem there. Medicare has its own trust and, naturally enough, it has horrible problems going forward. Any time you have a cartel (a government protected one in the U.S. case) in charge of supplying something essential to human life, the cost will escalate until it consumes the entire GDP. That is the path we are on.
Economists have descriptive terms for the situation where there is a readily recognizable problem with a simple and obvious solution, but logic and reason have no affect. The solution will be studiously ignored until it can't be ignored any longer. The U.S. is headed toward either highly regulated single payer, or a minimally regulated competitive market with higher risk. But who knows which it will be and how long it will take to get there. Meanwhile, there may be a revolution. (The Cartel relies on regulative capture for its existence, so if you destroy the regulation, you destroy the Cartel! A Cartel also results in more risk having to be taken on by those it serves --probably "by its victims" would be more correct -- so the question of whether medicine served up by the Cartel entails more or less risk than medicine delivered by a deregulated market place is one without a ready answer.)
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