Hmph! Good luck to those seniors in trying to FIND jobs! (Yeah I know, that’s not the point so put away your flamethrowers. Just sayin’)

Note to Democrats: Raising the Social Security Retirement age when people over fifty are un and underemployed and not able to find jobs is probably not a recommended path to continued electoral success.

Oh yeah, we’re all Wal-mart greeters now.

Like the concept of the ads but we all know that the Dems are going to ratfuck us in the lame duck session, so the whole exercise is kinda laughable, if it wasn’t so tragic.

But hey, we’re supposed to support Raúl Grijalva and all those other weak fucks who folded on HCR? Not me. Hope all those cocksuckers go down in flames. Still hoping that my vote for Carly the Evil Sheep will help send Babs to the K Street retirement home.

I with ya’ on that one. That’s a major part of our problem. No guarantee of a job when we need one. Wishing I was Norwegian right about now.

David, I loved that first commercial. How did they get footage of me falling off the roof with the chainsaw running like that……..oh wait……I made that up!

I guess it’s a very fine line, satire, but I’m not wild about the final image, mocking the fellow with the walker. If you’re trying to get people to vote with you, don’t mock them.

The others were harmless poking fun, but falls? Not really funny at that age.

We need Democrats who will talk about lowering the retirement age to 60, at least until the jobs emergency is over.

Carly favors serfdom.

I can’t see what you accomplished with that vote. Wasn’t there a Green to vote for?

They need even scarier ads: 69 year old log truck drivers barreling down the road, 69 year old sheriff deputies chasing the bad guys, 69 year olds driving triples on the interstate, and other jobs where the person needs to be a bit younger. There is a reason why the military doesn’t have many folks over 50.

Oh yeah, we’re all Wal-mart greeters now.

With the full complement of Wal-Mart health-care benefits.

sorry if my gallows humor offended you. I have to do all my labor around here myself and it makes me angry that no one cares if we drop dead.

Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment Insurance – these things reduce the risk of poverty, disability and elder homelessness. These are our hedge funds against risk. Why should the rich have risk-free lives and not us? Read here. 4 more

The truth is we are living longer because of these programs and the ability to stop working, not because our situations are better.

Good examples. The driving is especially tricky. I’m 77 and almost decided not to renew my license but did renew in case of emergency. I rarely ever drive any more because I worry about having a heart attack or something and wiping out 6 people standing on a corner.

Looks like they are going to mess with the younger folks re Soc Security.

That is one of the reasons I opted at 62 to get SS. I really had no choice I had been looking for work for more than 9 years. Here in Silicone Valley the unemployment is over 12% and IT work died with the dot com bust and never recovered. I sent out over 10,000 resumes and got all of 2 YUP! 2 interviews.

Voting Green would be an option, except that it still leaves open the possibility that Babs The Lying Two-Faced Bitch might win with just a reduced vote total. Voting for Carly is a double whammy; one fewer vote for Babs and one more vote for Carly.

As for Meg over Brown: He would certainly be a better governor overall but I’m voting for Meg for one simple reason: she’s not going to fuck with Prop 13 and throw me out of my own paid-for house into the street. Brown will do that in a heartbeat if he can find a way. (Esp, with a gerrymandered Dem legislature.)

The Dems in office have put their personal benefit ahead of that of the voters. Why shouldn’t I pay the cocksuckers back by doing the same. It’s like a war situation: when you know that if you surrender the enemy will execute you, why not kill as many of them as you can before they overrun your position. I say, “kill (metaphorically) all the Dem office holders you can before they stomp you to death”, which is what they have been doing.

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And, I thought it was the evil R’s who own the I’ve got mine, everyone else is on their own mentality. Apparently, I’m incorrect.

I took early SS this year at 64 for similar (lack of employment) reasons.

Here’s something everyone should consider: how long does it take you to get the value of the full benefits if you wait until 65-66-67? In my case the monthly difference between 64 and 66 was $225 a month. However, if I waited to 66, the money I left on the table from those two years between 64 & 66 was such that I would have to live to be 79 years and 10 months old before I got it back. Since I also get a little money every month from renting my parents old house, it was far wiser for me to take the reduced SS amount now. Heck, I might not live to 66, much less 79.

And, I thought it was the evil R’s who own the I’ve got mine, everyone else is on their own mentality.

You mean like the Dems in Congress who’ve got nice salaries, plenty of per diem money and travel perks, the best health care in the world, fabulous retirement benefits, etc? You mean those folks who “got theirs” and consider the rest of us “on our own”? Those folks?

Like I said @19,

The Dems in office have put their personal benefit ahead of that of the voters. Why shouldn’t I pay the cocksuckers back by doing the same?

Ah ha! Maybe I wasn’t incorrect, after all.

So anybody who thinks the Dems should be punished at the polls for selling us out is a troll?

Still waiting for somebody to explain exactly how the Dem party at the national level can be reformed from within without first defeating many of its embedded whores.

Yours is just another of millions of example of many people’s stories!
I say reduce the age to 50 or 55 , raise the amount of benefits by 20% until UnEmployment is below 4%! That would help bring the economy back to it’s feet!!! Just think of all the spending that would happen!! And you know those recipients Would spend the money, they really don’t have much of a choice do they?

Cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face is not a winning stategy. Punishment doesn’t not change behaviour. Not with humans. Not even with dogs. Of course, I’ve always been anti-authoritarian.

Except for the rental property part.

Why do you think the RePukes would do better they have already proven that they could care less about anyone who doesn’t make millions of$$$!
Name me one thing the Pukes have done For the middle class in the last two generations just one fucking thing.
Ronnie RayGun made it open season on the working class/Unions with his breaking of the Air Traffic Controllers Union. Fuck the Pukes I hope they go the way of the Dodo Bird. They are nothing but the fucking dirty greedy creeping slime of this Earth!

Really I wonder just how much he/she is extorting from the tenants, with his/her attitude I bet they are treated the same as would a Slum Landlord!

I’m starting to wonder at the wisdom of the old saying, It takes all kinds.

Tell him again, I don’t think he heard you.

Public perception (for various reasons) lags the reality. The fact is that even the Federal government won’t hire you if you are over 25 in whole swath of civil servant positions. You have to get in at college age and age in place hoping to escape constant corporate style “down-sizing” besides all the other occupational hazards. One Senate staffer I knew fought the good fight but got pushed out by the mid 30s despite an awesome intellect, skills and performance (maybe they got pushed out on purpose as we live in an official medio-cracy since 2000). How many ethical, formidably educated, skilled and experienced folks have had paid employment let alone merit-based compensation (compared to the merit-less compensation of hedge fund managers for their professional practice of theft) in the last 10 years? I knew a corporate mid-manager in a California corporate that was open about their HR policy of not hiring any Americans anymore by the mid-/late-1990s. I witnessed the constant parade of business workshops around DC re “doing business in India” that started in the late 1990s so the massive job losses that started occurring didn’t surprise me, I even wrote grad school papers about the structure of the problem (including reams of citations), but I couldn’t get folks to pay attention or do anything about it (mostly got flamed for bringing it up). So , with permanent “best-shoring,” Americans can’t even stay employed to 40. Meanwhile, I know a 24 year old that works in food service at a posh food store chain but doesn’t receive meaningful benefits including medical. So, why not drop the age for receiving SS to where the system kicks people out on their derrières and grandfather the rest? I’d conservatively estimate that at 35 years old.

