What the hell does Obama care? He's not standing for re-election, and he'll have done something decent. The Republicans will want to squeeze some kind of concession from the democrats in exchange for...anything really, and limiting the most generous tax breaks is anathema to some members of the party.
Actual progress in Congress is what people want. Any sort of agreement is going to involve some person getting less of what they want. We need medical reform - capping Medicare growth would force reform. We need more money to pay for the services people vote for - raising taxes on a section of the economy unmarred by and responsible for the financial disaster is a good way to do it. In the end you're going to tax and spend, since tax cut and spend isn't going to solve your problems.
Obama is still the face of the Democratic party. He answers to the party organizers. He doesnt have anything to lose, but he could hurt the party, and I am sure he is reminded of it regularly.
We need reform on almost every front. From taxes, to medical, to insurance, to entitlement programs, to military spending. Thats a lot to do in 4 years. Especially when it takes months to get some thing pushed thru congress. One bill is not going to cover it all. They would never agree to a sweeping reform bill.
Obama is still the face of the Democratic party. He answers to the party organizers. He doesnt have anything to lose, but he could hurt the party, and I am sure he is reminded of it regularly.
We need reform on almost every front. From taxes, to medical, to insurance, to entitlement programs, to military spending. Thats a lot to do in 4 years. Especially when it takes months to get some thing pushed thru congress. One bill is not going to cover it all. They would never agree to a sweeping reform bill.
To be honest, we will always need reform on every front. The world changes faster than our government does.
They're not fixing all of that in 4 more years, and they shouldn't even try. What they should do is identify the biggest priorities and reform those.
Our government will still exist in 4 years, and they can pick a new set of priorities then. Slow and steady wins the race.
Obama is still the face of the Democratic party. He answers to the party organizers. He doesnt have anything to lose, but he could hurt the party, and I am sure he is reminded of it regularly.
We need reform on almost every front. From taxes, to medical, to insurance, to entitlement programs, to military spending. Thats a lot to do in 4 years. Especially when it takes months to get some thing pushed thru congress. One bill is not going to cover it all. They would never agree to a sweeping reform bill.
To be honest, we will always need reform on every front. The world changes faster than our government does.
They're not fixing all of that in 4 more years, and they shouldn't even try. What they should do is identify the biggest priorities and reform those.
Our government will still exist in 4 years, and they can pick a new set of priorities then. Slow and steady wins the race.
True, but your priorities may differ from say mine or Jimbo's. So whos priorities should we center our self on? No matter the direction they take, some one isnt going to be happy.
Quote from Mystery »
there are not enough people paying into SS than taking out of it.
that is the problem it is based on a flawed system that there will always be more people paying in than taking out.
the number of people that are paying into the system has shrunk dramatically.
the other issue is that they have opened up social security to people that it wasn't meant for.
it was meant for retirement now people with disabilities and other things pull from it as well.
But it wasnt a flawed system until the government started dipping and using it for things it wasnt intended for. If you went back to the original idea, it would be fine. the probelm is the government cant keep its hands of that amount of money. Hence I say discontinue SS all together and let people invest for themselves. If they dont invest and dont have a nest egg to retire, sucks to be you. Dont cry about it.
Mystery do keep in mind until we hit less than 1:1 SS won't be completely insolvent. Due to the 75% factor against your average income, interest, inflation and upper limits which have a SUBSTANTIAL gap ($100k average you max your SS benefitbut still pay FICA on income until $200k or so) - heck on a recent report I saw before this trip if unemployment gets back down to 4% it would add another 5 years onto the SS estimates even if nothing was done.
Which although an interesting muse demonstrated something less literal to me - the importance in secondary economic factors in SS - the only difference being that real SS has a bottom line that you'll never be screwed and any other 'solution' doesn't have a bottom line which could lead to millions going from comfort to something unsustainable income wise even if they did everything right.
The existing system has all the pros and avoids the cons - only changes in the new systems actually exist in the current SS although a tad more circumstantial when they're allowed (I.e. drawing on it early unless blind, cancer or 2 years to live expect to have to appeal to an SS judge)
Can we pay off the debt? yes we can. what will it take? a ton of major changes to how Government runs and how government works.
[...]
New tax code:
if you make <=500K you will pay a 10% tax rate. standard deductions will be raise just a bit. 15K for married couples and 10K for single people.
you can still itemize your current deductions.
1099 workers will still retain their deductions as well.
if you make > 500K you will pay a 20% tax rate. you will be caped on your deductions of 10% of your income (capital gains is not included).
Corporate taxes: the corporate tax rate will be lowered to 10% with 0 deductions.
Capital gains.
Capital investments are life lines to smal businesses and corporations. the capital gains will stay at 15%. for those that make over 500K in capital gains they will have a cap of 10% of their investment profit in deductions.
taxes on homes <5m will be gone otherwise a 10% tax. no estate tax.
no marriage tax.
I think you may have written "500k" when you meant "50k".
Either way, this is not a deficit reduction plan, this is a "handout to rich people" plan.
This kind of magical thinking is how we got into this mess in the first place. Yes, if taxes are too high, that will stifle growth. We are not at that point. You people always forget that the Laffer curve was a peak in the middle or you make the ridiculous and unsupported assumption that our tax rates are always to the right (higher) than the optimal point.
If, however, our tax rates are below the peak, then cutting taxes will simply cut tax revenue. Which is the exact opposite of what we need to do to cut the deficit. And sorry, but the evidence just doesn't support your position. And yes, you actually do have to go out and get data and adjust for inflation and population growth and so forth and actually make a mathematical argument that cutting taxes by such a huge margin will raise revenue. Others do not accept on faith the GOP talking point that cutting taxes will raise revenue.
papa's john CEO has already stated that many of his franchise owners are going to lower people hours so they don't have to pay for health care.
John Schnatter is a whiny *******.
The man lives in a gigantic castle but he's whining that his employees will be able to afford to go to the hospital.
Mystery do keep in mind until we hit less than 1:1 SS won't be completely insolvent.
It went insolvent either last year or the year before. it was the first time that SS paid out vs taking in.
if unemployment gets back down to 4% it would add another 5 years onto the SS estimates even if nothing was done.
That is why setting up a system that is dependant on other people working is stupid. If everyone is contributing to their own SS fund and not someone else's then it can't go insolvent.
The existing system has all the pros and avoids the cons
yes that is why they state by 2030 it will begin to go insolvent unless something is done to fix the system.
because it has all the pro's and no con's.
