Anyone catch an interesting article in the Times today? I'm going to include excerpts here:



There is still more to the article so check out the links. Sorry its so long, I tried to edit some out, but some of it is historic and onformative, and the other stuff is commentary from both sides, so I couldn't find much to cut except a few direct quotes.

My opinion is that it can't, in fact, be fixed with a couploe snips. Nor would I want 13 percent of benefits to be cut. We've already got a pretty skeletal package. So what to do? I don't like the ancouragement of investing in company stock, first and foremost because the employee has to invest in his/her company's stock and that just seems like a one way ticket to lost money (as in can't choose to invest in other companies). I also just think the stock market is super-saturated and there isn't much room for people to profit in it nowadays, especially if they aren't professionals in the field. Well, it used to be a better idea in the fledgling days, but also encouraged valueing a new economic space that I find littole comfort in its foundations and principles.

I don't know, social security is very sticky because it depends on a big increase in population. There always have to be more kids (working members of society) than retirees. Every couple would need to have at least 3-4 children...that's a bad idea as far as sustainable populations. I guess I still think the idea of paying more taxes is better than cutting benefits because that just will continue to widdle down any benefit to the point of why bother? Individual packages as mentioned above (401, etc) are ok, but perhaps than businesses should be required to assist their employees in setting them up? Where I used to work there was a partial matching for 401k plans, but in 2003 they just randomly decided they didn't want to do it anymore, and pulled out of helping employees that had worked for them for decades. I don't agree with that either.

I expect some social responsibility for individual members, but admittedly I'm not sure in what way to act upon that desire. The fact of the matter is the national lifespan peaked over 80 for the first time a few years back, and that includes car accidents, sids, cancer, and everything else that can happen to very young people. Basically, if not cut dramatically short by something like an accident, this generation is going to live to above 90. At this point I'm still interested in paying more taxes rather than seeing benefits cut. I don't like the stock option unless people have the choice to put it anywhere they want, and what happens if they lose moeny (since that is more often the case now).

When it comes to $$$ I'm smart and this is the way to go..

Seriously I do think there are people that could be very frugal their entire lives and still not save up enough to live off of in retirment. I don't know if this is urban myth but my borther told me the new "Bonnie and Clyde"s have been elderly people holding up small (less secured) bank in the midwest because they literally don't have enough money. No business is going to hire you when you're 70, its not worth it for them, so what would a citizen do who has worked here since 20 and who now doesn't have enough money and regardless of desire to work, won't be hired by anyone. Should they just be allowed to rot?

Dolce, so you beleive that old people should be guaranteed a minimum income coming from the younger people, no matter what? I guess those are your moral values, and that's fine. But what I believe is that if everyone was left to their own devices without outside interference, then they would be perfectly capable to save on their own.

Well, you want to have the government to take care of Seoc. Security. Guess what that means? You're trying to *gasp* force your moral values on me.

And let's not forget that Soc. Secuiryt and other wonderful legacies of Roosevelt administration fail the 10th Amendment test miserably.

And of course I find minimum wage repuslive. Not only is the government telling me how much I can or can't pay my workers (even though both I and them are going to the employment arrangement willingly), it's also forcing people who are only qualified for jobs that are less-than-minimum wage into unemployment.

Bush's Crash Test Economics
J. Bradford DeLong
January 14, 2005

Fifteen years ago, the United States was in the midst of what you could call its “Age of Diminished Expectations.” Productivity gains had stalled, energy prices were high, the backlog of potential technologies that originated in the Great Depression had been exhausted, and waning benefits from economies of scale led nearly every economist to project that economic growth would be slower in the future than it had been in the past. With productivity growth stagnating for almost two decades, it made sense back then to argue that the U.S. government’s social-insurance commitments (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) were excessive and so had to be scaled back.

The intervening years have seen an explosion of technological innovation that has carried America’s general productivity growth to new heights. Yet the same calls to scale back America’s social commitments are heard.

Social Security’s actuaries may not have fully recognized the impact of today’s technological revolutions, but they have markedly boosted the scale of the system that the U.S. government can afford. Fifteen years ago, the consensus was that America’s Social Security system was in huge trouble, that it needed the equivalent of an engine rebuild. Today its problems look much more like the equivalent of a slow tire leak: You have to fix it eventually, but it isn’t very hard to do and repair isn’t terribly urgent.

So why is the Bush administration proposing radical changes to the Social Security system? Everyone who worries about America’s weak fiscal position puts Social Security's relatively small funding imbalance far down the list of priorities. The highest priority problem is balancing the overall budget, as the Bush tax cuts have opened Reagan-size deficits that threaten to cripple American economic growth.

The second highest priority is the long-term problem of figuring out what to do with Medicare and Medicaid. America must decide the size of its public health programs and how to finance them. The third most serious problem is the long-run problem of putting the U.S. government’s General Fund budget on a sustainable basis.

If Social Security is a slow tire leak, then the post-2020 General Fund is an urgent brake job, Medicare and Medicaid are a melted transmission, and the budget deficit is the equivalent of having just crashed into a tree.

What kind of driver, owning a car that has just crashed into a tree, has a burned-out transmission, and needs a break job, says, “The most important thing is to fix this slow leak in the right rear tire?” George W. Bush is such a driver.

There are three theories as to why the Bush administration is focusing on Social Security. The first is simple incompetence: Bush and his inner circle simply do not understand the magnitude of America’s other fiscal problems.

The second is ideology. For some reason Bush and his people think it is important to undermine the successes of the New Deal institutions established under Franklin Roosevelt.

The third reason is bureaucratic capture: just as the principal aim of Bush’s Medicare Drug Benefit bill of 2003 was to boost pharmaceutical company profits, so the Bush administration’s Social Security proposal will most likely be tailored to the interests of Wall Street.

If I were a betting man, I would put my money on Bush’s incompetence. After all, that seems to be the common denominator of every policy controlled by his White House.

Your moral values? I'm not telling you what to do with your monthly check am I? I'm not saying you can't spend it on booze, lotto tickets, Hummer payments, or on what type of food!

Your concept of "willing" employment is debateable...ever read Siddhartha? Well my favorite line about fasting is in there, but you know most people can't fast for months. There are probelms with living wage that need to be dealt with but I'm not going to pretend there isn't inherent power in the omployer over the employee that needs to be investigated.

And yes, where I come from we get up off our bus seat for elderly people, everything we enjoy now they put their minds and bodies to so I think we owe a little back.

And to the next post about 50 year olds, etc...what do you say about the handicapped?

Yeah I think if you're 50 or anything else that you should be able to go to the hospital...you know that. My aunt's partner died because they didn't have pcp care (just emergency) so didn't catch his heart condition until too late. That's sick. And the soccer balls is a tough one I'll grant it to you. The saying goes that the only thing worse than being manipulated is not being manipulated at all (or something like that). So I don't have the answer to that and I'll admit it, nor do I think Nike gets a freebie.

Some great ideas there, jb.

Of course you only meant them in jest, but a lot of them are still valid

Not Really Krem, I do mean all of those. I would like to see all of them come to fruition.

Especially I get pissed off when somebody in Florida, Alabama or some shitty coastal community saying this was worse than the last three hurricanes. But with god's grace we will build again. Actually god is telling them just the opposite. If their community is being knocked around every 4 or 5 years, he is telling them get the **ck out of there.