I used to believe in the power of diversity. But all the greedy and stupid is making me sick.

What is the point in bothering to vote for candidates in the U.S. anyway? Issues on the ballot I can understand taking the time to vote for or against for example if you live in California there’s a reason to vote for Proposition 19 if for nothing else to further expose the Obama administration as reactionary by its response to its passage. But for actual candidates? Total waste of time.

After the Dems swept into power in Congress in the 2006 midterms on a platform of “Vote for us if you want to end the war in Iraq” and then refused to actually do anything to, you know, end the war in Iraq like cutting off funding for it by refusing to vote on supplementals that should have told anybody with common sense that they’ve been bamboozled. After Obama gets elected as a supposed “change agent” and despite a Dem majority Senate and House gives the American people a health care “reform” bill written by the big insurance companies and Big Pharma; after giving us a Wall Street “reform” bill written by Wall Street that does nothing to prevent their casino-like behavior; after getting a Nobel Peace Prize then immediately escalating the gas pipeline war in Afghanistan; after promising us a government of accountability then adamantly refusing to have his attorney general go after the war criminals Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice, as apparantly accountability for torture, for the mainstreaming of police state measures with the Patriot Act and the starting of a war of aggression isn’t worthy of examining as he’s “moving forward, not looking backward”; as Obama has enshrined these police state measures and expanded upon them; and as Obama’s surrounded himself with an administration made up of ruling class pukes from the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Group and A.I.P.A.C. what can a sensible, informed person conclude but that it is an exercise in futility to go out and vote? Why bother when all the wealthy ruling elite will allow us to vote for are obvious conservatives and thinly-disguised conservatives? That’s as undemocratic as Saddam Hussein’s elections but with somewhat more sophistication.

Unless private money is taken completely out of political campaigns with each candidate instead getting an equal (but small) amount of public funding with campaigns lasting a couple months instead of a couple years the system will continue to be as artificial as professional wrestling. Candidates will continue to be nothing more than puppets of their wealthy corporate backers, answering to them instead of the average people of this country. Face it America: You don’t have a democracy. What you have is a dog & pony show every few years, designed to make you think you have a say in what kind of government governs you. It is painfully obvious that you don’t.

Obama and Alan Simpson can go **** themselves.

I heard one talking head say “If republicans win more seats than dems then the republicans will have a mandate and democrats will have to be more “bipartisan”"

WTF!?

Did anyone tell repubs dems had a mandate? No they obstructed EVERYTHING!!!

Dems are going to be called unreasonable for staying to the right of george w bush and not going further to bushes right… **** these people.

I understand your reasoning (which makes me feel like a dirty fucking predator), and I think it’s pretty abhorent. I think your willingness to vote repub to spite the dems is because you’re secure. You have a rental property that has some value (I’m guessing) and you’re already collecting your social security.

Can you take a step back and try to imagine what it would be like if you didn’t have that rental property? And if you were set to retire in 2014? How would you vote then?

wait, was it the (R)’s who created the Catfood Commission and stacked it with pols who have long wanted to cut Social Security?

No, that would be Obama and your Democrats!

voting (D) = voting against your interests, why do it?

Too bad you don’t [Edited by Moderator. Disagree without being disagreeable]. I rent the house at below market rates because I’d rather have a tenant that stays a long time than have people move frequently and have to go through the clean-up and re-renting process every year or so. In nearly eleven years I’m only on my third tenant. The first two each stayed about 2-1/2 years and only left when they moved for job reasons (one to FLA, the other to San Fran). I still get Christmas cards from them, including pictures of their kids and pets, every year.

The current tenant has been there for over five years. I’ve never raised the rent on a tenant, and a couple of years ago I gave half the security deposit back to the current renter as my way of thanks for her longevity as a tenant and the great way she takes care of the place. Speaking of taking care of the place, I pay the gardener, and I pay the annual trash collection fee.

And just FYI, when my mom died the house was in pretty rough shape so I put $40K of improvements into it (using my credit cards) and I did much of the work myself. The house is small but adorable, with lots new wiring, a completely new kitchen, new roof, stucco, paint, refinished floors, new fences, etc. But it took me five years to completely pay off those credit cards.

And in case it counts, I allow pets and children.

Now wait a second, he’s got a point about the donkey’s. The voters in 1979 turned against them and fell hook line and sinker for the corporate party. The Clinton types followed the money and why not. The voters left them high & dry, so they took what they could get! Like a recent guest on the site said a few months ago fight to double the SS benefits not just hold the line. If your gonna be working make a profit.

I will not be voting for any Dems either.
Write ins for me.

Obama isn’t even supporting all the Dems, but he tells us to support them. What a hypocrite. Guess his bosses at GS prefer Chaffee.

Babs deserves to go down for sure.
But, Feinstein; she is the devils spawn.
War profiteers in Congress guarantee endless wars.
Sickening that she’s there for years and years, again.

Check out the link below. A reminder of all the millionaires in Congress and the vested interests in bailed out companies. While we were losing our jobs, they were making money. It’s no surprise they all refuse to hold the banks accountable or break them up. They’re our biggest threat.
They are traitors.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29235.html

Wasn’t there a story about how Obamas supporting Chafey not the dem candidate?

Thanks for the article on risks. You made good points about how we all need to be able to protect ourselves, rich and poor.

Im with ya, on that ‘troll’.

Please don’t be rude to smart people who do have a clue. Secondly, you might want a bigger shovel, because, whether you realize it or not, you are just digger yourself into a deeper hole.
And, no, I’m not explaining. Anyone who’s smart enough to put 40k on credit cards for remodeling should be able to figure it out.

nahant, it would really help you to understand today’s government reality, if you were to religiously watch Dylan Ratigan, before he’s pushed off the air.

Catch today’s show, and then perhaps you might apologize to victortruex…

Of course, but they deserve whatever gets thrown at them.
They haven’t done a damn thing to fight back.
Instead they’ve sickened me to death with their pretend quest for bipartisanship as a con job play to vote with the wingnuts on most everything.

