Emotional reaction to the US electoral result

[Drogue]

Part puzzlement, though not much, and a large does of resigned "oh no, not again". I wish I could just not care, and smile at the mess they've put themselves into, but this affects the world too much, the mess isn't constrained to the US. I'm not sure what was more frightening - Kerry losing giving 4 more years of Bush, or Kerry losing meaning Hilary will have a prime run in 4 years time. Ok, she's not as bad as Bush, but surely there's someone competant who can run the White House? Please?!

[Arrian]

Hillary would get SLAUGHTERED in an election. Think the South/Midwest didn't like Kerry? They HATE Hillary.

Sure-fire loser, IMO.

-Arrian

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

Naw, the Dems really should run Hillary, the last president was a Clinton.

[Arrian]

Yeah, you'd love it if the Dems ran Hillary.

-Arrian

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

Originally posted by Arrian
Yeah, you'd love it if the Dems ran Hillary.

-Arrian

What?! She's a shoe in I tell ya!

[Arrian]

Brought to you by the Truth-O-Meter.

-Arrian

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

What have you got against Hillary? She'd make a great candidate as long as you can keep everyone from throwing water on her.

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Dissident
Clearly social security needs to be saved. And clearly there is not enough money being put in to social security to save itself. I don't agree with raising the age, because that does not benefit african americans with lower life spans. And it does not benefit me . Males in my family do not live to be that old.

The solution to me seems simple. We take money from other programs to keep social security going. All these years we have taken money from social security to fund other programs. It's time we reverse that trend. Yes it will be painful. But once the bulk of baby boomers die, we really head into a generation that is much, much smaller.

It's time for a little belt tightening of the federal goverment.

Health problems can and will be fixed, and I am not sure wether the African American thing is true. Whites certainly have diseases they are more likely to get, and it is possible that the differences in life expectency are merely from more young blacks being killed because more young blacks are in violent urban areas. That can mess up an average; one would have to make a study adjusting for socio-economic position to tell.

Hmm, I suppose you could always increase the starting age by 5 years (maybe 10) and add in a clause stating that if, in an expert's opinion) your life expectency is 5 more years or less, you can get S.S. for those years (perhaps assuming you are 18 or older), and S.S. would stop if the prognosis changed.

Edit: A prognosis on someone's current life expectency is much, much different than the average lifespan in the nation.

That's an idea though, I don't know how many people below 75 or so have a life expetency of 5 more years. There would be some fraud with that, but it might work. The Government would have to go to the Treasury department to get a cost estimate and see how much it would change things.

-Drachasor

[Drachasor]

Oh, and people are generally living longer, healthier lives, so I think increasing how long they work is not a bad idea.

Moving the retirement age up does save a lot of money. I can go look up the figures if you want.

-Drachasor

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Arrian
Yeah, you'd love it if the Dems ran Hillary.

-Arrian

Naw, they should just allow all Presidents to run for more than 2 terms again.

Then we can have a Clinton-Clinton ticket.

-Drachasor

[Kuciwalker]

Or Clinton vs Clinton

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Sikander
I find Drachasor's resistance to Bush's SS plan to be strange. He wants to set aside money to invest in order to get a better return on it, rather than simply using it to fund current government operations. Which is exactly what Bush proposes.

I am saying that after we are out of this dangerous area we should institute laws to help preserve S.S. money and invest it wisely. Right now we should just make sure all the money coming in is only used for S.S. Beyond that we should adjust other factors, pay some extra money, and the like to help us through this difficult time.

We cannot, however, afford to throw a substantial amount of S.S. money that is coming in to somewhere else.

Oh, and most people suck at investing, and Bush wants them to invest the money themselves. Probably half the people that think they don't suck actually do suck also (and some of the people that think they do suck would invest it themselves anyways if given the choice). People *can* be very stupid sometimes, even otherwise intelligent individuals. Government policy needs to keep this in mind everywhere (such as getting rid of semi-confusing/complicated ballots, among other things). Certainly I'd like it if everyone was extremely capable in everything, or even just competent in everything, but that isn't the case and never will be without excessive modification of the human race.*

-Drachasor

*When this is done, we can talk about what policies should be changed.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Drachasor


I am saying that after we are out of this dangerous area we should institute laws to help preserve S.S. money and invest it wisely. Right now we should just make sure all the money coming in is only used for S.S. Beyond that we should adjust other factors, pay some extra money, and the like to help us through this difficult time.

But this is what is already done! Government still takes in (marginally) more money than it puts out. You say the government can't be allowed to spend this money but how would that even be possible? Wherever the government keeps the money it will still be in the governments possession. If the government runs a deficit in the rest of it's budget you create the grossly stupid scenario of the government buying even more debt creating an even larger drain of revenue in the form of interest on that debt all while the surplus SS money is stuffed in a huge federal mattress (since any investment of SS money is regarded as intolerably risky for some reason) getting eaten by inflation. Furthermore when the payment day arrives the government will in reality find that it doesn't actually have the money it stuffed in the mattress in that the moment it puts the money back in it's 'checking account' the balance will still be below zero due to the enormous debt load piled up over the years. You can't fix the federal deficit with shell games. To save the ss money it has to leave the possession of the federal government.

Originally posted by Drachasor
We cannot, however, afford to throw a substantial amount of S.S. money that is coming in to somewhere else.

Oh, and most people suck at investing, and Bush wants them to invest the money themselves. Probably half the people that think they don't suck actually do suck also (and some of the people that think they do suck would invest it themselves anyways if given the choice). People *can* be very stupid sometimes, even otherwise intelligent individuals. Government policy needs to keep this in mind everywhere (such as getting rid of semi-confusing/complicated ballots, among other things). Certainly I'd like it if everyone was extremely capable in everything, or even just competent in everything, but that isn't the case and never will be without excessive modification of the human race.*

-Drachasor

*When this is done, we can talk about what policies
should be changed.

The problem is that you have not shown how the government has demonstrated any less fiscally irresponsible stupidity than the populace you think it can rescue from their own stupidity. How can a carefree spendthrift who has never had a postive baalance sheet in his life ever hope to safe keep a trust fund for someone else?


For the record I don't tolerate people starving in the streets but I'd much rather deal with that by abolishing SS and expanding federal welfare. I hate welfare but SS has all of the disadvantages of welfare with a few extra to spare and a much larger financial scale than even the most grossly generous wlefare scheme.