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Louise Hartmann wrote ~ "And with the decline of pensions, we saw a rise in 401(k) retirement plans, however that experiment has been a complete disaster. According to Alternet, “401(k)s are volatile, complicated, expensive, and inadequate,” and they don't provide retirement security for workers. "
Were just figuring that out now? Well thank you Captain Obvious! Anyone with a calculator can figure that out. I once sat down and figured with my 401k I could easily retire at the age of 65 and continue to live my present life style. The only problem was the I would have to get a raise totaling 7 times what I made at the time, and put every dime of it into the plan. Right!
A far better approach to retirement is to create a savings account in a proved high yield, low risk mutual fund. At least then you eliminate the middleman and always have direct control of your savings in case of an emergency. However, even this won't be adequate in most cases because people live paycheck to paycheck. Only Social Security has the ability to payout a substantial amount for average people. The problem here is that the fund needs to be expanded by putting it to work for the future recipients in the form of government loans and investments.
It's a crime the way we Americans mismanage our resources!
Anonymous hacked Decell...
"Decell Inc. is (apparently) a privately held company founded in 2000, fully owned by Israel ministry of defense."
"...we have managed to hack Decell servers, acquiring some highly sensitive information, including exact GPS coordinates of every City, Highway, Streets and of course every sensitive buildings located within Israel boarders!"
"We are asking every Zionist around the world to pay careful attention to the following statement:
You have a CHOICE to make, either STOP MURDERING CIVILIANS, WOMEN AND CHILDREN, STOP MASS-KILLING PALESTINIANS, STOP STEALING PALESTINIANS LAND, Or ELSE WE WILL PUBLISH MORE OF WHAT WE HAVE GOT, INCLUDING
COORDINATES OF SPECIAL BUILDINGS! THEN HAMAS MISSILES WOULDN'T LAND IN DESERT OR OCEAN THIS
TIME.......... "
http://cryptome.org/2013/04/opisrael-decell.pdf
This is just the tip of the iceburg. About 80% of the private pension funds are underwater And they are going to drag company after company under with them. I don't no how you think you can put $500.00 a month for 25 years into a pension fund and expect get $4,000 to $6,000 out for 30 years the numbers don't add up. Look what it did to General Motors.
Newest Wikileaks release...called "plusd".."Public Library of US Diplomacy"....What Kissinger said and when he said it. "The Kissinger Cables comprise more than 1.7 million US diplomatic records for the period 1973 to 1976. Dating from January 1, 1973 to December 31, 1976 they cover a variety of diplomatic traffic including cables, intelligence reports and congressional correspondence."
http://wikileaks.org/plusd/about/
"The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer." -- Henry A. Kissinger, US Secretary of State, March 10, 1975:
http://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/P860114-1573_MC_b.html#efmCS3CUB
Kissinger quote from half way down item #5 in response to Macomber: "That is illegal."
Obama will kill us all.
btw Burning Obama's natural gas releases C02 into the atmosphere
"Just about everybody in between knows that eventually there will be more spending cuts and higher taxes. Smart Americans will plan for it." ---from that article.
Yeah, smart Americans will plan to buy more guns and stock up on hollow points.
"It's better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!" --Emiliano Zapata
If they steal the contributions you have put into Social Security or if they steal right out of your savings accounts you have as much right to use force as any cop does in going after bank robbers. And it won't be long before they will be Cyprus-izing our bank accounts.
Just for the record I've just got an idea I would like to share with numbers freaks on how we can balance our National budget and have a $10 Billion surplus.
I call this the 25% plan.
The overall national budget outlays for 2012 is $3.803 Trillion. The overall revenue is $2.902 Trillion. $1.359 Trillion is derived directly from payroll taxes. An additional $959 Billion is collected in Social Security taxes. This leaves a total budget deficit of $901 Billion. 1
Reducing the deficit. Rounding off the overall military budget to a conservative estimate of $1 Trillion; and, cutting that by 25% reduces the debt by $250 Billion. Eliminating the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) gives an additional projected savings of $ 55.4 Billion. Ending the War on Drugs contributes an additional $26.5 Billion. The total savings in turn total $331.9 Billion; thus reducing the deficit to $569.1 Billion.
