US Government 2011

That's the point - The piddlin crap you guys usually recommend cutting usually amount to a cumshot in the ocean compared to "Defense" spending.

I recommend cutting Social Security and Medicare, plus eliminating almost every non defense department.

You cannot 'cut' Social Security and Medicare without hurting the people the government has made dependent on these programs. But you can reform them by beginning now to slowly and incrementally privatize them just as they have slowly and incrementally grown to the unsustainable burdens that they are. And they should be gradually and carefully transferred to the states to manage so as not to break faith with those already entrapped within them while ensuring that future generations will not be saddled with a permanent and ever growing economic albatross around their necks.

'...the government has made dependent on these programs?'

Why did you feel it necessary to slip that poison pill in there? It's so disingenuous.

I think the bigger issue is this - Recipients of those programs have paid a specific tax into the corresponding fund their whole lives, ALL THE WHILE paying a higher federal tax rate than we enjoy today. So how can you argue that hedging their benefits to prop up the current generation's lower taxes is fair or just?
 
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I recommend cutting Social Security and Medicare, plus eliminating almost every non defense department.

You cannot 'cut' Social Security and Medicare without hurting the people the government has made dependent on these programs. But you can reform them by beginning now to slowly and incrementally privatize them just as they have slowly and incrementally grown to the unsustainable burdens that they are. And they should be gradually and carefully transferred to the states to manage so as not to break faith with those already entrapped within them while ensuring that future generations will not be saddled with a permanent and ever growing economic albatross around their necks.

'...the government has made dependent on these programs?'

Why did you feel it necessary to slip that poison pill in there? It's so disingenuous.

I think the bigger issue is this - Recipients of those programs have paid a specific tax into the corresponding fund their whole lives, ALL THE WHILE paying a higher federal tax rate than we enjoy today. So how can you argue that hedging their benefits to prop up the current generation's lower taxes is fair or just?

It is NOT disingenuous. You have a whole generation who was discouraged from preparing adequately for their own retirement because the promise of Social Security was out there. You have a whole generation who has no alternative for health care other than government provided Medicare. It would be unconscionable to now break faith with those people we have absolutely made dependent on those programs.

YOU however are being disingenuous if you see my call for reform of an unsustainable system as somehow hedging anybody's benefits. I am suggesting that if we don't start NOW to reform the system and make it possible for future generations to have adequate insurance and adequate resources in their old age, the burden on those coming up with be crushing and debilitating and a constant drag on the economy. The only way that will be accomplished is to return such programs to the states where they should have been in the first place and gradually begin privatizing them into the free market.

There is a reason pyramid schemes are illegal. They simply are not sustainable and fool people into believing benefits will be there that are simply impossible to produce after the program has run so long. The 50 people who used to contribute to one person's social security will soon be two. And then one. And then fewer than one. We cannot continue the program indefinitely as it is, but if we are compassionate people we will do the reform with as little harm to people as possible.
 
I would add that it is totally disingenuous to want to keep the programs as they are anyway because they were originally designed to NOT be used. They were started when death was approximately the same time as when they would actually kick in. I always find it rather funny when the liberals go on about how SS and Medicare were these golden programs meant to help so many when they were actually DESIGNED to help just a select few that made it past the median age. Granted, I do not want to see these programs disappear BUT they need massive reformations in order to deal with the fact that we have come to expect living decades past retirement and enjoy that time.


BTW - this thread is almost a year old in itself... Why are we posting here!!
 
I would add that it is totally disingenuous to want to keep the programs as they are anyway because they were originally designed to NOT be used. They were started when death was approximately the same time as when they would actually kick in. I always find it rather funny when the liberals go on about how SS and Medicare were these golden programs meant to help so many when they were actually DESIGNED to help just a select few that made it past the median age. Granted, I do not want to see these programs disappear BUT they need massive reformations in order to deal with the fact that we have come to expect living decades past retirement and enjoy that time.


BTW - this thread is almost a year old in itself... Why are we posting here!!

LOL, I know, someone resuscitated it today for some reason, I got repped for a post I made like 18 mos ago! :lol:

You're right about SS and Medicare, they were intended to be collected only for a short time or not at all, not for 10-20-25 years as they often are today. The programs need serious reform. But not a reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Lifting upper income caps, making tax applicable to capital gains and Schedule K income, raising benefit age, all more palatable solutions than cutting benefits to this liberal...
 
I would add that it is totally disingenuous to want to keep the programs as they are anyway because they were originally designed to NOT be used. They were started when death was approximately the same time as when they would actually kick in. I always find it rather funny when the liberals go on about how SS and Medicare were these golden programs meant to help so many when they were actually DESIGNED to help just a select few that made it past the median age. Granted, I do not want to see these programs disappear BUT they need massive reformations in order to deal with the fact that we have come to expect living decades past retirement and enjoy that time.


BTW - this thread is almost a year old in itself... Why are we posting here!!

LOL, I know, someone resuscitated it today for some reason, I got repped for a post I made like 18 mos ago! :lol:

You're right about SS and Medicare, they were intended to be collected only for a short time or not at all, not for 10-20-25 years as they often are today. The programs need serious reform. But not a reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Lifting upper income caps, making tax applicable to capital gains and Schedule K income, raising benefit age, all more palatable solutions than cutting benefits to this liberal...
Of course they would be, you're a liberal ;)


I am not a fan of making those programs a BIGGER redistribution programs and I don't think that is needed. Actual accountability with measured privatization would be far better in my opinion. All that money properly managed would do far better and have absolutely no problem in returning to 10 times what is originally invested if it were based on individual accounts rather than government bonds.

Medicare is different and can ONLY be solved through killing off the old or fixing the healthcare problem. I would hope that we would do the latter but all Washington is doing is pushing the former. Yes - that includes Obamacare. Medical prices are continuing to rise at an alarming rate and nothing that Washington is doing right now is addressing that problem.
 
Death and Taxes 2011. It's the government, in six square feet.

At the above link is a zoom-able chart depicting the organization of every US government bureaucracy and program receiving more that $200 million in 2011. Each circle is proportional to the funding the organization or program receives.

2011%20budget%20visulaization.PNG


America, this is your government.

Pretty cool.

:eusa_think: What if We, The People could simply vote on the sizes of each circle?

:doubt: Congress would NEVER give up that much power.​
 

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