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Photo credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
I guess it all depends on how you look at it…
Bush II chief economist and CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin attacking the millionaires tax:
Of course, the biggest misconception about the Buffett rule is that it would help balance the budget. Not really. A rough static estimate — meaning no assumptions about growth or changes in behavior — suggests that the additional revenue would amount to about $35 billion a year. This works out to less than 3 percent of the $1.3 trillion annual federal budget deficit.
Yale Law professor Stephen Carter beating the drum for cat food austerity entitlement reform:
As everybody knows, there’s a lot of money to be saved in entitlements. Indeed, that’s where all the big budget savings are, had we but leaders courageous enough to tackle them. Moreover, there are no secrets. Raising the Social Security retirement age by one year, to 68, would save $70 billion between now and 2030. Raising the age by two years would save almost a quarter of a trillion dollars.
$35 billion a year from increasing taxes on those most able to afford it: Too trivial and insignificant to be worth the trouble.
$14 billion a year from forcing seniors to work until they’re 69: Woohoo, big money! Let’s do it!
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HEY, ELI ! Where are those people who are 68 to 70 going to find jobs when the ones who are 21 and up cannot? This is laughable.
Eli!
HEY, TWAIN! The austerity freaks never seem to consider the job market implications of raising the retirement age. Or maybe they consider it more feature than bug.
Buzz!
Black eye ELI!
Our problem is that the asshole in the WH likes these “good ideas.”
ECAHN!
Those 68 to 70 year olds need to go back to college and get some forkin’ skills. Sallie Mae here we come!
A gentle reminder from the way-back machine. Gr$$nspan commish did SS reform in 1983 so that W could give rich folks tax cuts in 2001.
I kid you not. That’s the kind of planning we’re up against.
Yeah, they can take one of those income-contingent loans. LOLOL
Debt slaves to college lenders, who can’t find jobz anyhow. Screw college.
I can’t even imagine working until I was 70. Just moving was a major project. This is so cruel and inhumane. I’m too old now to be caught up in this but I feel real pain for those who have not escaped the awfulness of it all.
I’m on the fin com of a college endowment, SUNY-New Paltz. At the ‘appropriate’ moment, I’ll ask what the employment experience of their grads has been since 2007.
Yeah, like folks who’ve done hard physical labor for 40 years. While dickhead was using affirmative action to transfer to an Ivy.
I want the test scores! LOL
A friend of mine has a saying: “Figures lie, and liars figure”.
Agree with Buzz; the asshole in the WH likes these ideas.
Well, eCAHN, you can reach most of them at their parents’ house.
How do you know O attended Columbia?
WRT physical labor, I aged 10 years with my tumble down the steps a year ago and the bad weather making it difficult to get back into shape. Peeps who I pay can’t do high jobs anymore, like cleaning gutters or second floor windows.
As I said on prior thread, firing congress and POTUS would save taxpayers a lot of money.
I can see a “Grand Bargain” coming: Work until 80 for SS, and Goldman will donate $10 million to AARP.
A “Balanced” approach. Asshole.
I doubt the rest of the committee has that level of awareness.
I am tolerated bc I ask embarrassing Qs of endowment managers, which other committee members value. Once I start asking embarrassing Qs of the college prez, who is an ex-officio member of the committee, I’m sure I’ll be asked to leave. It’s been over a decade stint so time for me to go anyhowl.
And AARP will pay for insurance ads with the $10 million.
And create jobs.
200.
Ask yourself this. If O had scored 1500+, we would know about it, right?
I mean, we know Schumer scored 1600.
O never attended Columbia.
Really?
TRMS touting accountability. What a fucking farce.
Jared Bernstein discovering fraud in the mortgage industry.
The part that always gets me is the “everybody knows.” Because of course, everybody they know does agree; they take it for granted.
And yet, there was a(n otherwise) lovely piece on npr the other day about a 71 year old reporter….with the clear implication that the story was being done because her continuing to work with energy and sharpness was, um, newsworthy. Remarkable!