Yes. Rhode Island. He snubbed the Dem candidate and endorsed the Indy, Lincoln Chafee. That is unheard of.

http://www.silobreaker.com/rhode-islands-dem-gov-candidate-says-obama-can-take-his-endorsement-and-shove-it-5_2263818583878402065

Dems. are not your friend, stop victimizing yourself.

So the question is HOW do we get 50 million fellow americans to demand that SS benefits are doubled? If it’s lots of money then I guess I’m out of luck.

the 40 to 55 year old’s are screwed! Who recently made that statement? We can’t get 50 mil. low incomers to get with it?

Everybody is really ‘jumpy’. I think the Dems are going to cave on SS and mess things up for our kids generation and weaken the whole structure of SS so that eventually it gets crushed in the next plutocratic onslaught. Here’s a graphic of why I think this way. It’s from the article in the NYT from this a.m. about the issue of the deficit:

The graphis is about three proposals to cut the deficit:

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/10/26/us/politics/26fiscal-chart.html?ref=politics

Each of the proposals includes cuts to Social Security and other social programs. The blithe printing of these proposals is a sign that our plutocratic overlords are openly plundering our government. They feel no fear so they evidence their lack of shame very boldly.

One of the major spokespersons for the plutocrats is Maya MacGuineas. Her proposal is on the far right of the graphic. She is a close associate of both Alice Rivilin (sits on the Deficit commission) and an associate of Peter G Peterson. This whole process feels ‘rigged’ and astroturfed to the max.

To finish, I think it may not matter strategically if you vote for a Democrat or a Republican if the fix is in to gut SS.

If all that is true then I really don’t understand your support of the right wing. And Cudos for treating your tenants as people. I have rented from both ends of the spectrum. Anmd the slumlords are horrible, after living in one place for 8 years they not only raised the rent every year, they did minimul repairs and then refused to give me our deposit back and the kicker is the Judge in the Small Claims Court(who was a Landlord)said to them “Oh I know how renters can be” WTF! I coul go on but they were repukes I do know that.
Luckily we own now but with this economy we are just hanging in there.
But what do you think the pukes do better than the Dems? Yes the both have way too much corporate money. The only way to fix it is to pass 1. Fair Elections Now Act — S.752 and H.R.1826:
You can find more here at http://youstreet.org/

Nah I don’t always agree with him at all, he way too corporatist for me.

I can imagine exactly what it would be like if I didn’t have my rental property. I can also imagine what it would be like if I hadn’t paid off my own little house. Took me 13 years to do it. Thirteen years of very little social life, no vacations, working 60 hours a week at multiple jobs, etc. (Single, no spouse to help out with things.)

Yes, I may skate by simply by the luck of being born when I was and having parents who left me a little something. (Not much more than the house. A year in a nursing home after a stroke left her bedridden burned through mom’s savings, and ate up her modest montly SS and public employees union pension. Her 33 year-old car fetched all of $600 when I sold it to a state “Cash for Clunkers” pollution clean-up program.)

Like you said, I am (to a certain degree) secure. But not all that secure. I have some pretty high medical insurance costs and co-pays, not because I’m sick (yet) but because everyone on my dad’s side of the family for the last hundred years has died of one form of cancer or another. (Lung, stomach, pancreatic, prostate/colon, and non-Hodgkins lymphoma.) Makes me not a very good actuarial risk. Also requires some expensive (high deductible, 40% co-pay) regular cancer screening tests.

I’m also facing both knee replacement and shoulder replacement surgery. Hoping to making it to 65 and Medicare for that, but it looks like Obummer is getting ready to gut Medicare out from under me, too.

I’m a union member and former member of two other unions. My father was on the Exec Board of his union. My parents met at a union hiring hall where my mother worked as a secretary. I grew up idolizing FDR and Truman and JFK, and I’ve worked in my share of Dem campaigns, every thing from issues research to walking precints.

Believe it or not, my motives for voting are independent of my personal situation. I’m voting the way I am because I just don’t see any other way to get those damn DINOs out of the party and force it back toward representing the people as it did when I was growing up and through the 1970′s.

Based on the evil the Dems have done — and the good they’ve not done — over the past couple of years, I’m at my wit’s end for another strategy other than voting them out of office. I just can’t see how rewarding them for their malfeasance will change how they behave in the future. Indeed, I think a case can be made for the fact that we were somewhat better off when Dems were out of power, because at least then they fought against certain GOP policies and actions purely for political advantage. They certainly made a much bigger squak over civil liberties when Bush was in office. And I doubt seriously that the Dems would go along with the pending SS and Medicare ratfucking if McCain or Romney or somebody like that was President.

Holy Cow!

Then what’s the next move?

WTF?! “Democrats who would like to do the same” Include OBUMMER!! He COMMISSIONED the Cat FOO fighters (who’ll disappear like UFOs after fleecing US and our children!)!!

How about ACTING on it?!

Don’t sweat it. The government never gives lots of money to the poor and middle class. Crap, some of these sadistic, cruel bastards think minimum wage is too high and a few hundred dollars in unemployment just encourages the lazy F__KS with two little kids to live large.

Ten years to increase the minimum wage to 7.35 or something. Gasoline prices alone have gone up threefold or more in the last ten years lif.
But Congress and the Executive kept working people teetering on the edge of the abyss, and into the arms of cut throat banks and credit card companies who knew they needed credit to survive.

watch him today, and tell us what it is that you disagree with. He’s not pro corporate; he is pro capitalist, but that is hardly the same thing. Take off your blinders, and get informed, please!

Almost every article I’ve read on this site has stated what the problems are and then leaves the door open for a response on how to attack the problem head on. Sign this or sign that isn’t getting it done! So what’s the next Move? Don’t vote for party one or party two and party three sucks. So what’s the next MOVE!

Exactly. You hit the nail on the head.
The last resort to get Dems back on tract is by giving them the boot.
Rewarding them has been an unmitigated disaster.

Damn, since there’s no editing on FDL, apologies for the lame spelling error @62. Shoulda’ been track.

Anyone who’s smart enough to put 40k on credit cards for remodeling should be able to figure it out.

Can’t tell whether this is snark or a compliment. I do know that I didn’t have any choice except to use credit cards. There was no other source of income. (I wasn’t about to encumber the place with a mortgage). And I had to do the remodeling. The house was in such bad shape that I would have only gotten really bad tenants and very low rents. Many upgrades were necessary just to comply with building codes and regs regarding conditions for rentals. And other parts were so bad that I probably would not have been able to pass the inspection to get a landlord’s policy, or at least not at rates I could afford.

Because I learned a lot from my father I was able to do much of the work myself, so I probably put $100K worth of work into the place for only $40K. I lost my job eleven days before mom died, so it was “good news/bad news”; I had the time to do the repair work but was burning through my savings to live on. And I’ve only gotten part-time work ever since. Those five years when I was paying off the credit card bills? Rotated charges over eight cards, jumping from various “zero percent introductory interest” offers to others, paid off the smallest ones first, then used the monthly savings to make bigger payments on the remaining cards. Many a month went by when at the end of the month I had less than $20 left in my bank account and less than $10 in my wallet. And I’m known (infamous?) for being frugal.

