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neo-cons are not the same as conservatives.
This is hilarious. FDR is the father of the military industrious complex that we see today.
The entire idea of SS was that you pay into for the whole of your life and then are repaid after you retire. Its not even remotely a simple handout.
What has happened is you have seen money 'borrowed' from SS to pay for arms races concurrent with tax cuts *cough* Reagan *cough* and then subsequently to pay for the massive interest on debt ac ulated.
To say that SS is the biggest drag is just ignorant. Look at national 'defense' costs and how much we pay in interest of the debt and get back to me
neo-cons are not the same as conservatives.
Don't bother, you're wasting your time. He's a lib . The lib s here purposely call conservatives neocons. Must have something to do with the thought of neoNazi, or just ignorance. Either way, they are too re ed to stop.
Last edited by Wild Cobra; 08-25-2009 at 05:30 PM.
I don't know where to begin...
SS is a govt socialist program to take care of you. It was uncons utional in its format, so they changed it in the 50's to go into the General Fund...instead of getting rid of it. It's not been "borrowed"...cuz there never was anything set aside, it was deemed uncons utional to do it. It went directly into the General Fund and it's been used to fund...everything. Not just "Reagan" and the interest on the debt. sigh...
It's a total screwup...and it's totally socialist Govt involvement.
As far as the biggest cost, and SS not being the biggest?
2008 BUDGET
$608 billion - Social Security
$386 billion - Medicare
$209 billion - Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program
$324 billion - Unemployment/Welfare/Other mandatory spending
Total SOCIAL SPENDING 1.527 TRILLION DOLLARS
$481.4 billion - Department of Defense
$261 billion - Interest on National Debt
And just to put things in "perspective"....Obama's "stimulus package" is around 800 BILLION.
...and so it goes.
Last edited by SouthernFried; 08-25-2009 at 05:42 PM.
That's what I forgot. I need to add interest on the debt to this chart:
Begin by adding interest off the debt and defense spending like I said. Then compare it to SS which is what we were talking about. The bait and switch is cute and all.....
The two go very hand in hand. Reagan started the trillion dololar deficiets with his arms race in the early to mid eighties. Its either that or you can always claim that Reagan was a socialist.
I totally agree with what it has become today. Unfortunately some of the necessary programs started in the 1930's have evolved to wasteful government of today and even opposite than what they were first intended to do at the time.
Democrats now are not the same Democrats of that era. They are now Libertarian Socialist under the guise of the Democrat label.
I'm not sure I understand. You want to add "interest on the debt" to "defense spending?" Because you think defense spending is the major item in our budget and all the interest on the debt should be attributed to it?
When I've plainly shown you differently?
hmmm, so it goes...
Yeah, lesson learned. Don't ever start a govt program expecting it to be done away with when the "current crisis" is over. It doesn't happen that way.
The lesson was learned by one of Obama's people when he said..."never waste a crisis" in trying to get govt programs like the stimulus passed.
too late now I guess....
Its called stealing from Peter to pay for Paul. I'm not going to bother dredging through all of the ways and means BS but it boils down to this. SS is more or less a pool of money that the fed pulls from to pay for particular projects.
Reagan really started doing this in the early eighties when he would pull from SS to fund his defense projects concurrent with cutting taxes. Not only did he raise SS for the future and the national debt at the same time. Defense Spending per GDP overall has increased since that time signifigantly.
Now he did appoint Greenspan who curbed inflation but I digress.
When you do this, you inflate the cost in the future. What your trying to do is look at this in a vacuum which posits nothing.
Wow... How do you figure that? Social security has always been used by the government for other programs. Defense spending was already 5.4% of GDP when Reagan took office. It went as high as 6.5% while he was in office. It was lowered to 4.7% at the end of Bush(41)'s term. A proper amount once we won the Cold War. Ongoing operations has the defense spending at 4.5% for 2008. What is your source that it is ever increasing?
Here's mine:
White House; OMB; Table 15.5—Total Government Expenditures by Major Category of Expenditure as Percentages of GDP: 1948–2008
Again, I don't know really how to begin.Its called stealing from Peter to pay for Paul. I'm not going to bother dredging through all of the ways and means BS but it boils down to this. SS is more or less a pool of money that the fed pulls from to pay for particular projects.
Reagan really started doing this in the early eighties when he would pull from SS to fund his defense projects concurrent with cutting taxes. Not only did he raise SS for the future and the national debt at the same time. Defense Spending per GDP overall has increased since that time signifigantly.
Now he did appoint Greenspan who curbed inflation but I digress.
When you do this, you inflate the cost in the future. What your trying to do is look at this in a vacuum which posits nothing.
SS was never a pool of money set aside that Reagan "started" using for projects, or whatever. It's been going into the General Fund since the 50's. It's been used for every single govt spending program since then. There is no "set aside" that anyone (uh, including Reagan) could pull from. They all used it...before, and since Reagan. Reagan didn't start it, or finish it...or use it any differently than anyone else.
"When you do this, you inflate the cost in the future. What your trying to do is look at this in a vacuum which posits nothing"
I don't know what your talking about here. Will using SS money, as all our administrations have done, inflate costs in the future? Govt spending, in general, inflates costs, not sure what difference using SS money makes...since it's all a part of govt spending.
Greenspan didn't curb inflation...the marketplace did. Sound fiscal and monetary policy didn't hurt. But, Greenspan is given far too much credit for things. I have an MBA, and I couldn't understand half the crap he said. I would talk to fellow investors who would smile and say the same thing. "nobody knows what he's saying, he likes it that way." Good for job security I guess. He didn't do anything differently than a "good" money manager would....uh, imho
You can't understand because you took the easy route and went administration instead of finance. Its like taking biology --the easy route-- and not physics and then complaining that you don't understand Feynman.Again, I don't know really how to begin.
SS was never a pool of money set aside that Reagan "started" using for projects, or whatever. It's been going into the General Fund since the 50's. It's been used for every single govt spending program since then. There is no "set aside" that anyone (uh, including Reagan) could pull from. They all used it...before, and since Reagan. Reagan didn't start it, or finish it...or use it any differently than anyone else.
"When you do this, you inflate the cost in the future. What your trying to do is look at this in a vacuum which posits nothing"
I don't know what your talking about here. Will using SS money, as all our administrations have done, inflate costs in the future? Govt spending, in general, inflates costs, not sure what difference using SS money makes...since it's all a part of govt spending.
Greenspan didn't curb inflation...the marketplace did. Sound fiscal and monetary policy didn't hurt. But, Greenspan is given far too much credit for things. I have an MBA, and I couldn't understand half the crap he said. I would talk to fellow investors who would smile and say the same thing. "nobody knows what he's saying, he likes it that way." Good for job security I guess. He didn't do anything differently than a "good" money manager would....uh, imho
It was actually Volckur who was appointed by Carter but he raised the interest by about 50%. That is serious market intervention and to say that the market just corrected itself is laughable.
The social security fund is NOT part of the general fund so try again.
what the government uses is the surplus from that and Reagan started this bull with his massive trillion dollar deficits.
sigh...
Social Security revenues go into Treasury general revenue and are credited to the Fund as unmarketable Treasury bonds (IOU's.) The Treasury pays benefits with general revenue. Any remaining revenue finances general government, with an equivalent value of bonds (meaning IOU's) in the Trust Fund as Social Security’s "surplus." That’s a Treasury account in action, not a trust fund.
The original SS act mandated any surplus in SS revenues goes to fund the govt. Reagan didn't do this.
Social Security’s Trust Fund is bogus. Meaning the "robbing the trust fund" issue is phony, too.
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