“Astonishing,” says [Tennessee Democrat Jim] Cooper of the new president’s avowed determination to confront the crisis. Leadership, says Cooper, who has seen precious little of it concerning entitlements, enlarges the number of “things that can be talked about.” Such as the Social Security payroll tax, which Cooper would cut for several stimulative years from 12.4 percent to 8 percent. It suppresses job creation, is raising more revenue than Social Security is dispensing and will continue to do so until 2017.
Cooper wishes more Americans were similarly eccentric and would read the 188-page 2008 Financial Report of the United States Government ”“ the only government document that calculates what deficit and debt numbers would be if the government practiced, as businesses must, accrual accounting.
Under such accounting, the deficit for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 would have been $3 trillion rather than $454.8 billion. The report’s numbers show that the true national debt is $56 trillion, not the widely reported $10 trillion.
yes, this is why people in their 30s and 40s have little confidence we will ever see the $$ we are shoveling into SS. It’s a Ponzi scheme: http://www.cnbc.com/id/28241636
All too true I fear.
Why is Bernie Madoff’s scheme a crime, but Social Security is not?
The difference between a Ponzi scheme and Social Security is that, in a Ponzi scheme you get suckered in by your own greed, while Social Security uses guns (the coercive power of the entire government) to force you into the scheme.
One might avoid a Ponzi scheme by wise choices. One cannot avoid the Social Security rip off. The demographic bulge known as Baby Boomers ensures that no corrective political solution will be provided. If there is one thing that can be counted on with the Baby Boomer generation, it is that narccistic self-interest will trump all else. I am sure, quite sure, that there are many exceptions to that generalization about the Baby Boomers, but I observe no move to repair Social Security to date that will prevent a reduction in benefits for my generation which follows them in retirement. I believe that it is estimated that Social Security will only be able to pay about 70% of the “promised” benefits to my generation. I see no initiative by the Boomers to correct this situation.
We could compromise and split the “pain”. Current and immediate-future retirees of the Boomer generation could forgo half or a quarter of their annual COLA increases until the future benefit gap is closed.
Anything on the horizon?
I thought not.
Short term, they will try to fix the problem by expanding the tax base. Immigrant amnesty will be rammed thru during the Obama administration in the hope of getting more payroll tax revenue from the expanded work force. The problem with this approach is that immigrants get old and sick too, and many will prefer their current off-the-books status to paying the nursing home bills for stupid old Americans. Mass immigration will also change (is changing) the character and culture of what was previously an Anglo-Saxon and Protestant nation. Outside the Anglosphere, it’s civil law jurisprudence rather than common law. This leads to very different ideas about property rights. Point being, the ethos that produced the prosperity (and paradoxically the welfare state albatross) of the American nation will disappear.
Long term, the choice will be between drastically reducing entitlements or hyperinflation. The government will probably try to save itself by doing the former, in which event most people will just stop paying taxes, like they don’t in Italy.
Grumpy mood today.
Thanks for the cheerful pick-up, Byzantine! 🙂
Hi Byzantine,
I think your analysis is quite correct. I would add to that picture the continued balkanization of our country by those refusing to assimilate. There will also be a dramatic increase in crime, pressed forward by narco-terrorist gangs and the further corruption of police and government officials by the corrosive effects of drug money.
Europeans will fare worse. Their demographics ensure that Europe will be Islamic within the next 40 years. Sharia law will be the order of the day. Women will walk 5 paces behind the men, wear burkas, and be denied education and freedom of movement. Multiculutralism will come to a screaching halt as the new order takes control.
What’s left of America/Aztlan will be standing alone…facing a radicalized Islamic Europe with nuclear weapons. Our globalized and right sized manufacturing base will be nearly completely gone. Our currency will be (is already) at the mercy of the Communist Chinese. We will abandon Israel.
Of course, that’s all paranoid rubbish. Party on! Pay no attention to the sloping of the deck or the release of lifeboats. Listen to the fine band and enjoy the evening air as you dance the night away.
Sick & Tired,
I’m equally worried about the Balkanization of the country by those who are already here: namely, the some 60% (and doubtless growing) of Americans who no longer pay taxes, and, therefore, no longer have any reason for true civic engagement. On the other hand, they do have a powerful incentive to maintain their status quo, which, given the topic at hand, will require increasingly confiscatory and punitive measures aimed at the minority funding the slop in the pig trough. Atlas Shrugs, anyone?
[blockquote]Why is Bernie Madoff’s scheme a crime, but Social Security is not? [/blockquote]
Social Security is being run by people with guns, and the color of law to use them.
Goodness me. I hardly recognize Europe from the ravings I sometimes come across on this site from across the pond ( # 7 above). I would begin to argue factually but then again, facts never convinced someone whose mind was made up beforehand. Now where did I put that Koran …
In fairness Terry, he speaks of Europe in 2050, not 2009. Childbearing at less than the replacement rate will have demographic consequences at some point.
Hi Terry Tee,
Fact: European Total fertility rate is 1.5 children born/woman (2008 est. CIA World Factbook)
Fact: The European death rate (10.39 deaths/1,000 population )exceeds the European birth rate (10.25 births/1,000 population).
Source: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ee.html
Fact: Sharia law has been spreading in the United Kingdom and the Islamic law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts now (since September 2008) given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.
Sources:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1535478/Sharia-law-is-spreading-as-authority-wanes.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7232661.stm
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1031611/Sharia-law-SHOULD-used-Britain-says-UKs-judge.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article4749183.ece
Fact: Islam is the second largest religion in the UK.
Fact: 15 to 20 million Muslims now live in Europe home (about 4%-5% of the total population). In France, the Muslim population is between 7% – 10%.
Fact: The National Intelligence Council projects that Europe’s Muslim population will double by 2025.
Source: http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050701faessay84409/robert-s-leiken/europe-s-angry-muslims.html
http://www.newsweekly.com.au/articles/2006jun24_i.html
http://www.pamun.org/www.pamun.org/ga.pdf
So, like I said, I was just spouting paranoid rubbish. Pay no attention. Keep dancing.
I ran for Congress in 1994 on a platform of fiscal disciple and return to constitutional restraint for the federal government. My warning was precisely what Mr. Will writes of today: That entitlements would swallow the budget unless trimmed or eliminated. For this I was derided as an “extremist,” primarily by the Democratic incumbant and his prostrate acolytes in the local press.
Well, who’s the extremist now?
Q: Why is Bernie Madoff’s scheme a crime, but Social Security is not?
A: the same reason that we cannot go up to a person on the street and demand a redistribution of wealth, but the government can and does every day. The force of Governmental Regulation.
#13 – did you run against Gephardt or Clay (IIRC, you are from St. Louis)? As you know, those guys were in such safe seats even the 1994 Republican landslide barely affected them.
Hi again Terry Tee,
I forgot this link: http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/19969/
[b]Muslim population ‘rising 10 times faster than rest of society’ in Britain[/b]
“The Muslim population in Britain has grown by more than 500,000 to 2.4 million in just four years, according to official research collated for The Times.
The population multiplied 10 times faster than the rest of society, the research by the Office for National Statistics reveals. In the same period the number of Christians in the country fell by more than 2 million.
Experts said that the increase was attributable to immigration, a higher birthrate and conversions to Islam during the period of 2004-2008, when the data was gathered.”
But do not worry. I am easily dismissed as someone subject to “ravings” and one that has an inability to let facts influence my mind (because I made it up beforehand). Still, it would have been nice if you had at least begun to argue factually, rather than just impugning my character. Well, God bless.