Posted on 06/03/2010 11:15:13 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The United States Supreme court ruled to have prayer removed from schools in 1962; Roe was in 1973, Sodomy laws in 2003...
We should put the blame where is belongs: socialists who want to replace God and family with big government.
I won’t be shedding tears over very many of you passing. Please get on with that already. The ways you have collectively twisted this country into a libidinous, licentious, perverted and financially screwed semi-Mexican wasteland are innumerable.
How dare you speak like an adult? It is more fun and much easier to blame boomers who never participated in the Woodstock culture.
You know, those folks who worked hard, were responsible and conservative.
It is always foolish to blame a whole generation. It is smart to blame those who really are to blame.
“Since no such reforms are ever likely, I look forward to the Greek Government being forced to sell the Parthenon — and to Oxford and Cambridge being turned into luxury old people’s homes.”
I’m good with the stuff about Oxford and Cambridge. Why don’t we throw in the Ivy League and Berkeley also.
Actually, if you read Megatrends 2000, those authors attribute the start of the 'babyboom' generation to 1942. Because that is just after when the first wave of WW2 soldiers went off to war.
None of the men who walked on the moon were Baby Boomers. IIRC, the youngest of those guys was born in 1943.
“I don’t know about England but here in the States, it was the Baby Boomers that built this country and made it one of the most powerful, must economically sound and most peaceful Nations in the world. Look at the country now. It’s not the Baby Boomers that are running it and tearing it down.”
I’m pretty sure youngsters, minorities, lawyers, quants, bankers and public employee union members elected the Obaminator. No doubt some were boomers. But the yutes went disproportionately for the bad guy who wants to make all of these inter-generational problems worse.
I have to agree because millions of 'babyboomers' have paid into the system and have been employed for all of their lives.
The problem actually began under Johnson because he, with a democrat Congress, changed the 'trust fund' from being that and moved it into the 'general fund'.
Why? Because there was a big pot of money accumulated and they wanted to spend it. Also, every year since then Congress, both parties, have spent the surpluses that SS generated. All the while they have been telling us SS need to be 'reformed'. Code word for screwing all of us.
“No no. It was very clearly enunciated by Glenn Beck: there were the guys who went to the moon; and there were the guys and gals who went to Woodstock.”
They not only went to Woodstock, they went into politics, journalism and education. That odious lot from the boomers is resposible for most of the mess we are in today.
It’s my understanding that the Feds owe SS $2.5 Trillion. They need to pay it back before spending any more of the countries tax money on anything. But.....we all know that this administration won’t do that.
That is mine as well. But, Congress in its inimitable wisdom, not wanting to be accused of stealing, had Treasury issued 'non-negotiable' bonds for each amount of surplus that they confiscated. My Representative, Doc Hastings, admitted in a letter my wife received that Congress used the surpluses to reduce the spending debt each and every year.
P.S. You all know what a 'non-negotiable' bond is worth? Nothing!!!!!!!!!
Excellent point, and that doesn’t include the influence of contraception. Also, declining birth rates due to couples delaying procreation. It all adds up. It’s all related, imho.
We don't talk about it much, but a lot of our space program was braintrusted by Nazi scientists we sneaked out of Germany after WWII.
If Hitler hadn't led Germany to total destruction, it's scary how advanced they would be today. IIRC, much of our stealth technology was based on early German research.
There is no way we can eventually pay our social security obligations without considering some sort of privatization scheme.
Bush wanted to propose this early on in his second term but could not do it because his political capital was spent on Iraq and he had little or no support from his own party ( at that time, the economy was booming and nobody felt any sense of urgency).
The country of Chile realized this problem over 25 years ago.
They knew then that cosmetic changes—increasing the retirement age, increasing taxes—would not be enough. Chile understood that the pay-as-you-go system had a fundamental flaw, one rooted in a false conception of how human beings behave. That flaw was lack of a link between what people put into their pension program and what they take out. In a government system, contributions and benefits are unrelated because they are defined politically, by the power of pressure groups.
