Unemployment falls below 9%

[Random]

Thanks for the correction. The larger point remains: people who paid almost nothing into the system collected benefits for the rest of their lives. SS was never based on individual contributions. It's a tax. Like any other ponzi scheme, continued benefits will require an ever expanding pool of contributors.

No. It's entirely possible to design a Social Security program that will last indefinitely with a fixed demographic population. If the number of people over 65 and the number of people under 65 never changed, and wages stayed fixed, you could make a Social Security payout formula that would last forever. Taxes might be higher and payouts lower than in a system with an expanding population, but there is no fundamental reason why you couldn't do it.

With people living longer and reproductive rates falling, the system requires immigrants. At some point, those brown people will realize that they have children and parents of their own to support and they never made those promises to those old white people.

That's why Social Security is not voluntary. Ponzi schemes fail because they offer an unsustainable rate of return to lure in investors. If they offered low but sustainable rates of return, no one would invest and the scheme would never get off the ground. Social Security doesn't have to worry about luring in investors, the government can just force people to pay in.

It cannot last.

Sure it can. Its already lasted 75 years. No real reason it can't last another 75.

 

[leftysergeant]

Why should "early education" apply only to academic subjects?

That helps them expand the data base upon which they make life decisions. Teach them to read simple instructions and enough arithmetic to do whatever measurements they need to do for their jobs and they never will learn history, biology, the arts or most of those things that contribute to critical thinking skills. In other words, they will turn into nice programable robots who can be trained to parrot the kind of crap you are trying to sell us.

Also, their hands are smaller, so maybe better suited to certain kinds of veterinary work.

Or hand-knot expensive carpets like they do in India and Pakistan, probably for about one tenth of what the value that their labor produces for some fat capitalist. Too bad that they will not have learned enough skills to get a high-tech job when their growing hands get too big to tie those tiny little knots.

What you propose is open to a lot of abuses. Who is going to decide which child takes which courses, whether academic or vocational?

What do you want to bet that non-white kids are going to be pushed to take the vocational courses?

They're lighter, so better suited to work aloft. Robert Fitzroy went to sea at 14. David Farragut joined the US Navy at 9, went to sea at 11, and commanded his first ship at 15.

Of course, at that point in our history, if a working man (or boy) was killed on the job, the bosses just said "**** happens," paid a small death benefit, like a box of groceries, to the family and hired some other expendable person to replace him.

Over my dead body.

 

[leftysergeant]

Thanks for the correction. The larger point remains: people who paid almost nothing into the system collected benefits for the rest of their lives.

So? The idea was to relieve the immediate suffering of those no longer able to recover from the losses they suffered in the crash of the ecconomy and to protect the able-bodied from winding up in that condition the next time the capitalists decided to let the ecconomy tank and start all over again.

SS was never based on individual contributions.

More mushroom food.

It's a tax.

Wrong again, dude. It's a mandatory insurance premium.

Like any other ponzi scheme, continued benefits will require an ever expanding pool of contributors.

Nope. Just lift the cap on the amount of income that the smaller, more productive work force pays.

With people living longer and reproductive rates falling, the system requires immigrants. At some point, those brown people will realize that they have children and parents of their own to support and they never made those promises to those old white people. It cannot last.

Stop with the mushroom food already. We can't keep the people we have here already working, so why do we need more people (unless it is to drive down the price of labor?)

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Wrong again, dude. It's a mandatory insurance premium.

Politicians sold Old Age and Survivors Insurance (aka "Social Security) as "insurance". Some religious sect objected that compelling them to buy insurance violated their freedom of religion (Betting against God?). A court ruled that Social security is a tax.

Stop with the mushroom food already.

Charming, isn't it, how socialists argue?

We can't keep the people we have here already working, so why do we need more people (unless it is to drive down the price of labor?)

The total human contribution to a country's "wealth" is aggregate GDP. Aggregate GDP is the sum of individual productivity. Any individual sitting on the sidelines reduces aggregate GDP. Child labor laws have the same impact on aggregate GDP that laws against, say, blacks practicing medicine or against women practicing carpentry would have.

 

[BenBurch]

...
Sure it can. Its already lasted 75 years. No real reason it can't last another 75.

