rastaman
09-28-2009, 07:51 PM
Monday, September 28, 2009
By Parie II.
The latest trick from corporate America is to force out workers that are 62 plus so that they don’t count as unemployed rather they are "retired". This is creating a surge in social security claims that will put the system in the red for the first time since the Reagan recession. Reagan then doubled the tax, the biggest tax increase ever. A tax that was levied on the poor and middle class; the rich don’t pay anything on the "rich" part of their income (no flat tax for them).
Current revenue is also down as wages are being depressed and also from having 30 million people out of work. Claims filed for retirement or disability under Social Security rose 900,000 over the previous year for the fiscal year ending this month. This trend will only accelerate as more people exhaust their unemployment benefits in the so called jobless recovery. Extensions to benefits passed by Congress only apply in about half of the states. Another big advantage to retirement is that you can get single payer health insurance from the government (shhh, don’t tell the kids).
There are in fact trillions of dollars in the Social Security reserve fund, but Reagan, Bush and Bush stole that money, so more money will have to be borrowed to replace the empty fund. Bush called the special Treasury Bonds issued for this purpose worthless paper. It’s the truth if you accept the premise that the Republicans have destroyed our economy and government. He would know, since he was instrumental in making that so.
The right-wingers are throwing a self righteous fit, "we told you that Social Security would go broke and should be put in the stock market, wait, wait, we mean we told you it should be put in real estate, wait, we mean it should be in Treasury Bonds (it already is in Treasury Bonds)... well, err, aaa, we told you so!" The Social Security Adm. says it will even out again in about two years as corporations run out of people to push into retirement, of course they are assuming the economy won’t get worse.
Just the same the corporate media is pushing the notion that Congress needs to "fix" Social Security by slashing benefits, raising the retirement age and increasing taxes even though the only problem is the looted treasury.
Repealing the Reagan tax cuts would fix all our problems but since the top 1% now own more than the bottom 90%, don’t hold your breath. We’re approaching the distribution of wealth ratio they had in the old Soviet Union where the party elite effectively "owned" almost everything. At least there everybody got health care and a pension. I guess we can’t expect that, Comrade.
By Parie II.
The latest trick from corporate America is to force out workers that are 62 plus so that they don’t count as unemployed rather they are "retired". This is creating a surge in social security claims that will put the system in the red for the first time since the Reagan recession. Reagan then doubled the tax, the biggest tax increase ever. A tax that was levied on the poor and middle class; the rich don’t pay anything on the "rich" part of their income (no flat tax for them).
Current revenue is also down as wages are being depressed and also from having 30 million people out of work. Claims filed for retirement or disability under Social Security rose 900,000 over the previous year for the fiscal year ending this month. This trend will only accelerate as more people exhaust their unemployment benefits in the so called jobless recovery. Extensions to benefits passed by Congress only apply in about half of the states. Another big advantage to retirement is that you can get single payer health insurance from the government (shhh, don’t tell the kids).
There are in fact trillions of dollars in the Social Security reserve fund, but Reagan, Bush and Bush stole that money, so more money will have to be borrowed to replace the empty fund. Bush called the special Treasury Bonds issued for this purpose worthless paper. It’s the truth if you accept the premise that the Republicans have destroyed our economy and government. He would know, since he was instrumental in making that so.
The right-wingers are throwing a self righteous fit, "we told you that Social Security would go broke and should be put in the stock market, wait, wait, we mean we told you it should be put in real estate, wait, we mean it should be in Treasury Bonds (it already is in Treasury Bonds)... well, err, aaa, we told you so!" The Social Security Adm. says it will even out again in about two years as corporations run out of people to push into retirement, of course they are assuming the economy won’t get worse.
Just the same the corporate media is pushing the notion that Congress needs to "fix" Social Security by slashing benefits, raising the retirement age and increasing taxes even though the only problem is the looted treasury.
Repealing the Reagan tax cuts would fix all our problems but since the top 1% now own more than the bottom 90%, don’t hold your breath. We’re approaching the distribution of wealth ratio they had in the old Soviet Union where the party elite effectively "owned" almost everything. At least there everybody got health care and a pension. I guess we can’t expect that, Comrade.