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Jamie
1 month ago

Since the 1960s when the Boomers started working, the top income tax rate has dropped from a high of 77% down to the current 37%.  This was possible because their payments in were in excess to the money paid out, so that huge excess was used to buy government securities.  There has never been a place to preserve that money to earn interest, so it all went into the General fund.  

Now that they are starting to retire and wanting to collect on all that money paid in, it no longer exists because of covering up all the budgets of the past four decades.  Instead of allowing that top rate to rise again to pay them back, todays gazillionaires wants to cut those benefits.

Social Security is not a charity.  It is a debt owed.  It hardly seems fair to penalize the people who have been carrying government expenses for four decades.  

 

craigcrawford
1 month ago

GOP Aims To Let Wall Street Take Over Social Security

Jamie, there is a war against Social Security brewing. Sen. Mike Lee summed up the latest attack in a series of alarming posts on X this week (all re-posted by Elon Musk with high praise).

His opening line:

Of all the deceptive sales techniques the U.S. government has used on the American people, one of them — the Social Security Act — gets far too little attention. Buckle up because this is a wild ride.

He goes on to call Social Security a “bill of goods”, saying that what we pay into to it is not “our money” but just tax revenue “gobbled up by the government itself”.

His solution? “Americans should be able to invest in their own future”.

In GOP speak that means turning over the money to Wall Street, their longtime goal — but now they’ve got the muscle to do it.

Read his posts here:
https://x.com/BasedMikeLee/status/1863771172485104124

blueINdallas
1 month ago

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-is-mocha-mousse-the-first-ever-shade-of-brown-chosen-as-pantones-color-of-the-year-180985588/

“What Is Mocha Mousse, the First-Ever Shade of Brown Chosen as Pantone’s Color of the Year?”

Hmmm, 2025 is gonna be a sh/tty year, so why not. 
 

blueINdallas
1 month ago

https://www.foxbusiness.com/healthcare/cvs-pulls-executive-photos-from-website-amid-manhunt-unitedhealthcare-ceo-killer

“CVS Health has pulled photos of its executives off its website as the manhunt for UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s killer continues. UnitedHealthcare’s leadership page has also been taken down, with the URL now redirected to the company’s homepage.”
 
Maybe change the way you do business because you are causing a lot of pain, and there are desperately angry folks out there…and this is ‘Merica, so guns.
 
 
 

blueINdallas
1 month ago

MAGAts want to privatize everything.
Now is the time for Dems to make a lot of noise about single payer healthcare…not health insurance.  CARE.  
Call it “Medicare for All” so folks understand it…and look at how Denmark does things.    
Broadcast/free stream Michael Moore’s movie “Sicko,” about healthcare around the world.  
Wound-licking time is over.   Start making big noise about what Orange Adolf & The Oligarchs (worst band, ever) are going to do…and make it impossible for them to carry out a single thing they try to do to unravel our democracy.
 
FIGHT! 

RebelliousRenee
1 month ago

Ivy…  so sorry for your loss…  glad you’ve come back to this site.
 
I LOVE color…   it was obvious to anyone who walked into my craft booth back when I was doing multiple fairs.
The joke I would tell people that would exclaim about all that color was…. ” yeah… I’m not into people who think brown is a festive color.”   It always got them laughing and they would hang around longer and sometimes buy a scarf.

RebelliousRenee
1 month ago

Kirk vs Spock…
 
 

Jamie
1 month ago

Social Security was originally designed so that the majority of people wouldn’t live long enough to collect. This mean there were funds for widows and orphans of the WW II war dead.   Now that life expectancy has increased substantially and there are fewer war dead from the smaller coterie of Korea, Viet Nam and Iraq/Afghanistan etc. it then expanded to cover long term disabled.  

There could possibly be some room for cuts to beneficiaries, but it would make more sense to tax wealth, stock trades etc rather than just relying on Income Tax to cover the ballooning shortfall.  

If all stocks were taxed at the rate of a half penny per share traded, the government would collect 1.5 billion per year.  

blueINdallas
1 month ago

Yes, Elizabeth Warren has a plan to secure Social Security.   Tax the rich a tiny bit.  Oligarchs aren’t having it.  

It really must be a sickness with them, to have more money than you could ever need and just hoard it for yourself.    Not caring about anyone but yourself, from cradle to grave.

And, yeah, the oligarchs will all die, too, and they can’t take it with them.   They will be remembered for what they built, but on the backs of exploited employees (and with the benefit of government subsidies and infrastructure).  History will not be kind to them.   

Their legacy will be greed and inhumanity.

IvyGreen
1 month ago

Just back from Birmingham. It was colder than Colorado.
Thank you BID, Renee, Pogo for your kind words. In my last conversation with my daughter in the hospital with no suspicion she would be taken from us the following day, I asked her, what do you want us to tell people? Without a second of hesitation, she said, the truth, of course. 

IvyGreen
1 month ago

I’ve been hearing about privatizing social security since I was in HR in the 90s. Maybe it will happen this time since the gaggle of cabinet oligarchs have their greedy eyes on the money.
A similar thing was done a while back in Maryland with the teachers pension fund. They were all happy to get fat checks when “Uncle Louie” gave them their money – made up of their accumulated contributions and interest – back. Not so happy when retirement time came, the original money was gone, and their puny checks showed up from the new and improved plan.

Jamie
1 month ago

BID

I just read a former comment you made about CEO’s and laughed.  When I worked at the US Chamber of Commerce we had a joke called the CEO intelligence test.  There was an older meeting room with rather complicated directions to reach.

1.  Front desk

2.  Elevator

3.  4th floor reception

4.  Down left to door.

5.  Landing with stair down to left or door across landing into the room.

If you entered, got instructions and immediately found the room, you were a secretary.  If you got to the 4th floor but needed help you were middle management.  If you were confused by the landing you were a VP.  If you stopped on the first floor and demanded an escort, you were the CEO.

blueINdallas
1 month ago

LoL.  Yep, Elon saying CEOs create wealth is BS. The leaves at the top will wither and die without the roots.  Elon is so far up his own butt, it’s ridiculous.  He inherited wealth and bought Tesla, Starlink and Twitter. He’s not a genius.  He’s just evil.