Dems show their true colors on this medicare bill...

[SoloFlex]

So lets see. I'm trying to think about a country where the old are not given support and the poor are forgotten.... but yet there's a rich upper class.

Hmmm...... Sounds like the middle east as well as many other 3rd world countries. Regions filled with social problems and never ending bloodshed.

To think that the poor and old are not your problems is to live in a fanasty land where everyone makes a million dollars a year and they got there on their own with absolutly no help from previous generations.

 

[MattTheSkywalker]

So lets see. I'm trying to think about a country where the old are not given support and the poor are forgotten.... but yet there's a rich upper class.

Hmmm...... Sounds like the middle east as well as many other 3rd world countries. Regions filled with social problems and never ending bloodshed.

To think that the poor and old are not your problems is to live in a fanasty land where everyone makes a million dollars a year and they got there on their own with absolutly no help from previous generations.

No one is forgotten.

responsibility for well-being is transfererd back to the individual.

(BTW our country existed approx 160 and 190 years without SS and medicare, respectively).

 

[Y_lifter]

I have taken my Mother in law in with loving arms as she retired
and was not working. She has been a godsend watching our Daughter when we work or go out over the years...

This is the way it should be..

 

[SoloFlex]

No one is forgotten.

responsibility for well-being is transfererd back to the individual.

(BTW our country existed approx 160 and 190 years without SS and medicare, respectively).

Matt, come on. You're one of my favorite posters here, but I can't fathom how you don't see that we have to take care of our community. Why aren't you jumping up and down about the money we flush down the toilet to other countries?

Of course I realize that I could easily be condemned for not supporting other countries, as we are quickly becoming a part of a "global community". However I think there are more pressing problems here at home.

No, no one should get a free ride. But those who are down trodden and scraping for food should be brought into shelter and helped. Not given a few bucks to buy beer, but to be helped in ways such as building job skills and personal management.

And you're right, fat people shouldn't get their stomachs sown up on our tax dollars. But at the same time if an unemployed person falls victim to cancer there should be a safety net that catches those who fall between the cracks.

 

[MattTheSkywalker]

Matt, come on. You're one of my favorite posters here, but I can't fathom how you don't see that we have to take care of our community. Why aren't you jumping up and down about the money we flush down the toilet to other countries?

Of course I realize that I could easily be condemned for not supporting other countries, as we are quickly becoming a part of a "global community". However I think there are more pressing problems here at home.

No, no one should get a free ride. But those who are down trodden and scraping for food should be brought into shelter and helped. Not given a few bucks to buy beer, but to be helped in ways such as building job skills and personal management.

And you're right, fat people shouldn't get their stomachs sown up on our tax dollars. But at the same time if an unemployed person falls victim to cancer there should be a safety net that catches those who fall between the cracks.

You're all over the place with your points. I've tried to stay foused.

Social Security and Medicare are investments in the past. They cost us $1T per year.

Universal healthcare is another idea which will result in throwing billions at old people.

Tax dollars, when spent, should have a positive impact on society. Redistribution away from producers to people with no future (elderly) is economic stupidity of the highest order.

Yet that is what we do.

 

[SoloFlex]

You're all over the place with your points. I've tried to stay foused.

Social Security and Medicare are investments in the past. They cost us $1T per year.

Universal healthcare is another idea which will result in throwing billions at old people.

Tax dollars, when spent, should have a positive impact on society. Redistribution away from producers to people with no future (elderly) is economic stupidity of the highest order.

Yet that is what we do.

First, I was not all over the place. I was clearly talking about social services.

Again, I'm going to have state that not everyone makes a "living wage" and that you didn't not get to were you are now without the help of previous generations. Why are you having trouble seeing that that those "useless" elderly folks had a hand in everything you currently take for granted.

 

[atlantabiolab]

So lets see. I'm trying to think about a country where the old are not given support and the poor are forgotten.... but yet there's a rich upper class.

Hmmm...... Sounds like the middle east as well as many other 3rd world countries. Regions filled with social problems and never ending bloodshed.

To think that the poor and old are not your problems is to live in a fanasty land where everyone makes a million dollars a year and they got there on their own with absolutly no help from previous generations.

Do you know what the average American saved of their income during the 40's-50's? Approximately, 25% of their income. Today it is less than 5%. Do you know why? Because they had to. Social Security was a relatively new creation and people were still in the habit of saving money.

After the advent of socialism in America, all responsible activities began to diminish, because the context of the public mind changed. Why should one save for latter years when we have the "safety net" of SS? When it is our turn to receive it we can just bitch and moan that it ain't enough to live and demand increases. With the various government healthcare coverages we have, the responsibility of the family has dwindled. No longer is grandma and grandpa our responsibility, they are the wards of old folks homes.

Your examples of what would occur with out the benevolence of the state is fiction. History does not side with you. Americans were more responsible for their lives in earlier years for one reason: they had to. The context of the world was such that one was required to care for themselves and family. Your beloved socialized reality is not one of care and generosity, it is one of relinquishing responsibility to someone else, it is paying someone else to do what you should be doing. Let my neighbor pay for my medical bills, let my children pay for my retirement, let the old folks home care for my elderly mom and dad.

Marx was correct that the family would crumble under socialism.

 

[SoloFlex]

I highly doubt 1950's Americans were saving 25% of their income. I'd love to see those numbers.

Thankfully the majority of America supports social security or some form of it.

In all reality Social Security is nothing more than Insurance trust funds set up to supplement people when they are no longer able to work. Plain and simple. The majority of people who receive it have paid into it.

You don't seem to have a problem paying your insurance premiums even though some of that money goes to people who haven't paid a dime to your insurance company.

Can you tell me that the money you pay in car insurance every month is wasted if you never get into an accident?

 

[atlantabiolab]

First, I was not all over the place. I was clearly talking about social services.

Again, I'm going to have state that not everyone makes a "living wage" and that you didn't not get to were you are now without the help of previous generations. Why are you having trouble seeing that that those "useless" elderly folks had a hand in everything you currently take for granted.

Ahhh...the old indebted to past and future generations rhetoric. Read Thomas Jefferson: "The earth belongs to the living".

Generations do not have the power to obligate proceeding generations into servitude. No matter how grand their age was, they are responsible for their debts, just as the next is responsible for its debts. My father has no authority to demand society provide him what he is capable of providing, just as my son cannot demand society provide him with their belongings, simply because he exists. Every man knows that he will have good times and bad, and it is his obligation alone to provide for himself, in money, property, and good family. The latter idea has been substituted with "society" or "state". Family is the natural creation designed to buffer man from the solitude and harshness of the world. Now we simply discard grandma and grandpa onto the social worker's doorstep and somehow get a warm feeling that everything is all right.

Each man comes into this world, in the best scenario, as a free moral agent, and in the context of the world at present. He only has the claim to his life and all that he can produce with it. What he produces he cannot take with him, so he bestows it as a gift to the next, to do as they see fit. If they ignore the good things he has produced it is to their detriment, for only the living suffer consequences.

"Living wages" are phantasms. We can't define them, they are not real. Those who promote this idea don't understand basic concepts of economics. For every forced wage increase, you increase costs, decrease production and prevent another man from receiving work.

 

[SoloFlex]

Your rhetoric is laughable, friend. Thomas Jefferson's "The earth belongs to the living" was about dead people, not old people. The people that we are discussing here are still alive.

Each man does not come into this world in the best scenario. There are those born into the bondage of drug dependences, mental disabilites, and crippling financial woes. He is not free. He is chained by forces that he has no control over.

"Living Wages" is a no brainer. Don't play around like you have absolutely no clue what these are.