So they decided to go in the other direction, to link benefits to contributions. The money that a worker pays into the system goes into an account that is owned by the worker. They called the idea a “capitalization scheme.”
So, they decided that the minimum contribution should be 10 percent of wages. But workers may contribute up to 20 percent. The money contributed is deducted from the worker’s taxable income. The money is invested by a private institution, and the returns are untaxed. By the time a worker reaches retirement age—65 for men, 60 for women—a sizable sum of capital has accumulated in the account. At retirement the worker transforms that lump sum into an annuity with an insurance company. He can shop among different insurance companies to find the plan that best suits his personal and family situation. (He pays taxes when the money is withdrawn but usually at a lower rate than he would have paid when he was working.)
A worker can contribute more than 10 percent if he wants a higher pension or if he wants to retire early. Individuals have different preferences: some want to work until they are 85; others want to go fishing at 55, or 50, or 45, if they can. The uniform pay-as-you-go social security system does not recognize differences in individual preferences. In my country, those differences had led to pressure on the congress to legislate different retirement ages for different groups. As a result, we had a discriminatory retirement-age system. Blue-collar workers could retire at 65; white-collar workers could retire more or less at 55; bank employees could retire after 25 years of work; and the most powerful group of all, those who make the laws, the congressmen, were able to retire after 15 years of work.
Under Chile’s system, you don’t have to pressure anyone. If you want to retire at 55, you go to one of the pension-fund companies and sit in front of a user-friendly computer. It asks you at what age you want to retire. Say You answer 55. The computer then does some calculations and says that you must contribute 12.1 percent of your income to carry out your plan. You then go back to your employer and instruct him to deduct the appropriate amount. Workers thus translate their personal preferences into tailored pension plans. If a worker’s pension savings are not enough at the legal retirement age, the government makes up the difference from general tax revenue.
The system is managed by competitive private companies called AFPs (from the Spanish for pension fund administrators). Each AFP operates the equivalent of a mutual fund that invests in stocks, bonds, and government debt. The AFP is separate from the mutual fund; so if the AFP goes bankrupt, the assets of the mutual fund—that is, workers’ investments—are not affected. The regulatory board takes over the fund and asks the workers to change to another AFP. Not a dime of the workers’ money is touched in the process. Workers are free to change from one AFP to another. That creates competition among the companies to provide a higher return on investment and better customer service, or to charge lower commissions.
Chile’s government began by assuring every retired worker that the state would guarantee his pension; he had absolutely nothing to fear from the change.
Pension reform should not damage those who have contributed all their lives. If that takes a constitutional amendment, so be it.
Second, the workers already in the workforce, who had contributed to the state system, were given the option of staying in the system even though they thought its future was problematic. Those who moved to the new system received what we call a “recognition bond,” which acknowledges their contributions to the old system. When those workers retire, the government will cash the bonds.
New workers have to go into the new private system because the old system is bankrupt. Thus, the old system will inevitably die on the day that the last person who entered that system passes away. On that day the government will have no pension system whatsoever. The private system is not a complementary system; it is a replacement that they believe is more efficient.
Needless to say, the transition, after 25 years of looking back at it, can be called a success. Their system is SOLVENT.
My dad is 59 and has been paying FICA since 1968. He has never taken a dime from any level of the government. I want to see him get back what he put in. Those of my generation who want to screw the boomers lack character.
That is true, but Congress has to fess up to the fact that they have been stealing the so-called trust fund to make the deficit look smaller for the past two generations. We can't just say, "Oh, well." "It's bankrupt." Then just forgive everything and move on.
There has to be some accountability somewhere. Someone has to step up to the podium and say to the American people, "We have been stealing your retirement funds to finance our little schemes that give money to those who don't work and earn money."
The time for forgiveness is past as far a I am concerned!!!
So how do we get the money back? Yank the cocaine out of Barney Frank's nose and sell it back to the distributor?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.