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On Mon, 16 May 2011 20:57:03 -0400, wrote:

On Mon, 16 May 2011 13:37:15 -0700, wrote:

On Mon, 16 May 2011 14:19:26 -0400, wrote:

On Mon, 16 May 2011 10:33:01 -0700, wrote:

On Mon, 16 May 2011 12:17:14 -0400, wrote:

On Sun, 15 May 2011 23:05:20 -0700, wrote:

SS/Medicare would be broke, no matter what happened to the economy.
There simply are not enough workers coming onto the bottom of the
pyramid to support an 83 million person peak.

This is completely untrue. Neither is broke and this is just a right
wing talking point without merit.

That is just denial.
Any program that pays out more than it takes in is doomed to fail

No. You're wrong. Many programs "pay out" more than they take in for
some period of time and they do fine in the long run. You're the one
in denial.

Name one that is on this scale.

Social Security.

You have come back to where you started didn't you.
SS generated huge surpluses for the first 75 years of it's existence,
money we spent.
That where it got the reputation for being successful. Now we are
going to see how it works in deficit.
Give me an example of a program that successfully runs for a
significant time in deficit.

SS hasn't run a deficit for a significant time and it's projected to
do just fine with some minor changes. Feel free to keep ringing the
gong of nonsense until your head hurts.

You started out with 35 or 40 payers per retiree in 1935 and people
were only expected to collect for a couple of years if they lived that
long. Now we have 3 workers per retiree and they will collect for 18
years.
It is simply unsustainable. The whole concept of a trust fund is
fantasy, invented in 1939 to fund the build up for WWII.

what's also unsustainable is the massive increase in healthcare costs
we face, again, engineered by the 'free market' fundamentalism of the
right.
Health care cost is part of it but simply having 40 million medicare
recipients is unsustainable and that will double in a decade.

It's only unsustainable if no action is taken. Action is being
proposed and the situation will turn around. More fear mongering isn't
part of the solution.

Do you have a 1.5 trillion dollar idea to fix the deficit. That is
really what we are talking about here and it is not a long term
problem it is a problem today. Medicare/SS are just another part of
the deficit now since both are running in the red.

I suggested several ways to start. We DON'T NEED TO FIX THIS TOMORROW.
We need to get started... subsidies, military, tax rates. I know you
don't like it and would prefer to think all is lost and the sky is
falling. It isn't.

The problem is this administration took a giant step in the wrong
direction, cutting the FICA tax. When are they going to start?

Not a giant step. Not compared to the budget busting of the last
couple of decades.

I agree we have made some big mistakes but this is going directly to
the SS deficit and clipping 5% of the total revenue from the
government. (payroll taxes are 36% and we took 14% of that away)

So, you'd rather blame Obama for a relatively minor and recent error
than blame Bush for nearly destroying the economy. Got it.

BTW did you see how Geithner is extending the debt ceiling? He is
taking money from the federal pension program. I am surprised nobody
is raising hell about that.

we have no choice but to extend the ceiling. our debt wouldnt be
serviceable if we didnt

The debt will be unserviceable when the interest rate doubles too and
that is far more than likely.

It is not "more likely." There's no credible evidence that interest
rates will be doubling any time soon.

More denial.
At this point we are only paying 0.3% on our short bonds. That is not
likely to continue very long. To think a fraction of a percent rate
hike is impossible it just lunacy. Right now investors are not even
covering the drop in the value of the dollar we pay them back with.

There is NO EVIDENCE of a dramatic increase in interest rates. Total
nonsense.

It doesn't have to be a huge change to make a huge difference.
Interest is now almost a third of our revenue.

You said double. So, you're backpeddling on that?

It is not unreasonable that the 0.3% rate we pay on short money would
double.

Feel free to let us know when there's a crisis.

Every crash in history was caused by debt. If the US economy crashes
it could quite easily be the end of the world as we know it.

It could easily, in your view, start raining marbles. I notice you
finally used the "end of the world" language.

How else would you describe a failure of the dollar?
That is what is at stake here.

The dollar has not "failed." It's devalued against certain currencies,
but it's far from failed. You act like nobody but you is aware of the
situation.