Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Bob D'A
Trad climber
Boulder, CO
|
|
|
Mar 23, 2010 - 09:00pm PT
|
Fat Dad wrote: One of Fatty's primary gripes with the new legislation is that we will follow the path of Greece and other European nations in carrying a deficit that's unsustainable.
Fatty and John L have not answered my question...What is a fair deficit number/percentage to GDP during wartime...add two wars and major recession??
|
|
Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
|
|
|
Mar 23, 2010 - 09:05pm PT
|
Excuse me, but what is this talk about deficit spending?
Reminder: the CBO said the healthcare bill would LOWER the deficit, NOT raise it.
And guess what? The CBO is NON PARTISAN, as in NOT Dem or Repub.
In addition, the right wing is a sorry ass example of deficit spending,
and has ZERO credibility to talk about money.
PERIOD
|
|
dktem
Trad climber
Temecula
|
|
|
Mar 23, 2010 - 09:08pm PT
|
Social Security [...] Those programs are failures!
Funny how so many people call Social Security a failure. It's been around for 70 years. The worst-case scenario projections are that benefits will need to be reduced in a couple of decades, barring any other changes.
There a number of ways to fix it, including simply raising the age when people receive benefits (which is completely reasonable given that life expectancies and general health has improved.)
So, by any estimate, Social Security will serve its purpose for more than a century.
Can anyone name another government program that has sustained itself for so long?
Hardly a failure.
(And let's not resort to calling it a Ponzi scheme - a Ponzi scheme is based upon fraud. There is nothing secret about how Social Security works: it is based upon sustained economic and population growth -- a very reliable long-term trend throughout history).
|
|
Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
|
|
|
Mar 23, 2010 - 09:20pm PT
|
Social Security IS solvent until 2027.
And THEN the SS Trust Fund of 2.4 TRILLION dollars kicks in.
And THEN, only AFTER the fund is exhausted, does the ratio of revenue to payments run at a 75 percent deficit.
This is HARDLY a description of near, or intermediate term, disaster.
AGAIN, the right wing has NO CLUE what they are talking about.
|
|
Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
|
|
|
Mar 23, 2010 - 09:36pm PT
|
"And THEN the SS Trust Fund of 2.4 TRILLION dollars kicks in."
The *Trust Fund* was spent a long time ago. It's all IOU's now.
You can't trust The Government.
|
|
Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
|
|
|
Mar 23, 2010 - 09:47pm PT
|
WRONG:
from wiki:
The trust funds are "off-budget" and treated separately in certain ways from other Federal spending, and other trust funds of the Federal Government. From the U.S. Code:
EXCLUSION OF SOCIAL SECURITY FROM ALL BUDGETS Pub. L. 101-508, title XIII, Sec. 13301(a), Nov. 5, 1990, 104Stat. 1388-623, provided that: Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the receipts and disbursements of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund and the Federal Disability Insurance Trust Fund shall not be counted as new budget authority, outlays, receipts, or deficit or surplus for purposes of - (1) the budget of the United States Government as submitted by the President, (2) the congressional budget, or (3) the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985.
The trust funds run surpluses in that the amount paid in by current workers is more than the amount paid out to current beneficiaries. These surpluses are invested in special U.S. government securities, which are deposited into the trust funds. If the trust funds begin running deficits, meaning more in benefits are paid out than contributions paid in, the Social Security Administration is empowered to redeem the securities and use those funds to cover the deficit.
|
|
John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
|
|
|
Mar 23, 2010 - 09:48pm PT
|
it is based upon sustained economic and population growth
This is my main problem with social security. Sustained population growth is unsustainable. At some point population needs to level out.
|
|
jstan
climber
|
|
|
Mar 23, 2010 - 09:51pm PT
|
I was pointing at debt here three years ago and met only yawns. Now Chaz is running around saying you can't "trust the government."
But he was strangely trusting of George Bush.
I'll stop here before everyone's head explodes on that one.
This following is old news by now.
|
|
Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
|
|
|
Mar 23, 2010 - 09:51pm PT
|
So they bought government securities with Social Security funds?
How is that different from an IOU ?
Fact is, it all was spent long ago.
|
|
jstan
climber
|
|
|
Mar 23, 2010 - 09:56pm PT
|
Three years ago I was yelling about debt and met only yawns. Now Chaz is running around saying you can't "trust the government."
But he was strangely trusting of George Bush.
I'll stop here before everyone's head explodes on that one.