I’m taking SS at 62 when the time comes (soon). I’m doing that because I don’t trust the bastards not to pull something else on us, even though they say they won’t.
I don’t like the fact that they say: “Well, don’t worry. You older people will still get SS.” Just because they have a “I’ve got mine, fuck the rest of you” philosophy, doesn’t mean everyone thinks that way. I wish younger people would take a page from the French.

VOTING has become a cruel shell game, no matter who you vote for. The pea that should be there to play the game has been stolen by the plutocracy and fed to their guard dogs. The whole game is a fuckin sham!

Where in my statement did you see me victimizing myself? I didn’t make a single statement about myself. Try reading [Edited by Moderator. Disagree without being disagreeable]

There are many who suspect this to be the case, yet being addicted to partisan politics are precisely the ones who allow this shell game to continue. They are the problem!

IDK. (I don’t know). What’s your first goal? Jobs. We have an 80 / 20 split, with 22% unemployment and the rest are allowed not to hear about us everyday. People still believe that if you work hard enough and so on… you will be alright in this system. Maybe we could try creating media about joblessness first. IDK? Ideas?

What about process? Maybe the first rule ought to be taking care of each other. Huh? yeah. Most of the organizations I have belonged to have fallen apart because of people reacting to each other, never working to accept the other people as different.

Are you planing to vote for Dems? If so, you are a glutton for punishment, if not, – my apologies.

Dude…these days being ‘frugal’ should be considered as a highly beneficial personality trait, not a detriment. Congrats!

Believe it or not, my motives for voting are independent of my personal situation. I’m voting the way I am because I just don’t see any other way to get those damn DINOs out of the party and force it back toward representing the people as it did when I was growing up and through the 1970′s

I can completely respect this. Thank you for taking the time to answer my question sincerely. I think your thought process there scaresme because its myself and my kids that are going to bear the brunt of this, those of us that are in our 20s and 30s and just now having children will be dealing with the fallout of this around retirement age, and when it’s time for our kids to go to college.

I can’t think of a better solution to rattling their cages than voting them out. But Meg Whitman and iCarly, by God, scare the living hell out of me. I’m concerned about what may come in the interim. The time period between now and 10-20 years from now, when the country will be ready to elect democratic majorities again, could hold a lot of terrible legislation. A lot worse than what we’re dealing with now.

I’m planning to vote for anyone without an R or D next to their name. In fact, I’m only planning to vote because of Prop 19 and the other important ballot initiatives in CA.

Free legal advice (and worth every penny), adjust your rent annually using the CPI-U index (the Feds also offer more specific indexes by region and industry but there’s no reason to get fancy with it). Inflation is very low presently (CPI increased by only 1.1% the past 12 months) but if it picks up in the years to come, the value of your rental income will inflate away.

Its easier for the tenant to adjust to small increases every year than a big jump after, say, 5 years. And from your standpoint, by simply using Uncle Sam’s inflation data, you don’t have to stress about how much or how little to increase the rent.

Even further off topic, if you follow that Consumer Price index link above, The sharpest increase in price the past year was for “used cars and trucks” at 12.9% (10 points more than for new cars). That’s crazy. I imagine it was “cash for clunkers” that’s driven up the price of used cars.

reduce the retirement age to 50 and increase benefits by 20%???? are you friggen nuts? My pay check barely pays rent, food and laundry, and I’m supposed to prop up some parasite that doesn’t want to sleep in the bed he made? All the information needed to see that Social Security is a broken, bankrupt system was available when you where my age (23), yet you chose to perpetuate a broken system and push off the burden onto the young, and now you want to increase the burden even more? You should of invested in silver, or gold or real-assets (land) or durable goods or something, but you didn’t. Tough.

No, it’s a good point, Margaret. People who support that kind of a “fix” for Social Security should at least be called on the fact that even people who want to work past normal retirement age have almost no chance of finding a job as anything except a Wal-Mart greeter. Proposing a “fix” that can’t be implemented in the real world is no “fix” at all.

When push comes to shove and the ugliness of our collective future is written in the streets where the poor and downtrodden are ground into dust, and the comfort and security dream is smashed for the remainder of us serfs, perhaps, the dynamic of choosing our leaders will evolve and be transformative…

but I do not see that happening in the near future…the apocalypse will come first IMHO!

Fughetaboutda Dems:

the whole system is corrupt … told by Laurence Kotlikoff

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seqvp52OAWQ

I am scared too. I have a son, 24 and a daughter, 21; both in the States and I worry about their future too.

Hey October…

I and perhaps others take real offense at being considered a parasite. I strongly disagree with your blanket statement. I have worked all my life since I was 12…and paid into SS, and other with holdings, with the knowledge that I might be able to call upon that cache of monies when I got older.

I invested in other forms and had the lion’s share of those investments pulled away and had to rely on ‘rainy day’ money to survive. I am 64 and have been seeking gainful employment as a fully qualified professional for at least 2 years. Please take that attitude of smugness and non-compassion elsewhere.

Parasite?
Is that you Ayn Rand?

Are you serious? What burden do you bear for the retirement of any person collecting social security? You’re paying the lowest tax rate in history, even with what you pay in SSDI.

And your paycheck barely covers rent, food and laundry, huh? So you’re throwing around what’s left to invest in silver, gold and land, right? How’s that working for you?

Social Security exists outside the congressional budget. Social Security currently runs a rather large surplus. Social Security can afford to pay out benefits for about 20 more years without any changes.

Social Security taxes are capped on high income earners, so a person making $1 million annually only pays as much as a person making $100,000 annually. Does this seem fair to you?

The FULL annual social security benefit for a retiree, in the state of California, puts them below the poverty level. Yet you think it’s a bad idea to increase benefits? You think these people who couldn’t afford to invest “made their bed”?

Chances are you’re a surf-by Troll who won’t even read this, but I hope you do and take it as something contstructive, not confrontational. That will allow you to think about what I’ve said above.

Thanks Kelly…

obviously very Ayn Randian and barf inducing!!

Plus, more to the point, myself and me partner have paid in over $400k, along with our employers over the years. Have 18 years more to work.

That’s OUR money we paid in, not yours. It’s an earned benefit.

Read up and learn.

Thanks KrisAinCA…

Looks like a ‘hit and run’ surf troll for sure!
If not, whinny isaackarjala, or just scratch your hoof in the dirt!

could not have said it better myself…

Walmart has great healthcare benifits, along with a great 401K plan, which is the way this country needs to go. We need to begin phasing-out SS and privatize..everyone should contribute to 401K’s and become independent from the government..”the larger the government, the smaller the citizen.”

