Obamatrons: He has no idea what to do

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If I had one wish from a magic genie, it would be to cure cancer. But if I had a second, it would be for a video to show up on Youtube of Santorum and Bachmann doing it. Those two kids deserve each other.

Bachmann - Santorum Overdrive!

[Anonymous]

Somehow though I imagine the sex would be pretty bad. The dialogue might be pretty funny though.

[Anonymous]

I can understand if the Bush years were great economically and unemployment was reaching new highs under Obama.

But it's not as if the lower taxes, less regulations, etc., under Bush spurred corporations to hire in the past decade.

Corporations are making record profits but hiring is slower than it's been in decades. This anemic growth in jobs started in 2000 and continues even today.

What's happening? Globalization. If the world is one giant market that means even with half its people in the Third World, China and India are still able to outpunch us by virtue of their larger populations.

[Anonymous]

Because when we're facing anemic job growth, the prospect of a debt-fueled implosion, etc., the one thing we're worrying about is "the sanctity of marriage?"

Give me a fucking break. The GOP is not serious. Of course, the Democrats aren't much better (they're going to run in 2012 on a "Republicans want to take your Medicare" platform), but they at least seem more grounded in reality (as in, they want to keep the welfare state and realize it'll cost money to make it happen.)

If Medicare were such a crisis, Paul Ryan would be proposing cuts to current and near-future recipients, not postponing the hard decisions for 10 years.

(Of course, those vouchers will be at a fixed price forever and will never ever ever be subject to the same inflation that Medicare is currently undergoing.)

Better the retired Wall Street types pay a lot more and the comfortable union types pay some more, that way we won't have seniors eating Alpo.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
If Medicare were such a crisis, Paul Ryan would be proposing cuts to current and near-future recipients, not postponing the hard decisions for 10 years.
(Of course, those vouchers will be at a fixed price forever and will never ever ever be subject to the same inflation that Medicare is currently undergoing.)
Better the retired Wall Street types pay a lot more and the comfortable union types pay some more, that way we won't have seniors eating Alpo.

Medicare is in a crisis. As is Social Security.
The reasonable thing to do would be to push the retirement age well into the 70s because when these things were instituted, life expectancy only exceeded the retirement age by a couple of years. There is every reason to insure that the elderly have a subsistence income to survive on when they become too old and frail to work, in keeping with the original spirit of the legislation. There is no justification for providing them a source of income for 20+ years on the back of younger, shrinking generations who will not be able to benefit in turn from this privilege.
Regarding Medicare, increasing the retirement age would solve some of the problem. However, since 80% of healthcare expenditures occur in the last year of life, and since we have access to vastly improved medical advances to keep us alive, albeit at dizzying costs compared to our forebears, the ethical thing would be to resort to QALI (quality-adjusted life years) principles in deciding whether Medicare should pay for a given procedure. The principle here is essentially that procedures would be denied in cases in which they are extremely expensive and the patient is more or less terminal due to other causes anyway. If that seems heartless, we have to remember that money spent on such hopeless cases is money that is not available for other care for people who would benefit more from it or that has to be someway or other gotten out of future generations.
The thing no one wants to tackle is the ridiculous amount of money we are spending on defense, just making more enemies for ourselves to defend against. You'd think this was Sparta, or something.

[Anonymous]

[quote=AnonymousMedicare is in a crisis. As is Social Security.
The reasonable thing to do would be to push the retirement age well into the 70s because when these things were instituted, life expectancy only exceeded the retirement age by a couple of years. There is every reason to insure that the elderly have a subsistence income to survive on when they become too old and frail to work, in keeping with the original spirit of the legislation. There is no justification for providing them a source of income for 20+ years on the back of younger, shrinking generations who will not be able to benefit in turn from this privilege.
Regarding Medicare, increasing the retirement age would solve some of the problem. However, since 80% of healthcare expenditures occur in the last year of life, and since we have access to vastly improved medical advances to keep us alive, albeit at dizzying costs compared to our forebears, the ethical thing would be to resort to QALI (quality-adjusted life years) principles in deciding whether Medicare should pay for a given procedure. The principle here is essentially that procedures would be denied in cases in which they are extremely expensive and the patient is more or less terminal due to other causes anyway. If that seems heartless, we have to remember that money spent on such hopeless cases is money that is not available for other care for people who would benefit more from it or that has to be someway or other gotten out of future generations.
The thing no one wants to tackle is the ridiculous amount of money we are spending on defense, just making more enemies for ourselves to defend against. You'd think this was Sparta, or something. I agree with much of what you say, even though I am old enough that it a near-future issue for me. However, a couple of comments: First, raising the retirement age would appear to be counter-indicated when unemployment is already such a problem. And second, Palin would be all over your "death panels".

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:
Medicare is in a crisis. As is Social Security.

Social Security is not in a crisis. Not even close. This is a myth pushed by Republicans who want to privatize social security and do to retirement savings what was done with mortgage (i.e. fuel Wall Street). Medicare is part and parcel of healthcare reform. The key to saving Medicare is not privatizing and letting those funds get sucked up by the investment industry as well. They key is lowering healthcare costs.