SS depends on other people working to make it work. right now there is 1.5-2 people for everyone 1 person pulling out of SS fund.
that is the problem. The only reason that it hasn't collapsed at all is because the baby boomers are still working. the ones that were going to retire can't. the recession hit them hard and they are having to save up again.
if they had all retired or come close to retiring at the same time the system would have failed.
Hence I say discontinue SS all together and let people invest for themselves. If they dont invest and dont have a nest egg to retire, sucks to be you. Dont cry about it.
you will never get rid of SS. that is the problem. so it has to be changed to reflect that same type of mindset which is the system i proposed.
instead of paying for someone else. it gets put in your own fund which a matching contribution similar to a 401k.
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It went insolvent either last year or the year before. it was the first time that SS paid out vs taking in.
Wrong. Last year was the first year that SS paid out more than it took in. Insolvency is when it cannot pay its bills. The reason that it's doing just fine for the time being is that it's sitting on literally trillions of dollars worth of banked savings. SS doesn't go insolvent until the mid 2030s right now.
That is why setting up a system that is dependant on other people working is stupid. If everyone is contributing to their own SS fund and not someone else's then it can't go insolvent.
Wrong. Worse, it defies both common sense and economics, and displays a fundamental lack of understanding of how SS works. First, have you ever heard of a mutual fund? Such things exist to, as a group, diffuse investment risk to individual investors. Going out on your lonesome is far, far riskier, in investment terms, than working with a larger group. In economic terms, your plan simply increases the likelihood that individual retirement plans go insolvent.
Social Security does not work the way that traditional investments do. Comparing SS to traditional investments is like comparing a duck to a Honda Accord. They're utterly different.
SS functions because the money you and I pay into the system today pay the benefits, today, of someone living in Florida. When we retire, someone will pay our benefits. SS has a trust fund to cushion itself from population ripples, but there is no investment. It works because the population of America grows.
yes that is why they state by 2030 it will begin to go insolvent unless something is done to fix the system.
because it has all the pro's and no con's.
SS depends on other people working to make it work. right now there is 1.5-2 people for everyone 1 person pulling out of SS fund.
that is the problem. The only reason that it hasn't collapsed at all is because the baby boomers are still working. the ones that were going to retire can't. the recession hit them hard and they are having to save up again.
if they had all retired or come close to retiring at the same time the system would have failed.
This is the biggest issue I have with people who bicker over SS: they only tell half of the story. Does SS have an insolvency problem in a couple of decades? You bet. Is this a permanent problem? NO.
The first baby boomers began to retire a few years ago, and will continue to do so for another ten years or so. Life expectancy in the US is about 78.2 years. You get full retirement benefits from SS if you retire at 65. Thus, on average, SS pays out for only about 13 years after retirement; let's be unduly generous, though, and add a whole ten years onto that figure, and say that the average boomer retiree will live to see 88, an expectancy 6 years longer than Japan, which holds the #1 worldwide expectancy.
When the last boomer retires in 2022, (s)he will draw benefits for 23 years, then. That means that the system has completely weathered the boomer storm at 2045, only about ten years' worth of payouts after it's currently solvent to. We're clear, cash-wise, until the mid-2030's. After the boomers have died off, the system is solvent again, as birth rates moved back into a stable, predictable pattern again when they started to have kids; the births per couple just moved very quickly from about 4.95 children per couple to 2.5-3 children per couple. The problem, ladies and gentlemen, is that the Boomers were the last generation to be the product of a really big average family.
The short-version takeaway: We only need to keep SS solvent until about 2045; after that, population dynamics will stabilize it without further meddling. We currently can pay until about 2034. The first boomer retired in 2010. That means that we have only 31% of the boomer bubble to pay for; we've covered 69% of the problem already, assuming an absurdly long-lived boomer retirement.
Hence I say discontinue SS all together and let people invest for themselves. If they dont invest and dont have a nest egg to retire, sucks to be you. Dont cry about it.
you will never get rid of SS. that is the problem. so it has to be changed to reflect that same type of mindset which is the system i proposed.
instead of paying for someone else. it gets put in your own fund which a matching contribution similar to a 401k.
I preserved the nested quote because both posts here are simply wrong. We do not have a structural problem with Social Security. We have a population problem with Social Security. Once we get past the growth rate kink that the boomers represent, we'll be 100% fine again.
Seriously, guys. I'm in English and I can do this math. There's just no excuse for the sort of financial illiteracy of some of these posts. All of these figures are freely available on the net, and have some sterling folks behind them.
The reason that we're bickering over SS in this nation is that some folks on the political spectrum see it as an opportunity to make rhetorical hay and win an election or two, and maybe even do away with a program that they philosophically don't care for, regardless of whether it works or not. It's not like other countries, like the U.K. and Canada, aren't facing the same numbers crunch, but they were able to turn a knob here and pull a lever there and just deal with it. We can too.
The average lion is approximately 190 cm long and 60 cm wide = 11400 cm2 = 0.00000114 km2
Now, if we take that times a trillion we get 11,400,000 km2 of lion.
Wrong. Last year was the first year that SS paid out more than it took in. Insolvency is when it cannot pay its bills. The reason that it's doing just fine for the time being is that it's sitting on literally trillions of dollars worth of banked savings. SS doesn't go insolvent until the mid 2030s right now.
not sure where you are getting your information but it is not correct.
As projected by the CBO SS is currently running red ink.
Wrong. Worse, it defies both common sense and economics, and displays a fundamental lack of understanding of how SS works. First, have you ever heard of a mutual fund? Such things exist to, as a group, diffuse investment risk to individual investors. Going out on your lonesome is far, far riskier, in investment terms, than working with a larger group. In economic terms, your plan simply increases the likelihood that individual retirement plans go insolvent.
you just making this statement tells me that you don't understand how mutual funds work.
i contribute to my own mutal fund. the other people in my company do not. they have nothing to do with how much money goes into my mutual fund. while the mutual fund is put into multiple catagorize's to distribute risk that has no bearing on who is paying into my mutual fund.
SS doesn't work like that. the money that i am paying into SS isn't mine. it is someone else's. when i go to retire it isn't like i saved up the money that SS is paying me. When i go to retire i am depending on someone else to pay my SS. It is a stupid system and highly illegal if you try this outside of the government.
in fact you can go to jail for running the same sort of thing.
