Posted on 08/29/2011 7:22:55 AM PDT by Poundstone
BUT, many of the state and federal union jobs were vastly overpaid with outrageous benefits not found in the private sector.
City of Beverly Hills paper just reported the average city worker gets a retirement pension worth 3.3 million. That is abuse of taxpayer spending.
SS is contributed to, but in many cases people far out live the contributions made and are in fact on welfare of a sort through SS.
We have to do a lot of cutting IMO. We need a balanced budget amendment and we also have to stop raiding the SS payments.
We can go on an on, but you all know already what I am saying here. :-)
What most of them do is avoid care or tell you you need care. If it is cancer and you have an HMO they will probably delay care hoping you die.
That is bad enough, not if you have that through the government figure it will be 1000% worse.
There's a lot of factors we used to look at in the early, head scratching days of the Iraqi insurgency. Terrain, population density, numbers of fighters, supporters, or fence sitters by percentage, religious and tribal affiliation, education level, military experience, resources, access to weapons, etc.
One of the more interesting things is that we never were fighting all that many Iraqis. They ranked poorly in almost any measurable category. Even the tribal or religious inroads we had made in the various areas didn't get us much play. During one of these think tank meetings I had been suckered into (I was more of a targeting analyst, not a researcher), one of the panelists mentioned offhand how lucky we were this wasn't actually California. The land mass was roughly the same as Cali, and that comparison was common.
It was daunting on an epic scale to imagine all those metrics suddenly rise and max out. If you get anything more than a very tiny percent of the population rise up, it would outstrip what the standing Army could handle very, very fast. Not without taking the gloves off. Which, in counterinsurgency, means that videos of your side doing some ugly clean up work will wind up on the internet, and add 200,000+ enemies. In the media age, a big Army is a bull in a china shop. Anything more than a very tightly controlled movement, and you wind up doing more harm than good at every turn.
Anyway, long story short, you're right. If the average American gun owner rose up at breakfast, Afghanistan on a bad day would look like Kindergarten by lunchtime.
Something many people do not know: Military retirement is funded on a pay as you go basis. Since Oct 1984, the military has been required to pay from its current budget the cost of future retirement.
“Annually the services transfer an amount equal to a percentage of their basic pay accounts for the active and reserve components. The percentage differs by component, but it is identical within components for all services. In FY95, fund transfers equaled 33.5 percent of the active duty basic pay and 9.7 percent of the selected reserves.”
Yes, I’m retired military. And in all but one year of my military service, retirement was funded and paid for in advance.
Let’s see - it was part of my contract with the government, and fully paid for during the time I served. Yep, I’m entitled to it.
Or a sweet 70's movie with Michael York. Seems that most people there were pretty happy, right?
Well, technically it’s only a contract between people of honor. Evidently you didn’t understand that concept.
“We need a balanced budget amendment”
I agree with most of your post, but I have to admit that I am a bit leary of ammending the USSC for a balanced budget. My hesitation is solely related to national defense......What would happen if we were attacked and had to spend over the planned budget to wage war?
(just thinking out loud)
“Well, technically it’s only a contract between people of honor.”
You give governments far to much credit, which is why the USSC limits the federal government. How is SS a contract if it is beyond the consititutional limits?
Give us our money back with interest and we're otta here. I'm sure young people feel the same. To hell with giving Washington deadbeats one more slush fund to distribute to the eternally dependent.
But there is no money. I think the government screwed people. Just flatout screwed 'em. No money is no money.
Now you have a group saying, "Don't give me anything. I'm not asking for a penny. All I want is for the government to stop taking my stuff."
And you have a group saying, "Your stuff is actually my stuff. I'm entitled to it. I'll be reasonable and settle for less than the full amount, but I want you to give me some of your stuff. And your children's stuff. You owe me."
These two views cannot be easily reconciled.
You would have to look at the original wording of the act. It would be analogous to an insurance program. The original language is Social Security Insurance. The monthly payout is in proportion to the amount put in on your behalf. The “contract” specifies how that is figured.
Even wonder what percentage of Detroit is 'disabled'?
Dems found a way for the eternally dependent to get around welfare reform... Dems give 'em Social Security forEVER. Start collect at 25 with a bad temper, HIV, drug problems - flat feet - whatever ) and collect for 50 years for more. The system's going broke because dem victim groups are pulling off the money.
When Social Security is broken, those people who really are disabled will die. And the old without relatives will die too. The 'eternally dependent' - the dem victim group members will just move on to the next scam...
“We have to have laws that prevent governments from bloating and that keep the people’s money MOST in their own pockets IMO.”
We are in agreement, but let me point out that we do have laws that are in place to prevent this bloating of the federal government....It is all contained in the USSC! ;-)
Check out this article and enjoy the source: http://www.thenewamerican.com/opinion/chip-wood/8321-the-left-baits-a-trap-the-qbalanced-budget-amendmentq
No insurance is an investment with a garunteed pay out. Insurance is rightly a form of risk management. How is Social Security a risk management tool?
That’s exactly what it was set up to be. It was never supposed to be a retirement plan. It was to be a safety net, not a system for total support of anyone but a subsistence for those who paid in and those who through some sort of personal catastrophe had nothing else to fall back on. An insurance against being destitute if you will.
So you admit that it is not a contractual agreement to pay everyone what they have “invested” into the system. Glad to see you come around.
That’s not what I said. Here’s what I said: “It was to be a safety net, not a system for total support of anyone but a subsistence for those who paid in and those who through some sort of personal catastrophe had nothing else to fall back on.” If you will notice it only says the monthly payout was not to be a total retirement system. There are some who, because of the way they calculate monthly payout by what they put in will more then others. The contractual agreement was that they would get a monthly amount. Actuaries at the time calculated the number of people that were likely to survive to retirement age and beyond. The “contract” if you will to those people was that they would get a maximum amount per month according to the formula.
So to say that there was no agreement to pay those that contributed who reached retirement age would be incorrect. The words in your statement “everyone”, “what they invested” are contingent upon if they reached retirement age and how long they live beyond the age they retire. To those who reach retirement age there is indeed a contract to pay them. Who knows whether they live long enough to reach retirement age or live long enough to fully get back what they put.
Agree completely. I’m a recent federal civilian retiree and my pension is part of my total compensation package, same as health care coverage. I’m entitled.
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