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isaly wrote:

Farmerkev wrote:

All welfare and services are supported by taxes, the government does not make income itself, it takes and redistributes what others earn.
What makes SS welfare is the very very loose correlation between what people contribute to what they receive.

In terms of what is actually deducted in payroll tax per month to what is actually received in SS benefit per month, for the people who earn between minwage and 100k per year we actually receive MUCH more in dollar figures. Adjusted for inflation, I'm not sure what that means.

It's an insurance program meant to ensure that people don't have to live in penury when they can't work. We pay the tax so that we can have a country where old people who make up that mass of average joes and janes don't have to starve. That money is supposed to be invested VERY conservatively and it works kind of like a pension plan, kind of like a dessert topping. . .

If you're wealthy enough to not need it to buy food, pay rent, or buy medication when you retire you should consider yourself lucky and you should not get it. . . for precisely the reason mentioned in the previous paragraph. If you had not done so well, you'd get it.

If you complain about not getting back what you put in you are, in my estimation, sufficiently greedy that it's likely you're just antisocial because you get it anyway. It's not means tested, which is what really gets me concerning people who complain. It's like you don't want to understand it. It's not my place to mandate that someone be forbidden to be antisocial, just don't expect me to buy anybody's BS rationalization.

That whole Beacon of freedom, light upon the hilltop thing is more than the freedom to rape the masses because it's legal.

The poor blue collar widow faced with only being allowed to take her husbands even though they both worked would be 1 example of people getting screwed by SS.
If you want to get down to brass tacks, that's exactly who it was set up for in the first place.
The initial age for eligibility was over a mans life expectancy and something like 18 months for a woman.

Government can be terribly corrupt, nobody's denying that. And fraud is a problem in Medicare. But private corporations aren't immune from corruption - in fact, I'd say recent events would suggest the opposite. Because they answer only to shareholders (and in reality, to a Board of Directors which are easy to populate with allies), corporate execs are more likely to abuse their positions. Any action - polluting, screwing workers out of their pensions, taking huge bonuses while laying off workers, accounting "errors" - can be justified as long as they are "delivering value to shareholders". At least with government, I have some say over who is running the show and checks and balances can be put into place.

Once you start burdening private insurance companies with lots of regulations to keep them honest, you're basically going to turn them into quasi-government entities anyway. There will also need to be a huge amount of inspection and oversight to make sure the insurance companies aren't screwing people over - you're going to have big government either way.

Farmerkev wrote:

bratboy wrote:

Farmerkev wrote:

All welfare and services are supported by taxes, the government does not make income itself, it takes and redistributes what others earn.

Huh, I never considered my paycheck for government service to simply be a "redistribution of wealth."  Fascinating.

Get and read this book.
If you can't afford it pm your address and I'll mail you a check.
http://www.toopoliticallysensitive.com/

You'll understand me and my attitudes much better after you do.

Innocent people railroaded by the justice system? That's not new. Look into the Black Panthers, the Rosenbergs, Sacco and Vanzetti.

Unfortunately there's not a justice system on earth that doesn't end up doing that once in awhile. It's the nature of the beast. I don't understand how you get from there to GOVERNMENT EVUL.

Farmerkev wrote:

Get and read this book.
If you can't afford it pm your address and I'll mail you a check.
http://www.toopoliticallysensitive.com/

You'll understand me and my attitudes much better after you do.

Perhaps I enjoy the mystery.

What does this have to do with anything?

Farmerkev wrote:

ShnickyShnack wrote:

Farmerkev wrote:

Get and read this book.
If you can't afford it pm your address and I'll mail you a check.
http://www.toopoliticallysensitive.com/

You'll understand me and my attitudes much better after you do.

Innocent people railroaded by the justice system? That's not new. Look into the Black Panthers, the Rosenbergs, Sacco and Vanzetti.

Unfortunately there's not a justice system on earth that doesn't end up doing that once in awhile. It's the nature of the beast. I don't understand how you get from there to GOVERNMENT EVUL.

You would have to read the book, it goes from local to the entire command of the IL State Police to the State Att General and both Governors and it's just the tip of the iceburg of the corruption and smurf I know.
You would think it was a movie story line but it isn't, it's real life.

That too is not new. Though no doubt about it, yours is one of the more corrupt states in the union.

But is that because government is bad, or because a culture of corruption has been allowed to openly thrive for generations?

I understand not liking a particular government. I can understand no liking a particular system.

What I can't understand is ending up in a place where the very idea of government is bad.

ShnickyShnack wrote:

I understand not liking a particular government. I can understand no liking a particular system.

What I can't understand is ending up in a place where the very idea of government is bad.

Not the idea of government at all.
The reality of what happens with government that tells me it needs to have limited and closely checked power, not ever expanding.
It should be trusted less than the average business because business knows you can walk away if they cheat you.

bratboy wrote:

Farmerkev wrote:

If you want to understand why I don't think highly of government or your profession read it.

...and do you find all of this reasonable on your part, or not?

Accepting reality for what it is isn't unreasonable.
Pretending it's something else is.

Farmerkev wrote:

Accepting reality for what it is isn't unreasonable.
Pretending it's something else is.

If you hadn't noticed, corruption can and does occur everywhere.

The "reality" of this book-inspiring tale of corruption from Illinois is not the "reality" of all government entities, officials, or attorneys.

Do we have a week go by without another example in the news?

I can pull news stories to hate anyone's profession. Journalists, farmers, lawyers...
Not geologists, though. Those guys are golden.

Tallgeese wrote:

I can pull news stories to hate anyone's profession. Journalists, farmers, lawyers...
Not geologists, though. Those guys are golden.

orly