I found the link to the article that had the three proposals for tackling the mighty deficit:

the graphic is accessible through a link in the left hand column

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/26/us/politics/26fiscal.html?hpw

We need to begin phasing-out SS and privatize..everyone should contribute to 401K’s and become independent from the government.

That worked out really well for everyone on 2008, didn’t it?

there is no cache, it’s a ponzi scheme…. you don’t take Social Security checks from some savings account, you take it from the paychecks of the people currently paying in.

At best, you where 23 when the information needed to see that the system was broken and unmaintainable, why you didn’t act on that information is beyond me. But you didn’t.

Wal-Mart benefits? HAHAHAHAHAH! Every community with a Wal-Mart subsidizes a Wal-Mart.

Give us the link to Wal-Mart’s benefit policy kumari. I know where it is, do you?

It’s beyond ridiculous, and the amount of Wal-Mart employees that qualify for MediCaid is a shame and a blight on Wal-Mart.

Aside from that, it’s nice of you that you’d like to forego the 12.5% of the income you’ve paid in to SS for your corporate masters.

So compliant, so willing.

I bet you can’t name the actual fund that pays SS benefits.

It’s hard to be factually incorrect isn’t it?

Of course I do..I work for them

NO!

”the larger the government, the smaller the citizen.”

Incorrect!

the larger and smarter the citizen, the smaller need for government intrusion and fleecing of OUR money! Oh and you really think putting your money into the hands of the Corps is such a great idea? Wait, I have a cardboard box to sell ya that is down by the river…

Most of us have been paying in roughly double the necessary amount for social security since 1983 precisely to build up a surplus in the SS system to cover the baby boom generation. Those surpluses have been invested in US Treasury bonds.

And to be honest, you think that gold and silver, at record high prices are a good investment? Seriously?

I’m also going to have to take SS at 63–don’t think I can wait until 64. I haven’t been able to get a full-time permanent job in 2 years. I’m working a part-time temp assignment and am grateful for it. I’ll loose a little social security because I make over the limit for collecting full benefits, but this temp assignment will end eventually and I have no way of knowing if I’ll be able to get another. I still send out resumes, but in reality I’ve given up the idea of a permanent job.

WTF what are you a fucking rightWingNut Ghost??
BTW I worked for everything I have! I guess You are one of those”I got mine ,,,, Fuck you if you don’t” !!

why you didn’t act on that information is beyond me.

There seems to be a lot that is beyond you! Like caring and making clear definable sense with facts to back up your assertions!

Everyone I know who had money in the stock market had their 401K drop at least 30%,some closer to 50%. People who are not 25 don’t have the time to make up that shortfall.

I can’t think of a better solution to rattling their cages than voting them out. But Meg Whitman and iCarly, by God, scare the living hell out of me. I’m concerned about what may come in the interim. The time period between now and 10-20 years from now, when the country will be ready to elect democratic majorities again, could hold a lot of terrible legislation. A lot worse than what we’re dealing with now.

You’re definitely right about the risks inherent in temporarily putting Dems on the street. But there’s also a theory that things have to get worse in order for a critical mass of public anger to boil up and force a positive change. Things were really bad, “on the brink” when FDR got elected. Anybody wanna bet that we would have seen insurrection in the streets if FDR hadn’t ridden to the rescue with liberal social policies?)

There’s also something to be said for the safety of being out of theater of comnbat when the shooting starts. Just prior to WWII Chester Nimitz got himself appointed to a desk job in the Pentagon because he knew war was coming and that field commanders who were unprepared were gonna get the blame and the heave-ho. And this is exactly what happened to Admiral Kimmell and Gen. Short who were in command at Pearl Harbor. Maybe sending the Dems to the rail to lick their wounds and wise up is the safest long-term strategy, esp. with respect to CA, where damage from Meg may be more easily correctible than damage at the national level such as the looming SS attack.

True dat it even screwed up the value I had built up with 24 years of service towards retirement and it fell 50% since 2007.. Yeah capitalism is fucking! Great for one thing only feed those at the top and fleece everyone else.. they gotta eat ya know.. money that is money.. Pure unadulterated greed bu the top 10%.

both gold and silver are grossly undervalued in relation to the dollar by all estimates I’ve read…… right now the gold:silver ratio is around 1:60, during periods of economic stability the ratio should be sitting somewhere around 1:12-1:20, so I don’t really think gold is a good investment, but it’s day to day fluctuations are smaller than silvers which makes it more appealing to some…… further, silver was higher in the 70s or 80s, and gold was at “record levels” in 2005 when it was only worth a 1/5 of what it is today, there is no reason to believe that in 5 years it won’t once again be at “record levels”

Pure unadulterated greed bu by the top 10%.
Where is my edit??? Arughhhh

Free legal advice (and worth every penny), adjust your rent annually

Thanks, but I’ve told each tenant when I rented to them that I had a philosophy:

I wanted tenants who paid the rent on time, took good care of the property, and didn’t annoy their neighbors (whom I’ve known for 40 years or more). In return I promised to give them privacy (not be a nosy landlord), not raise the rent as long as they stayed, and make sure that any problems or repairs were undertaken promptly and thoroughly.

In fact, since plumbing problems can be the most time-sensitive, my tenants have a “tenant’s manual” that includes my plumber’s phone number. SOP in case of a sink or toilet back up, leaking pipe or something, is they just call him. He rushes over, fixes it, sends me the bill. I also make it a point to resond asap to any appliance problems, which so far have been limited to one repair of the dishwasher and replacing a control element that went bad on the stove.

You are again misdirecting your grievances. It’s not capitalism per se, in this case, as it is bipartisan fraud.

Good luck eating that gold.

And since no one has any money, it won’t really go very far.

But I’m sure Glenn Beck luvs ya.

and silver was higher because there were some Texas Oil idiots named Hunt who tried to corner the market

hmm….. think I screwed up my years in that post….

Fuck isaackarjala’s attitude, but as for gold, – I moved my son’d Scholarship fund from Fidelity (muni bonds) into physical gold, and Beck had zip to do with it.

and now we have the Chinese, Indians, and Saudis buying up gold and silver like it’s going out of style…. not to mention turning a fat chuck of what they are leaving in fiat currencies into Yen and Euros…. so prices should continue to rise, not so much because of increasing values for gold and silver, but decreasing value for the dollar…..

Beck may or may not love me, but I hate him.

That is true, but this year it has come back with a vengence. Nice nice money flowing into the 401K’s. Most of my stocks are doing very well too. Americans get much too panicked. They don’t have patience.
What goes up must come down, and vice-versa.. It ALWAYS comes back.

