[inlink]lisa,163[/inlink]

I have often wondered that very same thing (e:lisa). I am lucky if i spend 3 hours in an entire semester studying.

thesimeon

I am back after a long long time of inactivity. Looks like 2 months absent. Ah well. The last two months have been full of activity indeed, as have everyone's I am sure. Started school today....not much going on there. Just more mind control. This is going to be a long entry. I know (e:lilho) seems to think we should restrict our entry's length but i need the space. Sorry (e:lilho). The problem today is social security. I have been hearing so much about social security being 'broken' that it is hard not to add my two cents to the issue. Put simply, there is no problem. The only reasons we are hearing so much about the 'social security crisis' is a magnificent propaganda campaign on the part of those who want to 'reform' social security. Lets talk facts here: Social security status, you will hear commonly when you are given numbers, is measured with what is called the dependency ratio. This is the ratio of 20 and older people in the country who are wage earners as compared to total population over 20. This will naturally become greater with time as our population grows much faster than the number of jobs created. A more useful indicator is if the same number is taken from age 0 and on, you will find, and probably not surprisingly, that this number does not change much. An extremely important fact to remember here is that we educated this whole demographic of our population when they were children, and we will certainly be able to take care them as an elderly population. The problem with their 'facts' is that they are derived from sketchy and sometimes even false science. First of all, the social security trustee's make their predictions 75 years in advance. They make these predictions and phrase them as inevitable fact. (Such and such will occur in 2013 etc etc). If you ask any wall street big shot what is going to happen on the market tomorrow (assuming he is honest) he will tell you its anybodies guess, which is true. The trustees also are making absurd economic growth predictions. They claim our GDP will grow 1.7% in 2032 which is inexplicably low. It has never been that low except for in the 1930's and very brief periods of depression (in any case it has never lasted long). They say our solution is to put the funds into the stock market and everything should be okay. There are several problems with this however. The stock market is inextricably linked to our economic growth. This would be one of the most fundamental concepts taught in stock market 101. If our economic growth is measured to be so low (1.7%) why is it that our funds will be so safe in the market? The true problem with social security as I see it is the fact that is regressively funded. There is a cap at 72,600 dollars, meaning a family making 1 million dollars is taxed on $72, 600 and the other $927, 400 are left alone (in terms of S.S. taxation) whereas a family making $50,000 is taxed on all of it. The funding for this program needs to be much more progressive and that will be a wonderful start to the social security reform we so desperately need. Now, this family of making $1 million has the fiscal resources to take the risk associated with pouring retirement dollars into the market. Certainly not the family making $50,000. The reforms currently being introduced will work to make the system more regressive, the burden will increase on the poor (even more than it is now) and lessen on the rich. The other, more obvious question that i hear many fail to ask is, why are we pressing so hard to introduce all this money into the market. There is one thing we can say for sure if that happens, that it will be a bonanza for wall street.

thesimeon