What Will Happen if We Really Do Breach the Debt Ceiling Through Republican Intransigence

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

What Ezra Klein assumes you know, and is actually even admitted in this video  by the Arizona Congressman (who thinks he's pulling the wool over our eyes), welfare now is a a non issue.  It has mostly disappeared.  What they are really going after now is your Social Security savings.
Republicans and many media people call them entitlements, something to which you think you're entitled, but didn't earn, like an inheritance (which strangely they claim is a holy devt to the children of the wealthy.) 

But we showed that you earn 20 years of retirement by the money that you alone paid into the Social Security system, and employers payments into the Social Security system for employees boosts that retirement to 40 years all prepaid.  Yet, Republicans want to permanently take away part of those savings which they call entitlements (ie gifts) and have carefully crafted their arguments so that it appears that seniors and working people would be supporting taking more from "welfare" which is virtually non-existant instead of supporting the theft of their own Social Security moneys which they have placed in charge of the government.

Even younger people, have already paid heavily into the system (read our report on how up to 15% of your income each year was paid into the SS & Medicare system -- calculate that out and learn how much of you money you would lose) and they will get a better deal than they are likely to do with greedy Wall Street managers taking care of that money (especially since employers are not likely to offer them matching savings compensations on the private market and financial firms are experts in stealing their investors' money which is why they can afford massive dumps of glitzy ads on cable and broadcast programs.  But hey, if you want to support billionaire GOP supporter bankers instead of your own retirement, go ahead and follow the Republicans to their entitlement free future.  Just remember them in their castles in Cabo while you're shivering on the streets of Detroit or wherever when you  get older.  Knowing they're laughing at you might help you survive another day.  Who can't appreciate a good joke?  Well, maybe those who are the butt of the joke, like we all are to the GOP.)

Again, the best way to make your Congress member do what you want is to contact them.  YOu can find their addresses (for DC and local offices), emails, fax and phone numbers at House.gov and Senate.gov.  For your specific House Representative you will need to know your valid registered address, including your zipcode and possibly the 4 number extension.  You can find your zip and extension at usps.com by clicking on  "Find a Zip-Code" which opens up a floating box where you can put your address information.  (Alternatively, click here to go to a full page dedicated to the same purpose.) For your Senators, I assume you remember which state you live in and can go from there.

Tell your Representative and your Senators through their staff, or via mail, or fax, that you will not find it acceptable that the 15% you've put into Social Security  through your and your employers' mandated contributions be disappeared, by law or by their defaulting on the debt the Congress already has agreed by vote to take on through tax cuts for millionaires in the Bush years, two unfunded wars during the Bush years and the financial mismanagement that led to a near depression which started during the Bush years, and that you know that the nation does better when the rich pay their fair share of taxes given the immense wealth they get from our nation than with the supply side tax cuts they want to give to their fat cat backers.  Tell them you will hold them personally responsible for the outcome of this new looming crisis, and protecting your Social Security funds.

Don't let them BS you about how Wall Street bankers will take care of your retirement for you.  Those people crashed our economy in 2008 and have shown they are adept at stealing from investors.  (Wall  Street banks are also responsible for  the crises in Greece and Spain that is dragging down the whole of Mid latitude and Southern Europe though GOP operatives and officials lie about that.  Scandinavian nations which offer high amounts of financial help for the poor and for seniors and a great public education to their younger citizens are doing surprisingly well, for the same reason that the Clinton economy did better than the supply side heavy and sputtering Reagan economy which really only had one upturn in mid to late 2004 allowing his re-election.)

And, yes, this is a new crisis brought on by GOP grandstanding which has even more power to crash our economy and keep it down than the Fiscal Cliff crisis they threatened the US with two weeks ago.  I'll apologize for Congress, but the GOP must bear their own blame for seeking to win the already decided 2012 election by forcing repeated crises.

A good short URL for this post is  http://x.co/rs7W

SOS Alert! Save Our Social Security Now! Time for Action!

The old days:

In the old days people used to be able to plan to retire in  a location like this.  Remove a few trees, grade and lay down  a short lane of gravel leading to a county road, and build a modest home, or live in a less expensive city from which you could reach the kids and grandkids homes easily, but not too close to major employments centers with the crowding and the noise and fumes.  Or maybe you'd stay in the big city and take up a sport or hobby that would help extend your life, and or otherwise keep you active and meeting people.

