Vito wrote:
Now, with the
Dow under 10, the surplus gone and deficite skyrocketing, our country in
another Vietnam quagmire and the world facing a war of terrorism ....

Best be voting Dem then, the Dow usually does better under the Dems than the GOP.

Cheers
Marty

Is somebody preventing you from saving your own money and investing it
as you see fit?


Dave wrote:
Well, the guvmint takes a big chunk out of it so the amount available is
only what's left over.

Sounds like a lame excuse to me.

Besides, President Bush gave a huge tax cut to the wealthiest
families... $150 billion per year to families with $1 million per
year income... aren't you one of them?


.... How about we make savings and investment deductible
when deposited or invested, and taxable at a lower rate when withdrawn, or
not at all after some age?

Already done, several ways. How about a plan where if you save $1, you
not only get to deduct it but your employer matches it? Oh wait, we got
that too.

In a country where obesity is one of the biggest health threats, and
people buy SUVs when gas prices are headed through the roof (and these
are just two of the most obvious examples of how profligate consumerism
has replaced old fashioned common sense), it is hard to explain why the
savings rate is so low.


... (I can hear the screams now from the folks who
want to take from them as has and give it to them as don't have.)

You hear voices from your computer? I knew you were a whacko but I
didn't realize you were psychotic... too much LSD back in the '60s, maybe?

DSK

In article . net,
Maxprop wrote:

"Jonathan Ganz" wrote in message

Maxprop wrote:


Who knows. But Bush didn't have a damn thing to do with it. Actually
the
French company that makes the vaccine in Britain is at fault.
Yes he did. He could have done something 3 year ago when he was
presented with the facts. He did nothing. It's not a French
company. It's US owned.

That's news to me. The company is Aventis, or something like that, and it's
French-owned, to my knowledge.

Yup... my mistake. They do have a subsidiary in the US. They make
Allegra and a couple of other well-known drugs.

http://www.aventis.com/main/page.asp...541833&lang=en

He's already got a backdoor draft going. It's just a small step.

That's an imaginative leap of illogic. He's said, "no draft" and I believe
him.

That's a fact. Heard of stop-loss? That's what's going on.

You obviously aren't old enough to recall how conscription altered lives,
even in peacetime. If a volunteer army is getting the job done, and it is,
then a draft is simply not necessary. Undoubtedly you are over the maximum
age, or you wouldn't be holding this position.

The volunteer army isn't getting the job done. Everything
community-based changes lives. That's the point. It allows you to give
back to the community and it changes your life.

I'm over the age, but I would volunteer if I knew everyone was
expected to serve. You wouldn't have to serve in the military
exclusively to contriube.

We could start by cutting needless government expenditure, which is
completely out of control. And we could quit robbing that mythical entity
called the SS trust fund. Hell, if a business owner even borrows from his

Mythical? It's not mythical to millions of seniors.

employee pension fund, he goes to jail. The gummint wigs have done it for
years. Next, there could be an interim program of partial investment and
partial FICA payment. But it HAS to be done, because like it or not, SS
won't last forever at the current rate of increasing ranks in the retirement
years (mostly the Boomers). SS was a bad idea for the general population
from the get-go, and someone, someday must address the problem. To simply
allow it to continue until it breaks down and fails is a head-in-the-sand
approach, and will spell disaster down the road.

Oh, now I see. Your argument is with FDR. Ok. Thanks anyway.



--
Jonathan Ganz (j gan z @ $ail no w.c=o=m)
http://www.sailnow.com
"If there's no wind, row."

In article ,
Dave wrote:
Besides, President Bush gave a huge tax cut to the wealthiest
families... $150 billion per year to families with $1 million per
year income... aren't you one of them?

Nice populist rhetoric, but it has nothing to do with the subject at hand.
(Wish I were one of them, but I'm not.)

Except that this populist rhetoric is accurate.

Agreed. But it is. One of the things that makes it worse is that in the past
it was common for children to care for their parents at home when the parent
got too old and infirm to live on his own. Now the custom seems to be to
dump them in a nursing home, making sure that they get rid of all their
assets three years in advance, so the guvmint will pay the bill.

Sounds to me like you have no idea what this means for children who
have to have two jobs just to get by. It's probably one of the hardest
choices they have to make.




--
Jonathan Ganz (j gan z @ $ail no w.c=o=m)
http://www.sailnow.com
"If there's no wind, row."

On Thu, 21 Oct 2004 09:29:54 -0400, "Vito" wrote
this crap:


I would have agreed four years ago when the Dow was pushing 15K and we were
planning to use a growing surplus to pay down the debt. The value of my
private investments were growing so fast I expected to have retired by now.
It never occurred to me that Republicans - and I'd voted GOP all my life -
could bungle BOTH the economy and foreign relations so badly. Now, with the
Dow under 10, the surplus gone and deficite skyrocketing, our country in
another Vietnam quagmire and the world facing a war of terrorism ....



I guess you don't realize that this is the time to buy. Buy now,
while the market is low, and soon, when Jeb Bush is elected four years
from now, after George W. Bush finishes his second term, you can
retire in style.