I preserved the nested quote because both posts here are simply wrong. We do not have a structural problem with Social Security. We have a population problem with Social Security. Once we get past the growth rate kink that the boomers represent, we'll be 100% fine again.
no they aren't the current system is flawed and no sustainable. there are simply not enough people paying into the system. the system is fundimently flawed on assuming there will always be more people paying in than out.
Seriously, guys. I'm in English and I can do this math. There's just no excuse for the sort of financial illiteracy of some of these posts. All of these figures are freely available on the net, and have some sterling folks behind them.
because your math is not correct. and economist for years have been saying that the system needs reformed.
like the current SS model you are making assumptions. my model doesn't make assumptions. it is a proven method since it works the same way a 401k does.
you invest in your own plan with a % match from the government and you earn a flat interest rate. the money is pooled for maximum interest gains.
either in bonds or CD's which ever is paying the most return.
it will more than cover the payments.
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not sure where you are getting your information but it is not correct.
As projected by the CBO SS is currently running red ink.
Oh, for goodness sakes, mystery, do you even read your own sources?
Quote from factcheck.org »
It’s important to note that benefit payments are not in immediate danger. Under current law, scheduled benefits can be paid until about 2037, according to the most recent projections.
I'm erring several years on the conservative side of things than factcheck does, because I prefer to get my data from the source itself. In fact, I'll just quote the Social Security Administration itself, as it is essentially a more compact version of the extended post I made and which you're complaining about:
Quote from The Social Security Administration »
Through the mid-2030s, population aging caused by the large baby-boom generation entering retirement and lower-birth-rate generations entering employment will be the largest single factor causing costs to grow more rapidly than GDP.
Finally, I'd like to ask for you to please differentiate between insolvency, which is the inability to pay debts, and simply spending through your savings. SS is spending its savings now. It will not be insolvent until the mid 2030s. The definition of words matters, and I chose mine with care.
you just making this statement tells me that you don't understand how mutual funds work.
i contribute to my own mutal fund. the other people in my company do not. they have nothing to do with how much money goes into my mutual fund. while the mutual fund is put into multiple catagorize's to distribute risk that has no bearing on who is paying into my mutual fund.
A mutual fund is a type of professionally-managed collective investment vehicle that pools money from many investors to purchase securities.
When you pay into a mutual fund, the brokers track how much you paid into the giant pool of money. That share is increased or decreased by the amount of interest that the giant pool of money makes or loses. When you withdraw, you can take up to your total share out of the giant pool of money but, and this is crucial, when you're invested in the fund, you're acting with a huge number of other people as one collective financial unit to do things that you wouldn't be able to do alone... exactly what I said a mutual fund was.
If you still don't get what I'm talking about, This American Life made two amazing hour-long programs that break this information down in two exceptionally well-researched and simply-explained programs. Go listen.
SS doesn't work like that. the money that i am paying into SS isn't mine. it is someone else's. when i go to retire it isn't like i saved up the money that SS is paying me. When i go to retire i am depending on someone else to pay my SS. It is a stupid system and highly illegal if you try this outside of the government.
in fact you can go to jail for running the same sort of thing.
Wow, it's almost like... I said this exact thing, without the political spin. In fact, I did, in italics, even:
Quote from Me »
Social Security does not work the way that traditional investments do. Comparing SS to traditional investments is like comparing a duck to a Honda Accord. They're utterly different.
SS functions because the money you and I pay into the system today pay the benefits, today, of someone living in Florida. When we retire, someone will pay our benefits. SS has a trust fund to cushion itself from population ripples, but there is no investment. It works because the population of America grows.
If you're going to debate me, mystery, please pay me the respect, as I do you, of not editing my quotes, and of not ignoring points I make which are inconvenient to you.
Now, if you want to argue, for ethical or philosophical reasons, that SS ought to be abolished or changed, that's valid and fine. Please, however, don't confuse these ethical arguments with the real math that the SS system faces.
no they aren't the current system is flawed and no sustainable. there are simply not enough people paying into the system. the system is fundimently flawed on assuming there will always be more people paying in than out.
Would you care to provide any figures to back up your claim, sir? I've extensively, if not exhaustively, cited the mathematical reasons for my assertions. You have provided nothing but assertions. Were we having a debate on the ethicality or the philosophy of SS, I'd have no problem with your argumentative strategy, but this is a debate about how to deal with a few specific, mathematical realities. As such, I would appreciate data.
Modify the Social Security tax cap. Workers pay into the Social Security system on earnings up to $106,800 in 2010. About 83 percent of worker earnings were subject to Social Security payroll taxes in 2008. If all earned income above $106,800 annually were subject to Social Security contributions but did not count toward benefits, Social Security’s projected deficit would be completely eliminated. If the higher income counted toward Social Security benefits, about 95 percent of the shortfall would be absolved.
Bolding is mine. All I'm asking is to cut the hyperbole and actually look at the real math.
like the current SS model you are making assumptions. my model doesn't make assumptions. it is a proven method since it works the same way a 401k does.
you invest in your own plan with a % match from the government and you earn a flat interest rate. the money is pooled for maximum interest gains.
either in bonds or CD's which ever is paying the most return.
it will more than cover the payments.
Claiming that this isn't making assumptions is rather amusing to me. I'll list some of the assumptions that you're making:
1.) That 100% of the American populace is financially literate enough to make robust, wise, diversified investments of the nature that you suggest. How about high school drop-outs? How about recent immigrants? Your plan works well for white, middle- and upper-class America, but isn't so good for other folks.
2.) That this investment vehicle will be a more cost-effective, reliable method of ensuring retirement solvency than Social Security. I've seen no hard evidence to suggest this, simply assertions that it would be because, you know, Free Market. 'Murica. Flag. Call me an egghead, but I'd appreciate a little evidence.
3.) That 401k plans (and investment vehicles like them) are guaranteed, reliable vehicles for retirement income. I know a couple of very nice elderly folks who have to work at my local Wal-Mart right now because their 401k's weren't reliable who'd have a few choice words with you about that.
I understand, mystery, that you have a political and philosophical bone to pick here. That's fair. If you think that the government should get out of this sort of thing, that's also fair. If you want to have a debate about that, I'd be delighted to engage you on that debate. Claiming, however, as arithmetic fact something which simply does not reflect reality is disingenuous and unhelpful.
The average lion is approximately 190 cm long and 60 cm wide = 11400 cm2 = 0.00000114 km2
Now, if we take that times a trillion we get 11,400,000 km2 of lion.
We can't pay it, the debt is going to have to be liquidated. We are going to have to shut down our global empire and break promises that we can't afford to fulfill.
