Wasting Time With Alex
Social Security
Friday, January 15, 2010
I think I know…
How the democrats plan to tackle their rampant deficit spending and the insane speed at which our deficit is going, at least in the short run, and I am scared, because it means they intend to confiscate our private investments.
Powerful House Democrats are eyeing proposals to overhaul the nation’s $3 trillion 401(k) system, including the elimination of most of the $80 billion in annual tax breaks that 401(k) investors receive. House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-Calif., and Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, are looking at redirecting those tax breaks to a new system of guaranteed retirement accounts to which all workers would be obliged to contribute. A plan by Teresa Ghilarducci, professor of economic-policy analysis at The New School for Social Research in New York, contains elements that are being considered. She testified last week before Mr. Miller’s Education and Labor Committee on her proposal.
I guess they have the perfect vehicle to get them an easy and quick $ 3 trillion now, and trillions more to spend. Just like they have done with Social Security, where they raid the funds, leave IOUs for someone to pay back in the future, and then simply spend our money willy-nilly to prop up the massive and inefficient bureaucracy from which they get their power, these crooks now figure they can get their hands on a real large wad of cash. And have no doubt that this would be a confiscatory act. A law that does away with private accounts and forces you to move your money into whatever vehicle the government wants so it can then spend your money like it does with the SS income, amounts to a confiscation of your money any day of the week. We are doomed if these collectivists get their way. More of that hope and change I guess.
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Saturday, August 22, 2009
Here is what happens when government helps you..
One of the big things the collectivists in power did when they got control of all three branches of government after the last election cycle, was to pass new and sweeping credit card legislation to prevent the greedy credit card companies from screwing irresponsible and stupid people that spent beyond their means and got themselves in deep debt. As usual government meddling has had the exact opposite effect as they wanted, and it is hurting those of us that are not complete and total idiots.
If your credit is good, or your credit card balance is low, you may soon pay more on every credit card bill. Why? Congress passed a misguided new credit card law, the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009. As a result of it, you may end up paying an annual fee. And you may end up losing your percentage rebates, your cash back, or your rewards program.
The new law arbitrarily limits credit card companies’ ability to increase rates on credit card balances, even when a cardholder’s balance has been rapidly increasing —meaning that a sensible bank might raise the interest rate, because a rising balance drives up the risk that the credit card company won’t get paid what it’s owed. (Increasing numbers of credit cardholders have run up big balances in recent years, then failed to pay them off).
In response to the new law, some credit card companies are starting to charge annual fees on their credit cards to protect themselves against potential losses. Others will likely drop their rewards programs, or stop giving customers’ percentage rebates on credit card purchases. For example, I and my wife get 3% to 5% back on most of our credit card purchases.
One of my co-workers just emailed me that since the new law, he will now be charged an annual fee on what he calls “the best reward card I ever found.” It’s the same card I use for many of my purchases. The new law is supposed to “protect” cardholders. But what it really does is transfer wealth from people who pay off their credit card bills at the end of every month, (or have good enough credit that the credit card company would not likely have increased their interest rate anyway) to people with bad credit who have run up big balances.
So again, government is subsidizing bad behavior at the expense of those of us that avoid it. That’s collectivism in a nut shell for you: in the name of helping those that chronically do stupid things and hence find themselves in “the sh*t”, politicians help those idiots by creating programs that punish those that do the right things. And then people wonder why destructive behavior becomes the norm. Yeah, I am one of those idiots that pays my credit card every month and never spends more than I can afford or pay off. So now I get to help pay for those other people. I am ecstatic as you can tell.
But this stuff with the credit cards isn’t the worse government has done for us yet. That honor goes, for now, and until they pass healthcare insurance reform and basically have these collectivist government bureaucrats take over 1/5th of our annual economy – trillions of more dollars and life & death decisions in the hands of uncaring unionized government thugs - to the stimulus patronage bill. Mark Steyn as usual has an awesome piece showing how well that $800 billion of our tax payer cash that the democrats in power have funneled to their operatives, partners, lobbyists, and donors so they could flood their campaign coffers with slush funds for the 2010 elections has worked for us: it has kept our economy down.
Meanwhile, in Brazil, India, China, Japan, and much of continental Europe the recession has ended. In the second quarter this year, both the French and German economies grew by 0.3 percent, while the U.S. economy shrank by 1 percent. How can that be? Unlike America, France and Germany had no government stimulus worth speaking of, the Germans declining to go the Obama route on the quaint grounds that they couldn’t afford it. They did not invest in the critical signage-in-front-of-holes-in-the-road sector. And yet their recession has gone away. Of the world’s biggest economies, only the U.S., Britain, and Italy are still contracting. All three are big stimulators, though Gordon Brown and Silvio Berlusconi can’t compete with Obama’s $800 billion porkapalooza. The president has borrowed more money to spend to less effect than anybody on the planet.
Actually, when I say “to less effect,” that’s not strictly true: Thanks to Obama, one of the least indebted developed nations is now one of the most indebted — and getting ever more so. We’ve become the third most debt-ridden country after Japan and Italy. According to last month’s IMF report, general government debt as a percentage of GDP will rise from 63 percent in 2007 to 88.8 percent this year and to 99.8 percent of GDP next year.
