Here's the Republican/Ryan ethos in a nutshell: "The most important things in life are honesty and sincerity. Once you learn how to fake them, the rest's a piece of cake."

Once again proves that the Republicans are Good Ole Pro-sociopaths

Silly Mike, Ryan would have to open himself up to answering questions versus just giving a statement, AND there would have to be people willing to ask those questions.

Given our current state of the media, I wouldn't count on any logical and relevant questions (heaven forbid there be any followup questions) being asked to him.

RobDon,

I can see why some think it's wrong for one generation to fund another generation's retirement. I know that the money I've been paying in for 30+ years has been used to pay benefits to folks who retired during that time. But as long as I know that it will come back to me when it comes time for me to retire (or my wife if I don't last that long), as it will for everyone, why should I have a problem with that?

And back to Ryan - if he is all for SS and opposes extension of the payroll tax cut for that reason, why did he propose large cuts to it and call it a Ponzi scheme? Restructuring SS should have the intent of keeping benefits basically the same or increasing them, shouldn't it?

Some people say that RobDon is a repuke troll spreading repuknican lies!!!

The idea that today's wage earners pay for today's recipients and tomorrow's wage earners will pay for mine is a bullsh!t repuknican lie! Just like the lie that the $2.5 Trillion in the Social Security Trust fund that we have been overpaying to create since Saint Ronald and Mr. Andrea Mitchell saved social security forever is just worthless paper that the taxpayers should not have to back up!

Social security is not insolvent now. Social security will not be insolvent any time in the near future. The long term solution to funding social security is to remove the cap on which social security taxes are collected or at least raise it to the intended 95% of all earned income which was supposed to be part of Saint Ronald of the Rayguns 'saving social security forever'. Currently that would be incomes up to about $190,000 per year!

the only real threat to social security are jobs. bring back our jobs and everything will flow back in to place.

an extra $20 in the pockets every week is an opportunity to spend local and on american made.

spending local and on american products is creating and securing our economy.

Restructuring SS should have the intent of keeping benefits basically the same or increasing them, shouldn't it?

There's so much spin by all sides in this arena the truth is hard to find. Here's an article from The Hill that says Ryan's budget leaves SS virtually untouched.

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/152929-social-security-gets-a-pass

I do know that part of the plan was to allow individual to divert part of their payment to a personal account administered by the SS administration but that belongs to you, not the government. Meaning that Congress could not raid it and that you would will it to children, etc. This is probably considered part of the cuts because it is less money that the SS fund would have access to, but participation would be optional.

My original post was intended to point out again that just because someone is opposed to "your way" of doing something doesn't mean they are against WHAT you are trying to do, just the process or way you are trying to do it.

Maybe Ryan is just opposed to the way SS is funded and managed, but still, how do you explain the Ponzi scheme comments -

"So if you take a look at the technicality of Ponzi -- I would -- it's not a criminal enterprise," he said, according to a transcript. "But it is a pay-as-you-go system where ... earlier investors or, say, taxpayers, get a positive rate of return and the most recent investors -- or taxpayers -- get a negative rate of return."

Where in the history of Social Security has a taxpayer gotten a negaitve rate of return? And if Ponzi schemes are not criminal enterprises, why did Bernie go to jail? Ryan's rationale is way off base.

You mean privatized...errr "personalized accounts? Gosh, wouldn't it have been just wonderful if they had done that in 2007?

Yeah but the problem is once you divert funds you stop paying into the general fund and then there's less money to support people and eventually no one is supporting anyone. This is the argument and logic behind taxation and social service programs. Somewhat slippery slope, I'll grant you, but we do have evidence that if people aren't forced to pay something directly into the government for the general care of others then they won't. And while that's OK for people who have spare money, for not-rich people like you and I who need that help it sucks. The generosity of others, unfortunately, can't be trusted as a whole. There are good people in the world, of course, but you can't make that economic policy. I guess it's fair, though, to point out that yeah libertarians aren't trying to screw people when they say 'no let people keep their money,' they just believe differently as to it's application. That's part of why I say I could totally understand libertarianism if it weren't for that pesky problem that I realize people- and subsequently economies- don't behave.

I had in mind more the whole Wall Street melting down thing and toxic assets destroying everyone's personalized accounts.

The Republicans and other plutocrats are moving heaven and earth to insure that it can happen over and over. Because if SOMEBODY makes a buck off of it, how can it be a bad thing?

