SSDI, created to assist people who have stopped working because of physical or mental-health problems, has become one of the largest federal entitlement plans, paying $124 billion of benefits in 2010. The number of beneficiaries jumped to 10.2 million in 2010 from 6.6 million in 2000.
The program's spending has grown so rapidly that it is projected to run out of money in four to seven years unless Congress intervenes.
--------- Simple extrapolation of the revenue, deficit, and expenditure lines for all levels of government in the US from local/municipal to federal indicates a socio-economic crackup within this time frame.
To be sure the FRB can monetize the debt so no one loses even a single *PAPER* dollar, ala Weimar, but unless/until the IRS code is significantly revised, corporate influence drastically curbed, and stringent expenditure/personnal caps at all levels of government enacted/enforced, SSDI bankruptcy will be the least of the worries/problems.
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Even with stringent expenditure/personnal caps, revision of the IRS code, and other Draconian measures such as Congressional refusal to increase the national debt limit, severe dislocations and stresses are sure to occur, but less than will occur if the current processes are allowed to run to completion/exhaustion, and some form of recovery [but things will never again be as they were] is sure to be much more rapid, i.e. compare/contrast Ireland and Iceland.
-- Unka George (George McDuffee) .............................. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author. The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).
Perhaps, and that is all the more reason to make getting good jobs easier as opposed to making things like food stamps or rent subsidies more difficult. You could eliminate subsidies and transfer payments altogether with the stroke of a pen and not create prosperity for even a single individual. Just the opposite.
They are quitting their jobs, losing their houses & cars, and having their families fractured so that they can enjoy the privilege of shopping with food stamps and having to beg for gas money only to have their driver license revolved for driving to the the welfare office without valid auto insurance.......having to sleep in their mothers garage, to idly spend their free time shivering at the freeway on-amp begging for a hand-out in freezing weather...
Yup--it's great fun enduring constant pain from rotten teeth and having to collect aluminum cans and walk 4 miles to the metal recyclers in order to buy a used tire for a 30 year old beat up oil burning gas guzzler so that you can get to the the home depot and beg for under-the-table work as a casual laborer ...or to not be able to read because your eyeglasses broke and you can't afford a new pair of glasses.
Damn straight--It's the new American Dream....and people are lining up for it, taking numbers..
It seems like no matter what graph you look at these days, it looks like some kind of "hockey stick."
Here's a kind of scary one:
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Wouldn't it be interesting to have some mathematician determine if these graphs are merely exponential, or asymptotic? (with the asymptote itself at, say, 12/12/12) >:->
"But DO tax all Wall St. transactions." "Let me repeat that: " "Tax all Wall St. transactions at the same retail rate as cited above. "
So you want my investments to cost me more? I don't like you anymore! I've saved and invested all my life, I don't want your class envy to cost me. It's not easy to save money, that's why the average net worth is less then $100k, even after a 40 years of work. Mikek PS, Tell me a joke and you might get back on my good side. ;-) You want to make it more difficult to get ahead
Put a cutoff on the tax say tax any transaction over a million or combined transactions of five million. Bring back the short term capital gain tax on commodities and stock trades. Make to oil speculation pay a little tax money.
put a time rated capital gains tax - for assets held less than a day,
95%, for assets held over a decade, 5% - that will change wall street's outlook from the next quarter to about 5 to 7 years out and do wonders for our econonomy
To which PrecisionMachinist (an acronym for someone with a short dick) added:
Suggest you put down that crack pipe and post something that at least flows like a conversation. Or learn how to snip. Or quit answering that nutjob Grise. WTF does what you have to say relate to what I said?
Nothing.
Now, go get your unemployment check and food stamps, and run over and pick up a few rocks while yer out.
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