[DekWannaBFlea]

Quote: (Originally Posted by RMadd)

thanks steve... and what's the big deal w/ a deficit? it's money we owe ourselves. it's basically like a big national credit card. that's deficit spending, using money you don't have. so are you against credit cards?

Are you kidding me? Why are you asking this question, any econ major would tell you why, because it hurts the econ in the long run....Ill say more iff nessesary

i'll agree that the patriot act is too strong, but we still need the good parts of it. and have your freedoms been violated by the act itself in the two years or so since it was passed?

Not my rights but the rights of others, and even if you make the claim that nobody's rights have been violated by the patriot act it is still the principle that counts. Giving too much power to one branch of the government is a very bad idea. (I.E. Checks and Balances)


thank god you didn't make a bunch of "shitty economy" remarks because, believe it or not, there are other factors at work in the economy's state other than the president. in fact, in my political science 101 class, we learned: the president really has nothing to do with the economy. honest-to-god, he doesn't.

Right, but he can have an influence, somewhat lol

as for north korea, i'd say kim jong-il has done a pretty good job of isolating his country himself, what with declarations of nuclear capabilities and all.

But we didn't help the situation by saying we wouldn't do bilateral talks, and saying that we are going to restarting nuclear testing, which bush wants to do.

ignoring social security? bush said he wants to privatize it. i don't know about you, but i'm sick of paying a good chunk of my paycheck to a bunch of seniors. the social security act took the elderly and made them from one of the poorest groups in society to on of the wealthiest. and i'm sick of hearing all this talk that, what with people living longer and all, and collecting social security for 20-30 years or so, that we young'ns might not get all that much. i'd much rather be able to put my social security tax dollars (or a rough equivalent) into something i have more control over, rather than relying on the federal government for my stipend. it's like welfare for people who already have money.

What about those people who can't afford to save right now? What about those people who live on paycheck to paycheck? How are they going to survive when they are old and unable to work? Believe it or not there are people in this country who aren't well of like you or me. And plus the fact is that the government has no right to just open up social security like it has. I doubt it will pay everybody back.....

Bush's plan is a bad idea......

"WHY PRIVATIZATING SOCIAL SECURITY IS A BAD IDEA

There are four major hidden flaws of privatizing Social Security: the enormous transition from a "pay as you go" to a pre-funded system, the costs associated with purchasing equivalent life and disability coverage (or maintaining the current disability and life insurance program in the context of a 16% cut in revenue), market risk, and higher administrative costs.

* Transition Costs. Privatizers face a costly transition period lasting 40-70 years. If pre-funded individual accounts were to be adopted, the generations living through the transition would have to pay for two systems at once, saving for their own retirement while paying for the Social Security benefits of their parents and grandparents.

* Replacing Disability' and Life Insurance. A sleight of hand used by many privatizers is to compare "returns" from Social Security -- a social insurance and retirement program -- to returns from private savings that provide only retirement benefits. Social Security taxes pay for disability and life insurance as well as retirement benefits. The program provides life and disability insurance to American workers and their families at an estimated value of a $230,000 disability policy and a $354,000 life-insurance policy for a typical worker. Privatizers argue that individuals can purchase disability and life insurance from private insurance firms. However, evidence from other countries' experiments with privatization suggests that insurance similar to Social Security would be costly. For people with pre-existing conditions, private disability and life insurance may not be available at any price.

* Overly Optimistic Returns on Stocks. Another problem with privatization is the assumption that the stock market will perform as well in the coming decades as it has in the recent past -- a risky assumption. In fact, many economists believe that the stock market may be at a peak, and many stocks may be overvalued. Privatizers can't have it both ways -- either the economy will be strong and the solvency problem projected for the current system wont materialize, or the economy will slow and the rate of return on stocks will drop, lowering the balances of individual accounts. Even if the stock market does well on average, individual accounts mean that there would be winners and losers. People who have greater knowledge and more money to invest will get higher returns than others. For low earners, who have less to invest and are less able to take risks, attaining average rates of return is unlikely. People who are unlucky or unwise could end up losing most or all of their money, placing additional burdens on SSI and other government programs that provide some safety net to poor people.

* Administrative Costs. Another problem with the privatizers' arithmetic is the failure to account for administrative costs. It costs a lot more to administer 150 million individual accounts than a single centralized system like Social Security. Experts conservatively estimate that it would cost about $25-$50 per participant per year to administer on top of the current system, which costs about $16 per person. Even small increases in management costs that are assessed monthly or annually can result in a large loss of value over one's lifetime. For example, if the costs of operating a system of individual accounts were 1% of account balances each year (a conservative estimate of the administrative costs of a 401(k)plan), these costs would consume approximately 20% of funds in personal accounts over a 40-year career, in addition to (not instead of) the current costs for administering Social Security. For lower income workers who have smaller accounts, administrative costs would absorb a greater percentage of th eir total value.

Source:http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...ov/ai_66938046

My responses are bolded