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State of the Union Address

Catawba said:
As a whole maybe but lets see the actual numbers of wealthy seniors?
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So do you support the current structure, where the average senior is wealthier and the average less wealthy people should pay for them?
I know before you said you don't like regressive taxes.

Have you changed your stance on this?
 
Free_Radical said:
Well, our money is given its value by its monopoly status, but that's neither here nor there. The point is that "cash money" is a real economic asset that can be used to pay down the liabilities incurred by SS, whereas Treasury Securities are nothing more than government debt, which is the exact opposite of a government asset; indeed, a Treasury Security is a government liability.



I think you're a bit confused. Treasury Securities are not assets on the government's balance sheet, they are liabilities. "Cash money", on the other hand, is an economic asset. That's the difference between financing the SS "trust fund" with Treasuries and cash. One is government borrowing and the other is not.

Brian
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Okay, here is how it works. For decades our payroll taxes have exceeded the amount necessary fund SS on a day-to-day basis. So what happens to that surplus? On the one had, Treasury could take that cash money and fill up warehouses with it -- the warehouses of cash. But with inflation, cash naturally loses value over time. So what they do -- by law -- is pay that cash to the Treasury in return for Treasury notes that at least pay some interest. The cash is *converted* into Treasury notes. The treasury notes can be converted back to cash to pay for SS benefits when necessary. The ledger would not be different if they skipped the conversion step, except to the extent that SS would lose the interest payments.
 
Removable Mind said:
That's pretty much just sustaining the current balancing, not substantially reducing it.

Inflating our way out is what got is in...

The government lovvvvvvvvvvesssss inflation so much so that they create it by printing, printing, printing, printing, printing...well...you dig what I'm saying.
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I think to cover the interest it would take 547 billion, add another 3 billion and we're slowly reducing the debt.
Of course we'd have to adjust other expenditures, to stop borrowing.
 
Catawba said:
As a whole maybe but lets see the actual numbers of wealthy seniors?
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The elderly have more total wealth but as a rule they have little or no earned INCOME. They rely on the fixed income derived from their wealth to get by.
 
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Harry Guerrilla said:
You were at least born and had a chance at having a say.
The comparison is not equivalent.

I, nor anyone else in my generation had a say.
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So are you saying a taxpayer should be exempted from paying taxes on any debt taken on by the government before his birth? Is that what you are proposing?
 
AdamT said:
The elderly have more total wealth but as a rule they have little or no earned INCOME. They rely on the fixed income derived from their wealth to get by.
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Average income for the elderly is approximately $30k a year.
Seeing that their expenses like housing are nearly always 0 and theirs costs to raising children are again, almost 0.

Their effective income level is higher than that of someone with children and paying a mortgage, while working.
 
Conservative said:
What benefits the economy is a growing economy and job creation. Investment capital is designed to do both
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Where is the growing economy and jobs then from the last 10 years of the Bush tax cuts?
 
AdamT said:
Okay, here is how it works. For decades our payroll taxes have exceeded the amount necessary fund SS on a day-to-day basis. So what happens to that surplus? On the one had, Treasury could take that cash money and fill up warehouses with it -- the warehouses of cash. But with inflation, cash naturally loses value over time. So what they do -- by law -- is pay that cash to the Treasury in return for Treasury notes that at least pay some interest. The cash is *converted* into Treasury notes. The treasury notes can be converted back to cash to pay for SS benefits when necessary. The ledger would not be different if they skipped the conversion step, except to the extent that SS would lose the interest payments.
Click to expand...

Do you not understand that a US Treasury Security is a liability on the government's balance sheet? It is an acknowledgement of indebtedness by the issuer of the note to the holder of the note and a promise to repay the principal with interest after a certain amount of time, but in the case of the SS "trust fund", the issuer and the holder of the note, that is, the borrower and the lender, respectively, are the same entity, e.g., the Federal government. That's why it's called "intragovernemntal debt", and debt is not an asset, it's a liability. Cash, on the other hand, is the very definition of an asset, and the most liquid of all assets.

Brian
 
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Harry Guerrilla said:
So do you support the current structure, where the average senior is wealthier and the average less wealthy people should pay for them?
I know before you said you don't like regressive taxes.

Have you changed your stance on this?
Click to expand...

The only way we can reduce our health care costs significantly is the same way every other industrialized nation has reduced their costs, through a single payer system.
 
Catawba said:
Where is the growing economy and jobs then from the last 10 years of the Bush tax cuts?
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GDP grew from 9.9 trillion to 14.4 trillion in 8 years of Bush, name for me any other modern day President that had a 4.5 trillion increase in GDP. You need to stop buying the leftwing rhetoric and get the facts. BEA.gov will give you economic growth numbers. Oh, by the way, Bush had a net job gain, Obama has a net job loss along with a declining labor force with over a million discouraged workers each and every month.
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
No, I'm proposing we make cuts to current programs to balance the budget.
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If writing off our $2.6 trillion dollar debt to seniors and transferring health care costs on those than cannot afford them, I am not interested.
 
