I paid into this sh$t over my decades of working. Nobody asked me if I wanted to donate. I keep myself healthy and I've paid for medical care for all the fat f%^k, drug addicted, homeless, lazy and crazy people that I see everywhere when a lot of the time I had really lousy coverage myself, not to mention paying for every stray dog that wanders across the border... I'd like my money back please.. oh wait, I can't get my money back... I sort of admire the medical establishment's response to all the services paid for by the Public Sector: raise prices about ten percent a year for four decades!! They are my role model for trading! I can't get my money back you say? You're saying I can't have my money back?? I found a way to get my money back bitches, it's called Trading!! It's time to trade well or die folks 'cause I want my frigging $ back and I want it YESTERDAY!! I'll never get it back by working, been there done that bought the Tee shirt... WiN =Work is Nonprofit, Obama wants another Trillion in taxes and I don't care if he gets it or not... markets will be around long after the US collapses!!
Means testing is just another hidden tax increase. It is particularly insidious because it would screw people who paid into a system for their entire lives on the basis that it was an insurance program and they were paying for their own future benefits. Now, when it is time for the government to fulfill its end of the bargain, you want to tell them, no, we decided we needed to spend that money on free health care for illegal immigrants? Or bureaucrats at the Education Department? The irony is the exact same people who think this is "fair" go apoplectic if they think a private insurance company is trying to weasel out of paying a claim. Means testing is nothing short of the wedge to get to liberals' ultimate objective, confiscating all private pension, IRA and 401ks. At first, it will just be a tax on "the very rich", then when they want more money on "those who were most fortunate in life", then those who have "excess savings", finally they will just take it all. Got to spread that wealth around, people.
If entitlements were structured like insurance, it could work. Problem is, SS and medicare are ponzi schemes. Everyone who pays in expects benefits. And benefits promised far exceed lifetime contributions. Take Medicare, for example. The average couple receives 3 TIMES in benefits than what they paid in! Means testing kicks the can down the road but doesn't make the programs solvent. Further, all the SS and Medicare projections are based long-term economic forecasts by the CBO, which are a joke. As it stands today, just to eliminate the deficit, each Federal program must take a 43% CUT in spending. That means SS payments, medicare and medicaid get cut by 43% across the board. Nearly HALF!!! Problem is, the economy is running on borrowed money. Balance the budget and the economy goes into a severe Depression. Employment, incomes and tax revenues dry up. The base of the pyramid effectively shrinks and social spending takes another hit. All in all, without the deficit, the economy can only finance social spending at around 35-40% of current payouts. Which are growing, by the way. The entire system is broke. The only real option is to print, which is likely they will. See, America is Greece in about 5 years. This whole nonsense about "passing it on to our children and grand children" is a pipe-dream. Most of the Boomers won't get 30% of what they were promised... We are really at the precipice of an economic catastrophe and all this talk about means testing are really half-measures and band-aids to score political points in the next election. They don't mean anything. The entire American way of life is about to change for the worse.
So the liberals are starting with the rich, then they'll go after the middle class, and then the poor, and "take it all", and spread it around? (On a side note, what will they be taking from the poor?) Or do you mean that they're simply going to "take it all" and keep it for themselves? As you imply this process is well underway, is it logical to assume that the super rich, the ones who have wealth and power, are all liberals? If not, perhaps the liberals are ineffective at all this, so it's really a non-problem?
I understand the frustration, but entitlements were never structured as an insurance program. Insurance pools money in the odd event a contributor suffers a loss. For SS and Medicare, everyone contributes and everyone expects benefits. Problem is, average benefits paid far exceed the amount paid in! It really is a ponzi-scheme, and always was. As a guy in my early 30's, it's really infuriating to be saddled with these hair-brained schemes that were the brain child of grown adults who drank the Kool-aid. Sure, Malthusians had a great case, but it should have been obvious by the early 80's, fertility and population was well in decline and productivity (thanks to offshoring) was nowhere enough to pick up the slack. The Boomers had 30 years to reform entitlements and make them solvent in light of shifting demographics, but everyone wanted their cake so here we are. My heart goes out to all the oldies that are gonna get flushed, but they made their bed. Why should my generation pay for their greed and short-sightedness? It's not like the entitlement bomb was a one-off thing. The nations entire fiscal house is this close from bankruptcy thanks to decades of pork, greed, endless wars and this debt-financed entitlement culture. I don't mean to rip on you, AAA. I know you, like most here, carry the water. Not drink it. But as a young guy, I am livid. Most Boomers were child-like in their reasoning and didn't give a shit about the country they were leaving to their children. They figured the politicians would take care of it. Well, ya, and here we are. They voted for a bunch of con-men who told them what they wanted to hear to get elected who kicked the can down the road hoping it wasn't them who got caught holding the bag.
Lol. Funny you should say that, because I've been composing a thread (working) title called, "The Chink in My Marxist Armor". In it I link to the latest example of how clever Man is at devising new ways to fuck up a good intentioned program by stealing from it (I'm referring to the gov incentive to push the $1 coin into circulation, and the scammers using it to get air miles). For me, this story confirms the "fallen nature of Man, thus strengthening the "tragic view" of Life, and thus, makes me a conservative. Edit: by the way, I predict you're going libertarian, not liberal, and that's because the republican party is tearing itself in two. I can't see liberal (economics) as part of your personality.
Those programs were not properly reserved for as insurance, but they were certainly sold to voters as insurance, not welfare. That's why you pay a separate tax for them. Until fairly recently, most people were quite sure they had their own private SS account with the money they had paid into the system securely invested there. The government encouraged that fiction, until it became inconvenient. I understand the frustration of younger workers. You are being asked to pay into a system that will be bankrupt by the time you will be eligible for benefits. Not a good deal. Clearly the answer is something along the lines of the Ryan plan, where changes are made far enough in the future that peoples' legitimate expctations are not frustrated. The democrats however relentlessly demagogue any and all proposals, except for massive tax increases. obama has not produced anything, the congressional democrats have not produced anything, yet they put on a despicable TV add showing Paul Ryan pushing an elderly woman in a wheel chair off a cliff. All I'm saying is that raising taxes and means testing the elderly should be the last alternative, not the first. Is it really more vital to spend tax dollars on public broadcasting, the Education Department, foreign aid, ag subsidies, and a hundred other wasteful and counterproductive programs?