Increasing revenue. I would propose an across the board income and social security tax increase of 25%. The total increase from payroll would then be $339.75 Billion and from social security taxes $239.75. Of course this tax would have to be proportionate to income level. I'm not suggesting a flat tax only an 25% increase in overall revenue. The total increase on revenue would be $579.5 Billion.
Therefore Gentlemen, as you can see, by eliminating gross waste and with a small sacrifice by all we can balance our budget with a $10.4 Billion surplus.
This approach doesn't cost our social safety net one dime.
1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_United_States_federal_budget
Here is a take on the subject. I happen to agree with a lot of things said here (like this is just the start of the pain, Medicare is still heading for insolvency) for example, but I'l pass on the article without any more comments.
http://news.yahoo.com/scary-message-everybody-obamas-budget-165520713.html
Nowt’s to the Newt’s
Yes this is an intellectual political economic social mental spasm. Good I hope. Form my view wondering if America is in what I call president Obama’s Sherlock Holms “Adventure of the second stain”. My spasm has an audience for a select few.
Wiki has a good reading about the adventure. Basically, documents stolen from important political persons that if found and published would likely lead to controversy, criminal indictments, murder, or war. Shall we say everything that a president needs to know for stuff like that could have been kept from Obama, or does Obama know these things now to play out a poker hand in the political theater, the mainstream extra listen as you lean forward all about after the commercial to culturist confuse trying to expose both terrorist Wahhabi Democrats and Republicans? They both exist and big time in Fox news, CNN, MSNBC.
Seems that wiki weaving about itself in possible blasphemous libel, or any definition by tea baggers in the internet and the general mainstream media with free speech and money being the same is in somewhere in the archipelago of corruption leaning on the shores watching serenely as the waves move with cocktails served elegantly removed from any sequester friction gazing in a sun set wondering what it would be like to lose everything they have. Yikes. Certainly realizing Romney just blew the shit out of having a business type person as president. Having elevators in the garage for all middle class and poor people didn’t beat two birds in every pot. What’s the use if you can’t buy a car, or a house? An Ace Ventura blunder or that might come from the Francis Grose's dictionary of the vulgar tongue.
Hi there we the people see you, the rich inclined arrogant with a savage wine with a beautiful bouquet garnished obnoxiously virtuous. Seditions libel as in free speech is money or vice versa all from the Supreme Court Bishops dedicated to the first perversion of the first Amendment. Nowt’s to Newt’s the new diagonal a Jacobian song played jacks or better or who has the best poker face booked too.
Please excuse my rambling for poetry is not my forte and don’t wish to know what my gradient is but after reading the adventure of the second stain a lot of politics seems to be “forced to fit”. As in a screwed up derivative that all the world seems to be paying for. Yes that derivative that should be held accountable as in Mr. Madoff screwing billions out of the system. From my view it is out of alignment to observe a billionaire person like Bloomberg valued at 27 billion in all his stock market savvy could not see Madoff tapping and tampering the system for 60 billion. It is odd and suspicious and socially wired. Think about it the sequester is about the same amount. Very interesting.
Exactly right! This myth of a "war on drugs" has been very profitable to a lot of people who are not normally considered part of the drug trade. The believers may still have the meme of the "law and order" against "criminal drug lords" in their minds but in reality our "law and order" are the "criminal drug lords". They have just used the ruse to drive up the price of the goods...just like our "holy war" in the middle east. Obtaining lots of cheap oil was never really the goal in invading the middle east...it was "control" of the oil ...to keep it "off the market"...to drive the prices up. It sure would not be in the interest of the oil companies to flood the market with lots of cheap oil. And it would not be in the interests of those "drug lords" (including the US banksters..who have laundered the drug money... and their puppet politicians) to make drugs legal...flooding the market with cheap drugs. No profit in that! And that is what it really is all about.
