Sanders will increase wealth of ordinary Americans

[Bernie Sanders]

If you pay all your working life into SS and then die the day before you are due to collect, you are screwed. Most of that money is gone for you and your family. On the other hand, if all the money you had contributed had instead been put into a decent IRA then your family gets that money.

Any way you objectively look at it any person would be better off funding their own retirement instead of having to rely on the government's half assed retirement account which was never intended to be a retirement account in the first place. It's just supposed to be a safety net which only helps the most stupid of our citizens who never bothered to prepare for their own retirement.

Anyone who is counting on SS to take care of their financial needs when they get too old to work are all idiots and fools. Kinda like the people who would vote for the real Bernie Sanders who, though fairly honest and straightforward, is living in a delusional dreamland where unicorns fart good fortunes for everyone.

Wrong my friend. The highest benefits go to the spouse. There's other benefits that will help families, if you die prematurely.

http://moneyover55.about.com/od/socialsecuritybenefits/a/Social-Security-Survivor-Benefits-For-A-Spouse.htm

[Bernie Sanders]

Damn patches you didnt hold anything back did you, my suggestion to millinials, other less than prepared people would be find some Amish or real farmer's, learn to shut up and survive if this worse case scenario should happen, not saying it will, but look around and pay attention to what is happening

Mets and waauw think I don't care about the poor. This isn't true at all but they can think what they want I suppose. I just think the best way to help regular people is to let people keep what they earn, have a stable medium with which to convert one's labors into the goods and services they require to live a just, moral, productive and hopefully happy life.

What is really sad is that everything, and I mean every single thing produced today that people need to live, is cheaper now than ever in the history of the entire human species. Never has food been so cheap and plentiful, never has housing been so adequate and plentiful, never has there been more opportunity and hope than there is now, today. At least if you measure in anything other than whatever fiat currency one is using. In fiat currency everything is more expensive than ever and hope is fading for the most vulnerable.

Fifty years ago an ounce of gold would buy you a hundred loaves or so of bread. Today and ounce of the exact same gold would buy you eight hundred loaves of bread. And it's the same for any other "thing" you could imagine to buy, priced in anything other than fiat currency. As things should be cheaper. We are better at growing food, conserving resources, more efficient ways of doing things, mass production, better materials and knowledge etc etc.
How can one explain why everything is cheaper than ever before and yet too many people still can't afford the basic things they need to live a decent life?
And people think the politicians are going to fix this? The politicians caused this when they opted for the moral hazard that is fiat currency. Fiat currency has it's pro's that's for sure, but people tend to ignore or forget the inherent flaws in such a system.
And in the US and the euro it's not just a fiat currency but it's a debt based fiat currency which is the biggest and longest running scam in human civilization that is rooted in outright fraud.
At least the Greenback and the Continental weren't debt based. But they failed as well because of the flaws in fiat currency.

It's so bad that the thing that the politicians and bankers, in the US and across the pond in the EU, fear the most is deflation. God forbid things got cheaper priced in currency. That could be a boon to the poor, if they could hold onto their meager jobs during a deflation cycle.
And it's always the same, the central banks fearing deflation start printing like fools trying to inject inflation and it gets out of control. It just keeps happening over and over again and no one seems to think "hey, maybe there is something fundamentally wrong with fiat currency systems".

The Ben Bernanke was before Congress and he was asked "What is the definition of a dollar?"
We all know what it is, A Federal Reserve Note is a note of a debt owed. A dollar represents what the government owes the Central Bank (most people don't realize that but that's what a Federal Reserve Note is, and that's what a euro is as well, a note of debt owed to the Central Bank). The Ben Bernanke answered that question with-
"A dollar is what you can buy with it". Haha! He went on about purchasing power, but that purchasing power is decided by arbitrary judgment by the Federal Reserve and it changes constantly and artificially contrary to market forces. And this is the basis upon which the politicians are supposed to fix the "wealth disparity"?
It's like trying to build a house on shifting sand, the house ain't gonna stand for very long. With such an arbitrary and shifting value of the very thing we use to buy things and with which we measure "wealth disparity" is it any wonder we have wealth disparity?

Ben Bernanke was a boot licker for the rich.



...and patches is a boot licker of the failed "trickle down economics" Patches wants to copy/paste fairy tale stories of the lack of will for poor people to work, if the government wants to give a helping hand. Perhaps, patches can copy/paste some fairy tales on how all the cash large corporations are hoarding is helping these same corporations hire the unemployed and under-employed.