Well, but Rob isn't/wasn't endorsing that viewpoint necessarily. He was simply saying that Ryan may not necessarily be an evil man. Ryan may honestly believe that allowing people to put money into private savings accounts for retirement is the better option to a public service program because he may honestly believe that this is better for the individual. Ryan does not consider WallStreet melting down or anything like that in making such a decision- I am pretty sure he looks at those as flukes or he may just see that as the natural cycle of the market. In which case his assumption is over a person's lifetime it wouldn't matter since that person's wealth would have time to come back up after each recession. If you talked to any investment banker he'd have the exact same mentality. That doesn't make it good or bad...it's just one perspective.

My experience has been that when talking about the modern political parties Republicans tend to be very good at short-term planning and policies that work really well in the immediate. But they are not good at long-term planning or policies that work well years out. Democrats are the reverse. Democrats are terrible at immediate term planning, but are usually pretty good about long term planning. Ryan's plan more than likely would lead to economic revenue surge because of increased capital to WallStreet and banks. The two are virtually indistinguishable so once you give your money to, I dunno Citi, they will then turn that around and use it to invest in buying and trading etc. I mean let's be fair here to Republicans: if a Republican had been voted in 2008 and the Congress' had been dominated by the Republican Party they are probably not lying when they say the recession would've ended sooner. Why? Because they would've dramatically cut taxes and regulations and capitalized on privatizing certain aspects of programs like social security (notice I did not say entirely, just voluntary amounts which is what they had proposed). Wallstreet would've taken that money and gambled it and in the short term made huge profits, which would have then been spent on the economy, which then would've raised revenues, which then would've started jobs. But the jobs would be low-income jobs, the housing market would've been more of what we had up to the crash, and the gambling wouldn't have been lucrative permanently. And that's sort've the difference between the parties. Obama is looking to heal the recession from the prospective of lower and middle income earners. Republicans are looking to heal the recession from the prospective of upper income earners.

The original idea of social security was to prevent elderly folks from becoming destitute. Is that a bad idea? If folks making a lot more are required to pay a little more, I'm OK with that. Are you?

The past 30 years tells you just how well THAT works. They are content to destroy the nation if it gives them a bigger piece of the pie or their corporate backers. Or their shareholders.

Mouzer, the flaw in your logic is your belief in the consequences of their actions. To wit:

"...if a Republican had been voted in 2008 and the Congress' had been dominated by the Republican Party they are probably not lying when they say the recession would've ended sooner. Why? Because they would've dramatically cut taxes and regulations and capitalized on privatizing certain aspects of programs like social security...... Wallstreet would've taken that money and gambled it and in the short term made huge profits, which would have then been spent on the economy, which then would've raised revenues, which then would've started jobs."

That's classic "trickle down" nonsense. First, it assumes that more tax cuts (likely only for the already rich) will result in economic stimulus on the macro economic scale. Thirty years of "Reaganomics" have demonstrated that isn't accurate and doesn't work. Second, "Wallstreet would've taken that money....and in the short term made huge profits, which would have then been spent on the economy, which then would've raised revenues, which then would've started jobs." Really? On what do you base the assumption that money (i.e., "huge profits") made by Wall Street gets spent? Again, the vast accumulation of wealth by the upper 10% over the last 27 years is evidence that Wall Street's money does NOT go back into the 'economy'. It goes into hedge funds and off-shore tax shelters, but very little of it goes back into the economy, and almost NONE of it goes toward the creation of jobs. At least, not decent-paying American jobs.

I love you Mouzer. I really didn't want to be the one who said it, but deregulation is what caused the meltdown in the first place.

Is someone else posting under your name? I'm embarrassed for even asking.

That's not exactly true dave. And again I wasn't arguing this from my personal position, I was explaining how Republicans see it. Go back and read my post: I made that quite clear or at least I thought I did.

There is a correlation between tax cuts and job creation. That's not a myth, although that's not necessarily to say that the jobs created are permanent or that they're the type of jobs that we want in America. People will take increased revenues and spend them on certain business if they think they can make a larger profit down the road. Remember that when we talk about 'WallStreet' we're really talking about just 1 industry even though it's comprised of a bunch of smaller industries. The banks, the insurance companies, the financial investment companies, the housing and construction companies, and the stock and bonds companies are all the same entity. Think about that for a second, ok? And then you can probably start to understand the prospective of Republicans.