This following is old news by now. We bought into it when we did not put AIG and all the other miscreants into receivership with the FDIC or create another Resolution Trust Corp. as did the elder Bush. Instead Bush gave Henry Paulson 3/4 of a trillion to spend as he "deems necessary."
The boom of the last nine years or so was possible because overseas investors were sending their money here. More than a month ago I said this flow is now reversing. Hot money is going to China and other places.
Read and weep. We are going to get the chance to shown the stuff of which we are made.
Pimco Bets on Asia as U.S., Europe Risk Policy Error (Update1)
By Shelley Smith
March 23 (Bloomberg) -- Investors should buy Asia-Pacific bonds rather than European and U.S. debt on the region’s faster economic growth and lower risk of policy changes that would damp the recovery, according to Pacific Investment Management Co.
“Politics are going to play a very important role in how an investor looks at asset classes over at least the next 12 months,” Brian Baker, Pimco Asia Ltd.’s chief executive officer, said in an interview in Hong Kong. “As policy makers withdraw from their fiscal stimulus, and as regulations are put in place in the financial system in the developed world, we run the risk of a policy mistake” that may weigh on markets, he said.
Withdrawing measures designed to stimulate the economy or raising interest rates too quickly, burdensome regulation and protectionism all threaten to choke off growth in developed markets, Baker said. The economic recovery in Asia, on the other hand, will be “sustainable” and investors should seek to benefit from the development of the region’s financial markets, he said yesterday.
The Asian unit of Pimco, manager of the world’s biggest bond fund, is focusing on Australian, Indonesian, Philippines and South Korean debt, Baker said. The Newport Beach, California-based firm recommends bonds of Asian companies with stable cash flows and of governments in the region that have adopted “prudent” fiscal and monetary policies to spur growth.
Under Pressure
Baker made his comments at a time when many governments of developed economies are under pressure to reduce budget deficits while increasing regulation of a banking sector widely blamed for worsening the deepest financial crisis in 70 years.
All the Group of Seven developed countries, except Canada and Germany, will have debt-to-gross domestic product ratios close to or exceeding 100 percent by 2014, John Lipsky, first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said in a speech in Beijing on March 21.
“In many cases an emerging market sovereign has a better balance sheet than a developed market sovereign that has a higher credit rating, given the fiscal spending that’s gone on in the developed markets,” Baker said. This shift “will continue over the next several years and is one that we think investors need to be aware of.”
Ratings Risk
The U.S. and U.K. have moved “substantially” closer to losing their top AAA credit ratings as the cost of servicing their debt rises, Moody’s Investors Service said this month.
Standard & Poor’s boosted Indonesia’s rating to the highest level in 12 years and the Philippines will meet with S&P and Fitch Ratings next month to seek an upgrade reflecting its economic stability, record foreign reserves and accelerating growth, central bank Governor Amando Tetangco said today.
Emerging economies will expand between 11 percent and 13 percent within the next year while the U.S. economy will grow by no more than 3 percent, according to Pimco estimates.
U.S. dollar-denominated bonds in developing Asian countries returned an average 36 percent in the last 12 months compared with an average 8 percent for U.S. government and company notes, Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data show.
To contact the reporter on this story: Shelley Smith in Hong Kong at ssmith118@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: March 22, 2010 23:58 EDT
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20603037&sid=aJ11yuLxi.KA
|
|
Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
|
|
|
Mar 23, 2010 - 09:56pm PT
|
WRONG:
The date at which the trust fund will run out, according to Social Security Administration projections, has receded steadily into the future: 10 years ago it was 2029, now it’s 2042. As Kevin Drum, Brad DeLong, and others have pointed out, the SSA estimates are very conservative, and quite moderate projections of economic growth push the exhaustion date into the indefinite future.
But the privatizers won’t take yes for an answer when it comes to the sustainability of Social Security. Their answer to the pretty good numbers is to say that the trust fund is meaningless, because it’s invested in U.S. government bonds. They aren’t really saying that government bonds are worthless; their point is that the whole notion of a separate budget for Social Security is a fiction. And if that’s true, the idea that one part of the government can have a positive trust fund while the government as a whole is in debt does become strange.
But there are two problems with their position.
The lesser problem is that if you say that there is no link between the payroll tax and future Social Security benefits – which is what denying the reality of the trust fund amounts to – then Greenspan and company pulled a fast one back in the 1980s: they sold a regressive tax switch, raising taxes on workers while cutting them on the wealthy, on false pretenses. More broadly, we’re breaking a major promise if we now, after 20 years of high payroll taxes to pay for Social Security’s future, declare that it was all a little joke on the public.
