Unemployment is the Best Way to Create Jobs

[Red Arrow]

Do you suppose some of us are willing to be means tested? Who else here would be willing to forego a portion of what's due if indeed there was financial justification?

If what I am due is based on what I have paid in, NO!

Will my grocery prices depend on my Form 1040?

If I pay cash for a car, does the engine cost extra?

One of my cousins is on disability.  She had to sell a car she owned outright (Bonneville) and buy a "lesser" car on credit because a Bonneville is a "Luxury car".

[Teatownclown]

If what I am due is based on what I have paid in, NO!

Will my grocery prices depend on my Form 1040?

If I pay cash for a car, does the engine cost extra?

One of my cousins is on disability.  She had to sell a car she owned outright (Bonneville) and buy a "lesser" car on credit because a Bonneville is a "Luxury car".

Who said you'd qualify? Why would you be against someone who makes $25,000 a month foregoing a portion of their social service take? Someone making $100,000 a month taking in $2500 a month agreeing to take just $1500?

[Conan71]

Who said you'd qualify? Why would you be against someone who makes $25,000 a month foregoing a portion of their social service take?

Based on that and lesser examples, I don't have a problem with means testing.  I'm quite certain there's a number of retirees getting hip and knee replacements compliments of the federal government who could afford to pay for it but might have to sell the condo in Boca Raton or Breckinridge to afford it.  Likewise with nursing home and other assisted care options.

[Red Arrow]

Who said you'd qualify?

No one. I agree that I probably wouldn't but that's now.  What about 10 or 15 years from now?  What would be the qualifying level then?  Does it not matter if it doesn't affect you?   Not my problem?  I think that's part of how we got where we are today.

Why would you be against someone who makes $25,000 a month foregoing a portion of their social service take? Someone making $100,000 a month taking in $2500 a month agreeing to take just $1500?

On principle. If I pay a dollar for goods and services, I expect a dollar's worth of goods and services regardless of my savings account.  If someone is giving out gifts, then they can choose however they want to distribute them.

I wouldn't mind if they voluntarily didn't collect but object to it being mandatory.

[Teatownclown]

On principle. If I pay a dollar for goods and services, I expect a dollar's worth of goods and services regardless of my savings account. 

OK. If I read this correctly, your attitude is if you come into a gaziliion dollars, you could give a smile about the poor, the uneducated, and the diseased?

Were you humoring me with the "voluntary" idea?

[Red Arrow]

OK. If I read this correctly, your attitude is if you come into a gaziliion dollars, you could give a smile about the poor, the uneducated, and the diseased?

Were you humoring me with the "voluntary" idea?

You read it incorrectly.

If I came into a gazillion dollars, you can bet that I would be paying more tax than my gross income now.  Even at only 15% effective rate.  I believe a lot of my taxes go to help the unfortunate.  How much of my gazillion do you want each year to help the poor, uneducated, and diseased?

If I had a gazillion dollars, I could afford to be philanthropic and would likely be so to causes of my choice.  My choices may not be your choices.  Kind of like Warren Buffet and his crowd.  (I wonder if he gets to deduct his philanthropic activities when calculating his income tax.)

I was not attempting to humor you with the voluntary idea.  If you feel strongly enough that you don't deserve a benefit you paid for, there is no reason you should be forced to take it.  On the flip side, there is (presently) no reason to give me food stamps since I can buy my own food.  I believe this is consistent with my statement in another thread that if Warren Buffet thinks he should pay more tax, he should be able to do so voluntarily.

[Conan71]

You read it incorrectly.

If I came into a gazillion dollars, you can bet that I would be paying more tax than my gross income now.  Even at only 15% effective rate.  I believe a lot of my taxes go to help the unfortunate.  How much of my gazillion do you want each year to help the poor, uneducated, and diseased?

If I had a gazillion dollars, I could afford to be philanthropic and would likely be so to causes of my choice.  My choices may not be your choices.  Kind of like Warren Buffet and his crowd.  (I wonder if he gets to deduct his philanthropic activities when calculating his income tax.)