These kinds of things were normal.

Now:

Now they are only for the select few.  There are many reasons  for that, most of which are completely different than the reasons that mainstream "explainers" from the news system to politicians both of which are dependent on money from the wealthiest people, tell us.  The theft and destruction of our retirement moneys, was and is a grand theft by the wealthy and powerful from the middle and working classes as well as the poor and sick or elderly.

We once had a three legged stool set up for retirement.  Saving accounts that paid a decent interest, maybe 5-7% over inflation, pension funds from our jobs because it was considered a basic human right that if you employed a person for 20 or 30 years you owed them a retirement, and Social Security, which the GOP has called an "entitlement" for enough decades that everyone now calls it the same, some with a sneer on their lips as if we are spoiled children of fat cats who intend to feed off the prosperous carcasses of our dead parents or at least their trust funds.  In fact, though, we have run the numbers and shown that you earn your Social Security and pay a painful portion of your paycheck every year for it.  Two of those legs, savings with reasonable returns and pensions, have been damaged or completely disappeared for most Americans leaving those who still have pension plans in place at risk of having them suddenly disappear.  IRAs get stolen from with ever increasing fees, and lowering interest rates, Savings account are earning less than a percent per year for most people, though interest on many unsecured loans are often over 30% a year.  And many employers have dropped pensions completely by contract renegotiation, bankruptcy which a GOP packed SCOTUS decided could disappear pension funds, or just ornery assholeness by bosses that are as bad in heart as those who created the horrific work conditions of the 19th century when they were called Robber Barons.


If you have an employer, they do pay half of your Social Security savings, but have always maintained that if they didn't have to pay they would immediately raise wages to compensate. Most knowledgeable sources believe that to be a phony gambit.  What the wealthy want is for the Social Security lock box to be broken so they can get their hands on it or at least to reduce your return, but as we showed in the linked article above, you do earn the entire amount via your direct payments to Social Security and your employers' payments if given just a modest but reasonable interest enough for you to be paid out for 40 years after 40 years of employment (at an average of the wages you were paid over that career).

Now you can go now and write your US House Representative and your two Senators and tell them you will not accept a vote from them to delay Social Security or even Medicare which would be easily fixed by negotiating drug prices, for years or reduce benefits and that you will be learning how they voted (we will post the votes here) and you won't believe the lies they tell you about why they "had to do that".

Also tell your Republican representative that you also know that he or she and his or her partners Gerrymandered the GOP to power in the US House of Representatives and you won't stand for that.

That will be overturned so they cannot count on stealing your political rights to give your retirement and Medicare money to fat cats and stay in power.  Things are going to happen FOR THE PEOPLE from now on, with or without them in office.

How to Contact Congressionals:

Find your current US House representative at House.gov.
You can select "Contact Your Rep's Name"  and then select "Email" from the drop box which will allow you to do just that (involving possibly your complete address including 4 digit zipcode extension (findable via link below) or you can select "Office Information" from the chart for DC and local office addresses, phone, fax, and hours.

Apparently the government site wants to act as your email service, but I doubt they will allow you to contact more than one Representative and two related Senators.   I'm going to go try it as soon as I finish here.


And your Senators names and emails can be found at Senate.gov
Ditto on the controls.

Those two above will require a zip-code possibly with the 4 number extension which can be found at USPS.com by going to "Look up a zip-code" and clicking, upon which a small secondary window will open asking for at least a partial address, usually at least the street and any postal box number and city or 5 figure zip code .  It will also ask for an email address.  I've never tried it but understand the Republicans do write to multiple sets of Congressionals each even if that isn't really nice, I guess from multiple email boxes that have been passed out like popcorn for the last couple of decades.  I've never been a spammer, but I'm told that the right passes around  email addresses of Congressionals like a lifeguard slathers on  suncream for use by their "nickel a tweet or email" squads paid from funds set up by very wealthy individuals.  This might be focused mostly on representatives of the same swing states that determine presidential candidates as the most common turnovers of House seats also occur in those areas.

This site Contacting the Congress will deliver to you personally the emails for your Congressman or woman and Senators along with their DC phone and DC fax numbers which, I assume, you can use via any email account or phone, fax. I suppose those are current.  If your Congressman has changed for 2013, this is still valid right now because there will be votes on the so-called fiscal cliff this week.  --(It is not a cliff, but is being hyped by our fat cat financed news system so that the GOP can take your money and give it to their fat cat donors, to be returned to as over priced ad purchases or for the Congressionals' campaign funds and SuperPAC ads to re-elect them, increasing their own personal power and wealth while you face a retirement without the money you actually put into it and a reasonable return.