[Anonymous]

entitlement spending IS a crisis. 2/3 of the increases are going to be medicare, but SS is not sustainable either. Is it an imminent crisis? no, of course not. but is it moral (or fair) to make promises you cannot keep to current workers?

we as a society are not going to accept taxing current workers at a much higher level to fund benefits to the retired. Just not going to happen. So SS needs to generally be self-sustaining. (And we definitely are not going to be able to do that unless we get the debt under somewhat control, which should be the biggest argument for progressives to take some small common sense steps now, instead of draconian steps later.) Changing the CPI calculations and raising the age a year or two for workers currently under age 55 are very easy steps, and would save so much money.

Plus, the key rationale behind SS was as social insurance. Those benefits (disability and surviving benefits to your kids) are not going to change.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:we as a society are not going to accept taxing current workers at a much higher level to fund benefits to the retired. Just not going to happen. So SS needs to generally be self-sustaining. (And we definitely are not going to be able to do that unless we get the debt under somewhat control, which should be the biggest argument for progressives to take some small common sense steps now, instead of draconian steps later.) Changing the CPI calculations and raising the age a year or two for workers currently under age 55 are very easy steps, and would save so much money.

I support tweaks to social security. For instance, the amount of income subject to social security taxes should be increased (it's about $100k now). But, there is no reason to discuss social security in the context of the debt ceiling increase as Obama and Boehner are doing.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:we as a society are not going to accept taxing current workers at a much higher level to fund benefits to the retired. Just not going to happen. So SS needs to generally be self-sustaining. (And we definitely are not going to be able to do that unless we get the debt under somewhat control, which should be the biggest argument for progressives to take some small common sense steps now, instead of draconian steps later.) Changing the CPI calculations and raising the age a year or two for workers currently under age 55 are very easy steps, and would save so much money.

I support tweaks to social security. For instance, the amount of income subject to social security taxes should be increased (it's about $100k now). But, there is no reason to discuss social security in the context of the debt ceiling increase as Obama and Boehner are doing.

under what circumstances would you consider raising the retirement age? they raise the income subject to SS tax every year.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:under what circumstances would you consider raising the retirement age? they raise the income subject to SS tax every year.

I haven't studied the issue of raising the retirement age enough to have a worthwhile opinion. However, I think that it is important to keep in mind that there are many jobs which are difficult, if not impossible, for older people to do because of the physical requirements. Those of use who primarily sit in front of a computer all day need to keep that in mind.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:under what circumstances would you consider raising the retirement age? they raise the income subject to SS tax every year.

I haven't studied the issue of raising the retirement age enough to have a worthwhile opinion. However, I think that it is important to keep in mind that there are many jobs which are difficult, if not impossible, for older people to do because of the physical requirements. Those of use who primarily sit in front of a computer all day need to keep that in mind.

I may have asked this before (or maybe it was in one of those messages I decided not to send): If the retirement age is raised, that means jobs that would become available do not, so unemployment gets even worse. Isn't this the wrong time for that?

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:under what circumstances would you consider raising the retirement age? they raise the income subject to SS tax every year.

I haven't studied the issue of raising the retirement age enough to have a worthwhile opinion. However, I think that it is important to keep in mind that there are many jobs which are difficult, if not impossible, for older people to do because of the physical requirements. Those of use who primarily sit in front of a computer all day need to keep that in mind.

I may have asked this before (or maybe it was in one of those messages I decided not to send): If the retirement age is raised, that means jobs that would become available do not, so unemployment gets even worse. Isn't this the wrong time for that?

Presumably, the retirement age would only be raised for those who are currently below a certain age. So, the effect on unemployment would not arrive for a few years. Someone would have to model job growth, population growth, etc. to know the impact. However, I wouldn't have any faith in such models so nobody should waste their time as far as I'm concerned.

I do support an immediate, short-term, lowering of the retirement age to free up some jobs.

[Anonymous]

Also, it's a myth that when SS was instituted people were expected to live only a few years after retirement. Life expectancy at retirement has changed relatively little-- I think something like 5-7 years-- and that change was built into SS last time we had to "save" it under Greenspan, when taxes on working people went up. Of course that made it look as though there was a surplus, so the money had to be given away to the rich in the Bush tax cuts (tax cuts on unearned income such as cap gains and dividends).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:entitlement spending IS a crisis. 2/3 of the increases are going to be medicare, but SS is not sustainable either. Is it an imminent crisis? no, of course not. but is it moral (or fair) to make promises you cannot keep to current workers?

Ah, I see what you did there. Nice work.

In any case, Medicare is trending towards unsustainablity. That's because *health* *care* in the US is trending towards collapse. And Medicare--listen carefully--insures exclusively THE VERY OLD.

When adjusting for population of insured, Medicare does a fuckload better than private insurance. So what you guys are proposing with Medicare reform, vouchers, etc... is to spend less money in a less efficient system. In other words, the savings comes from denying care to poor people.

If you take Medicare out of the equation, SS is completely sustainable by making minor tweaks like lifting contribution limits over $100k, or simply getting the economy back to full productivity.

As jsteele said, SS is a ginned-up crisis that the right-wing hopes to use to privatize SS--which would've been totally awesome for retirees over the last few years. Their savings would've been wiped out by the stock market crash, and we'd end up subsidizing them through beefed up social programs instead.