Ryan: Obama 'sowing social unrest'

[JimR-OCDS]

If America continues the way of Greece, and continues with trillion dollar deficits, it doesn’t matter who is calling the shots. Retirement won’t be golden years for anybody.

Paul Ryan is interested in taking the correct measures to actually save the economy, and thereby save some kind of meaningful social safety net that only a functioning economy will be able to provide. Not just Obama, but the Democratic party in general, have no plan, but only class war rhetoric that ratchets up the fear of the meek and the dependent.

Germany can bail Greece out, and maybe much of the rest of Europe too. Nobody can do that for America. Paul Ryan speaks to the truth of the situation, and is therefore unpleasant to hear. Obama speaks to people’s wishes and hopes and dreams, as if just closing one’s eyes and really, really wishing for all that is nice and pleasant and warm in this world will really, really make it come true.

It is pure fantasy to think that one percent can support the ninety-nine, that the energy industry can be neglected and shut down and the whole country will become green in both money and trees, and everybody will live happily ever after.

Now the baby boomer generation is nearing retirement age, and still they have not grown up to the fact that there is a real world out there that cannot be wished into whatever we might want it to be.

Its crunch time now. Good luck with that.

Please. The US isn’t anything like Greece and never will be.

Also, us baby boomers paid into SS for the past 50 years, and now you’re trying to tell us to grow up and learn about the real world?

The thing is, if any of you have parents or loved one’s collecting SS benefits, you’re already benefiting from SS, because without it, you’d be paying for their needs.

Jim

 

[Scott_Lafrance]

The current system isn’t failing, I know many people living on SS benefits.

My own son lives on disability benefits, which Ryan would end if he had the choice.

Thank God Ryan doesn’t have that choice.

Jim

Blind, unprovable assertions. I’ve already proved information that Ryan consulted with Archbishop Dolan to ensure that his proposals met with the Church’s concern for the poor and were very well received. I’ll take the archbishop’s word over yours, thanks.

 

[scipio337]

The current system isn’t failing, I know many people living on SS benefits.

My own son lives on disability benefits, which Ryan would end if he had the choice.

Thank God Ryan doesn’t have that choice.

Jim

Assets in 2010 were $2.6 trillion, an amount that is expected to be adequate to cover the next 10 years. In 2023, total income and interest earned on assets are projected to no longer cover expenditures for Social Security, as demographic shifts burden the system. By 2035, the ratio of potential retirees to working age persons will be 37 percent — there will be less than three potential income earners for every retiree in the population. The trust fund would then be exhausted by 2036 without legislative action.

It might work fine for you and your son, but it simply won’t be there for me. To my children, it will be something as far-fetched as the dodo, which is why I teach them to rely on God, and themselves for their needs.

Have you actually read Ryan’s plan? It’s not as bad as some would lead you to believe.

 

[Scott_Lafrance]

Assets in 2010 were $2.6 trillion, an amount that is expected to be adequate to cover the next 10 years. In 2023, total income and interest earned on assets are projected to no longer cover expenditures for Social Security, as demographic shifts burden the system. By 2035, the ratio of potential retirees to working age persons will be 37 percent — there will be less than three potential income earners for every retiree in the population. The trust fund would then be exhausted by 2036 without legislative action.

It might work fine for you and your son, but it simply won’t be there for me.

Your problem. As long as it is there for current recipients, all is well.

 

[jomoco]

Ah yes, paul ryan and the tea party express!

washingtonpost.com/opinions/republicans-continue-to-be-their-own-worst-enemy/2011/06/01/AGKcU5GH_story.html

For even as Republicans have imperiled themselves on the national level, they also seem to be committing political hara-kiri in one statehouse after the next. Republican governors who took office this year or last — the ones as determined as Ryan to do a wholesale rewrite of America’s social contract — have approval ratings that we normally associate with strains of bacteria. What’s more, they’re tanking in many of the swing states that will be key in next year’s presidential election.

[end quote]

It certainly seems that ryan has sewn not only social unrest, but his own fate as well.

jomoco

 

[scipio337]

Ah yes, paul ryan and the tea party express!

washingtonpost.com/opinions/republicans-continue-to-be-their-own-worst-enemy/2011/06/01/AGKcU5GH_story.html

For even as Republicans have imperiled themselves on the national level, they also seem to be committing political hara-kiri in one statehouse after the next. Republican governors who took office this year or last — the ones as determined as Ryan to do a wholesale rewrite of America’s social contract — have approval ratings that we normally associate with strains of bacteria. What’s more, they’re tanking in many of the swing states that will be key in next year’s presidential election.

