Well Crap... More Depressing SS News

[Mahonri]

I didn't read the article. Guess I should go read it and see how what I write below jives with it.

Since I've been a kid, I've heard that there won't be any $ left by 2020. I've never heard any other dates, I'm sure mine are different than those quoted in the article.

At the present rate of spending and debt, I can only imagine that we will be out of $ before that and benefits will begin to decline.

Most of the money we send to the IRS/Treasury via our taxes goes to service our debt.
Eventually we will indeed max out our credit.

Those are simply the facts. There is no money tree. It won't magically appear.
We won't be able to print our way out of it.

No one has ever spent their way into prosperity...., ever.

 

[newfoundland]

So agree with last two posts. It's the same all over the developed world. Riots in France because the retirement age is being increased to 62. Here in Uk we had a list of austerity measures issued to us last week. Our retirement age is increasing to 66. Social Security has taken a big hit and Government spending reduced everywhere except in overseas aid. This has not gone down too well! We will moan and complain and then we will tighten our belts yet again and get on with it because bottom line is can't spend what you don't have and we don't have the right to leave the next generation with that mess to clear up!

 

[PineappleMama]

Quote:
Well said. Just like anyone else spending on credit eventually you get to the point where you're struggling just to make the interest payments. With a person though you can always file for bankruptcy, courts will help you come up with a plan, etc. But when an entire government goes nutso with spending like we have for... what... 20 years... 30... well I really don't want to see us in the same position that Greece is in. There is no American Union to help bail us out... and we've ticked off a lot of folks who might just like seeing us fail... and a lot of countries already owe us money and refuse to pay it back... I think we'd be totally up a creek is we let things get as bad as Greece did... we've GOT to cut our spending, have to.

Not just for the sake of SS but for the entire economy's sake... again, as Mahonri said "No one has ever spent their way into prosperity...., ever."

 

[Dunkopf]

Yes there's a lot of people talking about spending cuts in general. You notice none of them get specific though. Just the same old same old. Do you realize that 28% of the stimulus package went to tax cuts for normal people? The rest actually helped create some jobs. Obviously not as many as are needed. Nobody will ever be able to prove one way or the other what the stimulus did or didn't do. One thing is for sure though. When Clinton left office there was a surplus. Eight years later we were deep in debt and had lost 8 million jobs. Something wrong with that picture and were getting ready to give the shovels back to the master diggers.

Worse times are coming.

 

[Organics North]

Quote:

I get a kick out of how fast people forget... The previous administration in September 08 said their was no recession coming and the opposing party was just making it up... Then in November after they lost the election got on national TV and said the right thing to do was bail out the banks... Don't forget it was not the current administration that was the architect for the bank bail outs...

Gee I wonder which administration deregulated banking and loans????... Which was what cause the current mess.. HMMMMMM...

Enough politics I am out of here..

ON

 

[PineappleMama]

Funny you mention that as I was JUST reading about it (Budget just before Bush, during, and now) earlier. Weird.

It's really hard to talk about cutting stuff when things are looking bad... hard enough when things are good, but really hard when it's bad. How can you talk about no COL for SS payments when you KNOW that medical costs are rising? How can you talk about cut off dates for unemployment when you know it'll mean thousands of people with NO income. That's there all the time, but right now it's even worse. Hard to get anyone to even be willing to talk about it, n'mind risk votes by voicing an opinion one way or the other. Unfortunately there's never a lull in elections, there's always SOMEONE up for office, so there's never a quiet time when it's "safe" to really talk, much less do anything. Shame really, it'd be nice to see what these folks really think, what they'd really like to see done. Unfortunately in a one minute ad there just isn't time for it so they have to go with the splashy stuff, and bare bones. And too often it turns out that it was all a bunch of smoke... other times they really do want those things but they're the minority so they don't have the power to do it. One bad thing about a two party system, there's no one to break the tie... so it just goes round and round... this team changing what this one did and vice versa and it's such a muddled mess that most of us (if not them) don't really even know what the devil is going on.

SS is just one more of the things that's a hot button issue, and is treated like one. It'd be nice if we could see just plain ol' black and white facts... simple, in English (since I'm not fluent in lawyer)... but simple black and white makes it where people can be held accountable, hard to hide errors (accidental or otherwise)... why flat out tell your boss that you screwed up, much better to just keep him in the dark so he won't fire you... what he doesn't know can't hurt him... seems like that's how things run to me even with all these new fangled transparency laws and such. *shrug* All I can do is try and spot the rats and not vote for them...

 

[Organics North]

Quote:

PM, aint that the truth!
ON