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this is why posting sources on here is useless. people just refuse to read the whole thing.
Oh, for goodness sakes, mystery, do you even read your own sources?
yes i did. evidently you did not. The whole fact check shows that the claims that SS is soluable are false. there is even a chart that shows that SS is paying out more and is running deficits.
It even states in the article that the US is using borrowed money to make the payments. It shows that everything that you claim is not true which is why it is called fact check.
picking one sentence out of an entire article does not make a valid point.
If you're going to debate me, mystery, please pay me the respect, as I do you, of not editing my quotes, and of not ignoring points I make which are inconvenient to you.
do not make alligations you can't back up. i never edited your post i never changed your post and i didn't ignore anything that you posted.
unlike you ignoring an entire article that shows that SS is currently spending more than it is taking in.
1.) That 100% of the American populace is financially literate enough to make robust, wise, diversified investments of the nature that you suggest. How about high school drop-outs? How about recent immigrants? Your plan works well for white, middle- and upper-class America, but isn't so good for other folks.
They don't have to make any decisions. which tells me you are not reading.
You currently are not paying for your SS. You are paying for someone else's. the government is promising you that when you retire that someone else will pay for your SS.
There is another investment scheme that is illegal and you can go to jail if you try to run it.
My system requires no decisions. people instead of paying for someone else start saving for themselves. their SS tax goes into their own account. the government does a simple % match and it gains a flat interest.
the system doesn't have to worry whether or not there are enough workers to pay out for people taking out. when you go to retire it will distributing the funds that you saved back to you.
That this investment vehicle will be a more cost-effective, reliable method of ensuring retirement solvency than Social Security. I've seen no hard evidence to suggest this, simply assertions that it would be because, you know, Free Market. 'Murica. Flag. Call me an egghead, but I'd appreciate a little evidence.
[j/quote]
It will since the federal government can't meet the obligations they have promised so far. in fact they are looking at paying people less than what they paid in as a way to fix the system.
it is far cheaper to pay a matching contribution and whatever interest is earned. the same way a 401k plan is cheaper than a pension which is why most companies don't offer pensions anymore.
[quote].) That 401k plans (and investment vehicles like them) are guaranteed, reliable vehicles for retirement income. I know a couple of very nice elderly folks who have to work at my local Wal-Mart right now because their 401k's weren't reliable who'd have a few choice words with you about that.
That is because they were invested in the stock market. This is not invested in the stock market but the bond/CD market which has a flat % rate of return on it. also with that much money pooled the fund could invest in High yield CD's and bonds.
which would make it more money. it never has to be invested in the stock market.
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this is why posting sources on here is useless. people just refuse to read the whole thing.
yes i did. evidently you did not. The whole fact check shows that the claims that SS is soluable are false. there is even a chart that shows that SS is paying out more and is running deficits.
It even states in the article that the US is using borrowed money to make the payments. It shows that everything that you claim is not true which is why it is called fact check.
picking one sentence out of an entire article does not make a valid point.
Well, now I'm suspecting that you're not even reading my posts, mystery, because you seem to be ignoring the parts where I say exactly what you're criticizing me for not saying.
Quote from Me »
I'd like to ask for you to please differentiate between insolvency, which is the inability to pay debts, and simply spending through your savings. SS is spending its savings now. It will not be insolvent until the mid 2030s. The definition of words matters, and I chose mine with care.
If you're going to debate me, mystery, please pay me the respect, as I do you, of not editing my quotes, and of not ignoring points I make which are inconvenient to you.
do not make alligations you can't back up. i never edited your post i never changed your post and i didn't ignore anything that you posted.
This is precisely what I meant when I asked you to not edit my posts; you're cutting enormous sections of what I said out of your responses; while normally, this is simply a matter of convenience, you have been consistently removing the parts of what I said that address, directly, what you eventually say.
unlike you ignoring an entire article that shows that SS is currently spending more than it is taking in.
I would refer you, again, to the section I just quoted from what I said in my prior post. I did not ignore your article. Far from it; I looked at it, provided a second source for context, and even went so far as to explain my specific word choices, and what I meant by them.
Unlike you, who actually did ignore not one, but five citations from my last post.
1.) That 100% of the American populace is financially literate enough to make robust, wise, diversified investments of the nature that you suggest. How about high school drop-outs? How about recent immigrants? Your plan works well for white, middle- and upper-class America, but isn't so good for other folks.
They don't have to make any decisions. which tells me you are not reading.
You currently are not paying for your SS. You are paying for someone else's. the government is promising you that when you retire that someone else will pay for your SS.
There is another investment scheme that is illegal and you can go to jail if you try to run it.
My system requires no decisions. people instead of paying for someone else start saving for themselves. their SS tax goes into their own account. the government does a simple % match and it gains a flat interest.
the system doesn't have to worry whether or not there are enough workers to pay out for people taking out. when you go to retire it will distributing the funds that you saved back to you.
This is, again, factually inaccurate. Let's look at just bonds, which you claim is a simple investment vehicle. I agree with you that it is more simple than stocks, but, well, bonds aren't exactly simple.
Would you like to buy a zero-coupon bond? How about a corporate bond? What interest rate over a given length of years is acceptable, profitable, or unacceptable? How does interest factor against inflation rates, in terms of real-dollar buying power?
I know people who are intimidated by the financial complexity of a checking account, mystery, and who will be utterly reliant upon Social Security for their retirement. Not everyone understands even relatively simple investment schemes.
Finally, complexity aside, I'd like to reiterate that comparing SS to traditional investment modes is like comparing a duck to a Honda Accord. The two things are NOTHING ALIKE. Please stop making this fallacious comparison. Social Security is NOT a personal investment. It is a government benefit, like food stamps or the mortgage interest tax deduction.
That this investment vehicle will be a more cost-effective, reliable method of ensuring retirement solvency than Social Security. I've seen no hard evidence to suggest this, simply assertions that it would be because, you know, Free Market. 'Murica. Flag. Call me an egghead, but I'd appreciate a little evidence.
[j/quote]
It will since the federal government can't meet the obligations they have promised so far. in fact they are looking at paying people less than what they paid in as a way to fix the system.
Please provide evidence to substantiate your claim.
it is far cheaper to pay a matching contribution and whatever interest is earned. the same way a 401k plan is cheaper than a pension which is why most companies don't offer pensions anymore.
Please provide evidence to substantiate your claim. However, let's just say, for the sake of argument, that what you have said here is true (because what you're claiming here is correlation, not causation).
