I can see no scenario where we can avoid debt default in some form or fashion without brutally slashing entitlements - especially Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and Civil Service pensions. Directly stated, Congress has spent and borrowed us into oblivion. The inevitable reduction of defense spending simply cannot go far enough.
And unfortunately, I cannot envisage any significant reduction in entitlements without a revolution ... and I cannot see that happening before the public becomes convinced it is the lesser of all other evils ... and, unfortunately, I cannot imagine that happening before this country is ravaged by hyperinflation.
I hope and pray with all my heart that I am wrong ...
>>Cuts in Social Security and Medicare, for which people have paid 15 per cent of their earnings all their lives, would result in starvation and deaths from curable diseases.
I stopped reading here.
Phase the programs out over 20 years.
I have paid into these programs all my life, and I regard these payments, like 90% of taxes, to be a deadweight loss.
Dr. Roberts when around the bend about 15 years ago, I seem to remember. Has he come back to his senses?
Uh Oh.. The evil ‘neocons’ are to blame...
Someone has been in the koolaid... LOL
...”I can see no scenario where we can avoid debt default in some form or fashion without brutally slashing entitlements - especially Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and Civil Service pensions”...
The first place to start would be to cut the cost of living increases which state and federal employees get in their retirement pensions..Teachers, for example, retire early because they know they eventually will pull in more retirement than they were making while working. Private pensioners do not get such benefits. If these programs are not scaled back, they will crash for too many goodies have been added on over the years for the sake of politics. However, they should not be cut for people already on them but for those coming on, the scaling back should be gradual. Social security was originally set up to be a retirement supplement for old people and it has become a welfare system because of the politicians. We have elected ignorant power mongers to rule over us for many years because we went for the charm rather than real deal and it has never been worse than today...
Yah, ok. Stop military spending.
Don’t fire any bureaucrats, though
This guy sounds a tad ... left.
The Neo COns created Social Security and Medicare? The NEO CONS authored the Immigration Reform act in 1965? Read that Neo con, the late Lion Of the Senate,Ted Kennedy Speech from the floor of the Senate in 1965 of what reforming Immigration would not do to the Country,just google it.
The question the American People should have been asking is where did THE MONEY Go! The answer they get will be the same one Bernie Madoff gave
IMO, the United States already HAS run out of time to get its budget and trade deficits under control.
You are right on target, my FRiend!
I have been one of a few voices in the wilderness crying out for the need of a Second American Revolution for YEARS, and even at this late day just before the Hindenburg Omen comes around once again and the economy destroyed by hyperinflation, the vast majority of Americans are not yet in favor of rebellion.
Yes, it will take an Economic Holocaust for the scales to fall off the eyes of our fellow Americans. They must be reduced to hunger, poverty, homelessness and RAGE before they shoulder arms and march on Washington, D.C.
People like us are like the Russian revolutionary Yevgraf following the badly led and ill equipped Russian Army to its inevitable destruction on the battlefields of the First World in the movie “Doctor Zhivago” - We know the oppressive Regime will be destroyed by revolution because of its bad decisions, but until the “boots” wear out and the people have had ENOUGH, they won’t listen to the voices of revolution.
Until the Feds began taxing the $%ap out of everybody in the country, people bought and sold houses for hundreds of years without their involvement. Same thing with healthcare, How do you think we all got here?!!
I had many ancestors that lived through their 80’s and 90’s without either Social Security or Medicare!!!Imagine. Some of them even participated in King George III’s schooling
I don’t think I’m going to take economic advice from an apologist for Iran and Palestinian terrorists, and one who equates our soldiers to Saddam Hussein’s henchmen. The man’s either on some islamofascists’ payroll or he’s got dementia.
It may be too late to fix the damage of the democrats.
http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html
Am I asking too much to vote them all out but a handful of maybe republicans and cut their salaries and stop the back door slush funds, big gov, and all of the corruption?
Duplicate thread, so I’ll copy and paste my post :)
Right up the zero’s alley. This guy wouldn’t know how to balance a budget on the Arizona border.
WHAT "territorial expansion?" Israel isn't territorially expanding.
First part of the article had me. PCR spins off into LSDland bleating about neocons and completely scrapping the Defense budget.
Sorry, no sale.
Here is what can be done.
The wars, which benefit no one but the military-security complex and Israel’s territorial expansion, can be immediately ended. This would reduce the US budget deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars per year. More hundreds of billions of dollars could be saved by cutting the rest of the military budget which, in its present size, exceeds the budgets of all the serious military powers on earth combined.US military spending reflects the unaffordable and unattainable crazed neoconservative goal of US Empire and world hegemony.
I'm pretty sure his Thorazine shot wore off just as he started typing that.
Mark
The American people are voting with their wallets. The government can’t continue without funds indefinitely. Keep every dollar you can in your control and “starve the beast,” as Pres. Reagan advised.