If I am a multi-millionaire and I deal w/ finances I can invest money into a construction company and a realtor company and a bank that deals w/ mortgages in order to spur growth. Right now the growth that I'd like to be spurring would be house-flipping (sound familiar?). So I invest specifically in people who purchase foreclosed homes and then the people who repair them. Those people then hire new people as a result of my investment. What then happens? Those workers that they hired buy the home that I just repaired. I also own the bank to which those people who just bought the home invest their mortgage in. I then can insure the home against the property owner and insure against the bank and the construction companies- all of whom I just financed w/ my money. I then, on the stock exchange (which I am also a part of), bet that these companies will all fail and the mortgages will fail. I then make this happen by purchasing up their stocks (causing the prices to raise) and then when the prices are nearly double what they were at my buying price, I immediately sell those stocks. This, of course, sends the net value of all of those to 0. I make a profit because a. I had insured against all these companies in case they failed so I get paid out by the insurance industry and b. because I bought the stocks at a lower price than I sold them at so I make money from the difference in the sale.

You have to remember that Republicans- as a party at least, not necessarily talking about individuals here, but as the representatives of the party- look at taxation, regulation, and policy from the prospective of this hypothetical WallStreeter. That is why someone like Mitt Romney doesn't understand people's outrage towards corporations or towards his work or towards his saying the housing market should hit the bottom. In his mind those companies hit the bottom as a part of the natural cycle of the free market. Someone else then comes along and revives them and then makes bank by doing so. And in the short term this gambling cycle works. It does create jobs in the short term and it does generate revenues in the short term. The problem is you have to keep cutting taxes and de-regulating in order for this system to survive. If you don't then the system immediately collapses as a result of it's gambling.

Like I said from the Republican perspective their policy decisions make sense. But you have to step in to their world in order to understand why they make those decisions. You have to put aside your personal feelings and look at it from their view point. You cannot understand Republicans unless you do this. FTR this is also why they want SS and Medicare to be privatized. They can then take that money and add it to the whole system which will make even more money. And that's OK because in their mind that's the free market. It goes up and down but overall it moves upward and therefore it is good for everyone. You have to remember that someone like Romney doesn't see income or wages decreasing because his is increasing. So he does not understand how it is that you can possibly think regulations and taxation create jobs. Nor does he understand how you could spend money on short-term programs because that money could go to pay down the deficit which reduces the inflation rate which reduces the interest which reduces the costs of doing all the things I just talked about above.

That is why Republicans fixate on deficits, and on taxation, and on regulation, and on the idea of income mobility. If you look back at what happened in the 90's we have a situation in which people went upwards in income because they had access to computers and were able to start becoming these millionaire investors (assuming they were smart enough to figure the system out). In the mind of a Republican by not constantly cutting taxes or by changing the regulation code you cannot spur growth because the investors won't have the gambling incentive.

FTR this is, in the short term, very true. It's not as though this comes from a non-factual basis. The problem is you're looking at it like a Democrat. You are looking at what has happened to middle and lower income individuals over 30 years. But you have to stop yourself and look at it from the prospective of upper income individuals. Over the last 30 years? They're income has gone up. So of course this is the route they want to go. And they justify it as OK because not every business they gamble on will fail. A lot of them will do OK. And those that fail, of course, are justified as being bad companies and the market just didn't want them. And you got a house out of it and a job so that's OK too. You'll now be able to work and move upwards and hey they'll even invest your money into that same system so that you too can be a player.

Are you starting to understand it now? This is why I keep saying that if Democrats really want to control the economy and not just the election cycle Democrats have to emphasize why it's so important that we stabilize the tax code, that we stabilize the regulatory, and that we break these industries apart. Obama has done some of that, but not all of it. If you don't do it then WallStreet gets over-excited, I guess you'd say, and gambles too much and this causes collapse. Part of why Obama cannot create jobs at a really expedited pace is because if he did those jobs would immediately be lost after he left office. There's a lot more at play here than I think a lot of you realize. Obama is not some dumbass nor is he a socialist Kenyan whatever. Whomever is advising him on his economics team- despite some of their flaws- seem to have a very astute understanding of how WallStreet operates and how to bring long-term stability. The problem? Democrats don't emphasize how their policies will be better. Democrats lose the fights on this because our politics can't think beyond it's nose. But anyways, now I've gotten far off from my original intention of this post lol. I was just trying to explain that this is the worldview that Republicans have and that you, as a Democrat, cannot possibly hope to understand the political world to which you are a part of if you can't understand both aisles of the argument.

No one hates social security. There is just a debate on how to preserve it. The underpinnings of SS were that there would be many more workers supporting fewer retirees. At the time of enactment, the average life span was in the 60's, and more workers contributing into the trust fund than those receiving benefits. Since then, two things happened. Demographics and advances in medical science. A declining birth rate and expanded life expectancy means fewer current workers supporting a larger retiree pool.