I was not attempting to humor you with the voluntary idea.  If you feel strongly enough that you don't deserve a benefit you paid for, there is no reason you should be forced to take it.  On the flip side, there is (presently) no reason to give me food stamps since I can buy my own food.  I believe this is consistent with my statement in another thread that if Warren Buffet thinks he should pay more tax, he should be able to do so voluntarily.

And yet, even if they taxed you more, they would still be borrowing at horrifying rates to feed the less fortunate. It's always going to be politically unpopular to raise taxes, although you can catch the occasional billionaire claiming they are shocked by how little they pay in taxes.

Of course, Mr. Buffett and Mr. Gates are always welcome to hire more income earners, with all this surplus income they wish the government would take, who will add to the overall tax base as a solution too.

[Red Arrow]

And yet, even if they taxed you more, they would still be borrowing at horrifying rates to feed the less fortunate. It's always going to be politically unpopular to raise taxes, although you can catch the occasional billionaire claiming they are shocked by how little they pay in taxes.

Of course, Mr. Buffett and Mr. Gates are always welcome to hire more income earners, with all this surplus income they wish the government would take, who will add to the overall tax base as a solution too.

I have a horrible vision that the day may come in my lifetime that the only way I will get any Social Security payments from the fund I have been paying into for nearly 40 years is to be flat broke.  My vision for the future is that if my personal income is less than SS, SS will make up the difference and that is all.  If my personal income even matches SS benefits, I won't get any $ from SS.

Happy?

[Conan71]

I have a horrible vision that the day may come in my lifetime that the only way I will get any Social Security payments from the fund I have been paying into for nearly 40 years is to be flat broke.  My vision for the future is that if my personal income is less than SS, SS will make up the difference and that is all.  If my personal income even matches SS benefits, I won't get any $ from SS.

Happy?

Don't get me wrong.  I agree with you.  You had to put money into this compulsory retirement savings plan which you could have put into your own well-disciplined retirement fund and you might have even been able to retire before now.  I'm further back in line than you, about 22 years from the current eligibility.  How do you think it looks for people my age?  I'm figuring I'll be doing a working "retirement" somewhere rather than holding my breath on getting my benefits.

[Gaspar]

I have never considered Social Security as a part of my retirement.  Don't even factor it into the equation. When I was very young and started my retirement fund, my father told me to ignore SS completely, just to regard it as an additional tax.

I however do intend to retire!  If SS still exists and pays for a grocery or two, then fantastic, but it plays no role in my investment strategy.

It is unfortunate that so many were fooled into thinking that SS would be a stable are reliable income source for retirement.  It's the worst of Ponzi schemes.

In fact, here is an explanation of the system that Charles Ponzi himself created:

You start by convincing a group of people, say five of them, to each give you some money, say $1,000, with the promise that each month thereafter, you're going to give them $50 back.   That works out to $600 over the year, or a 60% rate of return.   Not too shabby!   These people are a little skeptical at first, but the promised 60% rate of return seems worth the risk.     So you collect $5,000, but pay out $600 to each of these five people, $3,000 in total, leaving you ahead by $2000 at year end.   So far so good — stick with me...

Here's how you'll fund the $3,000 you're going to pay to those five people.

Not long after the first five, you find ten other people to also give you $1000, with the promise that they, too, will get $50 back each month thereafter.  You take in $10,000, and over the course of the year, you pay back the $3,000 to the first group of five people, leaving you with $7,000 from the group of ten, plus the full $5,000 from the group of five, for a total of $12,000.   But you still owe the group of ten $6,000.    That's OK, because after you pay them, you're still ahead by $6,000.

You can repeat the same funding mechanism to pay back that group of ten.    Find another ten people, or ideally, more than ten, promise each of them $50 a month, and pay them by using the incoming cash from yet another group of people.  Keep this going for a while and all the people earning 60% a year on their money might even turn you on to their friends.   It almost seems like a virtuous circle.

All the math for this will work out great provided you play by some simple rules.  You absolutely must keep finding more people to pay in.   You might need to start promising a lower return to new "investors", just to help the math.

Sure, that's not how it was intended to work, but that's how it does.  It cannot be fixed, because the number of people who pay in cannot support the number of payouts.  Sure you can adjust the amount in-out or the payout time-limit, but that is a temporary fix to a permanent problem.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Maybe, maybe not.