[hotfire]

food is cheap because we use cheap oil to make it...don't live in some fantasy world where that will last for ever...just look at a graph showing the correlation of food and oil prices...sooner or later cheap oil will end and we will start to pay the real price for what food costs to make...no amount of big business can stop that

[Metsfanmax]

Damn patches you didnt hold anything back did you, my suggestion to millinials, other less than prepared people would be find some Amish or real farmer's, learn to shut up and survive if this worse case scenario should happen, not saying it will, but look around and pay attention to what is happening

Mets and waauw think I don't care about the poor. This isn't true at all but they can think what they want I suppose. I just think the best way to help regular people is to let people keep what they earn, have a stable medium with which to convert one's labors into the goods and services they require to live a just, moral, productive and hopefully happy life.

I don't think that you don't care about the poor. What I do think is that if you came across evidence proving that you were wrong, that in fact the best way to help the poor was some sort of significant government social welfare program, that you would still oppose doing it because that's not your preferred system of government.

[mrswdk]

I just think the best way to help regular people is to let people keep what they earn, have a stable medium with which to convert one's labors into the goods and services they require to live a just, moral, productive and hopefully happy life.

And what if the costs of those goods and services (e.g. tertiary education, healthcare) are so high that even people who are working are unable to afford them?

[Bernie Sanders]

food is cheap because we use cheap oil to make it...don't live in some fantasy world where that will last for ever...just look at a graph showing the correlation of food and oil prices...sooner or later cheap oil will end and we will start to pay the real price for what food costs to make...no amount of big business can stop that

OR, when we pay agriculture workers decent living wages.

[Bernie Sanders]

I just think the best way to help regular people is to let people keep what they earn, have a stable medium with which to convert one's labors into the goods and services they require to live a just, moral, productive and hopefully happy life.

And what if the costs of those goods and services (e.g. tertiary education, healthcare) are so high that even people who are working are unable to afford them?

That's why all people who work 40 hour work weeks, should receive wages that will keep them out of poverty.

[tzor]

Many people just refuse to donate to charity regardless of their tax rate.

I'll have to look this one up, but I recall hearing an argument where charity rates is linked to the involvement of the highest level of Government. The argument was that over time, people get used to the notion that the "government" can do it, so they are less likely to do it themselves.

Here is the World Giving Index

Click image to enlarge.

[mrswdk]

The argument was that over time, people get used to the notion that the "government" can do it, so they are less likely to do it themselves.

An argument which is fairly heavily contradicted by your map.

[Bernie Sanders]

Many people just refuse to donate to charity regardless of their tax rate.

I'll have to look this one up, but I recall hearing an argument where charity rates is linked to the involvement of the highest level of Government. The argument was that over time, people get used to the notion that the "government" can do it, so they are less likely to do it themselves.

Here is the World Giving Index

Click image to enlarge.

That's why organized religion MUST start paying taxes!

[waauw]

Many people just refuse to donate to charity regardless of their tax rate.

I'll have to look this one up, but I recall hearing an argument where charity rates is linked to the involvement of the highest level of Government. The argument was that over time, people get used to the notion that the "government" can do it, so they are less likely to do it themselves.

Here is the World Giving Index

Click image to enlarge.

The argument was patches claiming that charity funds are superior to social security systems. I quote him:

I'm saying that helping the poor can be done better and more efficiently through private sources based on voluntary exchanges that don't rely on the use of force to achieve. The government is the exercise in the application of force and anytime you inject force into anything it's no wonder things just get worse.

I never said anything that contradicts what you just mentioned tzor. What I argumented was that social security systems are capable of gathering money from both the selfish and the unselfish, from which I continued that social security systems have a better record as shown by the Gini coefficient. This is very important as scientific research has already indicated that population happiness is tied to inequality.

[mrswdk]

Good to see patches standing up for freedom from tyranny. If not for people like him, King George would have stolen all the guns and spent his autumn years claiming the right to every American wife's wedding virginity.

Say no to the tyranny of redistribution via a democratically-elected government, say yes to the freedom of redistribution via private organizations!

[waauw]

I don't know what the government of whatever country you live in is required to do, but in the US there is no where in the Constitution that gives the Federal government the responsibility for "safeguarding wealth disparity".

You think I'm arguing semantics, but how did this wealth disparity come to be? According to Barrack Obama it's partly because of the tax code. He admits government's role in this wealth disparity. And your solution is to trust the people to "fixing" this wealth disparity are the same ones who helped create it? Seriously?