[end quote]

It certainly seems that ryan has sewn not only social unrest, but his own fate as well.

jomoco

Hey, a WaPo opinion piece. Wow!

Here’s another

The conventional line of attack on Ryan’s plan is already taking shape: It cuts poverty programs and “privatizes” Medicare in order to cut taxes for the rich.

Major demagoguery on all three counts.

(1) The reforms of the poverty programs are meant to change an incentive structure that today perversely encourages states to inflate the number of dependents (because the states then get more “free” federal matching money) and also encourages individuals to stay on the dole. The 1996 welfare reform was similarly designed to reverse that entitlement’s powerful incentives to dependency. Ryan’s idea is to extend the same logic of rewarding work to the non-cash parts of the poverty program — from food stamps to public housing.

When you hear this being denounced as throwing the poor in the snow, remember that these same charges were hurled with equal fury in 1996. President Clinton’s own assistant health and human services secretary, Peter Edelman, resigned in protest, predicting that abolishing welfare would throw a million children into poverty. On the contrary. Within five years child poverty had declined by more than 2.5 million — one of the reasons the 1996 welfare reform is considered one of the social policy successes of our time.

(2) Critics are describing Ryan’s Medicare reform as privatization, a deliberately loaded term designed to instantly discredit the idea. Yet the idea is essentially to apply to all of Medicare the system under which Medicare Part D has been such a success: a guaranteed insurance subsidy. Thus instead of paying the health provider directly (fee-for-service), Medicare would give seniors about $15,000 of “premium support,” letting the recipient choose among a menu of approved health insurance plans.

Call this privatization if you like, but then would you call the Part D prescription benefit “privatized”? If so, there’s a lot to be said for it. Part D is both popular and successful. It actually beat its cost projections — a near miraculous exception to just about every health-care program known to man.

Under Ryan’s plan, everyone 55 and over is unaffected. Younger workers get the insurance subsidy starting in 2022. By eventually ending the current fee-for-service system that drives up demand and therefore prices, this reform is far more likely to ensure the survival of Medicare than the current near-insolvent system.

(3) The final charge — cutting taxes for the rich — is the most scurrilous. That would be the same as calling the Ronald Reagan-Bill Bradley 1986 tax reform “cutting taxes for the rich.” In fact, it was designed for revenue neutrality. It cut rates — and for everyone — by eliminating loopholes, including corrupt exemptions and economically counterproductive tax expenditures, to yield what is generally considered by left and right an extraordinarily successful piece of economic legislation.

Ryan’s plan is classic tax reform — which even Obama says the country needs: It broadens the tax base by eliminating loopholes that, in turn, provide the revenue for reducing rates. Tax reform is one of those rare public policies that produce social fairness and economic efficiency at the same time. For both corporate and individual taxes, Ryan’s plan performs the desperately needed task of cleaning out the myriad of accumulated cutouts and loopholes that have choked the tax code since 1986.

Ryan’s overall plan tilts at every windmill imaginable, including corporate welfare and agricultural subsidies. The only thing left out is Social Security. Which proves only that Ryan is not completely suicidal.

But the blueprint is brave and profoundly forward-looking. It seeks nothing less than to adapt the currently unsustainable welfare state to the demographic realities of the 21st century. Will it survive the inevitable barrage of mindless, election-driven, 30-second attack ads (see above)? Alternate question: Does Obama have half of Ryan’s courage?

washingtonpost.com/charles-krauthammer/2011/02/24/ADJkW7B_page.html

It certainly seems you cannot successfully dismiss Ryan’s plan, or the Tea Party, with demagoguery.

 

[Darryl1958]

Please. The US isn’t anything like Greece and never will be.

Also, us baby boomers paid into SS for the past 50 years, and now you’re trying to tell us to grow up and learn about the real world?

The thing is, if any of you have parents or loved one’s collecting SS benefits, you’re already benefiting from SS, because without it, you’d be paying for their needs.

Jim

Then carry on.
Be happy No worries.

I always liked that one about bankrupt California though.
You know, how California used to be the grease of the American economy.
and now it is the Greece of the American economy.