欢迎你
By all means...call! Write letters! Send Emails! Tweets! It might make you think you are going to make a difference. But it won't!!! There is only one thing (well, maybe a couple of things) that will make a difference. And those things won't fall into the category of making our politicians and their puppet masters, the rich and powerful, chuckle at all of the fools they have under their control. They wouldn't laugh if the entire nation really did something useful about it. They wouldn't laugh if the entire nation figuratively (or even literally) broke out the guillotines and went after the criminals who are doing this to us. The rich are just playing psychological games with us, like a cat toying with a mouse just before they eat it. They know they can get away with this because they know that all we will do is "call the White House or their Senators", or write letters or emails...all fodder for a good chuckle. They don't fear us because the game is rigged...democracy is dead.
They use liberal or progressive democratic sounding names of their organizations, or infiltrate the once honorable institutions with traitors, to throw us off-guard.
Democrats, liberals, and progressives are suppose to be about peace and human rights and not war-mongers like the Republicans. So what do they do? The ruling elite, the cats, send in their pretend Democrats, liberals, and progressives who speak the language we all want to hear and then they slowly infuse the language of our exploiters, our real enemies. People like Obama. People like Suzanne Nossel. Chris Hedges has even resigned from PEN in protest against Suzanne Nossel being appointed head of PEN. He knows what she is and what she really stands for.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_hijacking_of_human_rights_20130407/
Greenspan did not call Clinton "the Greatest Republican President" for nothing. Thom has used this quote often.
I agree that the War on Drugs was a smashing success, assuming that the true objective was a symbiotic relationship between the government and criminal-elements, for outrageous agricultural price-support for God's Green Grass. I mean can you even comprehend $200/ounce? That's $6.4-million ($6,400,000.00) for a ton of dried weeds, that grow wild along the sides of the roads and fields across the Mid-West.
Same argument holds for the REAL "War on Terrorism" objectives. Trillions of dollars have been transferred from (paying) tax-payers' pockets to the Military-Industrial-Political Complex's pockets -- while disrupting and keeping the Mid-Eastern Oil Resources in turmoil, accessible to Global Petro-Chemical extraction and control. I mean, how successful would you like? The Bush Kid had it right: "Mission Accomplished."
Our Government is good at this stuff; just ask their patrons.
Mauiman2 ~ wrote: "Sorry there is one thing in your posts that says it all, you want to save money by eliminating the war on drugs. That ruins your credibility completely."
Now that you've lost your primary argument about the budget you think the path to redeem yourself is to defend having the highest prison population in the history of the planet--mostly composed of non-violent drug offenders?. Wanting to correct this travesty of justice ruins my credibility?
That stupid war has been going on now for over 40 years. We are no closer to winning it now than we were when Nixon started it in the early 70's. How much longer do you want to pour our precious Tax money into that black hole before you realize that it can never be won. The war on drugs produces nothing except a prison industry, a non-violent prison population, ruined innocent lives, and incredibly rich drug dealers. Look at the misery this war has caused here and abroad. Right now, we import far more drugs and have far more drug addicts in this country than we ever had before this war began; but, you, want to keep this costly mistake going. Shame on you.
Here's some numbers. War on Drugs past annual budget $15.6 Billion. Projected 2013 budget $26.5 Billion. The US has the highest incarceration rate at more than 3 x the rate of any other country in the history of the world. As of 2008 2.3 million people, or 1 out of every 100 citizens were in prison. The current rate is 7 x higher than it was in 1980 when President Reagan took office. You are suggesting this is a better way to spend money than caring for sick people and feeding the hungry?
You were the one who wanted to stick to the numbers. Now that the numbers have betrayed you, you want to attack my credibility. HA! What a joke? That's a classic example of FOX News loser logic. The last refuge of a scoundrel!
But, wait! Let's have some fun!
IS THERE ANYONE ON THIS BLOG THAT AGREES WITH THIS?
LET'S PUT THAT COMMENT UP FOR A VOTE!
Palindromedary ~ 谢谢
DAnneMarc:
Sorry there is one thing in your posts that says it all, you want to save money by eliminating the war on drugs. That ruins your credibility completely.
Ripping off Social Security was the Obama plan all along. It was evident when he brought on-board all Bill Clinton's bagmen.
Obama, like Clinton, is a corporatist and a free market liberal and anti-populist, anti-progressive who shmoozes populist and progressive to get traditional Democratic voters. It is worse than just being wishy-washy or a bad negotiator. These corporatists are posers, users, manipulators, and predators. They are duplicitous. They have made us their dupes.