You wanna address wealth disparity then you should be railing against income taxes. The rich don't pay income taxes because they don't have any income. The middle class and the poor pay the income taxes and they are the ones who can least afford them. After all, a man's labors are his own are they not?
You have no claim on your neighbors wages from digging ditches even if you claim it's for helping the poor. Unfortunately you should know better than anyone that government doesn't use the money they take from everyone to "help the poor".

You also ignore the inflation, every single central bank in the world is trying to pump more inflation and who does that hurt? Certainly not the rich.
Point in fact, during Obama's administration the Federal government virtually took over the entire college loan industry and pumped some $1 trillion into it. Admirable some would think as the goal was to get more people into college. The unintended consequences was a large sum of money was suddenly introduced into a niche market and caused the prices in that market to skyrocket. It's basic economics really.
Bernie's genius plan is "free" college for everyone. Ha! Raise your hands if you think the college teachers are going to work for free. Or the janitors on college campuses are going to work for free, or the textbooks are going to be created and printed and given away for free.
I can already tell you what happens if Bernie got his way, the costs estimated for such a program will skyrocket exponentially. But hey, who cares about results when one has a noble reason, right?

Decades ago wages kept up with inflation. This is no longer true and there isn't a damn thing politicians or government can do about it because they've boxed themselves in with past policies. Noble in nature but foolish in application. It's not like no one ever warned about the consequences, lots of people tried to explain. The wealth disparity is such that those on the bottom, the "working poor" don't have a chance to get out of debt because the currency they are paid in doesn't keep up with the rate of inflation. The governments needs the inflation because they are in such debt. Inflation is good if you are in debt, it's good for the rich who don't earn wages or income, but for everyone else it's just another hidden tax, the most insidious of taxes as it robs the purchasing power of hard working people who can't understand why they keep falling deeper and deeper into the hole.
At the same time the rich keep getting richer because their assets are inflating at an artificial rate and at such a rate that the little people are priced out. Then the inevitable collapse comes and government bails out the rich because, frankly, they are the one's contributing to the politicians election efforts. After all it's not like the poor have the money to contribute now do they?

Some like to blame the failing family structure or the loss of morals or the pursuit of the material over the moral. but it's all about the currency. Since the currency is created and manipulated by central banks who are partners with federal government, you start to see that relying on government to fix this wealth disparity is a trip into the absurd.

But hey, keep the faith if you want, it won't change the reality. Governments will keep pouring money into a never ending hole of social welfare at ever inflating prices and the rich will just get richer and the poor get poorer until it all just collapses as it always has through out the entirety of human history. All fiat currencies have a 100% failure rate and ours and the European Union's currencies are no different. Thinking "but this time it'll be different" is insanity.
A brief period of turmoil which may or may not include large amounts of violence and loss of life will give way to yet another fiat scheme and the whole stinking process just starts over again.

Semantics? Nope, it's reality.

The next great idea is going to be getting rid of cash all together. That process is beginning now as you probably know, waauw. The EU is getting rid of the 500 euro and there are calls for the US to get rid of the $100 bill. Few know that if you take all the $100 bills and all of the 500 euro bills, that is more than half of all the currency circulating in the world today.
The stated goal of course is to "stop crime" and such nonsense. The truth is the currencies are dying because fiat currencies always die the same way. This is just TPTB trying to get ahead of the coming shit storm and they count on everyone being ignorant or stupid.
None of this will end well but it's not like anyone seems to give a shit either. So whatever, put your faith in the very sociopaths who have created all this mess if you want. It might be a good idea to have some vital skills that are desired by people no matter what the situation is though. Maybe like be a doctor or mechanic or engineer or the like. Types of knowledge that civilizations rely on to thrive and grow.

Dude, calm your tits.

• You know full well I didn't mean 'safeguarding wealth disparity' was written in the constitution. It's perfectly obvious I responded to you with a political philosophy.
• Your Barack Obama argument is useless without any further address to context and details.
• Claiming that the rich don't have any income is like claiming the oceans are without water.
• You also seem to make the assumption that systemical inefficiencies can't be solved. Once correctly structured creating a system of free education is absolutely viable. Several european countries should be evidence of this. The same goes for 'income taxes'. With correct restructuring and tax shifts, income taxes can contribute against wealth disparity. I don't see how Mr. Sanders' dreams are unrealistic.
• I am fully aware of the fallacies in monetary economics, but that doesn't exclude the conceptual viability of a well-working social security system. You're sidetracking the argument here, and in case you were wondering, you're not the only one here who's bought himself some 'gold and silver' insurance.

[waauw]

Next time try and keep it short. You seem to even be side-tracking yourself. At least half your text seemed to be completely unnecessary.

