: How is the government seriously gonna deal with massive debt without collapsing on itself or raising taxes?
Government right now is a huge Ponzi scheme, Youre paying taxes to cover peoples Social Security and medicare even though they paid for it when they were younger. But the government spent that money and is now paying them back with your money, and nothing is going into savings for you. Do you think this is true?
Answers and Views:
Answer by Sound_of_the_silenced
This is how. The plan is clear and has been well thought out.
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development said in a report published Monday that the U.S. dollar should be replaced as the world’s standard reserve currency, giving rise to a new global currency managed by an as-yet undetermined financial regulatory organization.
Answer by EdTaxes will be raised the Ponzi scheme you mentioned ended when bush left the White HouseAnswer by Bill in Kansas
They are going to raise taxesAnswer by My Policies Caused The Calapse
They could reduce their spending!!! That’s what a real business does.Answer by Love Canada.
The problem is you pay politicians for results that are seen short term, there is no motivation to think long term.
Even the president has no motivation to think beyond 8 years, no matter how good he is, he gets replacedAnswer by subwm4bush
With the economy improving the dems won’t have to raise taxes on the middle class.Answer by GlobalWarming
Looks like what we need in the White House is a competent magician!
Think David Blaine would be interested?Answer by Seldon Surak II
Remember the ballanced budget during the prosperity under Clinton, just before the tech bubble burst?
More jobs, more workers
More workers, more pay
More pay, more tax revenue
More tax revenue & you can pay off deficit & debt.
Just do what happened under Clinton, but with PERMANENT jobs that won’t ‘bubble burst’
For example: Green manufacturing, Infrastructure Maintenance & Health Care
[And while we are at it, how about paying teachers a decent wage?]
We could keep good ones & get rid of bad ones if the market was competitive.
MAKE it competitive, PAY MORE!
[By the way, with everyone working, childcare will need to be more available, & that is where you can use the teachers who were kind & loved kids, but just didn’t make the cut.]
You are right ..it is the biggest ponzi scheme of all time…
exactly what bernie maddoff did…. THE GOVERNMENT took money we paid in, and it will now probably fall, like a big house of cards.Answer by Monsignor Martinez
And that would be wholly incorrect.
They paid into it when they were younger, NOT to cover themselves, but to cover their parents. You cover your parents. Your children will cover you. Your grandchildren will cover your children.
It is called a legacy debt. Each generation pays for the one that came before. The only way Social Security would run out of money for you is if your generation of humans is the last generation of humans before humans go extinct.
You may not get all the benefits that you were promised, mostly because Bush gutted Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid so that he could pay for his $ 3 trillion Iraq War without raising taxes to pay for that (hence the massive debt)…oh, and the fact that we are not having children at a fast enough rate to cover our retirement…but you will get something as long as there is a next generation of humans.
I mean, if you want to quit paying into Social Security, we can. But then no one is covering your parents, and they will have to move back in with you. At which time, you will still have to pay for them, and entirely by yourself.
Answer by Uncle PennybagsOK, here’s a dirty little secret. Our national debt never has to be repaid. The country will not crumble either.
We simply roll over the debt, which is paying it off by selling new debt, and continue on our merry way. The issue here is servicing the interest on the national debt.
Here’s the key! Growing the debt is acceptable, as long as we control the rate of growth to grow no faster than tax revenues over the long term. And this is the problem, under Obama’s own projected spending, debt grows way faster than the economy and the tax revenues that come from that.
See the linked short video about that demonstrates our national debt issues.
Answer by MacThis is the fundamental flaw with the Welfare System. Your tax money is going to pay for today’s consumption (I assume that you are not a recipient of Welfare currently). When you retire and will be eligible for Welfare Benefits, the tax payers at that point of time pay for you.
This scheme would work well if all generations were approximately of the same size and the amount collected in taxes is more than those given out in entitlements. Unfortunately that is not always the case.
Sometimes one generation is larger than the other. While the larger generation is the tax payer and not the entitlement recipient we do not have problems. However when the larger generation becomes the entitlement recipient we will find it hard to make ends meet.
We are left with 3 options.
1) Raise taxes
2) Bring in more value based immigrants.
3) Close the welfare system down.
Raising taxes is self explanatory.
By value based immigrants I imply those with higher levels of education and skills. These immigrants are more likely to pay greater amounts in taxes and are less likely to be dependant on the welfare system.
Closing down the system will be impossible for two reasons:
a) Way too many people have been made dependant on it.
b) People who have paid for it all their work life will feel cheated if we stop it when it is time for them to receive benefit.
America is in a similar cross-road. The Baby boomer generation was much larger than the next generation so this scheme is not likely to work if we do not use options 1 or 2.
If we do not want to raise taxes the value based immigrants are our only bet. There are many highly educated people in third world countries like India who would be interested in migrating to the first world if given an opportunity. Countries like Canada and Australia who already have a concrete immigration system have taken advantage of this option.
A lack of a coherent immigration policy and a lassie faire attitude towards illegal immigration has lead to this option having little value for the US. The illegal immigrants seem to wield a lot of political clout in the US and any immigration policy that will not give them an easy entry to citizenship or a green card is not likely to pass into law. Most of the illegal immigrants are not what I would term as value based immigrants. I would call them high risk immigrants simply because they have low levels of education, skills and English language abilities. This would make them more of a liability on the Welfare System rather than an asset. Immigration reform that will target value based immigrants and bypass the illegal immigrants is not likely to find favor with those on the left and given that the democrats are in a majority in both houses and have the presidency, this option appears to be less likely. The left and the unions also look unfavorably on the value based immigrants because they consider them to be competitors for high paying jobs. If the immigration reform include the value based and the high risk immigrants, the advantage of the value based immigrants will easily be offset by a larger high risk immigrant group.
This year Obama is less likely to hike the taxes because tax cuts were part of his campaign promise. However down the road when things get tighter and the election campaign of 2008 is a distant memory we would be starring down the barrel of a large tax hike especially for the middle class because by then the wealthy would already be up to their eyeballs in tax liabilities.
Answer by jotI’m not surprised. I think the government should show some real fiscal responsibility by cutting costs to only the bare essentials. For a member of Congress, if he has at least $ 1 million in assets and income (excluding the current salary of those in Congress) combined, he should receive a salary of $ 1 annually. Also, they should stop funding the alternative energy stuff and start allowing the oil companies to drill for oil in the US. Then after we become more self-sufficient, they can look into the green energy.
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