Do read this piece below. And I wish Thom would talk about this piece. I've never understood why no one talks about the fact that Clinton had plans to assault Social Security (like he assaulted Labor with NAFTA and our free press with the Telecommunications Act, etcetera).
http://www.counterpunch.org/2004/10/30/how-monica-lewinsky-saved-social-security/
[excerpt]
How Monica Lewinsky Saved Social Security...
[This essay is excerpted from CounterPunch's hot new book, Dime's Worth of Difference.]
Had it not been for Monica’s captivating smile and first inviting snap of that famous thong, President Bill Clinton would have consummated the politics of triangulation, heeding the counsel of a secret White House team and deputy treasury secretary Larry Summers. Late in 1998 or in the State of the Union message of 1999 a solemn Clinton would have told Congress and the nation that, just like welfare, Social Security was near-broke, had to be "reformed" and its immense pool of capital tendered in part to the mutual funds industry. The itinerary mapped out for Clinton by the Democratic Leadership Committee would have been complete.
It was a desperately close run thing. On the account of members of Clinton’s secret White House team, mandated to map out the privatization path for Social Security, they had got as far down the road as fine-tuning the account numbers for Social Security accounts now released to the captious mercies of Wall Street. But in 1998 the Lewinsky scandal burst upon the President, and as the months sped by and impeachment swelled from a remote specter to a looming reality, Clinton’s polls told him that his only hope was to nourish the widespread popular dislike for the hoity-toity elites intoning Clinton’s death warrant.
In an instant Clinton spun on the dime and became Social Security’s mighty champion, coining the slogan "Save Social Security First".
Let us now reconstruct the plot in greater detail.
In the mid-1990s pessimism about the future of Social Security was rife in seminars, conferences, op-eds and learned
...
[please read more at link]
你是正確的 ☑
Mauiman2 wrote: "1.Neither you or I are in a position to say exactly how much can be cut from the military before we seriously effect national security. I throw out 20% and that may be high. You seem to want to get rid of it all. You are smoking something really good if you actually think that is possible to do that without having some SERIOUS ramifications. "
What the hell are you smoking? You're the one who is Paranoid! I've lived in this country now for 50 years. I've never owned anything more powerful than a bee bee gun and a Baseball Bat. What kind of a Wuss are you anyway? What exactly are you afraid of? Do you need to be tucked in at night? What will it take for you to Man-Up?
Don't burden this Nation or Me with these silly Superstitious fears. Man-UP for crying out loud you Wuss!
You all know that if we had let the Bush tax cuts expire we would have increased revenue by 6 trillion. Mitch M had the nerve to say we got the tax increases we wanted because he gave us 0.6 trillion in increases. On the other hand it sounds like what a republican calls a compromise.
The problem with cutting the pay of the congress is that it would increase the number of members in congress being paid by the corporatists (AKA Fascists).
Why doesn't anyone give a response to Thom's statement that we need to increase the deficit to reduce the debt?
You should say we need to increase the federal budget by 15% to decrease the debt. Of course, the increase in the deficit should be as efficient as possilble.
As Ravi Batra pointed out each time we reduce the deficit too much the stock market crashes.
This is how a national economy works. It is not how balancing my checkbook works.
Mauiman2 ~ You are so full of pure S(Grits) that I am through trying to communicate with you. I'm afraid, "What we have here, is a failure to communicate. You see!"
My financially opulent friend...
You're on your own!
DAnneMarc
Paindromedary, the article you post is flat out wrong. West end realators in London are hiring as many French speaking agents as they can get their hands on to sell high end properties in London to the the rich French leaving France. England's Prime Minister got in hot water with his neighbors in the south by saying England welcomes the rich French with open arms. You think he actually said that for two people? Come on! I have never seen an article so wrong in my life!
Your dreaming if you think this kind of thing has any chance of not happening. Look at the US, when a state (like NY) raises its state taxes, they ALWAYS get a mass exit of wealthy (read former high tax contributing) citizens to Florida to avoid taxes. And the expected revenue increase never happens (or is much lower than anticipated). EVERY TIME.
And yes it may not always happen overnight like it did in England in 2008, but it will happen.
What makes you think history will not repeat itself here?