Your money, kumari, even if it’s there -which I doubt- will be inflated out of value before the end of O’s 1st/last term. What you have is a promise that will likely not be kept.

no it is unregulated capitalism that the MOTU foisted upon this country. Ever since The New Deal they have been trying to destroy it. All this deregulation is at the root of our problems. Oh and also ignoring/rescinding many of the labor laws and putting corporatist at the helm of the Labor Relations Department.
There once was a time of prosperity when labor was appreciated by Corps, but ever since St Ronnie The RayGun this country ahs been sucking all the money to the top. Some day some how all this Will Boil over and the MOTU will get their comeuppance!!

“On average, our basic food costs have increased by an incredible 48% over the last year (measured by wheat, corn, oats, and canola prices). From the price at the pump to heating your stove, energy costs are up 23% on average (heating oil, gasoline, natural gas). A little protein at dinner is now 39% higher (beef and pork), and your morning cup of coffee with a little sugar has risen by 36% since last October.”

Stagnant wages, unemployment and inflation – a highly volatile cocktail!

I said: “It’s not capitalism per se, in this case, as it is bipartisan fraud.”

You reply: “no it is unregulated capitalism that the MOTU foisted upon this country”

what am I missing? Who are the regulators, why are they not regulating, who is responsible?

the regulations were recinded.. kinda like Glass Steagle maybe for a starter?? Union busting by corps re Walmart who have 40% + workers who are on medicare to feed their bottom line, give me a break corps have been taken over by the greedy banking interests… Like most corporations pay 0 Federal income taxes.. on and fucking on… you know there is a class warfare being waged by the rich don’tcha??

“The jump in gold and silver prices illustrates that it’s not just supply and demand issues driving the precious metals higher – the decline in purchasing power of the dollar is also showing up in the price of physical goods. It is because stashing wheat and cotton in the garage is an impractical way to protect purchasing power that investors are increasingly looking to protect themselves with the monetary metals – a trend that is now very much in motion.”

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/quick-glance-real-world-inflation

Cheap labor small business men have become the new republican country club wanna-be’s, Reagan ran most of them out of business for one reason or another, the rest survived and want their due. It’s typical American Lightning politics ( panzer blitzing reich wing stuff ) Taft-Hartley’s final blow is coming! And Mr. Obama, don’t forget don’t fuck with the Fed or your brains will end up sprayed on a Dallas Blvd. We’ll have to be divided into more efficient regional provincial divisions,( Like Canada) and be adminstered by some organization of the Rothschilds from merry old England. Then we’ll have more of an even playing field with twelve year olds in Red China, where the whole John Birch baloney storey started…

And who rescinded Glass Steagall? Republicans?
How open to card check has Obama been?

You are voting against your interests, just like the Republicans. Perhaps you are the troll?

Perhaps you are the troll?

Thats a good one!
but at least Clinton fessed up that the Grahm Rudman was wrong to sign…
Now it is the wild wild West in finance which has led us to this mess.. Who has the most controls the most and hey they have no need for all those laws now do they…
So who will you vote for any way seeing as you say neither party is any good??

Nahant a troll? Never.
In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum.
Nahant is a long time beloved of this site. Ask (almost) anyone. I said almost, because I know you have a few, very, friends here.
And, no, you don’t get a cookie.

i suggest moving that because gold is the next bubble,,,,wait and see,,,

Tell me why are all the people eho enshrined fraud in legislation on the board of Obama’s economic advisers?

To me a troll is someone who gets their info. from the MSM. Where do you get your info on economy from, nahant?

I suggest America is the next bubble. Thanks for the advice, though.

be quiet, there is no cola to ss so you must be blind or a rabble rouser…lmao

thast would take some discussion however, if you leatrned anything form the dot com bubble, the housing bubble and so on,,,,whene everyone is buying something, its time to sell,,,just sayin…do what you want

right.

bigrock wants you to invest in saffron! and corriander!

hey, I’ll listen to your financial advice if it makes sense and accounts for a Global economic environment. So, shoot, – I’m all ears.

not from MSN fuckno thats for sure, but you haven’t earned the right to know what my sources of info are fuckno seeing as you don’t reveal many of yours.

because you are not an honest broker, nahant. I know what your sources are by deduction based on your lack of awareness of what is really going on, and your assessment of Dylan Ratigan.

I am constantly posting links to my sources, haven’t seen much from you.

Oi. I’ll go get a ruler. We’ll settle this right now.

But I do like reading Ian Welsh’s posts..

Look back here at the lake & you will find them.. I will not help you.

“As I’ve said before, the problem with this generation of Democratic politicians is they’re screwups and they are incapable of learning from their screwups.”
-Ian Welsh

Smooches sweetie!
When ya coming up this way?

“If you’re a wealthy American you can [refinance], but if you’ve got a seven-something FICO score and you’re in a so-so neighborhood so the collateral doesn’t have a big score in the equation, you’re screwed,” Whalen says. “These are the people Fannie and Freddie doesn’t want to see prepay, so they can keep the income on their portfolio. It’s horrible! People don’t realize how predatory these government agencies are.
“Everything Orwell ever wrote was true and it’s proven by the way people like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd have personally benefitted from this housing mess, while they’re actually hurting the poor people most.”

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/chris-whalen-fannie-and-freddie-are-orwellian-institutions-2010-10#ixzz13Vqd3V2J

No this kind of info:

Every 34th wage earner in America in 2008 went all of 2009 without earning a single dollar, new data from the Social Security Administration show. Total wages, median wages, and average wages all declined, but at the very top, salaries grew more than fivefold…

…The number of Americans making $50 million or more, the top income category in the data, fell from 131 in 2008 to 74 last year. But that’s only part of the story.

The average wage in this top category increased from $91.2 million in 2008 to an astonishing $518.8 million in 2009. That’s nearly $10 million in weekly pay!

You read that right. In the Great Recession year of 2009 (officially just the first half of the year), the average pay of the very highest-income Americans was more than five times their average wages and bonuses in 2008. And even though their numbers shrank by 43 percent, this group’s total compensation was 3.2 times larger in 2009 than in 2008, accounting for 0.6 percent of all pay. These 74 people made as much as the 19 million lowest-paid people in America, who constitute one in every eight workers.

Proof of class warfare and corporate greed!

So I still ask you fuckno who Are you voting for and why?

It’s a long way to Tiparrarey. Or, where you are. I wanted to go to Yosemite for Christmas and thought we could stop in on the way, but that’s not going to happen. We’re down to one car. Mine’s dead. I’m using my son’s computer, mine’s dead, when he’s not here. He’s doing his homework right now. Low bucks times. But, I’m holding on. When I can, I will. And, I’ll bring my voice and my flute and we’ll have some good musical fun.

I’m not voting for the Party of Chriss Dodd and Barney Frank. Are you and if so, why?

I can answer that:
Because for some, it’s better than letting the party of sheer and unadulterated lunacy get back the reins.