Here's just one explanation for the move away from pensions: taxes. Right now, when you contribute to a 401k (or similar; there are others, like 403b plans, which are similar in effect, if different legally), taxes are deferred. Because of inflation, it's cheaper to pay taxes later instead of now. Guess what? Pensions are taxable.
Here's another explanation: 401k plans are cheaper to companies because the employee ends up with less money, in terms of cash + benefits. In this possibility, it's a clever way of shafting your workers and saving a buck.
There are other possible explanations, all of which fit reality just as well as yours. Please don't assume without evidence.
[quote].) That 401k plans (and investment vehicles like them) are guaranteed, reliable vehicles for retirement income. I know a couple of very nice elderly folks who have to work at my local Wal-Mart right now because their 401k's weren't reliable who'd have a few choice words with you about that.
That is because they were invested in the stock market. This is not invested in the stock market but the bond/CD market which has a flat % rate of return on it. also with that much money pooled the fund could invest in High yield CD's and bonds.
which would make it more money. it never has to be invested in the stock market.
Before we even look at anything else, please do recall that bonds and CDs can be defaulted upon, just like any other investment. They are not risk-free, merely low-risk. For instance, imagine those folks were extremely risk-averse investors and put all their money in municipal bonds. Government-backed, state-sponsored investment vehicles; should be safe as houses, right? Wrong.
So, mystery, I've done my best to meet you halfway with reasoned debate and a robust amount of evidence to support my claims. Unless you are willing to do the same and, moreover, deal with what I have to say with some reasonable approximation of the thoroughness that I've dealt with yours, I'm simply not going to respond to anything you have to say on this subject any longer. I feel like I'm debating an ideologue here at best, or the guy from the Monty Python argument clinic at worst.
I'm an educator at heart, and I've been doing my level best to help educate folks about what I happen to have learned from a very, very investment-savvy father to other folks who maybe aren't so financially sophisticated. If you're just interested in shouting someone's political talking points as loudly as you can, I've got better things to do.
The average lion is approximately 190 cm long and 60 cm wide = 11400 cm2 = 0.00000114 km2
Now, if we take that times a trillion we get 11,400,000 km2 of lion.
Given: billionaire Wall Street banker *******s make up 65 percent of the demand for oil and therefore logically that much of the price. They're only a few hundred in number, they hoard oil to profit off of driving the price up and they get to do this only because of special government licenses that allow them to.
1. Revoke the licenses
2. Jail them for having that much oil, take it and all their **** with asset seizure. That's around ten trillion dollars and a billion barrels of oil
3. Double the number of refineries
4. Watch the economy flourish as gas prices tank and we knock out most of our debt, including all foreign debt
Given: billionaire Wall Street banker *******s make up 65 percent of the demand for oil and therefore logically that much of the price. They're only a few hundred in number, they hoard oil to profit off of driving the price up and they get to do this only because of special government licenses that allow them to.
1. Revoke the licenses
2. Jail them for having that much oil, take it and all their **** with asset seizure. That's around ten trillion dollars and a billion barrels of oil
3. Double the number of refineries
4. Watch the economy flourish as gas prices tank and we knock out most of our debt, including all foreign debt
Err, yeah. You can't just revoke the license and then jail them. They have that much oil because they said we could. We can't just change our minds and imprison them for it. They're Constitutionally protected from that.
We COULD change our mind and give them a reasonable amount of time to divest themselves, but we can't just seize the assets. No US judge would even consider allowing that.
I have a question to everyone who thinks the national debt can be paid off: When you say "pay off the national debt", you do mean all 16 trillion of it, right? There has only been one president in the history of the US that has completely paid off the national debt... Andrew Jackson. Yes, the same Andrew Jackson that killed the Second Bank of the United States. Until the Federal Reserve is gone, it will be physically impossible to pay off the national debt. Our money is literally created from debt; if we pay off our debts, we will wipe out that much money from the economy.
Also to Infinitive, I take what Paul Krugman says with a grain of salt. He might have a Nobel Prize in Economics, but you seem to put a great deal of stock in the fact that because Krugman is a Nobel laureate, he is automatically a credible person. First off, that just reeks of the appeal to authority fallacy. Second, it isn't just Keynesians that have won Nobel prizes in economics. After all, Krugman is the same guy that said we had to fight off the dot-com bust by inflating the housing bubble. And of course we all know how that turned out.
The United Arab Emirate has no income taxes, they are completely funded by their oil revenues. Energy independence for the win.
I agree the thing is that it will never happen here. to many political interests stopping it from happening.
Can't build new nuke plants, can't build new oil refineries, can't tap the huge oil supplies that we have.
there is no way to become energy independant.
Funny thing since the largest US export is now gas/jet fuel (replacing aircraft) and I just read in the paper that US is expected to be the world's largest oil SUPPLIER by 2020 (and a net-exporter/"independent" sometime thereafter)
Err, yeah. You can't just revoke the license and then jail them. They have that much oil because they said we could. We can't just change our minds and imprison them for it. They're Constitutionally protected from that.
We COULD change our mind and give them a reasonable amount of time to divest themselves, but we can't just seize the assets. No US judge would even consider allowing that.
Were I President, I'd suspend habeus corpus to do this.
The United Arab Emirate has no income taxes, they are completely funded by their oil revenues. Energy independence for the win.
I agree the thing is that it will never happen here. to many political interests stopping it from happening.
Can't build new nuke plants, can't build new oil refineries, can't tap the huge oil supplies that we have.
there is no way to become energy independant.
I don't know what you're talking about here.
The US simply doesn't have enough oil to both cover all our energy needs AND generate large profits. The US already hit its own peak oil - US oil production peaked in the 1970s and even the recent uptick in production hasn't gotten us anywhere near matching 70s production levels. And even if we managed to do it, it wouldn't last long at all.
And it certainly won't be helping with the deficit that if the oil is all being put into private hands. I mean, if we nationalized the oil companies so that oil being extracted from public lands belonged to the public, then at least if we had enough production we would be able to use it to lower gas prices in the US or generate revenues for the US gov't (enabling lower taxes) or something. But the oil companies would rather sell it overseas if it won't get a high enough price here.
The idea that we're being hamstrung by restrictions on drilling and that's all that's keeping us from energy independence and low gas prices is laughable.
We'll get much further towards energy independence by using energy more efficiently than we will by temporarily boosting production until the simple fact that our easily accessible oil reserves are running out catches back up to us again.