Pathetic Earthlings! No one can save you now!

In article ,
Dave wrote:
On 21 Oct 2004 17:10:24 -0700, (Jonathan Ganz)
said:

SS was a bad idea for the general population
from the get-go, and someone, someday must address the problem. To simply
allow it to continue until it breaks down and fails is a head-in-the-sand
approach, and will spell disaster down the road.

Oh, now I see. Your argument is with FDR. Ok. Thanks anyway.

Invoking the name FDR is a poor substitute for reasoned argument. Max is
right on this one. SS is, and always has been, a Ponzi scheme. And like all
Ponzi schemes it inevitably will come crashing down when the number of
"investors" isn't enough to continue making payouts.

So, another FDR hater. Wow, that's a shocker.



--
Jonathan Ganz (j gan z @ $ail no w.c=o=m)
http://www.sailnow.com
"If there's no wind, row."

In article ,
Horvath wrote:
On Thu, 21 Oct 2004 09:29:54 -0400, "Vito" wrote
this crap:
I guess you don't realize that this is the time to buy. Buy now,
while the market is low, and soon, when Jeb Bush is elected four years
from now, after George W. Bush finishes his second term, you can
retire in style.

You would vote for a fairy like Jeb.
--
Jonathan Ganz (j gan z @ $ail no w.c=o=m)
http://www.sailnow.com
"If there's no wind, row."

Besides, President Bush gave a huge tax cut to the wealthiest
families... $150 billion per year to families with $1 million per
year income... aren't you one of them?


Dave wrote:
Nice populist rhetoric

Is "rhetoric" a fancy word for "plain fact that I wish weren't true
because it makes my favorite candidate look bad?"

... but it has nothing to do with the subject at hand.

??? You were griping about taxes. I pointed out that your favorite
candidate has already cut taxes so much the budget is busted and likely
to stay that way. Didn't you get yours?


.... How about we make savings and investment deductible
when deposited or invested, and taxable at a lower rate when withdrawn, or
not at all after some age?

Already done, several ways. How about a plan where if you save $1, you
not only get to deduct it but your employer matches it? Oh wait, we got
that too.


All of the present arrangements are hedged about with rules designed to be
sure that those in a position to save the most don't get any tax break if
they do.

??? AFAIK everybody can save the same amount, $2500 (or did it go up
again already?).


... I'm thinking of a much simpler system where you don't have to have
a ton of actuaries calculating the "annual deferral percentage" of the
highest X% of a company's workforce each year, and a ton of lawyers jiggling
the plan and going hat in hand to the IRS for a ruling every time the plan
is changed. (Been there. Done that.)

??? Been there done that... in fact I am still doing it... sort of (I
hate committees). We don't have any actuaries and we darn sure don't
have any lawyers.

I'd be very much in favor of simplifying the rules for funding company
retirement benefits, and also in favor of simplifying private accounts.
But I don't see it happening any time soon.



In a country where obesity is one of the biggest health threats, and
people buy SUVs when gas prices are headed through the roof (and these
are just two of the most obvious examples of how profligate consumerism
has replaced old fashioned common sense), it is hard to explain why the
savings rate is so low.


Agreed. But it is. One of the things that makes it worse is that in the past
it was common for children to care for their parents at home when the parent
got too old and infirm to live on his own. Now the custom seems to be to
dump them in a nursing home, making sure that they get rid of all their
assets three years in advance, so the guvmint will pay the bill.

Ah yes, those darn families refusing to take responsibilities... what do
you expect, we have a Responsibility-Dodger-In-Chief who should set a
better moral example... but I digress.

If only those darn old people didn't get Alzheimer's and need
professional care... or any of those other geriatric conditions
requiring care that the average person cannot provide. If only people
didn't live so darn long... that'd help the Social Security problem too.

How dare poor and middle-class people live past 65! What gall! Too bad
there isn't a centralized area or state where poor old people live, we
could invade and end this threat!

DSK

"Jonathan Ganz" wrote in message

That's a fact. Heard of stop-loss? That's what's going on.

That's not the same as conscription. Kerry is making false charges.

Mythical? It's not mythical to millions of seniors.

There is no SS trust fund. It was robbed by Congress long ago. Now SS is
simply an annual expense paid from the general fund. THAT is the gist of
the problem.

Oh, now I see. Your argument is with FDR. Ok. Thanks anyway.

Oh yeah, my argument is indeed with FDR.

Max

In article . net,
Maxprop wrote:

"Jonathan Ganz" wrote in message

That's a fact. Heard of stop-loss? That's what's going on.

That's not the same as conscription. Kerry is making false charges.

That's right. It's just the first step.

Mythical? It's not mythical to millions of seniors.

There is no SS trust fund. It was robbed by Congress long ago. Now SS is
simply an annual expense paid from the general fund. THAT is the gist of
the problem.

It was not funded by Bush. Instead we all got $300.

Oh, now I see. Your argument is with FDR. Ok. Thanks anyway.

Oh yeah, my argument is indeed with FDR.

I like being right.



--
Jonathan Ganz (j gan z @ $ail no w.c=o=m)
http://www.sailnow.com
"If there's no wind, row."