U.S. retirement benefits to be cut?

Run time: 08:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aopOQFLk1fY   Posted on YouTube: May 08, 2010 By YouTube Member: TheRealNews Views on YouTube: 183   Posted on DU: May 08, 2010 By DU Member: Andronex Views on DU: 1592

 
President Obama, former President Bill Clinton, and others join Billionaire Peter Peterson in supporting new commission to solve long-term deficits.

Billionaire fat cat plutocrats want to cut social security from you and me. Seems to be plenty to bail out corporations and further enrich them by financing more wars. What a laugh coming from this Peter Peterson character who won't pay his taxes. :puke:

they cut my SS benefits I will have no choice but to not support Obama nor the Democratic Party. I'm sick of this crap. DNC has no problem asking me for money.. We'll see.

although I sometimes do to individual candidates who seem to be the real deal (progressive populists) and who won't kick us in the guts once elected. As far as Obama, I did campaign for him but I've long since realized he's just another center right Democrat who's working with the wealthy insiders and giving lip service to so-called "change" for the rest of us.

and were based on costs two years ago- not today. The Dems won't cut your benefit that you are receiving today. However, those of us under 50 know that we're going to have to do some things-

We need to tweak the tax rates, and tweak what the "lock box" is invested in. Even a small share of that funding being invested, say 10% of current payroll taxes- being invested in stocks rather than in government IOU's will make a huge difference. Another alternative could be to move the current age 62 reduced retirement benefit to age 63.

Those were all ideas floated during the LAST time we had major changes to Social Security in 1983-84. Then, they raised the full retirement age from 65 to 67. It will be age 67 before I could collect full SS retirement benefits, and I know that, and I am planning for that possibility.

What we DON'T need is a major overhaul- we only need some minor tweaks. Tweak it now, before it gets any worse, and let's get it done.

I'm 49. But I expect to get SOMETHING out of the program. Many younger than me expect nothing- they know the math.

If you vote republican- you won't get a reduced benefit- you'll get wholesale slaughter of the discontinuation of the program- in favor of individual accounts.

I'm fine with a small percentage--10% or so- being invested- but I want the safeguard of the vast majority of my SS contributions being done the way it is now.

to cut social security. All he has to do is take the cap off payroll contributions and that would solve the problem. You want to see the Democrats exit power for 40 years, have them in any way, shape or form be the party that cut Social Security. They don't have enough National Guard Troops and Army put together to protect the government fromt he revolution that will follow. Even Progressives will be armed to the teeth operating in quasi-military fashion.

CRAP. Our generation has paid for everything that we have in this country.
We have taken the short end time and again. NO MORE.

Gov't needs to find a way to repay the system for all of the SS money they have taken and used for general fund.
They promised to do that when they took it. Trillions of OUR $$ was built up in the fund. Where is it now?
Who got it? All of these crooked bastards need to be put out to pasture.

The last time the Dems called me to donate, I told them not a cent until they start to address the real problems we're facing.

- now we will all be screwed if Obama is listening to that POC.

of the population, and they're politically smarter than that.
Cutting unnecessary military spending would go a long way to making a better reality and living standard for the vast majority rather than the moneyed elites. We might want to consider cutting off all spending on contractors/mercenaries.
It's also time to make large corporations pay their fair share for the services rendered by government. They've already outsourced most of the jobs anyway, so their threats are foot stamping and tantrums.
Maybe it's time for a realignment with a redistribution of wealth. It's time to narrow the gap between the rich and poor, not widen it.
The Interstates provide a quick and direct escape route if times get desperate enough for the poor to go into the suburbs and commit mayhem.
Social unrest of the real variety, not the trumped up teabagger type, is a possibility that the powerful elites must consider before they try expanding the gap between the wealthy and the rest of us.
One alternative for the government is to bring back the mercenaries from Iraq and Afghanistan and use them as a militia to protect the wealthy.

no one to save them from the masses when the economy falls to pieces. They aren't gong to do away with their "security team". Your last sentence sums up the strategy they would employ if the shit hit the fan in the U.S.

They're already providing our police with enough heavy firepower to deal with about anything that comes down the pike, giving them time to hold out for reinforcements. See above.

The non-violent approach always seems to get more accomplished. In order to do that we have to educate and mobilize people to have millions of impoverished and disenfranchised people demonstrate and demand wealth redistribution and a return to a real progressive income tax system. We spend more than 15 times on "defense"(my ass) than all of the other countries in the world. How could any rational person not realize that our citizens are more important than their empire? To top it all off, the wealthiest people in our country receive Social Security while the needy are forced to take cuts. The billionaires scoff at the meager SS checks they get, but they sure as hell cash them while the needy starve.Our current capitalistic society, with the largest income disparity of the "top 20 countries", is just Feudalism. That has been around since the beginning when "they" determined that "might makes right." The citizens of the other "civilized" nations put an end to this long ago and up until the last 4 decades, we had a workable version (not half as good as the other countries)of civilization. In the 1970's, the top tax rate was 75%, now it is 35% and most corporations do not pay anything at all. My God, let's unite and bring this oligarchy to its senses. We are not chattel, yet really we are now. Poor peasant insurance? My God how blatant does it have to be before people turn the propaganda machines off and think for themselves? We can get jobs back for our people, if we just legislate it and punish the profiteers. Look at France, England, Germany, Switzerland, Canada..etc.. They have good jobs (not a service industry economy) strong unions and great universal health care (non-profit of course). We are the only ones who can do it. Or we can keep being serfs and getting less while the elite get it all. Remember the old 1970's era poster, with two vultures on a wire? The caption was "Fuck this, I'm gonna kill something." That's a pretty damned good message.

Do you realize how many Americans have only one retirement plan? A huge portion of our population has only SS for it's retirement. This current generation that is retiring is ending up on the short end of the stick by continously having to pay for the multinational companies failures.
F*ck 'em.
I'd say, MAKE IT A STRIKE OR WORK STOPPAGE. That will surely get their attention.

they know it. This is why Bush suspended Posse Comitatus.