But the Right need to MAKE it fail because they need the talking point.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

What you propose is open to a lot of abuses.¹ Who is going to decide which child takes which courses, whether academic or vocational?²

1. This isn't abuse?
I recommend Hyman and Snook, Toxic Schools. In Hawaii, juvenile arrests fall when school is not in session. Juvenile hospitalizations for human-induced trauma fall when school is not in session.
Clive Harber,
"Schooling as Violence"
Educatioinal Review p. 10, V. 54, #1.

"...It is almost certainly more damaging for children to be in school than to out of it. Children whose days are spent herding animals rather than sitting in a classroom at least develop skills of problem solving and independence while the supposedly luckier ones in school are stunted in their mental, physical, and emotional development by being rendered pasive, and by having to spend hours each day in a crowded classroom under the control of an adult who punishes them for any normal level of activity such as moving or speaking."

Clive Harber
"Schooling as Violence"
Educatioinal Review, p. 9 V. 54, #1.

Furthermore, according to a report for UNESCO, cited in Esteve (2000), the increasing level of pupil-teacher and pupil-pupil violence in classrooms is directly connected with compulsory schooling. The report argues that institutional violence against pupils who are obliged to attend daily at an educational centre until 16 or 18 years of age increases the frustration of these students to a level where they externalise it.

"I'm sorry I have so much rage, but you put it in me." --Dylan Klebold
2. Inevitably, for each child, some adult decides how that child will spend the days between birth and age 18. According to Gandhi, parents are the natural teachers of their own children. The only people who benefit from compulsory attendance statutes and the policy which reserves to schools operated by dues-paying members of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel an exclusive position in receipt of the taxpayers' sub-adult education subsidy are system insiders. Students, parents, taxpayers, and many real classroom teachers lose.

What do you want to bet that non-white kids are going to be pushed to take the vocational courses?

They'll earn more than the white child of privilege who attends school for 18 years and leaves with $100,000 in debt and a useless MS in Victim Studies. It wasn't plumbers and carpenters who created the current worldwide economic meltdown.

 

[Trakar]

Politicians sold Old Age and Survivors Insurance (aka "Social Security) as "insurance". Some religious sect objected that compelling them to buy insurance violated their freedom of religion (Betting against God?). A court ruled that Social security is a tax...

FICA is a tax

SSI is insurance

FICA is a tax that all workers are obligated to pay to fund a federal insurance system that will benefit those who pay into the system, deserve its benefits and apply for those benefits.

 

[BenBurch]

FICA is a tax

SSI is insurance

FICA is a tax that all workers are obligated to pay to fund a federal insurance system that will benefit those who pay into the system, deserve its benefits and apply for those benefits.

And the alternative is old people trying to survive on cat food and worse. Let's keep that in mind, too!

 

[Manopolus]

Why do family farms "need" subsidization? Why are family-operated restaurants "better"?

OK, I've got this one. Someone that owns a small business doesn't need employment from a huge corporate entity that constantly reduces prices in an attempt to put its smaller competitors out of business... and often puts itself out of business or reduces employment as a result.

In other words, if there are more small businesses, fewer "jobs" are needed, and fewer jobs are at risk when/if the business fails.

--which is why I'm damn glad to live in a small rural area with little corporate presence in these trying times (or at least in a place where the corporations are smaller). Actually, my local area is doing quite well economically.

...and oddly enough, most small farmers I know are against farm subsidies, as they tend to help the huge corporate entities more than they do the small farmer. So yeah, they don't actually work... except in cases of drought or other crop failure, where some of the government farm policies help a little.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

SSI is insurance

A Federal court disagrees.
More broadly, any State-mandated surrender of wealth to which a person has title is a tax. Corvee labor is a tax.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

OK, I've got this one. Someone that owns a small business doesn't need employment from a huge corporate entity that constantly reduces prices in an attempt to put its smaller competitors out of business... and often puts itself out of business or reduces employment as a result.

In other words, if there are more small businesses, fewer "jobs" are needed.

You contend that employment in small business is more secure? Sounds unlikely to me.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

And the alternative is old people trying to survive on cat food and worse. Let's keep that in mind, too!

Another option: saving during their productive years. Yet another option: educating their children well and passing the family business to heirs. Yet another option: joining a mutual-aid society. Why suppose that the largest dealer in interpersonal violence in your area (the government) will outperform these other options? The State has no assets to distribute beyond those it first takes from productive people.