It is not completely unreasonable to have this view.

Can’t wait.. We know the money crap.. ti very tight for us. Everthing is going up and the CSI says there is no inflation… Fucking a right…

read newt’s reply, he is spot on!! I wouldn’t trust them with anything let alone running the government.

Hi, newtonusr.

It’s counter productive, imo.

I’m with victortruex, I want Daryl Issa to audit the FED and have a deep audit of Geithner’s Treasury, Freddie, Fannie and all GSE’s if possible. The crime is in the Government/Private sector collusion.

emptywheel is upstairs!
“We’ve never lost complete command and control and functionality of 50 ICBMs”

No inflation. No Climate Change. No Evolution. No racism in the TB’r movement. No. No. No. The party of what?
I’m looking forward to the time in the future when we do get together and you boys can watch your wives sing you a really nice duet. It’s gonna happen. We just have to be patient.

Fair enough – we differ, although not as much as these exchanges would suggest.

Issa is a stain, a germ, and a dogged and rank individual. But I would grant you, he is a bulldog. If he were to confine his activities to the Fed, I would be a lot more comfortable.

What has Obama done to slow down climate change? What do you think Cap and trade is all about? As, for the rest, – the Right is a bunch of odious bigots and I have no interest bothering with their idiocy, – that’s something reserved for ‘political ambulance chasers’.

Fed, Freddie and Fannie. Don’t allow yourself to be lulled into Democrats knee jerk protectiveness of Maiden Lane!

When I choose enemies I always choose the bigger, stronger and better funded enemy.
~~~EDITED IN MODERATION~~~

~~ModNote: Let us NOT go down that road again this evening, please.~~~

Not even close to it.

I am more concerned, and this is getting repetitious, that we are, by omission, electing mentally unbalanced and ideologically driven whackos. It is that simple – corrupt as the day is long beats corrupt and crazy 10 times out of ten.

IMHO.

When I’m being interrogated by the good cop, and the bad cop, I know exactly the game they’re playing.

I know I know… sigh..

The Real Reason Obama Has Let Us All Down
On the night he won, I too shed a little tear; but the people weeping today are those having their homes repossessed

by Johann Hari:

“Is Barack Obama a politician whose actions should be judged soberly, or a figure from a feel-good fairytale to be revered from afar?

For two years now, most of the good and honorable people who desperately wanted him to beat John McCain – as I did –have watched his actions through a distorting haze of hoping for the best. So when Obama set us all up for another global crash by refusing to reregulate the banks or stop even their riskiest practices, we looked away. When Obama set us all up for more terror attacks by trebling the troops in Afghanistan and launching a vicious air war on Pakistan that is swelling the ranks of jihadis, we didn’t want to hear it. When Obama set us all up for environmental disaster by refusing to put the brakes on his country’s unprecedented and unmatched emissions of climate-destabilizing gases, we switched over to watch will.i.am’s YouTube rejig of the President’s “yes, we can” speech. And when a week from now he is beaten at the mid-term elections – after having so little to show the American people – by a group of even more irrational Republicans, we will weep for him.”

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/10/26-14

“Obama admin. threatens to walk out on ‘Don’t Ask’ negotiations”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/10/white-house-dadt-meeting-court-cases-mentioned/

What would Democrats be without wedge issues held in place? Hmm….

the Wall Street Journal reported that the cat food commission has been moving away from focusing on Social Security, but only in the short-term. It’s entirely possible a long-term “fix” that exempts current or near-retirees could be adopted

Now I understand what worlds second richest person said that war is being waged on main stream by top 1%, they winning it and main stream is not even knowing it they are being waged a war against.

Since the original straight-forward tactic is not working cat-food commission looks like they are focusing on divide and conquer methodology. Social Security keeps our Economy Depression Proof. Nothing wall street can do as long as current version of social security is present our economy will not go into depression. Once they put the tweaks in then viola depression hits, all the assets will hit rock bottom prices and it will go for fire-sale prices to the richest 1% holding the cash. All the human costs due to depression will be considered as just collateral damage and unavoidable consequences. Acquisition of the assets is the goal. Pres. Thomas Jefferson already predicted this scenario two centuries back if main stream is not vigilant.

Oi. I’ll go get a ruler. We’ll settle this right now.

LOL!

the problem with this generation of Democratic politicians is they’re malignant, evil screwups and they are incapable of learning from their screwups.”

See what just a little addition can do to bring about more truth and clarity?

corrupt as the day is long beats corrupt and crazy 10 times out of ten.

No, because you need corrupt and crazy to make the corruption and the craziness so bad that finally things get fixed. Dictatorships don’t fall because of corruption, they fall when corruption gets so far out of hand that there is no other alternative but rebellion and some form of reform.

Wait, what? I’m paying the lowest tax rate in history, when there haven’t even been taxes for all of history? Am I hearing this correctly?….

Mostly right now I am investing in durable goods, you can advance your standard of living much further and faster when you aren’t wasting money on cheap shit that doesn’t last. Otherwise, silver is cheapish ($1.75 for a pre-1964 dime), but I don’t have any land or gold at this time. Land will likely be very valuable in the future if for no reason other than the ability to grow your own food, since food prices tend to inflate faster than anything else.

as far as 100k verses 1m, since when was stealing from one person justification for stealing from another person?…

that “surplus” is “invested” in treasury bonds and when SS cashes out those treasury bonds the Treasury Department will pay out using either tax money, printing press inflation or by issuing more treasury bonds (incurring more debt)

As far as SS not paying out enough to put people above the poverty line in California …. the fate of the US dollar, US empire and the US government, was pretty much decided when the Federal Reserve first started printing money out of thin air, which was the 20s or 30s…. the information needed to realize that the system is broken and that you either need to fix it or disassociate from it has long been available and your or their lack of foresight doesn’t obligate me to clean up for you or them.

yea, I take care of myself and you aren’t my problem.

Just to be clear: when I say crazy, I don’t mean out of hand, or too busy to be watched, supervised or controlled.

I mean lacking the mental capacity, whether the source be:
• externally or internally chemical-driven
• environmental factors like abuse or brain-washing
• actual physical deformation leading to inhibited brain function and critical thinking capabilities
I mean literally unwell.

You don’t have to be Idi Amin unwell, or Pol Pot unwell to still be so far off the path that your judgment and cogency is unreliable for the well-being of yourself or others. We are talking about public policy here, people, not whether we prefer chocolate or strawberry.

Does anyone take Christine O’Donnell or Carl Paladino or Ken Buck or Michele Bachmann at their word? Because if you do, you have some explaining to do as to why you would let them have a drivers license, much less allow them to make decisions about matters of great importance.

Firstly lets be perfectly clear that when Ben pursues his own interests and than Adam comes along trying to get Ben to instead pursue the interests of Adam under some bullshit guise of “charity” or “help” or “brotherly love” or whatever it may be and tries guilt tripping or denigrating Ben when Ben choses to continue pursuing his own interests, they are both selfish, but Adam by far more so. So don’t waste my time with some bullshit invocation to “care”.

But lets see, what facts are you going to deny? That the surplus that Social Security supposedly has is invested into US Treasury Bonds? That when those bonds are cashed in, the Treasury will have to either take the money from taxes applied to people still working, take out more loans and/or “inflate the debt away”? That the Federal Reserve has been printing money without any corresponding increase of specie in government reserves since the 1920s or 30s? That the Brenton Woods Agreement ultimately brought about the demonetization of gold sooner than it would of happened anyways? That the only thing keeping this charade of the US having an economy afloat is the willingness of the Saudis and increasingly few other oil rich nations to accept USD as payment for oil in exchange for a guarantee that their regimes will be protected against internal insurrection by US troops and/or arms manufactures?

saying that “liberal social policies” pulled us out of the Great Depression is basically saying that people are so stupid or so socially inept that if left to their own devices they would of taken more than FIFTEEN YEARS to recover from the Great Depression. You’re basically arguing that people not only have the social skills of an autistic, but are also mentally retarded. Now what’s really devastating are property taxes that force people out of their homes and not only turns an economic slow down into a recession/depression but also allows the ultra-wealthy to accumulate the lions share of real assets at bargain basement prices, but abolishing property taxes might actually require that people take a good long look at their world view and no one wants to do that.

So if I hear you right:
Abolish property taxes, buy precious metals (Do you have a vendor in mind?), and become a fiscal Paulist.

I have to admit, the google search I just ran was mighty enlightening indeed.

No one was being forced out of their homes in California before Prop 13 was passed. And bonus: we grew a shining example of what public education could accomplish. Oh, and roads. And bridges. But no more.

Is there anything you want to pay for? Do you have your own paving concern, so you can just whip out a road whenever you need to travel by ground? How about a landing strip? How about an agency to test store-bought food for safety? And your electrical products so you don’t get zapped? And an agency to monitor your nearby volcano?

Can you do these things?

…… lets jump to the fun part, food safety, electrical products and nearby volcano…. wait, none of those things have ever been funded by property taxers, and did I or did not say that abolishing property taxes would require a close look at your world view or not ~~~EDITED IN MODERATION~~~? Is it not explicit in the statement “but abolishing property taxes might actually require that people take a good long look at their world view and no one wants to do that.”, that I’m not claiming it’d be easy? ~~~EDITED IN MODERATION~~~.

