OWS protesters say:Govt. must guarantee health care, college education & retirement

healthmyths

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Sep 19, 2011
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Example of how OUT of touch the OWS protesters are.

Doug Schoen Demo pollster interviewed 198 protesters and Sixty-five percent say that government has a moral responsibility to guarantee all citizens access to affordable health care, a college education, and a secure retirement—no matter the cost.
Douglas Schoen: Polling the Occupy Wall Street Crowd - WSJ.com

So who would pay for this "guarantee"
Well I have no problem with this except one word: "Government"!
Because EVERY American worker if allowed at age 23 were allowed to direct all the SS & Medicare payments taken out of the paycheck was put into assets that appreciated at 8% a year and this occurred for 47 years the accumulation would be $3,249,880.
Over the years the worker had health insurance and at retirement now has $3 million for a) health care.. b) for retirement c) help in college education!
All of this without ONE dime coming from the government!

Now there are idiots out that like Dems who accuse "privatizing" SS as "gambling" "risky", etc.. but they are ignorant! Equities have grown over 47 yers at 8% and NO idiot has at retirement ALL funds in equities!
So idiots that argue against the ordinary worker becoming a millionaire all from simply "compounding interest".. HATES Americans from becoming millionaires!

So the objective of "GUARANTEE" can be done!
Let the power of capitalism make poor workers millionaires!
 
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College costs goin' up due to cuts in state and federal school subsidies...
:eek:
Analysts: Obama Student Loan Policies Ignore the Real Problem – College Costs
October 25, 2011) – As President Obama prepares to roll out new student loan relief programs through executive order on Wednesday, policy experts say actions taken by the administration to date have not targeted the root problem – the rising cost of college tuition.
The president plans to announce steps he will take to assist people struggling to pay off their student loans. They will not require congressional authorization. The announcement in Denver will take place on the final day of Obama’s three-day trip through western states. It also comes at a time when many of the Occupy Wall Street protesters are demanding forgiveness of student loans. “I don’t think he would go as far as student loan forgiveness, but even if it’s just increasing federal subsidies, it’s problematic for a number of reasons,” Lindsey Burke, an education policy analyst for the conservative Heritage Foundation, told CNSNews.com. “Any time you increase subsidies for student loans you are saying to the three-quarters of people who did not graduate from college that you are going to put the burden of paying for college on their backs – even though they did not attend college,” she said.

Andrew Gillen, research director for the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, was uncertain what the president would propose, but anticipates the possibility of plans to expand the income-based repayment plan. Under Obama, the amount a borrower must repay was reduced to no more than 10 percent of annual income, a reduction from the previous rate of 15 percent. This applies to those living at 150 percent of the poverty level, or about $33,000 per year for a family of four. “I don’t really see much he can really do just by an executive order,” Gillen told CNSNews.com. “The cause of the problem is that tuition is too expensive and students need to take out unmanageable debt,” he added. “The solution to that is not to say, ‘OK, you can still take out the debt and we’ll pay it for you.’ It’s to figure out what’s causing all this so that students don’t have to take out unmanageable debt. That’s why I don’t like the income based repayment program.”

Beginning last July, new college loans were arranged directly through the Department of Education. The shift eliminated the federally subsidized Family Education Loan Program which involved private lenders, establishing a near monopoly by the federal government. Under the previous subsidized system, private institutions would agree to issue student loans at government-determined interest rates. They could then be reimbursed by the government if they lost money. There are still some private lenders in the market place, but American Banker reported earlier this month that the number has dropped from 25 percent of loans in 2007 to just 10 percent this year. The changes to the income-based repayment policy was part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, while the shift from subsidized student loans to direct government loans was part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Gillen explained.

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Yea, Uncle Ferd fixin' Granny's apple wagon so's she can sell her apples an' we can have cable...
:redface:
Many Americans say they will have to work until they're 80
November 16, 2011 | Forget about retiring at age 55. Or 65. Or perhaps even 75. One-quarter of middle-class Americans fear they will have to work until they're at least 80 years old to afford a comfortable retirement (if "retirement" is even the right word, given that many of these people may never actually retire).
That conclusion, in a survey released Wednesday by Wells Fargo & Co., found that nearly three-quarters of Americans expect to continue working into what long has been retirement age. A little more than half of those said they'll need to work to pay their bills, while the rest said they want to keep working. The survey was the latest of many showing that Americans are dangerously unprepared for retirement. With only limited savings, many people are realizing they must work much longer, must dramatically scale back their lifestyles, or both. More than half of middle-class Americans in the Wells Fargo survey said say they must slash their current spending "significantly."

The average person has squirreled away a mere 7% of their hoped-for retirement savings -- a median of just $25,000 versus a desired goal of $350,000, according to the survey. Three in 10 people in their 60s have less than $25,000, suggesting they'll have no choice but to live on Social Security. The Wells Fargo survey painted a more dire picture than most other polls, which typically pin the worst-case retirement age in the mid-to-late 60s. But pessimism may be a sign of the times. A new survey by Yahoo Finance found that 41% of people ages 18 to 64 feel the American Dream is "out of reach." The poll found that 37% of people have no retirement savings, and more than half of them have socked away nothing for their children's college educations.

The specter of having to work until age 80 raises a host of issues, including the risk that illness could force many people to drop out of the workforce. And in an era of corporate cutbacks, even healthy people could be pushed out of their jobs through layoffs or buyouts. “The fact that the vast majority of middle-class Americans expect to work well past the traditional retirement age has significant societal and economic implications,” said Joe Ready, director of Wells Fargo's institutional retirement and trust unit. The survey of 1,500 Americans was conducted from early August to late September.

Source
 

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