 

[Manopolus]

You contend that employment in small business is more secure? Sounds unlikely to me.

In a specific instance, no. As an overall system made up of smaller entities, yes. One huge corporation failing can't bring an entire region down to its knees if there is no huge corporation. Admittedly, the concept doesn't apply to chains of small restaurants vs privately owned ones... there's essentially no difference there (except for in places where the supply for the restaurant chain is a major contributor to the economy, if it's localized). I guess I'm talking more of industry, here.

 

[leftysergeant]

Why suppose that the largest dealer in interpersonal violence in your area (the government) will outperform these other options?

Because it always has. Learn US history, Mr. Hoover.

 

[leftysergeant]

<mindless, confused twaddle snipped>

This is not even a rational argument against public schools. It totally leaves out the role of the deterioration of society as a whole as the GOP and Libetarians tear the school system and the working class family to pieces to make them more subject to the will of the investor class in creating this condidtion.

They'll earn more than the white child of privilege who attends school for 18 years and leaves with $100,000 in debt and a useless MS in Victim Studies. It wasn't plumbers and carpenters who created the current worldwide economic meltdown.

Dog whistle mushroom food.

"They're black. They aint got what it takes to be doctors and engineers or CEOs anyway."

Go find somebody who just fell off the short yellow bus. We don't need that superstitious twaddle.

 

[BenBurch]

Another option: saving during their productive years. Yet another option: educating their children well and passing the family business to heirs. Yet another option: joining a mutual-aid society. Why suppose that the largest dealer in interpersonal violence in your area (the government) will outperform these other options? The State has no assets to distribute beyond those it first takes from productive people.

You got no idea how life works, apparently.

I know people who saved their whole lives who lost pretty much all of it in the 2008 downturn. They didn't want to depend on SS, but now they have to. I supposed you'd rather they die.

 

[Trakar]

A Federal court disagrees.
More broadly, any State-mandated surrender of wealth to which a person has title is a tax. Corvee labor is a tax.

Again you conflate FICA with SSI

Social Security is a social insurance program that is primarily funded through dedicated payroll taxes called Federal Insurance Contributions Act tax (FICA). Tax deposits are formally entrusted to the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, the Federal Disability Insurance Trust Fund, the Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, or the Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode42/usc_sec_42_00000401----000-.html

...The amounts appropriated by clauses (3) and (4) of this subsection shall be transferred from time to time from the general fund in the Treasury to the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, and the amounts appropriated by clauses (1) and (2) of subsection (b) of this section shall be transferred from time to time from the general fund in the Treasury to the Federal Disability Insurance Trust Fund, such amounts to be determined on the basis of estimates by the Secretary of the Treasury of the taxes, specified in clauses (3) and (4) of this subsection, paid to or deposited into the Treasury; and proper adjustments shall be made in amounts subsequently transferred to the extent prior estimates were in excess of or were less than the taxes specified in such clauses (3) and (4) of this subsection. All amounts transferred to either Trust Fund under the preceding sentence shall be invested by the Managing Trustee in the same manner and to the same extent as the other assets of such Trust Fund...

SSI is paid from the general fund, the FICA taxes are calculated to meet these funding requirements. SSI is not a tax, FICA is a payroll tax.

 

[leftysergeant]

The State has no assets to distribute beyond those it first takes from productive people.

That just gave me a great idea. Instead of taxing worker to pay for SS, take it from the non-productive people like the Koch roaches and the Walton larvae or Rupert Murdoch.

 

[BenBurch]

That just gave me a great idea. Instead of taxing worker to pay for SS, take it from the non-productive people like the Koch roaches and the Walton larvae or Rupert Murdoch.

Well, if we had a 50% tax on all capital gains not on a personal first or second home, we could close the books on the debt in just a few years.

 

[Trakar]

And the alternative is old people trying to survive on cat food and worse. Let's keep that in mind, too!

Even more importantly, let's look at the situation that gave birth to SSI, namely daily pickup crews that would have to travel around cities every morning (rather like garbage collection crews) picking up the bodies of deceased elderly indigent people who couldn't afford housing or food, poor farms, family and community burdens, etc.,. I see no good reason to return to the conditions that fostered this state of affairs.

http://books.google.com/books?id=15...=PA16#v=onepage&q=Social Security Act&f=false