Free_Radical said:
Do you not understand that a US Treasury Security is a liability on the government's balance sheet? It is an acknowledgement by the issuer of the note of indebtedness to the holder of the note and a promise to repay the principal with interest after a certain amount of time, but in the case of the SS "trust fund", the issuer and the holder of the note, that is, the borrower and the lender, respectively, are the same entity, e.g., the Federal government. That's why it's called "intragovernemntal debt", and debt is not an asset, it's a liability. Cash, on the other hand, is the very definition of an asset, and the most liquid of all assets.

Brian
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Yes, I do understand that. And so is cash. Capiche? In this case they are not issuing treasuries out of thin air. They are issuing them *in exchange for* cash.
 
Catawba said:
The only way we can reduce our health care costs significantly is the same way every other industrialized nation has reduced their costs, through a single payer system.
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You keep repeating this, but it's just not true.
It doesn't matter how many times you do repeat it.

There are other economic models, which show that you can reduce medical industry expenditures.
 
Conservative said:
GDP grew from 9.9 trillion to 14.4 trillion in 8 years of Bush, name for me any other modern day President that had a 4.5 trillion increase in GDP. You need to stop buying the leftwing rhetoric and get the facts. BEA.gov will give you economic growth numbers. Oh, by the way, Bush had a net job gain, Obama has a net job loss along with a declining labor force with over a million discouraged workers each and every month.
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Yeah, that's what I mean, despite the Bush tax cuts, there was stronger economic growth and more job growth under Clinton when the tax rates were higher, and we didn't end with the biggest Recession since the Great Depression. And our increase of National debt was a fraction of that under the Bush.
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
Yea, that's why I never said that.
How about you form a rebuttal based on what I say, instead of what you make up?
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How about you say something first and then I will rebut it. All you said was you would cut programs to balance the budget.

Edit: wait a minute, you did say earlier that you didn't think taxpayers should have to pay back the money owed to seniors.
 
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Harry Guerrilla said:
You keep repeating this, but it's just not true.
It doesn't matter how many times you do repeat it.

There are other economic models, which show that you can reduce medical industry expenditures.
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I don't know about the only way...I'm not that smart. But one way is to force insurance companies to truly compete in every state...make them accountable via the same anti-trust laws as most other corporations.
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
You keep repeating this, but it's just not true.
It doesn't matter how many times you do repeat it.

There are other economic models, which show that you can reduce medical industry expenditures.
Click to expand...

Not without limiting benefits or access.
 
Catawba said:
How about you say something first and then I will rebut it. All you said was you would cut programs to balance the budget.

Edit: wait a minute, you did say earlier that you didn't think taxpayers should have to pay back the money owed to seniors.
Click to expand...

No I said you shouldn't take out debt in the name of people who have no say.

But I've already made my points, you just keep making all these straw men for me to knock down, instead of being intellectually honest.
It's same ole, same ole with your posting style.

Cut = reducing spending, not eliminating entirely, just so we're clear.
 
Catawba said:
Yeah, that's what I mean, despite the Bush tax cuts, there was stronger economic growth and more job growth under Clinton when the tax rates were higher, and we didn't end with the biggest Recession since the Great Depression. And our increase of National debt was a fraction of that under the Bush.
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What is it about liberalism that creates this kind of loyalty, Clinton didn't have higher GDP growth than Bush thus there wasn't stronger economic growth as bea.gov will show you but you have no interest in anything that refutes your opinions which is all they are.

You saying the same thing over and over again doesn't make it true but it does make you wrong and thus irrelevant.
 
Removable Mind said:
I don't know about the only way...I'm not that smart. But one way is to force insurance companies to truly compete in every state...make them accountable via the same anti-trust laws as most other corporations.
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I want the state to stop mandating non insurable benefits, that I'll never use like, coverage for pregnancy and in vitro.
They seem to be going in the other direction though.
 
Catawba said:
That's right, the general fund owes SS 2.6 Trillion, so you look for ways for the General fund to pay that money back that was taken from the fund we all paid into for retirement insurance. Since a lack of revenues due to the tax cuts for the last 30 years required us to borrow money from SS in the first place, it seems obvious where the money should come from to pay it back.

Sounds like to me you want absolve your responsibility for this money owed to seniors.
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Of course they do. It was the Republicans that squandered tha majority of that fund and now that it's gone they want to take the years of sweat by 100's of millions of workers and reduce it to nothing. What fund? Oh, that's been spent......... we have to start fresh. Sorry it doesn't work that way.
SS was fixed in the 1980's to last forever....except that the huge income disparity has now thrown the calculations off in 25 years or so. The SS withholding money has to be levied on 90% of wages for continued solvency. Raisng the top limit on withholding from $108,000 to $180,000 will be enough to put SS on a firm footing without any benefit cuts.
 
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