If the challenge goes into the new Congress next year, we will try to figure this out again and make sure your new Congressionals, if not the same are available to you.  There are forces that, not only attempt to keep information from you, but  to keep your ideas from your Congressionals.  We will try to help.

But contact your Representative and Senators today.  They may make their decision tonight or tomorrow.   Do not wait a minute.  Tell them to not touch Social Security funds or age or the  Medicare age.  You will be keeping track!

The Obama administration has a bill pending to keep any immediate pain by regular Americans from being felt by going over the fiscal "cliff".  That is another thing being squashed by the Gerrymandered US House.  Tell  your Congressmembers that you are aware the Republicans are the main problem and that you will be watching to see if they personally join in opposing action to solve the matter in an equitable manner.

A good short URL for this post is http://x.co/qvVW

Picture above of slope and frozen creek in California's "Gold Country" used via Creative Commons License Attribution (CC by 2.0) thanks to Flickr user "El Caganer" who has no connection to this blog or blogger.

Fat Cats Now Planning to Take More From You By Cutting Your Social Security. We Need to Fight Back on This!

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Ezra Klein's Washington  Post report on this is here "Why rich guys want to raise the retirement age"  (Though everything in his print analysis is covered in the video above.  This link is here for you if you can't watch the video for some reason. Plus I've added a few thoughts below.)

In the written piece one other flaw I noticed as the hash was being flung. Blankenfein claims you only work 25 years before you retire.  Um, on what planet?  Who starts working at age 45?  Or for those retiring at 62 who starts working at 37?  Most people are working since they are 14, 16, 18, or at least by 24.  Why is this guy saying we only work 25 years before claiming retirement.

Because they guy he is talking to is just nodding his head and agreeing with everything this Wall Street Bank CEO is saying, not challenging anything, and that, in a nutshell is why such talking heads on TV news are paid so much.  So they will just compliantly nod when the rich guys who make their fat salaries possible, start spewing garbage aimed at taking away more from us so they can lard up their own bank accounts.

Luckily the regulars and replacements at MSNBC don't nod and agree all the time with such people.

BTW,  Social Security is not an entitlement.  We show here that you have earned it. If you have worked 40 years you have earned 20 years of retirement with just 6% of interest on  it.   Yes, Wall Street does not offer any deal to the government that would give a puny 6% interest  without endangering the whole fund system which of course would likely disappear if we did not insist on security.

But, in fact, you also don't get a full continuation of your salary, average or final anyway, so you have still earned your retirement.

When Wall Street wants to play fair we can fix this too.  If the Democrats are strong enough we can still protect Social Security.  We need to make the Democratic party as strong as possible by convincing our friends and families to vote in years that aren't p;residential elections too.  Then we can tackle the gerrymandering that handed the House of Representatives back to the GOP this November.  Gerrymandering makes everyone less of human worthy of full rights and more of a slave to those who make it happen, including the GOP and their fat cat backers.

The Truth About Social Security That Many Don't Want You to Know

Ironic?:

You Pay over 15% of your Salary into the Social Security/Medicare System Every Year.

But:

Republicans Call It an "Entitlement", Implying You Feel "Entitled" to Other People's Property.

Explanation: As a self-employed individual I pay both sides of the tax towards the Social Security/Medicare system.  That's 15.3% of my income each year.  I was shocked when I first saw the rate a couple of decades ago, since as an employee I paid less than half of that.  A little checking led to the realization that my employer paid half of the total amount that needed to be paid, matching my contribution. But I've also read, that employers maintain that if they did not have to pay their portion of the "payroll" taxes they would instantly transfer that money to their employees.

And, if you believe they would actually funnel the money into your paycheck, I've got a brand spanking new Ford Model T to sell you!  But it shows the mindset of the business community, and they probably do take it out of your salary. I know its completely taken out of mine.

So for the years you've worked the government has taken 15.3% of your salary for all intents and purposes for Social Security and Medicare

But for thirty years or more mainstream news media have joined the GOP in proclaiming  that program an "entitlement" like something wholly unearned passed down to you as an inheritance (a windfall that Republicans actually believe you should get in entirety without paying taxes on) and the GOP has acted like it's something you are demanding from poor starving billionaires.