Err, yeah. You can't just revoke the license and then jail them. They have that much oil because they said we could. We can't just change our minds and imprison them for it. They're Constitutionally protected from that.
We COULD change our mind and give them a reasonable amount of time to divest themselves, but we can't just seize the assets. No US judge would even consider allowing that.
Were I President, I'd suspend habeus corpus to do this.
The President doesn't have that power. No branch of the government does, except in cases of armed rebellion or armed invasion, where the Congress is empowered with it.
It's also not the power you're looking for, I think - habeus corpus is protection against imprisonment without a trial. Perhaps you have Ex Post Facto in mind? However, that's even less likely - NOBODY has that power in the United States, with no exceptions; it's explicitly prohibited by Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution.
Well it seems that we are going to go down the fiscal slide. everyone's tax's go up and 120b across the board cuts will occur.
Obama refuses to hear anything but his 3% increase on rich people. he will not go for a revamped tax code with closed loopholes and changes to deductions.
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Actual progress in Congress is what people want. Any sort of agreement is going to involve some person getting less of what they want. We need medical reform - capping Medicare growth would force reform. We need more money to pay for the services people vote for - raising taxes on a section of the economy unmarred by and responsible for the financial disaster is a good way to do it. In the end you're going to tax and spend, since tax cut and spend isn't going to solve your problems.
We need reform on almost every front. From taxes, to medical, to insurance, to entitlement programs, to military spending. Thats a lot to do in 4 years. Especially when it takes months to get some thing pushed thru congress. One bill is not going to cover it all. They would never agree to a sweeping reform bill.
To be honest, we will always need reform on every front. The world changes faster than our government does.
They're not fixing all of that in 4 more years, and they shouldn't even try. What they should do is identify the biggest priorities and reform those.
Our government will still exist in 4 years, and they can pick a new set of priorities then. Slow and steady wins the race.
True, but your priorities may differ from say mine or Jimbo's. So whos priorities should we center our self on? No matter the direction they take, some one isnt going to be happy.
But it wasnt a flawed system until the government started dipping and using it for things it wasnt intended for. If you went back to the original idea, it would be fine. the probelm is the government cant keep its hands of that amount of money. Hence I say discontinue SS all together and let people invest for themselves. If they dont invest and dont have a nest egg to retire, sucks to be you. Dont cry about it.
Which although an interesting muse demonstrated something less literal to me - the importance in secondary economic factors in SS - the only difference being that real SS has a bottom line that you'll never be screwed and any other 'solution' doesn't have a bottom line which could lead to millions going from comfort to something unsustainable income wise even if they did everything right.
The existing system has all the pros and avoids the cons - only changes in the new systems actually exist in the current SS although a tad more circumstantial when they're allowed (I.e. drawing on it early unless blind, cancer or 2 years to live expect to have to appeal to an SS judge)
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
Either way, this is not a deficit reduction plan, this is a "handout to rich people" plan.
Cutting taxes will not result in huge growths of revenue
This kind of magical thinking is how we got into this mess in the first place. Yes, if taxes are too high, that will stifle growth. We are not at that point. You people always forget that the Laffer curve was a peak in the middle or you make the ridiculous and unsupported assumption that our tax rates are always to the right (higher) than the optimal point.
If, however, our tax rates are below the peak, then cutting taxes will simply cut tax revenue. Which is the exact opposite of what we need to do to cut the deficit. And sorry, but the evidence just doesn't support your position. And yes, you actually do have to go out and get data and adjust for inflation and population growth and so forth and actually make a mathematical argument that cutting taxes by such a huge margin will raise revenue. Others do not accept on faith the GOP talking point that cutting taxes will raise revenue.
John Schnatter is a whiny *******.
The man lives in a gigantic castle but he's whining that his employees will be able to afford to go to the hospital.
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
It went insolvent either last year or the year before. it was the first time that SS paid out vs taking in.
That is why setting up a system that is dependant on other people working is stupid. If everyone is contributing to their own SS fund and not someone else's then it can't go insolvent.
yes that is why they state by 2030 it will begin to go insolvent unless something is done to fix the system.
because it has all the pro's and no con's.
SS depends on other people working to make it work. right now there is 1.5-2 people for everyone 1 person pulling out of SS fund.
that is the problem. The only reason that it hasn't collapsed at all is because the baby boomers are still working. the ones that were going to retire can't. the recession hit them hard and they are having to save up again.
if they had all retired or come close to retiring at the same time the system would have failed.
you will never get rid of SS. that is the problem. so it has to be changed to reflect that same type of mindset which is the system i proposed.
instead of paying for someone else. it gets put in your own fund which a matching contribution similar to a 401k.
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Wrong. Last year was the first year that SS paid out more than it took in. Insolvency is when it cannot pay its bills. The reason that it's doing just fine for the time being is that it's sitting on literally trillions of dollars worth of banked savings. SS doesn't go insolvent until the mid 2030s right now.
Wrong. Worse, it defies both common sense and economics, and displays a fundamental lack of understanding of how SS works. First, have you ever heard of a mutual fund? Such things exist to, as a group, diffuse investment risk to individual investors. Going out on your lonesome is far, far riskier, in investment terms, than working with a larger group. In economic terms, your plan simply increases the likelihood that individual retirement plans go insolvent.
Social Security does not work the way that traditional investments do. Comparing SS to traditional investments is like comparing a duck to a Honda Accord. They're utterly different.
SS functions because the money you and I pay into the system today pay the benefits, today, of someone living in Florida. When we retire, someone will pay our benefits. SS has a trust fund to cushion itself from population ripples, but there is no investment. It works because the population of America grows.
This is the biggest issue I have with people who bicker over SS: they only tell half of the story. Does SS have an insolvency problem in a couple of decades? You bet. Is this a permanent problem? NO.
The first baby boomers began to retire a few years ago, and will continue to do so for another ten years or so. Life expectancy in the US is about 78.2 years. You get full retirement benefits from SS if you retire at 65. Thus, on average, SS pays out for only about 13 years after retirement; let's be unduly generous, though, and add a whole ten years onto that figure, and say that the average boomer retiree will live to see 88, an expectancy 6 years longer than Japan, which holds the #1 worldwide expectancy.
When the last boomer retires in 2022, (s)he will draw benefits for 23 years, then. That means that the system has completely weathered the boomer storm at 2045, only about ten years' worth of payouts after it's currently solvent to. We're clear, cash-wise, until the mid-2030's. After the boomers have died off, the system is solvent again, as birth rates moved back into a stable, predictable pattern again when they started to have kids; the births per couple just moved very quickly from about 4.95 children per couple to 2.5-3 children per couple. The problem, ladies and gentlemen, is that the Boomers were the last generation to be the product of a really big average family.