We are now in a position where contributions into the fund are less than payments from it. Various suggestions have been offered to correct this, all worthy of discussion. But the fact is we have to face up to it.

I get the impression some people believe there is this huge trust fund set aside to pay benefits. There is not. All we have are IOU's from the govt. As these are cashed, the debt grows.

Face the facts. The SS program is a Ponzi where the payment is soon coming due

Forgive me Mouzer, I prostrate myself before you.

I missed that you were offering the rightwing perspective and thought you were speaking from personal conviction. Terrified doesn't begin to describe it.

I thought I knew you. I'm so very sorry.

There are some facts to back up their argument and some economic theories. And then I was trying to explain how those theories come in to play and why Republicans view them as good. I wasn't meaning to advocate for them as my own view. I was just trying to say that yes there is a short term correlation between major tax cuts and job growth. And what it gets you is what I described- it enhances the system of gambling. But because it creates growth in the immediate it's seen as preferential. The negatives of the gambling are just excused away as 'that's how the free market works.' Once you can wrap yourself around that then you can understand why it is that people like Herman Cain can propose a 999 plan and be taken seriously.

People need to, desperately I think, understand that we've created a situation in which Wall Street is pretty much our entire economy. I mean if you think about it we have: defense and Wall Street. That's it. Pretty much every other industry in this entire country is either part of Wall Street or Wall Street makes policies in the hopes that it will be part of it. Our entire system is becoming progressively more and more a giant lotto machine. It is to this that Republican policies are made. Once you can understand this then you can understand why it is that we have debt, deficits, low income wages, temporary high employment followed by high levels of unemployment, etc. Factually speaking Democrats are better if your intention is to correct this system of playing the ponies. But if you like the system, believe it's the free market, believe that the short term gains are all that matter: then you vote Republican.

That was my whole point.....which, really, I was getting off subject from my first post. I initially posted to say that 'yes Ryan does believe what he's doing is right for America.' You just have to understand why he believes that.

TOM...finally, someone on this thread understands the issue. Kudos to you.

Face the facts. The SS program is a Ponzi where the payment is soon coming due.

Cute. How about bringing manufacturing back to America. Yeah it may cost more initially. But more people making more money would expand markets for goods and services at home which would employ more people which would pay down the deficit with more collected from payroll taxes and taxes on goods and services.

Here's a really RADICAL idea. Roll back the union busting of the past 30+ years. People retiring on a pension that they paid for themselves would be less weight on the public dime. It worked for the Greatest Generation. We transplanted some of our economy into post-war Germany and they did very well with it, strongest member of the European Union for a reason.

It is past time for a Domestic Marshall Plan.

Cue screams of outrage in 3...2...1

tom...

i wish i had more iou notes in my wallet.

Ryan is being seriously challenged by a Dem in the upcoming elections. If he loses, his presidential ambitions are dead. And he is an easy target with the budget he proposed. The Dems need to pour a lot of money into this race.

from C&L

he looks like he may have a shot. at beating Ryan

http://blueamerica.crooksandliars.com/howie-klein/blue-america-welcomes-rob-zerban

If you want a serious alternative to Ryan then check out Dem Rob Zerban who raised over $500,000 in 2011.

http://www.robzerban.com/press/dccc-lists-rob-zerban-campaign-emerging-race
https://www.facebook.com/RobZerban

with his finger in his nose and the tip coming out of his right ear pointing to a GOP sign.

"Politicians who want control over evryone elses money just don't seem to be ''well-grounded'' these days..."

And which party is for less government???

You're sounding like a good republican.

"personally, i find it a bit rattling that people have such less faith in our future generations in being able to help pay for our retirement."

It has nothing to do with faith and all to do with numbers.

When 17 workers supported one retiree, and now there is only 2 workers supporting one retiree, we are screwed.

that means we need to raise our workforce.

i find it a bit unrealistic that we have the number of seniors 8 times the amount of working age in america. it seems unproportionate.

we don't have a social security issue, we have job rate issue.

we also have an issue of government stealing from social security to pay for other programs.

Of course if workers retired on pensions that they had earned during their employment, there wouldn't be as much burden on the public dime. But that would be CRAZY!

social security is earned pensions from their employment. in fact, i think it's the most earned pension.

not to mention the republican governor being recalled or being jailed not going to help. so no coat tail riding there.

and with the economy heading in the correct direction (yes all be it slowly) the Dems have a good change on riding on the Presidents coat tails.

The sources of this radical view must be coming from Rove-Norquist. Money and intimidation goes a long way.

Uncle Sam will always take your money. Just write a check every year for the amount of social security you were paid to the government. Better yet, write the check out to your favorite charity.