Another reason entitlements need to go bye-bye

[Daldolma]

Originally Posted by Asher [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

There are many theories as to why we are in Iraq. I personally do not believe it was for WMD.

No matter what the reasoning is the money would be better spent here.

Asher

I don't believe it was for WMDs, either. Nor do I believe W is a petty child that wanted to fill in the gaps left by his father. What I believe is that Iraq and Afghanistan are in the center of the most oil-rich region in the known world, and ensuring the availability of that oil as competition grew in East Asia was of utmost importance -- important enough to fabricate a war.

And I do believe it's debatable whether or not the money would be better spent here.

[Ihealyou]

Originally Posted by Daldolma [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Not to be a douche, but this isn't actually true. The money you paid in is long gone. Social Security is currently being paid with money borrowed, predominantly from China.

Not to be a douche but...

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Social security is still fucked though.

[Asher]

Originally Posted by Daldolma [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Not to be a douche, but this isn't actually true. The money you paid in is long gone. Social Security is currently being paid with money borrowed, predominantly from China.

Haven't the last few presidents been robbing Social Security to fund some of their programs? If they would stop pulling money from there we wouldn't need to borrow from China to pay out.

Asher

[Loke]

Uuur, does that chart at all concern you when you consider the fact that the Federal Reserve Bank is essentially a quasi-private organization that has not been audited in over 9 years? Just curious.

As far as the rest of this - I'm gonna refrain from making more points extolling the virtues of Austrian Economics of Keynesian. Some of you think I'm wrong and I think most of you are pretty incorrect, we'll just have to agree to disagree. I will say that given our current economic state, I think it is silly for anyone to argue that it is wise to maintain our current policies though.

[Asher]

Originally Posted by Daldolma [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I don't believe it was for WMDs, either. Nor do I believe W is a petty child that wanted to fill in the gaps left by his father. What I believe is that Iraq and Afghanistan are in the center of the most oil-rich region in the known world, and ensuring the availability of that oil as competition grew in East Asia was of utmost importance -- important enough to fabricate a war.

And I do believe it's debatable whether or not the money would be better spent here.

I think oil plays a much larger role than most governments are willing to admit.

Things happens all over Africa all the time and no one gives a shit but heaven forbid Libya, a large oil supplier to Europe, has problems. If they were a large supplier to the US we would probably be more involved in that war right now too.

So, assuming that is the reason we are in Iraq right now how has it benefited the average American?

We can all see how oil companies have profited. We can all see sky rocketing prices at the pump compared to pre-Iraq and before all the unstability in the oil market. We have seen a defense budget balloon at a crazy rate costing a lot of our tax dollars.

Most US oil comes from Canada. How does this war benefit us and justify the crazy ass spending we have had to do to support it and will have to continue spending to support even after the war is over.

I laugh when Fox News talks about Obama being at fault for the credit downgrade. John Boehner said he got 98% of what he wanted. The right wouldn't budge at all on tax increases for the weathly, which a majority of the nation supports despite what the right will have you believe.

That bill was not compromise at all. W. and corporate greed sunk the economy and now we are gonna fix it on the backs of the poor and middle class.

Sound fair?

Republicans like to spend just as much as the Democrats if not more I would argue. They just like to sink our dollars into the pockets of other nations and our wealthy. At least Democrats want to spend the money here to benefit people here.

I don't know how they get away with being called fiscally conservative. I wish the Tea Party didn't just wake up when Obama was elected.

Asher

[Asher]

Originally Posted by Loke [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Uuur, does that chart at all concern you when you consider the fact that the Federal Reserve Bank is essentially a quasi-private organization that has not been audited in over 9 years? Just curious.

As far as the rest of this - I'm gonna refrain from making more points extolling the virtues of Austrian Economics of Keynesian. Some of you think I'm wrong and I think most of you are pretty incorrect, we'll just have to agree to disagree. I will say that given our current economic state, I think it is silly for anyone to argue that it is wise to maintain our current policies though.

I think everyone agrees it is silly to maintain our current policies the question is how do we fix it?

One side wants no tax increases or reform to close loop holes and the other side wants no cuts to major and popular government programs such as social security and medicare. It would be nice if they would come together and do both. I think the proposed $3 in cuts to $1 in tax increases to the wealthy was fair.

Letting the Bush tax cuts expire alone would save a lot of money.

Never having had enacted them in the first place may have avoided this problem all together.

Asher

[inyane]

social security is a ponzi scheme, but its ok cause its the government doing it

[Peatree]

Man I had no idea this thread would go so far. Who knew?

[Cyrano]

After reading this all I have learned is that Daldoma is smarter than anyone else in this thread.

You guys sit here blaming wars, or programs, or individuals, but it's pretty obvious that our greatest problem is the lack of cohesion amongst politicians and their constituents. Neither side is willing to bend and is more concerned with making their opponents look guilty than they are with actually creating a better future.

Barkingturtle you seem like an intelligent chap as well but I'm not sure what got up your ass to the point of resorting to name calling that you did. In my opinion your argument is based on pointing out what is wrong rather than offering any solution towards fixing those problems. I'm with the others here, you can't compare a our nation to Norway and you can't expect implementing their model for governance over ours would elicit similar results. Too much of our money and interest is invested outside of our own borders, including military and defense spending, to maintain the social programs they do. Socialized medicine will never work in the US simply because we're too big and not because of greed or any large scale lack of compassion.

Personally, what I think we need is for politicians to think smaller and be willing to compromise on those small issues. You can't expect to reform one of our biggest industries or programs completely and then get people to just fall in line. Healthcare reform affects too many people's lives in the business sector to expect them to shut up when they're seeing their livelihood change in the course of a few months. You act as if the insurance companies have the government in their pocket but it's one of the few industries where they are only allowed to make a certain percentage of profit per entity. Think about that, if you owned a car part store and the government said you could only make 4% profit over your total operational cost it would be infuriating. They're capping companies to keep them from making too much while forcing small business to carry insurance for every employee by 2014 or begin paying fees. That's complete crap, business owners shouldn't have to provide everything for their employees. They give them jobs, it should be up to the employees to manage their money effectively enough to pay for their own insurance. If someone is willing to offer a benefits package it should be considered a perk and not a government mandated entitlement. This is a perfect example of illogical expectations between extreme liberal doctrine and government ordinance. The worst part is that this type of program will mean less jobs overall because the owners will have to burn positions, redistribute workload, then increase benefit management spending to make heads and tails of the ever-changing laws associated with this reform.

Again for me it all comes back to a lack of accountability on all fronts. Why actually make some sacrifices when you can simple entrench yourself and point fingers as shit gets worse? If we had instead started smaller and mandated that all individuals carry health insurance by law and tested those waters for awhile we might have some actual progress. Overhauling everything will never work, but with a four year window of power partisanism will continue to reign.

[Chanur]

Social Security would have a 2.4Trillion dollar surplus if it had not been robbed . Second SS will never go away, the Republicants don't want to cancel it. They want to privatize it so their banker owners can invest it with no risk and steal the interest profits. Same thing that's currently happening to widows and families of killed soldiers and their insurance pay outs.