 

[Darryl1958]

Blind, unprovable assertions. I’ve already proved information that Ryan consulted with Archbishop Dolan to ensure that his proposals met with the Church’s concern for the poor and were very well received. I’ll take the archbishop’s word over yours, thanks.

If Democrats did not have fear to peddle, they would have nothing at all.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

Assets in 2010 were $2.6 trillion, an amount that is expected to be adequate to cover the next 10 years. In 2023, total income and interest earned on assets are projected to no longer cover expenditures for Social Security, as demographic shifts burden the system. By 2035, the ratio of potential retirees to working age persons will be 37 percent — there will be less than three potential income earners for every retiree in the population. The trust fund would then be exhausted by 2036 without legislative action.

It might work fine for you and your son, but it simply won’t be there for me. To my children, it will be something as far-fetched as the dodo, which is why I teach them to rely on God, and themselves for their needs.

Have you actually read Ryan’s plan? It’s not as bad as some would lead you to believe.

If congress had not used SS funds for other things besides SS, there would be plenty of money there.

Also, if Obama hadn’t cut the SS witholding tax last year, it wouldn’t have gone into debt for the first time.

His jobs bill also calls for more cuts to the SS tax. This is foolish.

They can still save SS for you if they fund it with the SS tax and leave it alone. They may have to raise the income limit to $120,000, but it can be saved.

What they can’t do, is help the poor save enough for retirement or should they become disable.

The mistake would be to eliminate it.

Jim

 

[JimR-OCDS]

Blind, unprovable assertions. I’ve already proved information that Ryan consulted with Archbishop Dolan to ensure that his proposals met with the Church’s concern for the poor and were very well received. I’ll take the archbishop’s word over yours, thanks.

Sorry, but if the working young are able to opt out of SS, then there is no money going in for those who are currently living on SS benefits.

Sure, he told the Bishop that these folks would not lose their benefits, but if there aren’t enough young healthy workers paying into the system, where will the funding come from?

Jim

 

[bbarrick8383]

If congress had not used SS funds for other things besides SS, there would be plenty of money there.

Also, if Obama hadn’t cut the SS witholding tax last year, it wouldn’t have gone into debt for the first time.

His jobs bill also calls for more cuts to the SS tax. This is foolish.

They can still save SS for you if they fund it with the SS tax and leave it alone. They may have to raise the income limit to $120,000, but it can be saved.

What they can’t do, is help the poor save enough for retirement or should they become disable.

The mistake would be to eliminate it.

Jim

What?

If it wasn’t for government, your government run social security would be just fine?

Say it isn’t so…

 

[ComputerGeek25]

What?

If it wasn’t for government, your government run social security would be just fine?

Say it isn’t so…

This is irony at it’s finest.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

What?

If it wasn’t for government, your government run social security would be just fine?

Say it isn’t so…

Until just recently, Social Security was fine and was run by government.

Three generations have now lived under SS with no regrets.

Jim

 

[estesbob]

Until just recently, Social Security was fine and was run by government.

Three generations have now lived under SS with no regrets.

Jim

\What about the next three generations?

 

[bbarrick8383]

Until just recently, Social Security was fine and was run by government.

Three generations have now lived under SS with no regrets.

Jim

As if people hadn’t predicted the “until just recently”.

You were warned, now I’m stuck with the mess.

 

[bbarrick8383]

“Up until just recently…”

The inevitable route of socialism…

Up until just recently, it was working fine until the government raided the coffers and messed it all up.

That’s why we say no to these sort of things to begin with.

 

[ComputerGeek25]

“Up until just recently…”

The inevitable route of socialism…

Up until just recently, it was working fine until the government raided the coffers and messed it all up.

That’s why we say no to these sort of things to begin with.

You are correct.

 

[Raskolnikov]

“Up until just recently…”

The inevitable route of socialism…

Up until just recently, it was working fine until the government raided the coffers and messed it all up.

That’s why we say no to these sort of things to begin with.

Except it is no longer the first place. And some wonder what is the point of taking measures to try to prevent the catastrophe that already happened. And accusations of socialism betray little more than a lack of an argument.

 

[bbarrick8383]

Except it is no longer the first place. And some wonder what is the point of taking measures to try to prevent the catastrophe that already happened. And accusations of socialism betray little more than a lack of an argument.

Social security hasn’t become a socialist program?

 

[SamH]

Social security hasn’t* become* a socialist program?

Become?

It is, but facts like that ruin a perfectly emotional arguement