~~~ModNote: Abusing and insulting other participants subjects your comments to moderation.~~~

or let people keep their money and either spend or invest it as they like without getting employers involved….. you know, free markets not capitalism and sure as hell not corporatism.

oh, and I’m kinda getting the impression that this site is aimed at Californians and isn’t necessarily Utahan friendly (note: my car died in SLC, I am not here by choice…. but I wouldn’t be in Cali by choice either).

No one was being forced out of their homes in California before Prop 13 was passed.

You may have done a google search, but I lived it and I’m here to tell you, that was exactly what was going on, and what was looming on an even bigger scale if Prop 13 hadn’t passed. We had soaring property values (similar to the recent subprime bubble) and people with older, small homes saw their tax rates doubling every two years, sometimes every year, as developers bought adjacent properties, scraped off the old house, and built the predecessors of today’s McMansions.

I know, because my mother, living on a modest salary as a city employee and soon to be retired, was scared shitless of not being able to afford to stay in her paid-for, mortgage-free home. My mother (my Dad was five years dead by then) was a devout Dem, union member, union supporter, true blue liberal, but she — and millions of other blue collar-ish and middle class Dems up and down the state — rallied behind Prop 13 until it passed by a 2:1 margin. (It had to have tremendous Dem support; then, even more than in recent years, Dems outnumbered Republicans by a significant margin.)

Have you given any thought to what would have happened during the recent subprime bubble to people on fixed incomes who owned their homes? The skyrocketing increases in assessed valuations would have raised their property taxes by as much as a thousand percent. What do you do if you’re living on the average SS of about $1,400 a month and your property taxes go up from $1,000 a year to $10,000 a year? Where does that money come from?

You don’t think property taxes could go up a thousand percent? The property taxes on my mother’s old house are currently just over $1,000 a year. During the housing bubble I was offered as much as $850,000 by developers for the “dirt value”, for the ability to scrape off the old house and build a McMansion.

$850,000 of assessed valuation at 1% base rate would be a base property tax of $8,500. BUT…on top of the base valuation you have to add the extras which are on our property tax bills: voter approved school bonds, surcharges for the water district, sewer district, street lighting district, storm drains, etc. In my city/county/school district that adds roughly another 22%, or $2,200. (Remember, these extra assessments are computed as a percentage of the assessed value, so whenever the assessed value goes up, so do these assessments.) So now we’ve got $8,500 + $2,200, which is $10,700, or slightly more than a one thousand percent increase.

California’s budget problems don’t stem from Prop 13, they stem from:

a) Billions in tax breaks for yachts, oil companies, and other forms of corporate/elite welfare.

b) A completely assinine personal income tax structure which puts everyone who makes more than $41,000 in the same tax bracket. Nice middle class couple makes $41K a year in net taxable income? They pay at the same rate as Kobe Bryant and Steven Spielberg. In fact, given the tax dodges of those mega-income types, the middle class couple probably pays more on a percentage basis.

c) Dem politicians who have sold out to employee unions over ridiculous pension benefits.

d) Dem and Repug politicians who, for decades, combined with each other to defer paying for those pension obligations off into the “future”, which, unfortunately, has now arrived.

e) Gross inefficiences, waste, and abuse in bloated bureacracies at every level. Ever been to the CA DMV? The people at the customer service windows work at a steady pace, do a good job, no complaints there. But have you ever watched all the other people there, the ones at the desks in the center bullpen area or the glass-walled offices along the back? I have, and I can tell you, it sure didn’t look to me like anybody was doing much of anything urgent. Lots of chatting with each other, wandering from desk to desk, but certainly nothing like the pace of activity in a typical bustling private company. And keep in mind:

- Most car registrations and a majority of drivers license renewals are done via the mail and/or internet and are processed out of a major centers, not local DMV offices.

- Many forms, answers to questions, etc., are available online and or through automated voicemail systems.

Don’t get me wrong; not all state and local government agencies are bloated, in efficient, or over-staffed. But the allocation of resources is totally fucked up. We have social workers and probation officers drowning in overwhelming case loads, but we overspend on DMV workers or prison guards with exorbitant pay and lavish retirement packages. (Retire at age 55 at 90% of final salary plus annual COLA and state-paid health care until Medicare kicks in at 65.)