Oh, please. I'm all for cuts at the Pentagon but the Dems are even worse. Whenever anyone talks about reforming Medicare or SS we get the ridiculous "they wanna throw granny on the street" stories. How about raising the age for full retirement? Do you realize that 65 was almost the average life span when SS began? Since then, it's been raised one whopping year. And the stuff going on with "disability" benefits and SSI is ridiculous. Almost anyone can get one (or both) by finding the right lawyer or applying enough times. Just find someone willing to diagnose you as bipolar. It's well known that people in inner cities know how to game the system to get their "crazy checks."
You've never even written a sentence with correct capitalization and punctuation. I'd put my fifth-grader against you in an IQ test.
If they don't extend the Bush-era tax cuts in the lame-duck session early on, then yes, tax advisors are suggesting to their clients to sell positions to realize capital gains taxes at 15% in 2012, rather than 23.8% in 2013. (The long-term cap gains rate rises to 20% plus the 3.8% Medicare tax on unearned income on high-income taxpayers only).The qualifying dividend rate goes from 15% to around 44% with phase-outs and the Medicare tax. Short term capital gains goes from 35% to 44% too. Everyone won't want to sell at the same time. Do you gamble on selling early?
Oh, I'm aware that it will never happen. Until it happens. If the Left thought it was getting a raw deal from the welfare state, i.e. that its partisans were paying more in than they draw out, the drumbeat for secession would be so loud in the media that nothing else would be heard. So, by process of deduction, if the Left's partisans aren't getting a raw deal from the welfare state, the Right's partisans must be. I don't understand why people who are not on the Left go along with the false premise that the United States, in its current political configuration of 50 states governed by one Federal government, is a necessary, rather than historically-contingent, situation. Even conservatives who worry about national security would have to agree that even in the event of splitting the country in two, the conservative states could field a military which would be world-class relative to any other country's military. Plus, we'd lose the dead-weight of the politically-correct members of the officers class who are using the military as a social experiment. For anyone who is to the right of Lenin, breaking up the US into at least two countries is a win-win-win. The sight of watching pseudo-intellectuals like Free Thinker try to keep a country running when the two classes in it are the Oprahs and Warren Buffetts of the world on one side and the New Black Panther Party/La Raza inner-city minority underclass on the other would be hilarious. There isn't enough income redistribution in the world to keep those two demographics from fighting. In the end, Oprah and Warren Buffett and Free Thinker go "bye-bye" and get run over by the advancing inner-city hordes. Just thinking about it makes me chuckle.
And how has that kept up with the life expectancy -- which was my point? From 65 when SS began to 66 now. You do the math before commenting. Kettle calling pot....
No, you learn something: Raise the Retirement Age? ⢠Americans are living longer and spending more time in retirement. �� Since 1940, when Social Security began paying monthly retirement benefits, life expectancy at age 65 has increased 5.1 years for men and 6.0 years for women. �� The full retirement age would have to increase to 73 for adults to have the same expected years of remaining life in retirement today as in 1940. http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/412167-Raising-Social-Security.pdf I'm right -- SS hasn't kept up with life expectancy--not even close. Now move along.
oh well hell, if you want to go that route, who was that guy? E.E. Cummings I suppose you are the last word on correctness Tell me, why should English be the official language of the United States? Are you English? I'm not, at least not entirely. What do you know about the written language? Probably nothing more than you were taught in school. I was taught in school that Christopher Columbus discovered America. You have a lot to learn when it comes to the difference between knowledge and intelligence.