End all social welfare programs immediately

a reply to: ketsuko

yep, and now that social security isn't a cash cow anymore then want to ditch it, but, well, unless they want to push grandma over that proverbial cliff, the only way they'd avoid a mass genocide of the aged is to divert many of them to the social welfare programs...so it wouldn't accomplish much, would it?
that's the problem with trying to solve the budget from taking away from those who have nothing, the best you can hope for is that they will accept their fate and die off, the worst is that they find other ways, not so pleasing to society to make ends meet.

a reply to: ketsuko

I'm aware of how it works. My dad made the same arguments a LONG LONG time ago about how the funds were gone and wouldn't be there fore him.

We are currently funding the baby-boomers and my Dad's generation. And in turn, they funded my Dad when he retired, and he funded the Greatest Generation in their Golden Years.

Ask what happened BEFORE social security? NYT - Life Before Social Security

BY 1934, it was not hard to make the case for Social Security. The Great Depression had devastated employment, pensions, the stock market and savings. Many older Americans, and their beleaguered children with families of their own, found themselves suddenly and shockingly in economic freefall.

''A great calamity has come upon us, and seemingly no cause of our own,'' declared a 69-year-old architect, one of millions of Americans who wrote to President and Mrs. Roosevelt, pleading for help. ''It has swept away what little savings we had accumulated and we are left in a condition that is impossible for us to correct.''

As Congress begins a debate over the future of Social Security -- whether to allow Americans to put some of their Social Security taxes in private investment accounts -- the relevance of this history will be a matter of fierce dispute.

Isn't it time, many Republicans argue, to reinvent a Depression-era program for a more financially savvy generation that trusts, rather than fears, the market? Or, as Democrats assert, are Republicans ignoring a cautionary history that highlights the value of a guaranteed government benefit?

David M. Kennedy, the Stanford historian and author of ''Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War,'' said that he found it paradoxical that the current debate over Social Security ''is being couched in terms of individual ownership and privatization of the system, when those kinds of ideas deeply informed the way the original Social Security system was put together.''

In fact, while the movement for social insurance and old-age pensions had been building for years, it took a depression to overcome resistance to it. ''It's not an accident that only in the context of that protracted trauma did we get such a departure from our notion of laissez-faire, rugged individualism,'' Mr. Kennedy said.

The trauma for the elderly of that era can hardly be overstated. As W. Andrew Achenbaum, a historian at the University of Houston, put it, ''The Depression destroyed every mechanism that had existed for covering the vicissitudes of old-age dependency.''

History is my friend.

- AB

a reply to: BELIEVERpriest
yes, because you are younger and think that you'll be able to accumulate enough wealth before you get to the point where you need it.
never mind that every so often the economy is gonna crash and they are gonna find a way to ensure that you end up paying for the bailout so they don't lose their wealth, like has happened so often in the past. or that the home you are buying now will be of less value than what you bought it for maybe, or that your grown kids maybe be lucky just to have jobs and are still living with you needing your financial help!!

a reply to: dawnstar

I honestly don't expect to live to retirement age and don't care to. Its really not that big of a concern to me whether or not I will have something to retire with.

We live until we die. Its that simple. Aside from what spiritual principles you take from your time here, what happens between birth and death really isn't that important to me.

Ill make the best of it, but I wont be waiting by my mailbox like a dog for the government to give me a treat. Maybe other people can live with that, but not me.

a reply to: AboveBoard

And your point is that because it hasn't happened it can't?

Sorry but math says otherwise. Not the way things are being run.

originally posted by: BELIEVERpriest
I honestly don't expect to live to retirement age and don't care to. Its really not that big of a concern to me whether or not I will have something to retire with.

That's the attitude of someone whose going to need to leech off the system when they suddenly find themselves living to 110.

a reply to: Aazadan

Im sure youll be there to remind me of my words.

a reply to: ketsuko

Nothing about the history of what happened before SS????

The point is, it will be funded because even those that wanted to destroy it a generation ago were unable to, despite the math. The passion on this issue weighs FAR more heavily in the direction of supporting it and it would be both politically and economically disadvantageous for any Congress to scrap it. SS dollars go right back into the economy, for one. It feeds the economy and keeps the elderly from being utterly destitute (though barely, I agree, if they don't have housing already paid for, etc.). The lessons of history ARE important and America is, in my opinion, a better and nobler nation than to allow its hard working elderly to be cast into crushing poverty, through no fault of their own, as in the case of the Great Depression, and our most recent Great Recession.

I have no doubt that Congress will "find" the money for SS as easily as they paid to "find" those weapon's of mass destruction Mr. Bush went looking for...no matter how much arm waving and hand wringing some of them will do about it. In the end, they will pay.

