No. of Recommendations: 15
I wish Social Security would be privatized. The monies should be for the payer's own future retirement and not immediate transfers to strangers' current retirement.
You understand that this would necessarily involve smaller checks for every single recipient, right? The only reason the checks are as large as they are is because some people die before collecting as much as others do. That may seem unfair, but that's how insurance works. Imagine if you called Aetna and said 'I paid for fire insurance but didn't have a fire, so send me back my premium.' That would (obviously, I think) mean that people who *did* have a fire wouldn't get paid.
we can't afford the transfers anymore
And yet we do. And without much pain on anybody's part, especially those who earn more than the top figure and who stop contributing halfway through the year.
Let the citizens of each state keep their tax money for their own state's use
One of the worst ideas yet. Some states <cough/Conservative/cough> have already shown a predilection to ignore health issues in favor of tax cuts for the already wealthy. And somehow they keep getting elected. Well, that's OK with me, except for the part about people dying, disease spreading, and people opting to travel to take advantage of those states which *do* protect their populations. This is one of those things that makes us a country instead of a potpourri of fiefdoms, like Europe.
the Great Depression
Your 'facts' are wrong, so wrong as to make me think you've never read anything but wildly biased tales about it. It's already been refuted upthread, I'll just add that it's nothing close to reality. (PS: Roosevelt issued wage and price controls, um, in 1943. The Great Depression began in 1929. See the difference?)
Republicans now want to cut both Social Security and Medicare
No, they never have.
Actually they have multiple proposals on the board, they have talked about it for a long time, and they are finally in a place with their rules committee and House majority that they may actually try to pass something. Gosh, I hope they do, if only to signal to voters what their long plan is. As for raising the age, that's already been done.
compare that with the Depression of the early 20's
Recessions are not all the same, even if they sport the same word. Post war recessions tend to be short, as an economy retrenches and reallocates from wartime production to consumer. Same thing happened after World War II. Recessions involving a (partial) collapse of part of the economic system are different. You're spouting talk show economics.
