The States are going bankrupt

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Of course, upper management pays itself whatever it wishes, or what it can get away with. To accomplish this they screw over the rank-and-file employee, who then becomes resentful of government employees who they see as "riding the graveytrain" while their corporate managers enjoy their lives at 10 different country clubs paid for by the corporation. Is it any wonder that stockholders are suing their Board of Dircetors, who are nothing more than corporate lackeys?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38696064/ns/business-us_business/

40 million dollars, for being fired. And people complain about teacher's pensions. What a disgrace.

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...And people wonder why there is no money for basic services, whether it's from a corporation, or the government. The more I see this, the more I'm convinced that the bailouts were a mistake. The government should have just nationalized the banks that were in default.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40795080/ns/business/

 

... but that would have been Socialism and you'd be living in a Gulag now, guarded by unionized goons!

Nationalised banks would have inevitably failed. That is so, because unlike anything done by the inevitably successful private sector, think of Bear Stearns, WorldCom or ENRON, the government is deterministically doomed to fail in anything it does!

Just think of the Iraq war ... oh wait ... that is conducted by the inevitably successful military (the only thing the government ever does well is killing people) which means that the Iraq war was a victory ('mission accomplished' - which is why it today has a staunchly pro-Iranian regime). If the military ever fails, it is because they have been stabbed in the back by greedy, self-serving and backstabbing leaders (a species unheard of in corporate America, or the military for that matter), and we all know how they suck, and, well, backstab.

 

Ok, Ragusa. Amazing as it may sound, you have actually educated me. I had no idea where the 'taxes are bad' ideology came from, nor how pernicious it was. I now find, on this point at least, that I'm in complete agreement with you. The Dems do the same thing in those that want to enact a socialist state through government handouts, but I have yet to see that ideology enact a takeover of the party as a whole. It's still a minority opinion in the Dems.

I also think this qualifies as a suitible 'last straw'. I officially consider myself Independent from now on. Mind you, I'm still thoroughly conservative, but I much prefer logic to ideology. It just works better.

No, no, Ragusa. You missed it. The Iraqi war made extensive use of private contractors. That is why it was such an unmitigated success. I'm honestly disappointed that you missed this.

 

Oh, this is going to sweeten my grog Cheers

 

That is a case study. Rummy set out to "prove" that the private sector could conduct both war and policy BETTER than the government and he quickly applied his "private sector" management style, which he had gained from years of experience in the corporate world, to the Pentagon and the Iraq War. In the process he fired any general who dared to disagree with the way in which the war was conducted, bringing in loads of private contractors and ignoring the advice of generals, such as Collin Powell, who warned that war could not be conducted like a corporate strategy. Is it any wonder that near the end, Powell could not even stand to be in the same room with Rummy?

I was not until Rummy was canned and the troop surge was conducted, which the generals had been begging for, that real headway was made in the War in Iraq. So much for the private sector war machine.

 

An example how things can go wrong when you privatize social security is Russia. After the Soviet Union collapsed and they privatized everything and their mother they also reformed (scrapped) the old pension system and obviously the Russian ruble and the markets took a dive when the Soviet Union fell, meaning that pensions are now worth dust in Russia. This is also why the elderly are the main support of the communists over there and why there are retired people there living in poverty.

To me it's really a question of who do you trust more, the government or the market forces and banks. It's a bit like choosing over two layers of hell really. If all goes well they'll both screw you over in a similar scenario to the one in Russia.

 

SS has been one of the most successful government programs over the last 75 years. It works. Working people pay into to it all their lives and they expect that the money will be their for them when they are done. It is their money. Politicians don't mess with it. Why? Because they know that old people vote, and they are scared to death of them. Do you think the market gives a damn what happens to those people, ultimately?

 

One under-publicized point on the tax deal that Obama cut with the Republicans is that SS payroll taxes will be reduced by 2% in 2011. I know we're getting near the tipping point on SS, where the money going out will exceed the money coming in. I cannot help but think that by reducing the SS tax by 2%, we will accelerate that process.

 

I'm not sure I agree with that assesment that it has been successful. People like it, but a success? The problem with social security and medicare is that they were originally created when life expectancy was much shorter. Now people are expecting to work for 40 years and then have the government take care of them for the next 30 years. There is no way that is sustainable. The retirement age needs to be moved to somethign like 80 to make it feasible.

 

Well, yes. I don't mean to sound sarcastic, but "You think?" After 75 years it would seem that just about any program would need to be updated in someway. It is amazing to me that it has made it this far without major changes. It is credit to how well the program has worked.

You didn't know that workers and employers pay into SS? It is hardly a case of the government "taking care of them." The government has actually been dipping into those funds, so it is more the case of "the people taking care of the government."

Good thing one of us is the accountant here.

 

The employer stops making payments when the employee is no longer an employee. So yes, once the employee becomes the retiree the money comes from the government. One of the biggest misconceptions is that social security is a giant lock box or an escrow account that has all of this money in it. In reality the federal government has taken all of the money out and put in IOUs.

 

They take all the excess money out and have that as an IOU. Up until now - and for the next 5 or so years, SS will take in more money than it pays out. That's kind of the drop dead date for the system to change. With the change of 2%, I do not know if that dates moves up or not.

EDIT: I would proposed a combination of fixes to the system:

1. Raise the maximum income for people that pay into SS (currently around $106K).

2. Raise the retirement age by 5 years across the board - so 67 for a partial benefit, 70 for the standard benefit, and 75 for the max benefit.

 

Yes, I made that point.