Seniors voted for Trump at an alarming rate. Further, seniors voted Republicans into congress. They voted in people whose vision is to reform entitlements therefore let the reforms begin.
As a senior, I favor changes to strengthen viability of Medicare and Social Security, but not their dismantling. We have not been using an economic system that shows itself willing to forego profit for investment in human capital onshore. So, the myth of providing for one's own retirement in other than penury is exactly that, a myth. Let the reforms begin indeed. Start with knocking the cap off the w/h taxes for these social safety net programs. Raise the retirement age since we are healthier now and can work longer. Consider a means test for millionaire households with incentives to forego the benefit. The programs' purpose is not only to shelter elders from abject poverty and disease as they age out of the population, but to protect the general public's health and safety as well. Failing reforms, then switch to an economic system that does not pretend to provide any benefits below from tax-cuts above. Put the taxes to direct public benefit and stop saying they will create onshore jobs.
I for one am tired of paying for entitlements for which I get zero benefit (social security and medicare). People need to do their part and prepare for their own retirement and not burden younger generations. If they did not do an adequate job saving for retirement, whose fault is that?
LOL possibly Apple's fault for offshoring those enticing iPods and iPhones all these years? Make some jobs with some of those excess profits and then we can talk whose fault it is when a tool and die maker doesn't set aside money for retirement. Meanwhile go live on $15 an hour in a metro area and see how much money you can set aside for anything past the rent and the carfare to work. Don't worry about exceeding the max protected by the FDIC when you bank it...
I am so sorry you don't like paying FICA taxes. I didn't like them and I didn't like paying the Vietnam War income tax surcharge either, although at least back then we saw on our paystubs where the war monies were coming from, unlike GWBush with his "go shopping to support the troops" initiatives. I didn't hear him say "and oh by the way save up for your retirement because Trump's going to kill Social Security."
Further, I was never really thrilled holding up my end of taxes for whatever corporate subsidies we were dishing out during all the years I was in the workforce. Talk about entitlements. I hope the war machine made a good return on my dough.
But the FICA withholdings are not for entitlements, they are social safety net programs passed by Congress decades ago and that have provided clear benefits to retirees and the general public ever since then. Yes people need to help prepare for their retirement. We do not show them how to do that from the time they are teenagers. Let that begin.
I laugh when you say "not burden younger generations" while I write checks to help educate my own nextgen. If and when they graduate and get a job, they will save for their own retirement, as they are certainly aware that my having put funds into a 401k while I was in the workforce is the only thing keeping them out of student debt currently. Get out of your own bubble once in awhile. You live in a country of 320 million diverse people and situations. My own "bubble" certainly makes a mockery of your narrow views.
I am also tired of carrying the load for public education. If you are too lazy to earn enough money to send your kid to a school that you pay for, whose fault is it?
Those are some of the most selfish and shortsighted comments I have ever seen posted in this entire forum. I know plenty of libertarians, some in my own family, but even they are not so deluded as to think this country in its unfettered and savage capitalism allows the average family's hardworking heads of household to make enough money to afford tuition to a private school. Where does "lazy" fit into the picture of these Americans you do not even know? Can you support your assertion? And do you want to live in a nation of uneducated presidents, members of Congress, mayors? Children are us, later on. Children become our political leaders. To invest in their education is to underwrite the future of the nation. It cannot be less important than making sure we can defend ourselves with adequate military force. Defend what? Without education we are next to nothing.
HUD is of no benefit to me.
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread” (Anatole France). I’m sure you’ve heard the quote, and you may even also be aware that he was a Communist. However given your post and some other posts you've made here, i am not sure that you understand the implications of a large homeless population. But it's reassuring if you at least understand the laws against vagrancy and so forth apply to you as well as to the unfortunate amongst us. It's always good to know what you can't do even if you would never imagine having to try it out.
The EPA is, at best, of questionable benefit.
Without a vigorous EPA Los Angeles would have become an uninhabitable brown dustbowl by 1990. I could see what I'd be breathing there when my flight was circling before landing back in the 1960s! Take it from there. At least you said "questionable" benefit instead of dismissing clean air and water out of hand. And climate change is no hoax, even if the incoming administration plans to claim that as soon as its transition team gets its climate-change-denying speech written. I might not be too old to join a protest march after all, who knows. I'm still doing dance workouts so the barricades might even be calling me. Or I could just pick up the phone to my Congressman once that climate-change-denying sod gets sworn in.
The people were pretty clear on Nov 8. Particularly where it mattered - Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida. Let the politicians do the will of the people.
No argument there. Have at it. Half the country said no to the incoming administration. Sounds like there will be enough checks and balance in the Congress on the left, particularly in the Senate, to keep the right from just committing suicide on behalf of the entire nation.