The bigger problem for those who want to see a crisis in Social Security’s future is this: if Social Security is just part of the federal budget, with no budget or trust fund of its own, then, well, it’s just part of the federal budget: there can’t be a Social Security crisis. All you can have is a general budget crisis. Rising Social Security benefit payments might be one reason for that crisis, but it’s hard to make the case that it will be central.
But those who insist that we face a Social Security crisis want to have it both ways. Having invoked the concept of a unified budget to reject the existence of a trust fund, they refuse to accept the implications of that unified budget going forward. Instead, having changed the rules to make the trust fund meaningless, they want to change the rules back around 15 years from now: today, when the payroll tax takes in more revenue than SS benefits, they say that’s meaningless, but when – in 2018 or later – benefits start to exceed the payroll tax, why, that’s a crisis. Huh?
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/about-the-social-security-trust-fund/
|
|
Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
|
|
|
Mar 23, 2010 - 09:59pm PT
|
Jstan,
I've been saying for decades that most of what the Government spends money on isn't authorized in the Constitution. Continuously, no matter who's the President.
Norton,
Both you and Krugman mis-state my position on Social Security.
|
|
dktem
Trad climber
Temecula
|
|
|
Mar 23, 2010 - 10:00pm PT
|
The Social Security trust fund wasn't simply "spent" - it's not that simple. At least try to read Wikipedia before you make know-it-all posts.
The "Social Security is a Failure" myth has been propagated by Wall Street firms that want to end it. If we end Social Security there will be a huge influx of money into privately owned funds. Big $$ for Wall Street. You are playing right into their game. (I used to work in that industry - I know this stuff well.)
This world you live in where "government can't be trusted" must be an interesting place. I'd like to see how one functions in this place where we can't eat food from the store because we don't now if it is safe, and we don't use cash because we can't trust it's value, we you can't fly on an airplane because we can't trust that air traffic is managed, and ...
|
|
Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
|
|
|
Mar 23, 2010 - 10:03pm PT
|
dktem,
Just because you can pick out a handful of beneficial (arguably) things The Government does, do we have to trust everything it proposes?
Were you asleep during the Bush Years? We had food and cash and airplanes back then too. Did you trust the Government then?
|
|
dktem
Trad climber
Temecula
|
|
|
Mar 23, 2010 - 10:03pm PT
|
This is my main problem with social security. Sustained population growth is unsustainable. At some point population needs to level out.
Agreed. But the more important component is economic growth. As long as we have innovation we will have economic growth.
(When we stop having economic growth, we are all SOL anyway...)
|
|
dktem
Trad climber
Temecula
|
|
|
Mar 23, 2010 - 10:05pm PT
|
Were you asleep during the Bush Years?
Nope. That's why I voted his party out.
And that's why (American) government works.
|
|
nature
climber
Tucson, AZ
|
|
|
Mar 23, 2010 - 10:16pm PT
|
So, by any estimate, Social Security will serve its purpose for more than a century.
Can anyone name another government program that has sustained itself for so long?
Hardly a failure.
ah dk... you should know better than to toss around facts with blue. it really undermines his argument. Place nice would ya?
|
|
John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
|
|
|
Mar 23, 2010 - 10:19pm PT
|
Just because you can pick out a handful of beneficial (arguably) things The Government does, do we have to trust everything it proposes?
Were you asleep during the Bush Years? We had food and cash and airplanes back then too. Did you trust the Government then?
Mostly. I trust that most policemen are honest. I trust that most firemen will do their job. I trust that bridges will stand, and food is mostly safe. I trust that we probably wont have a military coup.
Why? Because for the most part humans are trustworthy, if you pay attention. And that is one of the keys to trusting government. We the people have to pay attention.
Some other keys are that we have to learn discernment. We can't keep looking at everything as black and white. Not all taxes are bad. Not all government is bad. Not all socialism is bad.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Mar 23, 2010 - 10:21pm PT
|
And ......... you can never ever trust a politician.
|
|
Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
|
|
|
Mar 23, 2010 - 10:26pm PT
|
in the words of a noted forum Republican: "facts are irrelevant"
Or, from a noted leftist here: "beautiful theories are often ravaged by gangs of brutal facts"
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!