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To: qam1
No matter what fix we're talking about - partial privatization, raising the retirement age, means testing so millionaires forfeit benefits, tying benefits to inflation rather than wages, etc. - the most ferocious opposition comes from the demographic that won't be affected either way by any proposal being discussed at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue: Americans already 55 and over.

Stated as simply as possible, the overwhelming majority of them are functional morons. If ever there is a minimum standard required to participate in the workings of government, as in voting, most of them would be disqualified.

And they all vote.

Any wonder at the sad transformation of our country into a prosperous "third world"?
Our country continues to survive in spite of them. How, I am still mystified about.
Save your flames. I are one of them, in the clear minority.

34 posted on 05/25/2005 9:14:04 AM PDT by Publius6961 (The most abundant things in the universe are hydrogen, ignorance and stupidity.)
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To: Publius6961; qam1

It's the FDR / New Deal worship factor. In reality, when the Great Depression started, even Hoover did not have the stones to let all the bad debt work itself out and to resist the temptation of heavy government involvement in the crisis. FDR, seeing his opportunity, given all of the poorly financially educated minions who had leveraged themselves into the hole during the unreal days of horrible P/E ratios, knew that he could build on the already established interventionist tactics of Hoover and turn the whole thing into "economic rescue by government" on steroids. In fact, Hoover's small intervention made things worse, and FDR's major intervention made things FAR worse. But the people, now sensing something wholly new, namely, the US government interjecting itself right into the core of the economy, had their quick fix of entitlements and so was the "gimme" culture born.

FDR then went on to overspend socially and underspend militarily, setting the stage for the near defeat of the US and UK during the outset of the hottest (2nd) phase of WW2, and thereby manufactured yet another crisis which would call for even MORE government intervention. By the time the war was over, the "Greatest Generation" as well as the teenaged Silent Generation and the toddling earlist Boomers had been conditioned to accept socialism lite as well as the whole idea of a government "final safety net" to protect them from any future sudden major equity adjustments.

What a mess.


56 posted on 05/25/2005 9:56:07 AM PDT by GOP_1900AD (Stomping on "PC," destroying the Left, and smoking out faux "conservatives" - Take Back The GOP!)
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