I checked out a while back and found that even 6.2% interest applied to what is taken from only your paycheck for your Social Security alone would make a nice nest egg and keep you living at the same standard of living (as you averaged) for 20 years past your retirement.  And the calculator I used only paid the interest yearly. By paying daily (like money you owe is usually calculated) that number should be a good deal higher.   Social Security payments are not paid out at the amount you were receiving, but substantially less, so you should receive them for substantially longer than 20 years without costing the government anything.

Also, there is the charge that the government doesn't pay out interest on payroll taxes funds because they don't make interest on them.  But if the government avoids higher interest charges because it has the FICA funds sitting around waiting for people to retire, then it is receiving a kind of interest on them most (actually all because you and I are the government of the people, for the people and by the people) of that benefit should be passed on to you.  Also, there is still the employers side of  the SS payments, which, as I said probably are from what you might have once gotten, though I doubt they would ever be returned is the employer contribution disappeared.  That would instantly double your retirement years, so the government should be able to pay you for 40 years of retirement at the average of a years income out of your own funds.  And that's what the GOP and the mainstream news media don't want you to know.  Both of them are selling your rights to the same billionaires and centi-millionaires that are continually using their strings to pay them big interest free loans and providing them fantastic investment opportunities through wars or at least mega military purchases, as well, a prison building and maintenance and even tax cuts for the wealthy that never actually provide better paying jobs for us.

Finally, we should take the employers at their words and calculate double the amount that we actually pay for our Social Security, because I'm sure they do take it from our pay. So we could live 40 years beyond retirement and only take out what we've paid in and at a reasonable interest. Ask politicians where our money is. Did it already disappear into war and tax cuts for the wealthy?
And we need to put to bed the idea that young people pay for older people's retirement.  The numbers show they don't.
  
Conclusion:

Don't let anyone call your Social Security an "entitlement".  You earned it, you saved it.  It's yours! 

But the Republicans want to take it away for tax cuts for fat cats and war.  

 Here is the compound interest calculator I used for the above calculations.

Picture above used via Creative Commons License thanks to Flickr user DonkeyHotey  who has no connection to this blog or blogger.

A shorter URL for this post is  http://bit.ly/1gU7wlF

If He Became President, Romney's Plans Would Destroy Romneycare and Prevent Other State-based Programs

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Maybe The Lies Ron Paul and His Followers Tell About Social Security and Retired People Led to His Poor Showing in Florida

The Sunset Years

They're not the time that you want to be attacked with vicious lies

Picture shared via Flickr's native attribution and linking code. Roll over picture to see photographer's name. Click on it to go to original Flickr location.

Young Ron Paul followers are told by the Libertarians, whether Representative Paul or not, that retired people are stealing their money.   The Paulites and friends have a scenario cooked up in which poor suffering young underpaid workers are virtual slaves to Baby Boomers.

It's hardly a surprise that wealthy Mr. Paul has as much disdain for older people as his newsletters used to show against people of darker skin.

Mr. Paul maybe you'd better consider that's why you did so poorly in the Florida primary election, because though there are lots of retired folk in Florida there are lots of them all over these United States as well, though maybe not in such a concentration, and telling lies about some of the most vulnerable people in the nation is not good.

BTW,  I already proved that most retired people have already financed their retirement via their payroll taxes, whether our government wants to acknowledge it or not.

See:  Do You Feel Entitled to Social Security? That Could Be a Good Thing

The Ed Show: Marco Rubio Says Americans Aren't As Good As They Used to Be

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Do You Feel Entitled to Social Security? That Could Be a Good Thing

Whether you worked one job or more for your career, you may have paid for every bit of your retirement.

Picture above uses Flickr's native placement and attribution code. Rollover for photographer's name. Click on it to go to original page to examine various options

If you feel entitled to Social Security when you grow older, congratulations, because you are.

Do you know why? Because you paid for it.

For employees the FICA for 2010 (a year you may have already filed for or for which you extended and are planning to file) the FICA included 6.2% for Social Security for wages up to $106, 800 and 1.43% on all wages for Medicare. We'll skip Medicare for now. Your employer contributes a matching amount for Social Security and each are liable for up to $6621.40 for 2010. Employers have long complained about the matching payroll tax and claim they would rebate the same amount of money to their employee's wages if the government would just not make them match it. That of course is baloney because if they were going to pay employees the same amount that they saved then there would be no reasons to change anything. But I do believe them that they take it from your pay now. So it becomes part of what you are paying for your retirement.