[mrswdk]

Next time try and keep it short. You seem to even be side-tracking yourself. At least half your text seemed to be completely unnecessary.

It's called freedom of speech, buddy.

[tzor]

I never said anything that contradicts what you just mentioned tzor. What I argumented was that social security systems are capable of gathering money from both the selfish and the unselfish, from which I continued that social security systems have a better record as shown by the Gini coefficient. This is very important as scientific research has already indicated that population happiness is tied to inequality.

Social security "systems" ... We only have one here in the US. It's been raped and pillaged by a number of other social programs. That's the only one I know of and the only one I care about. (Despite of the radio ads that say that I, an US citizen, can take advantage of Canada's system.)

I'll just make one point, which might be initially derived from a scriptural quote, but is a clear good argument of the human condition: "Charity gladdens the heart of the giver / No one likes to pay taxes." President Carter loves to work constructing houses, do you think he would have that same love if he was forced to do it? The work is the same, either way.

The Tzor Plan would actually transfer a lot more things from taxes towards tax-free charity. People would pay the same but me much happier about it.

[patches70]

I don't think that you don't care about the poor. What I do think is that if you came across evidence proving that you were wrong, that in fact the best way to help the poor was some sort of significant government social welfare program, that you would still oppose doing it because that's not your preferred system of government.

Your problem mets is that you don't have the ability to help the poor at all currently and the guilt eats you up. If you were confronted with actual evidence that the US welfare system wasn't working you still wouldn't oppose it because that's not your preferred system of government. You want to transfer your personal responsibilities to your fellow citizens to the government and thus alleviating you of all responsibility.

The evidence.

In 1964 Lyndon Johnson announced the "war on poverty". AS of 2012, according to the US census, the US poverty level is the exact same as it was in 1967. This is despite that the US now spends $1 trillion annually on direct cash payments to the poor.



After WWII the the poverty index was steadily decreasing without the welfare state. From 1964 until 1970 there was even some progress with the welfare state but after that the "war on poverty" is a failure. Why? What changed around 1970?


Since Johnson's famous speech the US has sunk over $22 trillion into the war on poverty and all we've gotten for it is ever greater wealth disparity and virtually zero headway. Your answer is to throw more money at it? Let the government double down and keep expanding the welfare state? And you really think that will help?
Even worse, this is funded through deficit spending, i.e. debt. Debt is just deferred poverty. You take out a loan today and tomorrow you have less money because you spend your money paying back the debt. Borrowing is trading future prosperity to use today. Only fools live like this. The best way to combat poverty is certainly not getting into more debt. Quite the opposite actually. The debt is causing the poverty, the wealth disparity and the very medium upon which each and every one of us makes transactions are all just notes of debt.

[Metsfanmax]

I am not sure that this graph you showed is meaningful, because the official poverty level (which is measured in nominal dollars) is changed for various reasons throughout time, with the result that it doesn't necessarily track some constant standard of poverty in real terms. What would be more instructive, if you want to make the case that social welfare spending hasn't helped, is to pick such a standard in real (not nominal) dollars, and then show that the percentage of the population with incomes lower than that standard has not decreased since the 1970s.

Another reason it is not meaningful is that wealth disparity is increasing for reasons that are external to social welfare programs, so even demonstrating the above might just show that what social welfare programs have done is to help put a small bandage on that external effect.

I am also going to refuse to enter into a debate about the wisdom of consistent deficit spending except to say that there are a lot of smart people out there who think it isn't harmful and is actually a good thing to do, so I'm not going to be convinced it's a bad idea by a short paragraph from someone of questionable economic credentials on an internet forum equating wise macroeconomic policy with wise microeconomic policy.

[waauw]

I never said anything that contradicts what you just mentioned tzor. What I argumented was that social security systems are capable of gathering money from both the selfish and the unselfish, from which I continued that social security systems have a better record as shown by the Gini coefficient. This is very important as scientific research has already indicated that population happiness is tied to inequality.

Social security "systems" ... We only have one here in the US. It's been raped and pillaged by a number of other social programs. That's the only one I know of and the only one I care about. (Despite of the radio ads that say that I, an US citizen, can take advantage of Canada's system.)

I'll just make one point, which might be initially derived from a scriptural quote, but is a clear good argument of the human condition: "Charity gladdens the heart of the giver / No one likes to pay taxes." President Carter loves to work constructing houses, do you think he would have that same love if he was forced to do it? The work is the same, either way.