Yet they they turn around and talk about how “everybody is gonna have to work till 70 as routine in the future.”
How do these two things reconcile? They don’t.
Nor do they recognize the fact that (let alone the new grads these days who can’t find jobs) once your job has vanishsed when you’re over 50, your chances of finding another job are very, very small. They keep telling us that, too, but just can’t put the several facts together!
Okay, taking a deep breath. Pet peeve.
I am sure the free market will magically produce a vast array of awesome and fulfilling jobs for 70-year-olds.
taking care of other 70-year olds.
If he had, do you think this would have been Columbia’s PR release when their first alum became POTUS. Doesn’t pass the giggle test.
In other news, Ari Fleischer hits a base loaded home run.
If Komen hasn’t already pissed off everyone to the maximum degree already, expect more announcements.
Fleischer being involved really is the icing on the cake. I imagine that we are going to find out all sorts of sleazy things about Komen now.
if, three years and some months ago, when Barack Obama and the democrats (and progressives, we thought…) won a resounding victory over the assholes who were so determinedly ruining america, someone had predicted a political climate where throwing elderly people under the austerity bus would be the political coin of the realm, along with all of the other sustained rightwing predation, he would have been hooted off of the site, here.
I’m at the point that I don’t want to hear another fuckng word about how bad the republicans are, without the attendant and more important truth, that without Barack Obama’s laying down for them like a cur dog, they would not be ABLE to be bad. If he had even TRIED to do the right thing, they would have been reduced to a puddle of back-alley piss, politically speaking.
Instead, we’re treated to the disgusting campaign-kabuki spectacle of Obama pretending to be the big reformer NOW, when he has zero chance of reforming anything, and will probably lose the Senate, if not the White House, itself.
Will the democrats just stand around and watch the mid-term debacle be repeated?
It sure as shit looks like it.
I think the Democrats are going to do better this year. But not because they *are* better, but because the Republicans have reminded everyone just how horrible they are.
They tried to hoot some of us off the site, but some of us are assholes & stayed here anyhowl.
Aloha, Eli…! Another awesome post…! *g*
That’s about when I joined!
Aloha, Ctut…! Thanks!
*heh* You’re letting yer slip show, M’dear…! ;-)
A sexist comment.
Speaking of being booted off sites, today I just got booted from a private website that is only open to members of the Writers Guild of America — you know, those left-leaning Hollywood writer types.
My sin? Excessive criticism, backed up with articles, links, sources, etc., of Zero’s sellouts.
Ah, the Veal Pen. Not as prestigious as being booted off the Orange Satan, but still, I wear my little badge of dishonor proudly!
So sue me, M’dear…! ;-)
Sufficient to point out your insensitivity. No need to sue.
Ahhh, perspective…
ELI!
Fleischer has always been one slimy motherfucker.
I’ll be 70 in less than 2 years but I don’t see an end to swimmin’ in the great capitalist cesspool M – F any time soon.
It really does come down to “We suck less,” doesn’t it? That’s fuckin’ pathetic.
Yeah, but worth pointing out his failures.
KELLY!
Gotta work with what ya got.
I got a flyer for a cruise Alma Mater Tulane, and Ari is to be aboard for lecturing….Does that really make you want to take a cruise? Yikes…I started to write the school;)
That’s because you didn’t work harder and invest your money more wisely when you were younger. Just ask Willard; he’ll set you straight.
(Is a snark tag really necessary?)
And we’re about running on dry. Bottom of the barrel this time.
Well, former person, you have made my life easier. Not that’s an accomplishment that St. Peter will credit you with at the Pearly Gates. *g*
Oh, absolutely.
Aloha, SD…! It is f*cking pathetic…!
But, False Flag, anyone…? 8-(
Fixed it for ya.
That’s actually the truth but I did all the shit I can’t do now and gotz no ree-grets. Willard couldn’t buy what I’ve done. heh
All together….I really could not believe someone took that to be a selling point….
