What would you do if government stopped covering AS support?

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It would be nice if the U.S. government did. Does it? Then sign me the f*ck up!

Both of these are false. It's not defense (4% of the budget) or welfare (less than 8%) but the stupid ass entitlements that are ruining the budget. Why on earth Bill Gates thinks he needs to collect Social Security, and people think they need to live in retirement for 20 years even if they are able to work, is beyond me.

Of course, corporate welfare (10% of the U.S. budget, depending upon how it's counted) is another huge loss.

http://www.filmsforaction.org/news/gove ... _programs/

It's subsidies to corporations and wasteful entitlement programs, not help for the poor or disabled, that needs to go.

What you posted is false, but it's understandable given the deliberate spread of misinformation on the topic..

Social security is not in danger nor is it part of the budget. Social Security pays its own bills and is separate from the rest of the budget.

Also, people shouldn't be forced to work every day they might conceivably be able to work. Just because someone might be able to work from 66-85 (and the truth is most people probably can't work that long, and most won't even live that long) doesn't mean they should be forced into it. They've been paying into payroll taxes their entire lives, and the point of payroll taxes is to fund Social Security. I am not sure where the cutoff point is, but there are people alive today who cannot retire until 67 and receive full payments due to something passed in the 1980s.

Also, everyone pays into social security, so they are entitled to receive it. It is not an "entitlement" in the sense you mention:

http://www.chicagonow.com/chicago-then/ ... ement-123/

Social Security is neither going bankrupt nor is it draining the economy:

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/10/15/ ... -security/

That article also addresses the myth of "still able to work for another 20 years."

The "I paid into it, I should get something back" mentality is what makes SS an entitlement, and it's what's ruining the economy. It doesn't matter one way or the other what is part of the budget. The Senate hasn't passed a budget in what...3 years -- for anything? Money from SS goes back and forth to other things all the time, so it's definitely part of government spending; therefore, it's effectively part of the budget. Revenue is paid into benefits instead of other things, taxes collected from SS means less ability to collect taxes from other sources, so it is contributing to the deficit. This doesn't even count the catastrophic loss that payroll taxes (as opposed to income taxes on the wealthy) cause to the economy annually in the form of wage cuts and outsourcing, which also adds to the deficit.

I'm sure some people can't work. Then they should get disability payments, but there's no means testing and no requirement that someone not be able to work. When SS was passed into law, the average life expectancy was lower (61) than the age at which SS was collected (62 or so). And it's not just SS; Medicare is another huge drain on the economy.

It's our dumb American mentality of hating welfare and hating helping the poor that has, ironically, driven us over the fiscal edge. We don't like to help those who need help, so we created massive, unwieldy entitlement programs that were bound to go bankrupt as soon as birthrates started falling (something that happens in ALL developed countries). If we just had programs to help those who needed help, our budget would be perfectly balanced, and we'd be able to help a lot more needy people. But good luck getting Republicans to vote for "welfare" that might help black people. And good luck getting Democrats to revamp entitlements.

The 5 huge myths doesn't really say anything. It's just an argument over terminology. "Not being able to meet obligations =/going bankrupt [because one has to declare bankruptcy to go bankrupt, and SS can't technically do that yeah yeah]." Sure, ok....Next.

The Chicago Now article is false even in the title: a welfare program is a gratuitous program to help the needy. An entitlement program (which includes Medicare) is a program that beneficiaries are legally entitled to based on either paying into the system or working at a company for a certain number of years. So the very dumb "we've earned it" mantra that will block all attempts at ever reforming the system is as much to say as "it's an entitlement." That is simply incorrect. If everybody who paid taxes thought they deserved it all back at some point, we wouldn't have much of a country. Social Security is a tax, and just because you pay it, doesn't mean the government owes you anything.

Anyway, my main point was that benefits to persons with disabilities really have little to do with the deficit. Entitlements and corporate welfare are a much more serious problem.

Also, money that's spent on welfare, food stamps/SNAP, social security benefits, and other assistance programs actually goes right back into the economy because that's the entire point. Which means that a robust benefits system is actually something of an economic stimulus, since the poorest people have more money to spend. This whole notion that spending is the culprit for the economy's current state completely ignores the actual factors that have gone into putting us into such a deep deficit.