The Tzor Plan would actually transfer a lot more things from taxes towards tax-free charity. People would pay the same but me much happier about it.

As I just mentioned to patches, it's not because a system is malfunctional now that it can't be fixed. This topic is about Bernie Sanders and potential improvements to the current american social security system. Many countries are already far further progressed down this line, so looking at their examples seems only logical. If you start up a project the smart thing to do is to try and learn from others who've already completed a similar project.

And since you like to point out people's happiness, let me rebut in fashion:

Americans are happier in times when the gap between rich and poor is smaller, a new study finds.

The reason, according to research to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science, is that when the income gap is large, lower- and middle-income people feel less trusting of others and expect people to treat them less fairly.

The study also provides a potential explanation for why American happiness hasn't risen along with national wealth in the last 50 years.

"Income disparity has grown a lot in the U.S., especially since the 1980s," study researcher Shigehiro Oishi of the University of Virginia said in a statement. "With that, we've seen a marked drop in life satisfaction and happiness."
Unequal income

The results apply to about 60 percent of Americans, or those in the low- and middle-income brackets. For wealthier Americans, the size of the income gap had no effect on happiness.

Economics researchers have long documented growing income inequality in the United States, which they measure using an index called the Gini coefficient; the larger the number the greater the gap between rich and poor. During the 1960s and '70s, the researchers wrote, the U.S. Gini coefficient was on par with many European countries and lower than France's. According to the United Nations Development Program, the U.S. Gini coefficient between 1992 and 2007 was 40.8, higher than France's 32.7. Traditionally happy Scandinavian countries, such as Finland, have Gini coefficients in the mid to high 20s.

But it's tough to compare happiness between countries, since Argentina (a country with a large income gap) differs from Finland in many ways other than economics. To get rid of some of those variables, Oishi and his colleagues used the U.S.-only General Social Survey, which questioned 1,500 to 2,000 randomly selected Americans every year or every other year between 1972 and 2008. More than 48,000 people answered questions on how happy they were, how much they trusted others, and how fair they thought other people were.

Explaining unhappiness

The results showed that during times when the income gap was large, Americans in the low- and middle-income groups were less happy than during times of lower income gaps. (For wealthier people, the income gap made no difference either way — though another study has found that giving away money, which would seem to lessen that gap, can be very rewarding.) Changes in total household income weren't related to the happiness ups and downs.

The results are correlational, so researchers can't be sure that the income gap directly caused unhappiness, but a little more digging turned up a possible explanation. When the income gap grew, low- and middle-class people became increasingly distrustful of their fellow Americans. They were also less likely to believe that fair treatment from others was the norm. This social fracturing could explain the drop in happiness during these times, the researchers wrote.

If the results hold, the authors wrote, they explain why countries with lower income gaps, including Denmark, France and Germany, have become happier as their wealth has grown, while Americans have not.

"The implications are clear," Oishi said. "If we care about the happiness of most people, we need to do something about income inequality."

http://www.livescience.com/14638-income-inequality-costing-americans-happiness.html

[mrswdk]

When you start walking up to a man who has toiled hard all week for his paycheck, and you force him to hand over that paycheck for the 'common good', you Sir are a communist.

That might work for people like Stalin and Mao, but in America no one has yet taken away the guns. The citizens still have power, and as a result they still have their freedom.

With the citizens in charge, reds like Bernie, who would pilfer the pockets of every single American, will never take power.

[waauw]

When you start walking up to a man who has toiled hard all week for his paycheck, and you force him to hand over that paycheck for the 'common good', you Sir are a communist.

That might work for people like Stalin and Mao, but in America no one has yet taken away the guns. The citizens still have power, and as a result they still have their freedom.

With the citizens in charge, reds like Bernie, who would pilfer the pockets of every single American, will never take power.

Depends on how much of the paycheck you tax. Socialism isn't the same thing as communism.

[mrswdk]

And thus the citizenry were picked up and placed at the top of the slippery slope by Chairman Waauw.

[mrswdk]

Is that how you pronounce your name? I always read it in my head as 'wow', as in 'oh wow that guy seriously believes that the Scarborough Shoal belongs to the Philippines'.

[waauw]

Is that how you pronounce your name? I always read it in my head as 'wow', as in 'oh wow that guy seriously believes that the Scarborough Shoal belongs to the Philippines'.

Waauw is pronounced as 'waʊw', as in 'It's astounding how mrswdk has an off-switch for critical thinking'.

[waauw]

And thus the citizenry were picked up and placed at the top of the slippery slope by Chairman Waauw.

Does that mean you will clean my feet?