Ok, then...based on my experience with about double the 8 to 10 mentioned earlier, people I have known who were out more than 6 months were WAY more than ready to go back to work.  Even to the point of taking 'lessor' work to at least fill in the time.  My personal experience is that I have not met these slackers that are the fodder of RWRE propaganda and hype.  But then, I guess I just don't hang around with slackers...

[Red Arrow]

I have never considered Social Security as a part of my retirement.  Don't even factor it into the equation. When I was very young and started my retirement fund, my father told me to ignore SS completely, just to regard it as an additional tax.

I have been actively saving for retirement since I was in my young 30s.  Traditional retirement programs were going away as Reagan haters love to remind us.  What they don't remember was something called vesting.  It worked well for my father's generation when you worked for the same place for 35 or so years.  Those plans were not portable to your next job and you lost any company paid money which had not met the vesting timetable.  I have a little bit of that kind of money waiting for me from the Government Pension Guarantee organization since my employer from that era is long gone.  I put money in IRAs when they first became available.  I have put nearly the max into 401K programs at 4 different places in the last approximately 25 years.  I have always been conservative (yes, cheap too) with my money so my retirement savings have not rocketed into the stratosphere.  Nor have I lost everything due to the stock market.  I too have tried to count on SS as "beer money" but the closer I get, the more it looks like it will be a significant portion of my retirement income.  SS is already on a plan that starts full benefits at ages older than 65.  That doesn't bother me.   I will be eligible at 66.  (For the morbidly inquisitive, you should be able to figure my age now.)  Steps taken to save SS like raising the income cap from around  $20,000 to now around $106,000 were sabotaged by raiding the fund.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Hah, hah, hah!  Complete obfuscation. You cannot prove your point so you resort to a canard that doesn't apply to me.

I've stated repeatedly here that paying the piper will mean everyone has to pay more in taxes at some point. But there is a cost to that!

When it comes to the actual effects of higher taxes on employment, just listen to what the corporate types are saying.  They are the ones who do and don't create jobs.  Take a read of why Cisco created a bunch of jobs in Ireland instead of here then get back to me.  That's the tip of the iceberg.

Not at all.  You readily dismiss the CBO out of hand without so much as a glimmer of evidence, shred of proof or any other valid information that might lead to enlightenment.  (You channeling guido lately???  Hope not!)

As far as paying higher taxes - yeah, it is inevitable since the lies of the last 30 years have put us into this hole.  And when you are listening to the corporate types, you are deluding yourself, also as has been proven not just over the last 30 years, but for at least 60 years (since 1950 or so).  What else would you expect them to say??  It is identical to asking a kid if it is a good idea to have candy for breakfast.  Of course he is gonna say yes!!  Duh!!

Look how embarrassing the situation had to get before Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, John Bogle, and other "richest of the rich" came forward - several years ago - to say how bad the situation was, and would get worse.    

The whole concept of a tax cut at the beginning of a recession, followed by tax hikes following soon after has been applied repeatedly and extremely successfully for at least those 60 years.  Until this last Bush adventure into true voodoo economics.  And you see where we are now.

[Red Arrow]

Ok, then...based on my experience with about double the 8 to 10 mentioned earlier, people I have known who were out more than 6 months were WAY more than ready to go back to work.  Even to the point of taking 'lessor' work to at least fill in the time.  My personal experience is that I have not met these slackers that are the fodder of RWRE propaganda and hype.  But then, I guess I just don't hang around with slackers...

It probably depends on how hungry you are.  My intention was to differentiate between those who wanted a job, any job and those who might be interested in working for a particular employer.  Which do you think an employer would prefer?

[heironymouspasparagus]

Don't get me wrong.  I agree with you.  You had to put money into this compulsory retirement savings plan which you could have put into your own well-disciplined retirement fund and you might have even been able to retire before now.  I'm further back in line than you, about 22 years from the current eligibility.  How do you think it looks for people my age?  I'm figuring I'll be doing a working "retirement" somewhere rather than holding my breath on getting my benefits.

I'm less than 10 years from that age and I am definitely looking at that working "retirement".  There won't be any such thing as retirement for me.  Even with SS.  And it is directly due to the economic destruction laid on us for the last 30 years.