The short-version takeaway: We only need to keep SS solvent until about 2045; after that, population dynamics will stabilize it without further meddling. We currently can pay until about 2034. The first boomer retired in 2010. That means that we have only 31% of the boomer bubble to pay for; we've covered 69% of the problem already, assuming an absurdly long-lived boomer retirement.
I preserved the nested quote because both posts here are simply wrong. We do not have a structural problem with Social Security. We have a population problem with Social Security. Once we get past the growth rate kink that the boomers represent, we'll be 100% fine again.
Seriously, guys. I'm in English and I can do this math. There's just no excuse for the sort of financial illiteracy of some of these posts. All of these figures are freely available on the net, and have some sterling folks behind them.
The reason that we're bickering over SS in this nation is that some folks on the political spectrum see it as an opportunity to make rhetorical hay and win an election or two, and maybe even do away with a program that they philosophically don't care for, regardless of whether it works or not. It's not like other countries, like the U.K. and Canada, aren't facing the same numbers crunch, but they were able to turn a knob here and pull a lever there and just deal with it. We can too.
Magnificent Quote of the day:
http://www.factcheck.org/2011/02/democrats-deny-social-securitys-red-ink/
not sure where you are getting your information but it is not correct.
As projected by the CBO SS is currently running red ink.
you just making this statement tells me that you don't understand how mutual funds work.
i contribute to my own mutal fund. the other people in my company do not. they have nothing to do with how much money goes into my mutual fund. while the mutual fund is put into multiple catagorize's to distribute risk that has no bearing on who is paying into my mutual fund.
SS doesn't work like that. the money that i am paying into SS isn't mine. it is someone else's. when i go to retire it isn't like i saved up the money that SS is paying me. When i go to retire i am depending on someone else to pay my SS. It is a stupid system and highly illegal if you try this outside of the government.
in fact you can go to jail for running the same sort of thing.
no they aren't the current system is flawed and no sustainable. there are simply not enough people paying into the system. the system is fundimently flawed on assuming there will always be more people paying in than out.
because your math is not correct. and economist for years have been saying that the system needs reformed.
like the current SS model you are making assumptions. my model doesn't make assumptions. it is a proven method since it works the same way a 401k does.
you invest in your own plan with a % match from the government and you earn a flat interest rate. the money is pooled for maximum interest gains.
either in bonds or CD's which ever is paying the most return.
it will more than cover the payments.
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Oh, for goodness sakes, mystery, do you even read your own sources?
I'm erring several years on the conservative side of things than factcheck does, because I prefer to get my data from the source itself. In fact, I'll just quote the Social Security Administration itself, as it is essentially a more compact version of the extended post I made and which you're complaining about:
Finally, I'd like to ask for you to please differentiate between insolvency, which is the inability to pay debts, and simply spending through your savings. SS is spending its savings now. It will not be insolvent until the mid 2030s. The definition of words matters, and I chose mine with care.
I don't even... For goodness sakes, read the very first line on wikipedia's explanation of what a mutual fund is:
When you pay into a mutual fund, the brokers track how much you paid into the giant pool of money. That share is increased or decreased by the amount of interest that the giant pool of money makes or loses. When you withdraw, you can take up to your total share out of the giant pool of money but, and this is crucial, when you're invested in the fund, you're acting with a huge number of other people as one collective financial unit to do things that you wouldn't be able to do alone... exactly what I said a mutual fund was.
If you still don't get what I'm talking about, This American Life made two amazing hour-long programs that break this information down in two exceptionally well-researched and simply-explained programs. Go listen.
Wow, it's almost like... I said this exact thing, without the political spin. In fact, I did, in italics, even:
If you're going to debate me, mystery, please pay me the respect, as I do you, of not editing my quotes, and of not ignoring points I make which are inconvenient to you.
Now, if you want to argue, for ethical or philosophical reasons, that SS ought to be abolished or changed, that's valid and fine. Please, however, don't confuse these ethical arguments with the real math that the SS system faces.
Would you care to provide any figures to back up your claim, sir? I've extensively, if not exhaustively, cited the mathematical reasons for my assertions. You have provided nothing but assertions. Were we having a debate on the ethicality or the philosophy of SS, I'd have no problem with your argumentative strategy, but this is a debate about how to deal with a few specific, mathematical realities. As such, I would appreciate data.
This is... partially correct-ish. Economists agree that SS needs some structural reforms to get through the tail end of the baby boom generation. However, the changes we're talking about are not large, and there are a lot of different options, any of which would get the job done handily. Here's one:
Bolding is mine. All I'm asking is to cut the hyperbole and actually look at the real math.
Claiming that this isn't making assumptions is rather amusing to me. I'll list some of the assumptions that you're making:
1.) That 100% of the American populace is financially literate enough to make robust, wise, diversified investments of the nature that you suggest. How about high school drop-outs? How about recent immigrants? Your plan works well for white, middle- and upper-class America, but isn't so good for other folks.
2.) That this investment vehicle will be a more cost-effective, reliable method of ensuring retirement solvency than Social Security. I've seen no hard evidence to suggest this, simply assertions that it would be because, you know, Free Market. 'Murica. Flag. Call me an egghead, but I'd appreciate a little evidence.
3.) That 401k plans (and investment vehicles like them) are guaranteed, reliable vehicles for retirement income. I know a couple of very nice elderly folks who have to work at my local Wal-Mart right now because their 401k's weren't reliable who'd have a few choice words with you about that.
I understand, mystery, that you have a political and philosophical bone to pick here. That's fair. If you think that the government should get out of this sort of thing, that's also fair. If you want to have a debate about that, I'd be delighted to engage you on that debate. Claiming, however, as arithmetic fact something which simply does not reflect reality is disingenuous and unhelpful.
Magnificent Quote of the day:
yes i did. evidently you did not. The whole fact check shows that the claims that SS is soluable are false. there is even a chart that shows that SS is paying out more and is running deficits.
It even states in the article that the US is using borrowed money to make the payments. It shows that everything that you claim is not true which is why it is called fact check.
picking one sentence out of an entire article does not make a valid point.
do not make alligations you can't back up. i never edited your post i never changed your post and i didn't ignore anything that you posted.
unlike you ignoring an entire article that shows that SS is currently spending more than it is taking in.
They don't have to make any decisions. which tells me you are not reading.
