Bernanke wants to cut WHAT!? Social Security and Medicare? Really??

I was so sick of hearing from the Right how we liberals are always looking for a government “handout” that I did a little research on the handouts. Big business and the rich get these handouts:

— subsidies and other direct grants;

— tax breaks, reductions, deductions, exclusions, write-offs, exemptions, credits, loopholes, shelters, and rebates even for profitable companies;

— letting corporations be headquartered off-shore and pay no federal income taxes;

— large government contracts of every imaginable kind; some on a cost-plus basis with every incentive to cheat and get more;

— discounted user fees or subsidized use of public resources (land, water, airwaves,e­tc.);

— free government-funded R & D;

— every program from the Department of Commerce, Agriculture and others underwrites it; the FDA for Big Pharma; the FCC for media and telecommunications firms; the FAA for the airlines, the Treasury and Fed for Wall Street;

— individual tax breaks for the rich; billions offshored to tax havens; allowing corporate fraud and abuse

— privatizing more – schools, highways, bridges, airports, prisons, public lands, utilities, parts of the military, mercenaries, and thus far a failed attempt to privatise the most important program for seniors and the disabled – Social Security;

And at the same time, advocating abolishing welfare and other social benefits; rendering organized labor impotent; rewarding the privileged at the expense of beneficial social change and the democratic ideal that government should serve all its people, not just its preferential few.

I don’t want to hear about the “rugged individualism” that this country is based on ever again. That is s myth perpetuated by the elites, who practice corporate welfare. And how dare Bernanke and others claim the we can’t afford the crumbs they graciously let us contribute to.

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KQµårk 死神
Member

The problem with Social Security is the ridiculously low wage ceiling. Taxing a middle manager who makes around $109K and an athlete that makes $10MM is just a huge inequity in our system.

bito
Member

KQ, Heaven forbid that the ceiling be removed.
/sarc

nellie
Member

There’s a great book by David Cay Johnston called “Perfectly Legal” about this very topic — the way our laws and tax system have been tailored to the rich, pretty much rigged to funnel money up from the working class to the wealthy. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. Who, after all, is writing these laws….

escribacat
Member

Hello Cher, Corporate welfare is alive and well in this country. Unfortunately, you have to do research as you did in order to see it. I think we need to re-work the “tax incentives” for outsourcing as well. I haven’t been watching the Bernanke hearings. Did he really suggest abolishing welfare and social security?

missfrenchyUSA
Member
missfrenchyUSA

Privatize all this, allow people to have a choice on where to invest there money for retirement, get rid of employment-based health care and allow school choice through vouchers, charter schools and magnet schools. That would actually be better for the consumer in the end

Corgi Lover
Guest

And if all that was done, in my twilight years I would be looking at an America infested with illiterate Teabaggers complaining that their investments were bad and now they have no retirement money, and the number of insured would be at 25% with the rest of the country dropping from ever increasing amounts of untreated illnesses. No, I don’t think that is going to work well.

escribacat
Member

Agreed. The foreclosure crisis is a good demonstration of the bad judgment many citizens show. Because the government must step in and bail out — the government must also step in very early on in the whole process.

KevenSeven
Member

How much of that was people being deceived by brokers looking to make a commission?

What, the brokers had no responsibility for selling loans to people without incomes?

Frenchy is right about a lot of things. Not this.

Now fan me, or else.

BigDogMom
Member
BigDogMom

When someone demands to be fanned, I go out of my way not to fan them.

Desperation for freinds does not suit you keven, LOL!!!!

escribacat
Member

I fanned you yesterday when you said you were against fanning!

I agree most of the people were led around by the brokers/realtors. But the end results is still that they signed up for something they shouldn’t have. Too bad we can’t legislate against manipulative salespeople.

choicelady
Member

I’ll fan you, KevenSeven, desperate or not! LOL!!! Everybody deserves to be loved, even the emotionally needy.

