381–390 of 518 posts
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Ah, followup. Here's the link to the talk I referenced if anyone cares to take a listen. http://longnow.org/seminars/02007/jun/28/the-end-of-history-...
I'd love to listen to this, but it seems like the mp3 is corrupted. It won'd play in iTunes or Quicktime. Shame.
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The thought of how this would actually lead to a better allocation of money baffles me. It sounds like the first half of the tragedy of the commons.
That's part of democracy isn't it? We might be better off if we only let highly educated people vote and only after they passed a series of intelligence and psychological tests but we don't do that. As long as essential spending was covered I do think it would lead to a better allocation of federal dollars simply because it would add an additional check & balance to the system. You could now (effectively) vote for a…
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Is it the government's job to keep people employed for the sake of employing them? No! There are times in history where government spending can help , like during the Great Depression. The government spent a lot of money on public works projects to help put some people back to work. But this didn't do much to actually end the depression. It was the onset of WWII and the subsequent ramp-up to a war economy that really…
> Is it the government's job to keep people employed for the sake of employing them? No! The most basic task of government is to maintain a stable social order (see, e.g., the preamble to the U.S. Constitution). With sustained, pervasive unemployment comes social unrest (see any number of examples from the past 100 years). So .... > The government spent a lot of money on public works projects to help put some people…
I must say I don't see this language appear in the preamble of the Constitution. The Preamble outlines the purpose of the Constitution to "promote the general welfare" -- not to "provide the general welfare". All a reasonable, healthy government can do is provide a few basic structures for its people to build off of, it can't support the whole country (or really anyone) by itself. Unemployment is a governmental problem only insofar as governmental policy impedes useful production; anything else is pandering politicians attempting to dodge the wrath of an uninformed, slothful populace (because the politician likes prominence, money, and power).
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I doubt it will be that significant. Japan has been at AA- from all rating agencies forever (and has vastly higher debt) and pays lower rates than the US. Besides, as you pointed out there are so few large countries with AAA from all agencies. Besides, there's no new information released today, other than what some analysts at S&P think.
Japan is a nation of savers and has a massive domestic pool of savings. Also, Japan will drop below investment grade within the next ten years as those savers retire. America, on the other hand, needs to borrow internationally.
http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/20397/japans...
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First, you're right, both parties have diverted Social Security surpluses. But only one party -- the GOP -- is trying to avoid paying it back, using the SS deficit as a tool to dismantle or alter the program. Second, that doesn't change the social contract we have with people who have spent their entire lives paying out up to $6000 a year in wages to the fund. Third, yes, while baby boomers retire, it will run a defi…
>Second, that doesn't change the social contract we have with people who have spent their entire lives paying out up to $6000 a year in wages to the fund. A good reason not to trust the government to keep a forced retirement account on your behalf. Someone is going to get the short end of the stick here eventually. I would prefer that people own up to this and we set up an orderly, phased dismantling of the program,…
As for investing pensions in the stock market, I'll merely add that in Australia, where we've had superannuation for 20 -odd years, all usually invested in stocks, there were are a large number of people who thought they were going to retire in 2008 (my parents amongst them) who are now still working.
Some great non-hair-on-fire conversation here. Whenever I read and note that most folks are not that far apart on things, I keep wondering why the system is so broken. Here's the systemic problem, which has nothing to do with Treasury Bills, tax structures, or political parties. Phases of political maturity: 1) Apathy. Political parties are like football teams. You pick one and they're your guys. You root for them no…
0) Withdrawal. No political party represents me, and the ones in existence represent other groups. There's nothing I can do to change the system, and it's not even worthwhile voting. I'm going to watch Jersey Shore.
In most Western countries, there's a lot of people in stage 0. It's a problem for any putative democracy.
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First, both parties have raided Social Security, not just Republicans. In fact, both parties have been complicit in the government's financial misfeasance for a long time. Second, you mention the money "to pay back the workers who contributed." There was never any money to pay back. Social Security was always a pay-as-you-go system. Current revenue pays for current appropriations. There was never any "trust fund," an…
First, you're right, both parties have diverted Social Security surpluses. But only one party -- the GOP -- is trying to avoid paying it back, using the SS deficit as a tool to dismantle or alter the program. Second, that doesn't change the social contract we have with people who have spent their entire lives paying out up to $6000 a year in wages to the fund. Third, yes, while baby boomers retire, it will run a defi…
Such a decision is overridable by 50%+1 of the legislative body--that same number that is would take to spend the money.
Okay, yes, a constitutional amendment would work, but I suspect most legislators proposing a "wall" like the one in question would be lukewarm to the idea.
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There's no such thing as an unfunded liability for Social Security. By law, SS is funded solely by payroll taxes. If payroll taxes are insufficient, benefit payments are reduced to match. Social Security can never go bankrupt, and it can never be in debt.
> There's no such thing as an unfunded liability for Social Security. This is wishful thinking. Social security benefits have been promised to a lot of people, and the money isn't there. It's all well and good to say they will just reduce benefits, but that's just a nice way of saying that they'll default on the liabilities. In reality this is no different from Medicare or Medicaid, or the military budget, or anythin…
Social Security and Medicare are funded by payroll taxes. Medicaid and military budget funded from Federal income tax.
If you cut military budget 100%, you will save ~900 billions (or whatever the right number is) a year. If, on the other hand, you cut Social Security or Medicare, the savings are 0, because you will have to cut their funding as well. Surely, no one will pay Medicare taxes, if there is no Medicare exist, right?
Mindboggling. Does the S&P understand that the U.S. debt is all denominated in a currency that the U.S. government can print at will? If the U.S. government doesn't have an AAA rating, what does an AAA rating even mean? At the moment, the national "debt" is over $10 trillion dollars, while the total supply of currency is about $2 trillion, and total government profits are about negative $1.5 trillion. If we assume th…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking Fractional-reserve banking might be a good topic to review. It is entirely possible for more debt than currency to exist. Suppose you deposit $100 at a bank, which lends $80 of it to Alice. She deposits her $80 in another bank which lends $60 to Bob. So that's a perfectly legit scenario where more debt ($140) exists than currency ($100). And it doesn't mean that…
OK, let's take the financial crisis, where S&P, Moody's, and Fitch rated thousands of CDOs as AAA. In return for the fabricated ratings, S&P et al received billions of dollars. Years later, the credit rating firms downgraded all those CDOs and they went belly up.
The credit rating firms have been under investigation for years now and the Senate has called for criminal investigations by DOJ. Its time your "smart economists" took a perp walk.
These firms should be smashed by the SEC and their officers branded on their foreheads with a giant letter "E". There are other more reliable companies in the industry that will rise to replace them. They have caused the loss of so much money, they have misled so many, they would not be missed.
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>Second, that doesn't change the social contract we have with people who have spent their entire lives paying out up to $6000 a year in wages to the fund. A good reason not to trust the government to keep a forced retirement account on your behalf. Someone is going to get the short end of the stick here eventually. I would prefer that people own up to this and we set up an orderly, phased dismantling of the program,…
As opposed to forced retirement accounts you manage yourself? Make no mistake, no sane government would allow for completely voluntary contributions to any sort of pension or superannuation scheme - it'd be setting its country up for a massive economic and social timebomb as the majority of the population put present wants over future needs. As for investing pensions in the stock market, I'll merely add that in Austr…