- AB

a reply to: BELIEVERpriest

before my feet got bad, I did, I walked just about everywhere, even after they were hurt I walked quite a bit. but eventually they got so I just couldn't take those nice long walks anymore. like I said, it's painful to even walk down to the mailbox and back. I got depressed, angry, eventually manage to get into working only to end up having to quit again.. and just couldn't get back in. I don't go anywhere unless I have to which means I go to the store about once a week and that is it. at least when my husband was alive, I had a purpose, now, I don't really have that. inside I am dead, and no matter how hard I try I just can't find a way out of that one. And, I can't help but wonder, maybe, just maybe things could be different if the gov't had just provided me with the little bit of help I needed when the problem first started instead of just wanting more to help others.
both times when I quit those jobs I had decided I would rather be dead than to keep going like I was going, and I was prepared to do just that. like I said, give me a nice office job that I can do without alot of pain, that pays the bills, that fine, otherwise leave me alone, don't want to help me out then don't, but well, don't be surprised when you find my dead body somewhere out in the woods or in an abandoned house. but I will not live in that kind of pain anymore.. I'd rather be dead!

a reply to: dawnstar

Just try not to take what I said personally. I can have a very short fuse sometimes, and sometimes its difficult for me to understand that people don't see the world the way I do. My opinions are very controversial and shocking to most people, so I'm sorry for being insensitive.

I think I'll leave the thread now before I say something else out of frustration.

originally posted by: onequestion
a reply to: pikestaff

Tell me how much it costs to hire a full time employee and why

It costs whatever the hourly wage is. Plus insurance offered if it is offered.

What about also having a MAX salary in addition to getting rid of social safety nets? Force money into the company coffers & enable more hiring & expansion vs massive accumulation of private wealth. You can't just cut all social aid programs & expect the results be that everyone goes & gets a job. The disparity of wealth & personal greed is the true danger to society, not the government. Government intervention is merely being enabled by it as politicians cater to the true power class & attempt to enrich themselves.

a reply to: SmurfRider

What about also having a MAX salary in addition to getting rid of social safety nets? Force money into the company coffers & enable more hiring & expansion vs massive accumulation of private wealth.

Why not do away with privately and publicly owned companies all together? The government should own and operate everything! Silly idea that business owners should have any control at all!

a reply to: Phage

Total strawman & nothing to do at all with what I said. If people could only be allowed personal profit of $1million a year, all bonuses/salaries/income of any kind would be forced back into the economy, the business, or employee salaries. Never said anything about the government taking it. I'm not saying there wouldn't be plenty of instances to plan for but it's obviously something that will probably never happen anyways. People love being slaves too much to ever actually fight to end wage disparity.
No human alive needs over $1million a year to exist. End of story. Our species deserves its plight imo, may we all die in poverty thinking one day we will be overflowing in money.

a reply to: SmurfRider

Never said anything about the government taking it.

You may as well have. You are saying the government should tell someone how much profit they can make from their own business.

No human alive needs over $1million a year to exist.

Right. But it's a good incentive to build a successful business. A business which, guess what, employs people.

Yay for mass genocide, maybe do away with Medicare too, sort the wheat from the chaff

originally posted by: onequestion
a reply to: stabstab

Darwin.

They will die or take care of themselves and putting money into the hands of the people is what's going to make that paradigm possible.

So you will next be advocating people be free to live off the land without penalty, fines, licenses, leases, and all sorts of preventative measures that keep a person in poverty, IN poverty without the ability to rectify their situation, at least, to your standards?

Perish or thrive?

How simplistic your logic is. You mean, Perish or perish... because the system is set up to create a welfare state, it damn well better be prepared to have one.

originally posted by: onequestion
Its so simple to understand

Ahh, a simple solution to a complex problem.

You should run for president.

All of that money is probably equal to only a few fighter jets and missiles.. only a small fraction of what is spent on defense. Maybe we should cut there instead. Not that anyone has any say in the matter..

a reply to: onequestion


Explanations for debt are always due to welfare for individuals.
Strange that the reasons for debt are always ascribed to some aspect of social welfare for individuals.

Funny how national debt is never ascribed to:

the absence of a tax on share trades
tax evasion by the rich
low rates of company tax
the war industry
the spying and surveillance industry

Does it not strike you as odd that the people at the bottom end of the socio-economic pile always seem to be cause of national debt? This would not be an example of the buck of blame passing downwards would it.

Funny how the people least equipped to defend themselves are always guilty of being the cause of a poor economy. If they are the cause of bad economic times, then why are they never responsible for good economic times as well???