Namaste, CT, long time no talkee. Two ships crossin’ in the night.
Explain this:
The President of Columbia would seem to be a rock solid source.
No Doubt, Hombre…! Recently, I’ve had to check the Menu ya offer daily, to make sure ya didn’t serve up the TRNN or RT clip, I wanted to feature later on…! ;-)
Heh. U R are zo naive.
ELI!
Sure! We’ll just steal all the money people have been putting into social security and medicare all these years, break our promises to seniors to prevent the wealthy having to pay as high a percentage in taxes as the people who depend on those programs. What could go wrong? These people are just evil.
Ahhhh, I wouldn’t worry about that. Second helpings are just as good as first. The pickin’s have been a little slim lately. I think Blumenthal’s interview this mornin’ could stand all the publicity it can get.
Tell me all about the observatory.
MARGARET!
Funny how raising or removing the payroll tax cap is almost never mentioned as a means of “fixing” Social Security. How about removing the cap and *lowering* the retirement age? I bet it would have some kind of positive effect on unemployment too.
Can’t be havin’ any o’ that there socialist stuff, now.
Or put differently, if POTUS lied to us, what in the world makes u think that Columbia prez wouldn’t.
Ahem. Raising payroll tax cap would be tax on “job creators.” (Scare quotes)
Spot on. Lift the cap, lower the retirement age to 63 maximum. Talk about savings and job creation!
You want to blow up their minds with that?
I think I can speak for most here when I say fuck ‘em.
There is one person here who might take issue. Eagerly awaiting the response.
The pickin’s have been a little slim lately.
Which truly worries me, SD…! When it’s such a Powder Keg in the ME/Persian Gulf, with three Carrier Groups, and a fourth nearby…! It really reminds my of the buildup to WWI and a potential Archduke Ferdinand ‘assassination’, or even another USS Liberty…! 8-(
Whether I am naive is beside the point.
Here is more evidence.
Huh? As in what’s your point.
Wanna hear something afu? When I was in the navy, I saw a training film that dramatized the Liberty incident but the bad part is that it was dramatized to show how sloppy sailors and lax discipline cost lives but they never mentioned Israel. In fact my company commander point blank refused to answer the question when asked who it was that attacked Liberty. Gives you a warm fuzzy doesn’t it? Those sailors didn’t die in vain! The navy co-opted their deaths to blame them for the fatalities.
My point is President Obama attended and graduated from Columbia.
That speaks volumes, Peg…! 8-(
Children, here is the solution.
Take all the money from the wealthy and create government run businesses that hire the unemployed. All profits from the businesses goes to paying off the debt and creating more government run business. Between the profits and the increased tax base will bring about a balanced budget, with all the programs we really need. If the wealthy are socially irresponsible with the money, then they do not deserve to have it. Capitalism is dead, and we need to stop pretending it is otherwise. We need to own our own manufacturing, services, and development, without the greed factor. We can have reeducation camps for the rich that have lost their money, due to greed. FEMA has already done part of the work for us. We need to create close ties to Cuba, to get avisors with experience in accomplishing this properly.
I say punish them all for their betrayals, then start the search for those who won’t betray.
First: Eli, I’m sorry, but I see no reason for the democrats to “do better” in the general. I think you’re making the mistake that a lot of democrats are making, by inferring from Obama’s goat-rodeo bounce, that he’s off to the races. I think that’s going to disappear within three-four months, when some foreign policy chickens start coming home to roost.
And, I think SouthernDragon is right: “…We suck less!” didn’t work for shit, in the mid-terms, and I think that it’s going to be even worse, this year.
Good post, Margaret. The Pentagon and White House did a hell of job sanitizing that bloody little “glitch”, didn’t they?
“I say fuck ‘em.”
It’s an either-or situation; if we DON’T say fuck’em, then they’re guaranteed to keep on fucking us.