KevenSeven
Member

Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

missfrenchyUSA
Member
missfrenchyUSA

Survival of the fittest. If you cannot handle investing your money, then learn to save for your end of days. This a lame excuse

Corgi Lover
Guest

Your words are shallow and empty. You have no experience in being in the lower end to gauge your answers from.

Perhaps old folks just need to use their 2nd Amendment rights and start robbing people at gunpoint, as opposed to the slicker way that the white collar criminals take it from us every day.

BigDogMom
Member
BigDogMom

If you privatize Soc. Sec., you are at the mercy of the markets and greed. I can just see it now, some exotic retirement package conjured up and being promoted by investment firms to help people part with their money, just as the banks and the private mortgage companies did. No thank you.

The average person, joe six-pack and martha tea-bagger, have very limited knowledge and experience on investing, they would be ripe for the picking.

Corgi Lover
Guest

The reality is that even smart people, like myself, often don’t end up with the best investment choices. Listen to whom you will, analyse over an extended period, look at how you percieve the economy. But in the end it’s a crap shoot for everyone who doesn’t have insider knowledge. I was very conservative in my investing thru-out the 1990s until the end when I decided to shift to the burgeoning tech markets. Oh, yeah, and then the bubble burst…

choicelady
Member

There is no such thing as private competition or choice for consumers. We see increasing monopoly or oligopoly, so all this would do is force you into a market over which you would have NO control paying prices they can demand. There has to be someplace for people to have a guarantee of rights and dependable sources of retirement, health care, etc. What we need is a balance – private sector for variable goods with a bust-up of massive corporate market dominance, and a secure governmental network of – YES – entitlements for our basic needs. That has worked well in the past and can work well again. Bernake is an idiot and no liberal.

bito
Member

C’lady, This proposed buyout of NBC/Universal. This doesn’t sound good to me? How many jobs will be lost when they have to “slim down” to repay their debt?
Comcast already has Phones, cable, broad band. How many channels will now become premium channels?
Talk about Monopolies!

missfrenchyUSA
Member
missfrenchyUSA

I wonder why there is more oligopolies and monopolies? Oh yes, GOVERNMENT COLLUSION. We do not have a free market anymore, we have a market where the few have used the government to step on the many smaller entrants.

KQµårk 死神
Member

Social Security is a trust and should never be privatize. If everyone was a money expert it would be different but we already have a good balance of SS and 401k and IRA’s for people to balance their retirement.

I think the employee based healthcare system is the biggest underlying reality that is blocking real healthcare reform, it’s a crutch and everyone should be given the choice of an exchange with a public option. That’s really Ron Wyden’s plan.

I do agree with limited vouchers and charter schools but they have to prove the money is well spent especially in charter schools whose performance has been mixed at best.

WLA
Member

Privatize Social Security? I did NOT just read that on this site. I know I didn’t.

*fingers in ears*

Lalalalalalalalala…

missfrenchyUSA
Member
missfrenchyUSA

What is wrong with privatizing SS? I would prefer to have the choice to invest my retirement money in something that may help make far more money than SS could do

Corgi Lover
Guest

You might make wise decisions. Most wouldn’t and would fall into the trap put out for them by the unscrupulous who sell investments and “are there to help you.” In the long run most, and I’d guess over 75%, would end up with badly performing funds and the high probability of retiring during an economic downturn, discovering further that their long term investments were worth squat.

And that assumes that people actually would invest. If you’re at the bottom of the ladder, that extra 7+ % that is the SS tax would just go into survival needs, just as all the money does now.

Do you have an answer when so many arrive at old age with nothing? Other than the Republican health care solution applied to the retirement cost problem?

WLA
Member

If Bush had succeeded in privatizing Social Security, we would have had thousands (if not more) of Seniors out on the street after the collapse.

escribacat
Member

Bail out or death panel.

escribacat
Member

LOL. That’s how I feel about the idea!! We’d all be up the creek right now if that had passed.