"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

But there never was any place to *store* the money. Everyone knew
from the start that this is how it would work. That's why many of
us laugh when we hear about the "trust fund."


And some of us are outraged that our federal government
misrepresented how FICA was used
to finance a government that had un-sound financial policies.

I'm only p*ss*ed, I knew the screw was on for a long, long time.

Wes

With all due respect, Wes, they never hid how it works. People just
didn't pay attention. This was all thoroughly explained and vetted
back in the '80s, when Greenspan was selling an increase in the FICA
rate to Congress.

This is a complicated government. Its finances work astoundingly
well, and it's not at all hard to understand the basics. But most
people don't bother to look into it, and wind up being suspicious and
paranoid about the whole thing.

There are so many cheap-shot ways to criticize it that Congress
generally keeps pretty quiet about it. But they don't hide it. That's
unfortunate in several ways, one of which we're paying for now: it's
given the Tea Partiers a whole string of cheap-shot arguments.

I'm sure that most of them don't know how it all works. And they're
counting on most of the country not knowing how it works. That's how
they get people worked up and angry -- by selling them a bunch of
baloney, playing on their suspicions and their lack of understanding.
That's what creates paranoia.

My Mom and I are watching Beck every evening. It's becoming a sort of past
time.
She actually records his and Smith's daily broadcasts so we can watch it
together.
LOL

Now, THAT's entertainment. g

A couple of days ago Beck displayed and then explained his "Debt Clock".
He got a bunch of stuff right and then at the end added that the US had an
unfunded liability of $75 Trillion dollars.
Yep, you guessed it - Social Security. I paused the playback and explained
how rediculous this was and also that it just isn't, and couldn't be,
true.
She got it right away, especially the part about either raising taxes or
reducing benefits to correct any imbalance.

Your mom, as you've described her, is smart. Most people are plenty smart
enough to get it. But they get their information from people with an agenda,
who play on the fact that studying balance sheets isn't fun for anyone, so
hardly anyone does it.

That "Turkeys Voting for Christmas" piece was one of the most depressing
things I've heard lately. But I don't blame people for not looking into
these things for themselves. Many of them have become so complicated, as has
the world. That makes us vulnerable to the polemicists -- even the fairly
ignorant and transparent ones, like Beck.


OK, she's an MLS from Michigan State but if a woman in her 80's suffering
from the early symptoms of either senile dementia or Ahlziemer'scan wrap
her
head around the actual truth, anyone ought to be able to do the same.

They should, and they can. But they don't.

Apparently, Glenn Beck, Wes and a huge percentage of the population are
unable to be as rational as my 80 something mother.

Beck has a shtick that makes him a lot of money. Wes has a full-time job.
But Wes watches C-Span, which I can rarely bring myself to do. What seems to
get lost is the background and perspective. It requires quite a bit of
study.

For example, if you talk to someone who thinks that our national debt is
insurmountable, at 83% of GDP, and explain to them that it was 120% of GDP
after WWII and was followed by two decades of high average growth, they look
immediately for a reason this couldn't be true, rather than trying to figure
out why it IS true.

--
Ed Huntress