For FY2011 the employees' share of the Social Security tax has been reduced from 6.2% to 4.2% as a result of a bill passed last December.

But let's add all you pay up at the normal rate and see what you might have paid for your retirement through the payroll taxes and the supposed amount your wages were reduced by your employer for his or her portion of them. For the years in which each portion was 6.2% you paid 12.4%.

Lets say you make $40,000 in your household for a year. Now if we add in the employer's portion of Social Security you could say you made $42480. This is probably just getting by in a cramped apartment in many cities, but you're paying $5268 a year in FICA Social Security taxes. If you do that for 40 years you will have ended up paying $210720 in Social Security taxes, almost 5 years worth of wages! But wait a minute the government took your money and kept it for that long time. If you had borrowed that from bank or a credit card you'd pay at least 20% a year for that, and maybe over 30%.

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Notice I have replaced  these old calculations with a more accurate calculation below the next line of slash marks.

But lets give the government the benefit of the doubt. We will have to charge them 20% a year though because you are a working class person who struggled to raise your children, not money- rich China.

There is probably a good formula for this, but I'm going to take half the money you have to give to the government for your retirement over 40 years work and multiply it by the cc rate of 20%. and we get $23179 interest per year. Over 40 years that makes $927,160 far outstripping the original principle. Now we add that to the principle and we get $1,137,880.

YOU ARE OWED OVER MILLION DOLLARS FROM THE GOVERNMENT FOR YOUR RETIREMENT IF YOU ONLY HAVE A WORKING CLASS WAGE.

I have seen some calculators on another computer that make easy to make almost the same money with only 5% interest, but this machine doesn't have Java installed and I can't use them.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

New calculations:

 Note: I have now found a Compound Interest Calculator which shows that 6% interest on your tax if put in a savings account compounded annually would yield $815,286.03 enough to live for another 20 years on your current salary, plus some.   Of course, the government doesn't collect real interest (and in the past few years no interest except from people who can't pay their taxes it seems) or apparently offer any.  

I don't believe you even get that back if live 20 years past the day you get your cheap fake gold watch. In fact we can calculate that if you were compensated for 20 years after retirement you would get $800,000 if you got your full salary, which you don't. Since retirement for many does not start until a person is 67 that means you still haven't been paid back at 87 and a lot of people don't even live that long.

Of course, you may work your way up to a better wage but that just means you will be paying more into the Social Security pot and hoping to live long enough to get your fair share out.

Pundits and Politicians are adding another fake idea argument to the "Entitlements have to go" game, that people are living much longer lives these days, but that is a statistical folly. The fact is that life span is an average measurement and childhood mortality has been reduced so much since the days when Social Security was started, that the average life expectancy actually is measuring more workers to help pay for the retirees rather than only a larger drain on the Social Security system.

There may need to be some tweaks to the system like making everyone pay their full share instead of stopping the wealthy from having to pay more after $106, 400. After all some famous football players start taking disability payments of millions a year right after they leave the league and that comes from Social Security. It's time they paid for that extended retirement with their full share going into the pot. You though pay plenty for your retirement and probably a little too much.

The GOP is trying to paint average Americans as wanting to be like a modern day Little Lord Fauntleroys who expect to live off the work of others in their retirement so they use the term "entitlements".

Little Lord Fauntleroy prospered because of entitlement (in that English nobility are paid by the taxpayers and had other advantages thrust on them in the past that they did not earn). The whole rags to riches story of the child depends on that British scam on the bulk of their people. Frances Hogson Burnett's Little Lord though was a poor fatherless American child whose own mother refused help from his noble British grandfather according to Wikipedia.

But just the word "entitlement" pins the average American as a profligate, lazy jerk who expects the government to support him for decades near the end of his or her life.

Tell the GOP to get real. You earned that retirement money.  It's yours.

You've already paid for it.

Why Taxes Will Rise in The End.

David Leonhardt explains at NYT (mobile edition)

Video: Now Republicans Are Talking About Killing Social Security

First Medicare and now Social Security. And you wondered where the GOP thought it would get the money to finance American Exceptionalism, where the US fights eternal war for big business? From you, friend.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

To Tweet this:Tweet