Obama Taking Us Over the Fiscal Cliff As He Proposes MORE Spending

Source all of this bull(*)(*)(*)(*).

 

Governing by extortion. If Congress doesn't take the estate tax proposal, the dead will be taxed at 55% of everything over one million. Not many small businesses have that kind of liquid assets. Banks don't generally give loans to dead people so all I can see is the liquidation of thousands of small family businesses.

 

Paying the bills? How about starting a budget so we can see what bills are being paid. They are so affraid of a budget because they know they are wasteing the taxpayers money.

 

All the left have in mind is raising taxes. You do that and the wealthy are going to get up and go. When that happens its going to result in even more loss of jobs. Keep your hands out of others pockets.

 

The only problem is that Social Security sucks from my perspective. It addressed a symptom of a real problem identified in the 1930's but never addressed the problem. The problem identified was that about 1/2 of American retirees didn't have enough personal assets to provide an income when they retired. Instead of addressing the problem, which was the lack of personal assets, Congress created a welfare program to mitigate the problem by providing income instead. That's why I've repeatedly supported privatizing Social Security which would build personal assets so that Americans didn't need government assistance. The only problem with this is the over 70 years of a welfare program where people haven't been building personal assets so there would need to be a transition from government welfare to personal wealth accumulation that takes decades. The cost of that transition is, based upon my estimates, about $30 trillion over 30 years and that would require new taxation to accomplish. Those like myself that propose privatization also have to provide for the costs which will be about $1 trillion in new government taxation and spending because FICA/Payroll taxes would no longer exist. We also need to address a safety net for privatization but the costs are projected to be minimal for that.

I've not seen either Republicans or Democrats proposing a solution to the Social Security problem. Republcans want to take a poverty level program and cut benefits predominately by cutting spending that would result in retirees slipping deeper and deeper into poverty in the future and Democrats want to start funding it with general tax revenues in the future so that it also creates borrowing which it has never done in the past. Neither of these are solutions.

The real solution, from my perspective, is privatization that builds personal assets and that requires about $30 trillion in new taxation to phase out the existing welfare program. In the end though privatization is good for Americans especially low and middle income earners that would accumulate wealth and it would save many tens of trillions of dollars in future welfare taxation and spending above the $30 trillion in transitional costs.

Additionally, because individuals would have personal wealth providing an income, they could afford private health insurance when they retire ending the need for Medicare as well. The two largest welfare programs in the US would end in about 30 years with the privatization of Social Security but it will cost about $30 trillion in federal expendatures to do it. Nothing happens if we aren't willing to pay the cost.

 

Yes...its just a bump in the road. The only thing is we are rideing on flat tires. We are not going to go much farther if we don't change those tires. And if we don't change...that cliff is going to tumble.

 

Have they proposed replacing the goofy income tax with a VAT yet? Wake me when they do. I'd support that and I think it would actually make a positive difference. Import tariffs on Chinese and perhaps other foreign-made goods as well would be nice, too. We need to build up our economy, and we need to avoid a bureaucratic mess like the IRS and the present tax code.

 

And that rainmaker is soon going to run out of ink for the printing presses to print that money. He better wake up and the people better too.

 

Personally I oppose a value added tax because it creates embedded taxation that the American Taxpayer doesn't see. I prefer a consumption tax with prebates (while opposing the FairTax.org proposal that has already been corrupted by political agendas) which eliminates the need for tariffs because all goods sold in the US would be subject to the same taxation. Tariffs always result in receprical tariffs which would reduce US exports and that's not good for US commerce. A consumption tax on all retail sales of goods doesn't suffer the same negative consequence and levels the playing field between US produced goods and imported goods.

This is merely an inherent problem with the US government not enforcing contract law and the statutory requirements of Title 12 that require the Federal Reserve to redeem Federal Reserver (promissory) notes in "lawful money" which are American Eagle Coins being produced by the US Mint today. If the Federal Reserve was required to redeem a $50 Federal Reserve note with a $50 American Gold Eagle, as is currently require under both contract law and Title 12, then the Federal Reserve wouldn't be able to print unbacked Federal Reserve notes which are actually fraudlent promissory notes being issued with no intent to fulfill the promise.

 

the other issues is those that have saved, often lost everything the first time they were sick and required hospitalization, which is more common in the elderly (thus the reason we have Medicare, the insurance companies did not want to cover them, they were not profitable)

"privatization of Social Security " what happens if they go BK, would they be too big to fail?


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Next time you watch the news...make sure you turn up the volume. It really helps.

 

To bad you don't know what Ubama is trying to do. What a shame.

 

You have that * * * backwards dude. Its Ubama that is ignoring any compromise. Open your eyes once in awhile.

 

Works for me. I'd be fine with them NOT being paid, actually.

 

Nah, they still have to live.

 

Never looked at it as extortion until now, its a sleazy move by Democrats but my perspective is a little different. They want to raise taxation similar to socialist Europe where everyone pays over 50 percent of their income in taxes for welfare expenditures, yet they can't say it to the public or face the poor ratings by the middle class.

So they 'extort' Republicans with higher tax rates on the rich, and if Republicans should refuse and go over the fiscal cliff they would not take the blame because of class warfare they created between middle class and rich, and that would mean more revenue or higher taxes from everyone rich and middle class alike.

It is a good strategy, win win either way for them.

 

This is historically inaccurate as the problem identified in the 1960's was not denial of coverage but instead the inability of 1/2 of the population to be able to afford the health insurance because they didn't have the personal assets to generate the income required (the identical problem identified in the 1930's when Social Security was created but the problem was not addressed, just the symptom of a lack of income).

We can also note that many private health insurance companies, especially under the Blue Cross / Blue Shield program are not-for-profit enterprises so there isn't the profit motive that many like to cite as being a problem with private insurance.

I did mention a safety net but it probably wouldn't be required because the proposition being put forward doesn't exist in reality based upon what a privatized Social Security account would be. It would be based upon mutual funds that are diversified and age-adjusted so even the failure of some of the component enterprises would not adversely affect the individual because they would represent a very small percentage of the investment portfolio. Additionally the investment experts for the investment companies are not likely to select potential failures because they're competing for billions of dollars in investment capital.

Historically there has never been a case where "diversified and age-adjusted" private investment plans for retirement have ever failed. The key is obviously "diversified and age-adjusted" private invesment accounts. I don't recall exactly but I believe that the S&P 500, which includes all of the S&P 500 corporations both good and bad, has a historical return on investment of something like 9.8%. And while retirement investment accounts are very long term spanning up to 45-50 years even during the short time period between 2001 and 2010, which included our most recent major recession, the average 401K still had a return on investment of over 8% and they've gone up considerably since then.

The problem isn't with privatization which promises five times or more in retirement income based upon historical investment data but instead the roughly $30 trillion to phase out a welfare program and replace it with personal wealth accumulation. Privatization requires the funds currently being collected in FICA/Payroll taxes so that revenue is lost to the government but it still has to pay Social Security benefits for the next 30 years for those where it's too late to begin investing long term for retirement. Privatization would require about $1 trillion a year in additional general revenues to make it happen. That is the only real problem with making the change but in the long run Americans would be far better off.