Posted on 07/19/2023 11:34:05 AM PDT by Kaiser8408a
Shot through the heart (of the economy), and they’re to blame. The Fed and Congress give government a bad name.
When I see the faces of Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen and Jerome Powell, all I think of is …. the Minsky Moment brigade!
From Zero debt in 1776 to $21 trillion in 1997 and just in the last 4 years, debt has gone up by that same $21 trillion. This graph shows the debt explosion, a 63x increase.
And then we have Congress promising >$192 trillion in entitlements (wealth transfers) that will likley be added to the already >$32 trillion in Federal debt.
(Excerpt) Read more at confoundedinterest.net ...
Shot through the heart! And you’re to blame, spendthrifts, you give the economy a bad name!
No! I will not give lapsed Catholic and practicing liberal Jon Bon Jovi a penny for those lines!
And what to do. Gold and silver does nothing. Land can be taken willy nilly (happened to me). Cryptos, I don’t know enough about, but after FTX and others seem to be a scam. Seems to me those squatters living in tents and RVS have the right idea.
“Same Amount In Last 4 Years Than It Did In First 221 Years “
Same than? Really? :-)
Not to oversimplify, but tough decisions will need to be made.
Social Security is a big part of the unfunded liabilities. We know that 3 major steps are needed to balance outlays and income of Social Security.
1. Raise the retirement age.
2. Raise taxes
3. Cut benefits
or some combination of these steps.
Every single step is unpopular. But isn’t this what we pay our elected officials to do, to weigh the options involved, and fix problems such as these????
1. Raise the retirement age.
2. Raise taxes
3. Cut benefits
Or, how about we treat SS the way companies took care of their pension plan liability issues? Instead of taking SS from your paycheck and putting in some fictitious 'lockbox'...
You let people invest that into their own 401k/Roth/IRA. Then you wont need government SS to buy your bread and water in retirement.
Who the hell are you? You never paid into the Social Security System weekly for months with your wages for fifty years otherwise you wouldn’t be lumping those payouts into the entitlement/welfare basket. It’s not an entitlement it’s a benefit which workers paid for in hard earned dollar paycheck deductions over the course of their working lives. If it wasn’t managed by a perverse federal government the returns on their original investment would be twice what they are now. You have your goddamned nerve.
Are you pissed off at me????
What do you suggest for fixing the financial problems of Social Security? I outlined three key areas which are likely to be looked at, to fix the financial problems of Social Security.
I have paid into Social Security for over 40 years. So I don’t have the 50 years that you have.
Why do you say I have my goddamned nerve? Did I offend your sensibilities for suggesting that the changes needed to balance things out are tough to deal with???
Or would you prefer that we just never deal with Social Security’s financial problems?
“There’s an infinite amount of cash at the Federal Reserve”
Neel Kashkari of the Minnesota Federal Reserve
> Every single step is unpopular. <
Yes. The only one that might possibly happen is #2, raise taxes. By that I mean they might raise taxes on the “rich”, the rich as defined by communists like AOC and Bernie Sanders.
But I fearlessly predict that no corrective action will be taken. Because no one in DC except Rand Paul cares about deficits. Even Trump doesn’t care.
End result: Hyperinflation, as the Feds turn up the printing presses to pay the bills.
This may well be the “default” position, that the money supply will always be increased to pay promised Social Security benefits.
And this will create inflation. If we simply create more money to pay off Social Security benefits, then the buying power of those benefits will be much less than people expect. Which has the same effect as a cut in benefits.
and 4. Do nothing
but that leads to automatic cuts in the system that will be worse than if we take steps today to fix it.
however politicians can blame the ones that made the rule (probably all dead) and claim it’s not their fault do likely #4 will be selected.
Biden will just wave his magic wand and it will all go away.
Option 2 if it only affects removing or raising the cap on SS wages could be done fairly easily. The rich constantly cry about not paying enough. Here would be their chance.
We Americans put up with this idiocy.
Well, we put up with this, because we haven’t had a SHTF type moment. We have these debt ceiling problems sometimes, but then they get resolved and there is no real SHTF moment.
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