After Reagan and Bush Sr. the US budget was in the red. The budget returned to the black during Clinton's two terms, and got blasted right into the red again during W.'s administration due to an attitude that unlimited spending was good coupled with the Republican ideological stance that taxes are bad and should be cut. That is explained here:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-5 ... n-the-gop/

And the spending during the Bush administration:

http://mercatus.org/publication/spendin ... rge-w-bush

I'm a socialist. So I'm not going to argue with you here. I might sound like a Republican when I'm criticizing the idea of the welfare state, but actually, I think it's just part of the package of capitalism that needs to go.

I'd like to refer everyone to my article I posted above which showed that corporate welfare spending is nearly double ALL other welfare spending. So let's have a talk about which welfare programs take up the highest portion of the budget. I'm looking at you Apple, GE, GM, Goldman Sachs, and Exxon.

I get pretty irritated when people associate help for the poor or persons with disabilities with the deficit. Even if you accept that spending causes deficits, it's still one of the smallest parts of the budget.

I do agree that "corporate welfare" is a huge drain. Here's one example:

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/20 ... g-reports/

7.77 trillion dollars given to banks to keep them afloat. Something that was only discovered via Freedom of Information requests.

Also, no budget has passed for the past three years because Republicans decided they wanted to be the "party of no" and refused to negotiate or compromise. They used their House majority to put the legislative branch into continuous gridlock.

What you wrote about social security draining the economy is not really the problem. The problem is that the people who run corporations feel entitled to dodge as many taxes as they can, so they do whatever they can whether it's pay cuts, outsourcing, and moving production to less developed nations where they can pay a significantly lower wage that is not subject to payroll taxes. These taxes aren't going to break any solvent corporation, the worst they might do is require lower wages for massively overpaid executives and their golden parachutes. Payroll taxes were not a serious problem

Anyway, it's not an unreasonable sense of entitlement to expect that if you pay into a retirement program, that you should actually receive the retirement benefits you paid for. The notion that people should work until the day they die is so regressive I don't even know what to call it right now.

Last edited by Verdandi on 28 Jan 2013, 11:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Despite the disagreement we're having here, I think we agree more than we disagree economically.

I stopped reading after this. Yes, if you put your money away for the future, whether you are forced to or not, you are entitled to your money. You make entitlement sound like a 4 letter word. If you set money aside in your savings account you are entitled to that money. If you buy a car you are entitled to drive it. If you buy a house you are entitled to live in it. If you work for 8 hours you are entitled to 8 hours wages. Get it?

"I paid into it, I should get something back" mentality....

The dude wasn't speaking against entitlements he clearly stated that.

The problem with entitlements, and why there not simply called savings or something of the sort, is the simple fact that there false promises.

The government simply can't afford it, its not much more complicated than that. People simply live in retirement longer than they work, and require extensive health care when they retire. So unless everyone, pays atleast 60 percent taxes(ignoring all those foolish government tasks like prisons and schools) the system will not continue to work.

The government is most definanetely going to make it harder to get disability as time goes on.

The government is not an entity that exists to help you, it is a for profit business, it will fight as hard as it can to retain it's money and spend it on things that get more money.

Of course he wasn't speaking against entitlements, he's a self proclaimed socialist. He's speaking against the mentality of 'keep what I earn' because he believes in redistribution of private production to the public. His problem isn't with social security, it's with how the money is being redistributed.

The vast majority of people work for 40 years or so and get to enjoy retirement for 10 if they're lucky. Where does this notion of people simply living in retirement longer than they work come from? Basic math and statistics show that this is not even possible. People who do manage to live in retirement for longer than they work most likely are getting comparatively small payments because they probably worked a total of 5-10 years for their entire lives and probably were a candidate for SSDI or SSI in the first place.

Also, there is literally no evidence supporting that "60 percent taxes" thing. Like Social Security, it's supported by a payroll tax.

I am officially diagnosed by experts, and dont get any support. So if I wouldnt get any support anymore, I would do the same, as I am doing now.

Government mismanagement of all autistic related expenditures
including seemingly unrelated costs such as accident and emergency, employment and law enforcement
means financial support payments
only make up a small proportion
of autistic costs to government

Mental illness costs everyone heaps
Nanu nanu

Just an ASD diagnosis isn't going to get you welfare. It shouldn't. Many autistic people can work. If you can, why in the world would you want to be living below the poverty line, with all your finances constantly being checked, always at risk of having your only source of food, shelter, and medical care yanked away from you, perhaps because of a simple clerical error? No. It's not a good life. It's not something you want to do, unless you absolutely have to.