You currently are not paying for your SS. You are paying for someone else's. the government is promising you that when you retire that someone else will pay for your SS.
There is another investment scheme that is illegal and you can go to jail if you try to run it.
My system requires no decisions. people instead of paying for someone else start saving for themselves. their SS tax goes into their own account. the government does a simple % match and it gains a flat interest.
the system doesn't have to worry whether or not there are enough workers to pay out for people taking out. when you go to retire it will distributing the funds that you saved back to you.
That is because they were invested in the stock market. This is not invested in the stock market but the bond/CD market which has a flat % rate of return on it. also with that much money pooled the fund could invest in High yield CD's and bonds.
which would make it more money. it never has to be invested in the stock market.
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Well, now I'm suspecting that you're not even reading my posts, mystery, because you seem to be ignoring the parts where I say exactly what you're criticizing me for not saying.
This is precisely what I meant when I asked you to not edit my posts; you're cutting enormous sections of what I said out of your responses; while normally, this is simply a matter of convenience, you have been consistently removing the parts of what I said that address, directly, what you eventually say.
I would refer you, again, to the section I just quoted from what I said in my prior post. I did not ignore your article. Far from it; I looked at it, provided a second source for context, and even went so far as to explain my specific word choices, and what I meant by them.
Unlike you, who actually did ignore not one, but five citations from my last post.
This is, again, factually inaccurate. Let's look at just bonds, which you claim is a simple investment vehicle. I agree with you that it is more simple than stocks, but, well, bonds aren't exactly simple.
Would you like to buy a zero-coupon bond? How about a corporate bond? What interest rate over a given length of years is acceptable, profitable, or unacceptable? How does interest factor against inflation rates, in terms of real-dollar buying power?
I know people who are intimidated by the financial complexity of a checking account, mystery, and who will be utterly reliant upon Social Security for their retirement. Not everyone understands even relatively simple investment schemes.
Finally, complexity aside, I'd like to reiterate that comparing SS to traditional investment modes is like comparing a duck to a Honda Accord. The two things are NOTHING ALIKE. Please stop making this fallacious comparison. Social Security is NOT a personal investment. It is a government benefit, like food stamps or the mortgage interest tax deduction.
Before we even look at anything else, please do recall that bonds and CDs can be defaulted upon, just like any other investment. They are not risk-free, merely low-risk. For instance, imagine those folks were extremely risk-averse investors and put all their money in municipal bonds. Government-backed, state-sponsored investment vehicles; should be safe as houses, right? Wrong.
So, mystery, I've done my best to meet you halfway with reasoned debate and a robust amount of evidence to support my claims. Unless you are willing to do the same and, moreover, deal with what I have to say with some reasonable approximation of the thoroughness that I've dealt with yours, I'm simply not going to respond to anything you have to say on this subject any longer. I feel like I'm debating an ideologue here at best, or the guy from the Monty Python argument clinic at worst.
I'm an educator at heart, and I've been doing my level best to help educate folks about what I happen to have learned from a very, very investment-savvy father to other folks who maybe aren't so financially sophisticated. If you're just interested in shouting someone's political talking points as loudly as you can, I've got better things to do.
Magnificent Quote of the day:
Given: billionaire Wall Street banker *******s make up 65 percent of the demand for oil and therefore logically that much of the price. They're only a few hundred in number, they hoard oil to profit off of driving the price up and they get to do this only because of special government licenses that allow them to.
1. Revoke the licenses
2. Jail them for having that much oil, take it and all their **** with asset seizure. That's around ten trillion dollars and a billion barrels of oil
3. Double the number of refineries
4. Watch the economy flourish as gas prices tank and we knock out most of our debt, including all foreign debt
Err, yeah. You can't just revoke the license and then jail them. They have that much oil because they said we could. We can't just change our minds and imprison them for it. They're Constitutionally protected from that.
We COULD change our mind and give them a reasonable amount of time to divest themselves, but we can't just seize the assets. No US judge would even consider allowing that.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-12/u-s-to-overtake-saudi-arabia-s-oil-production-by-2020-iea-says.html
The United Arab Emirate has no income taxes, they are completely funded by their oil revenues. Energy independence for the win.
Also to Infinitive, I take what Paul Krugman says with a grain of salt. He might have a Nobel Prize in Economics, but you seem to put a great deal of stock in the fact that because Krugman is a Nobel laureate, he is automatically a credible person. First off, that just reeks of the appeal to authority fallacy. Second, it isn't just Keynesians that have won Nobel prizes in economics. After all, Krugman is the same guy that said we had to fight off the dot-com bust by inflating the housing bubble. And of course we all know how that turned out.
I agree the thing is that it will never happen here. to many political interests stopping it from happening.
Can't build new nuke plants, can't build new oil refineries, can't tap the huge oil supplies that we have.
there is no way to become energy independant.
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Funny thing since the largest US export is now gas/jet fuel (replacing aircraft) and I just read in the paper that US is expected to be the world's largest oil SUPPLIER by 2020 (and a net-exporter/"independent" sometime thereafter)
Were I President, I'd suspend habeus corpus to do this.
The US simply doesn't have enough oil to both cover all our energy needs AND generate large profits. The US already hit its own peak oil - US oil production peaked in the 1970s and even the recent uptick in production hasn't gotten us anywhere near matching 70s production levels. And even if we managed to do it, it wouldn't last long at all.
And it certainly won't be helping with the deficit that if the oil is all being put into private hands. I mean, if we nationalized the oil companies so that oil being extracted from public lands belonged to the public, then at least if we had enough production we would be able to use it to lower gas prices in the US or generate revenues for the US gov't (enabling lower taxes) or something. But the oil companies would rather sell it overseas if it won't get a high enough price here.
The idea that we're being hamstrung by restrictions on drilling and that's all that's keeping us from energy independence and low gas prices is laughable.
We'll get much further towards energy independence by using energy more efficiently than we will by temporarily boosting production until the simple fact that our easily accessible oil reserves are running out catches back up to us again.
The President doesn't have that power. No branch of the government does, except in cases of armed rebellion or armed invasion, where the Congress is empowered with it.
It's also not the power you're looking for, I think - habeus corpus is protection against imprisonment without a trial. Perhaps you have Ex Post Facto in mind? However, that's even less likely - NOBODY has that power in the United States, with no exceptions; it's explicitly prohibited by Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution.
Obama refuses to hear anything but his 3% increase on rich people. he will not go for a revamped tax code with closed loopholes and changes to deductions.
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