There you have it in a nutshell. Obama whom ran on the exaggerated lie of lack of fiscal responsibility by republicans, whom had been far from fiscally responsible, but nowhere as irresponsible as democrats had been those last 2 years they had control of congress during the Bush years, is now literally destroying our future and projected – and I think this number is way on the low side – to add another $9 trillion to our deficit in the next few years. This collectivist government has crippled our private sector and all but guaranteed no chance for an economic recovery here when other countries are already making moves in the right direction. And it is not even close to being done screwing us. Now under the guise of fixing a crisis of their own making, they are trying to get their hands of 1/5th of our economy by taking over healthcare. We are getting screwed by everything this government is doing.
That’s why the “stimulus” flopped. It didn’t just fail to stimulate, it actively deterred stimulation, because it was the first explicit signal to America and the world that the Democrats’ political priorities overrode everything else. If you’re a business owner, why take on extra employees when cap’n’trade is promising increased regulatory costs and health “reform” wants to stick you with an 8 percent tax for not having a company insurance plan? Obama’s leviathan sends a consistent message to business and consumers alike: When he’s spending this crazy, maybe the smart thing for you to do is hunker down until the dust’s settled and you get a better sense of just how broke he’s going to make you. For this level of “community organization,” there aren’t enough of “the rich” to pay for it. That leaves you.
For Obama, government health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture in which all elections and most public discourse will be conducted on Democratic terms. It’s no surprise that the president can’t make a coherent economic or medical argument for Obamacare, because that’s not what it’s about — and for all his cool, he can’t quite disguise that. Apropos a new poll, the Associated Press reports that Americans “are losing faith in Barack Obama.”
Yeah, again those of us that did not make the bad choices or actually did the smart things, are going to be left paying for those that chronically make bad choices and decisions. And that’s why in a nutshell I believe collectivism’s goodness is simply paving the road to hell for us. These people are doing what no enemy has ever been able to do: bring America down. And they are doing it from within, and under the guise of doing it for noble and good reasons. Those dumb Islamists should have just waited another decade or two for the left to truly and totally emasculate us before they had made their move, and they would have crushed us by now.
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Monday, July 06, 2009
Get ready for the “Cali-Style” federal IOUs
There has been a ton of meaningless drivel going around by the usual lefty propaganda outlets about how conservatives, and in particular Rush Limbaugh whom mentioned it back when, want Obama to fail. The meme is that conservatives are going to do things to make that so. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, unlike democrats/leftists, who do actually undermine things they do not like - see Iraq war 2003 to present for undisputable proof – as a matter of recourse, conservatives, notice I did not say republicans BTW, in general do not need to do anything to make the current Obamanomics policy fail. For proof, just look at California where Obamanomics has been the de facto policy for the last 2 decades.
July 6 (Bloomberg)—Last week, we discovered that the state of California will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today. With California mired in a budget crisis, largely the result of a political impasse that makes spending cuts and tax increases impossible, Controller John Chiang said the state planned to issue $3.3 billion in IOU’s in July alone. Instead of cash, those who do business with California will get slips of paper. The California morass has Democrats in Washington trembling. The reason is simple. If Obama’s health-care plan passes, then we may well end up paying for it with federal slips of paper worth less than California’s. Obama has bet everything on passing health care this year. The publicity surrounding the California debt fiasco almost assures his resounding defeat.
It takes years and years to make a mess as terrible as the California debacle, but the recipe is simple. All that you need is two political parties that are always willing to offer easy government solutions for every need of the voters, but never willing to make the tough decisions necessary to finance the government largess that results. Voters will occasionally change their allegiance from one party to the other, but the bacchanal will continue regardless of the names on the office doors. California has engaged in an orgy of spending, but, compared with our federal government, its legislators should feel chaste. The California deficit this year is now north of $26 billion. The U.S. federal deficit will be, according to the latest numbers, almost 70 times larger.
Bleak Picture
Bleak is an understatement. Remember that Obama and democrats ran and won big on picking at how horribly fiscally irresponsible the republicans had been during the Bush years. Well, Obamanomics is about to outdo those years and deficit spend in one year what it took Bush and the republicans 8 years to do. Have a look at how much money the Obamanomics plan is going to put us in the red by.
By the time Obama is done we will have tripled if not outright quadrupled our current deficit! And it is a guaranteed thing we will see nothing of the growth promised, unless you think a bigger government is equal to an economic boost, for all this spending.
The Obama administration has no shame, and is willing to abandon reason altogether to achieve its short-term political goals. Ronald Reagan ran up big deficits in part because he believed that his tax cuts would produce economic growth, and ultimately pay for themselves. He may well have been excessively optimistic about the merits of tax cuts, but at least he had a story.
Obama has no story. Nobody believes that his unprecedented expansion of the welfare state will lead to enough economic growth. Nobody believes that it will pay for itself. Everyone understands that higher spending today begets higher spending tomorrow. That means that his economic strategy simply doesn’t add up.
Character Deficit
And I should remind everyone that the above projections does not yet contain the massive, and drastically underestimated, costs of the Obama “Cap and Tax” and “Healthcare” plans. The first one is a massive new tax burden that serves but to enrich some politicians and their elected entourage of sell-out companies at the people’s expense. The second is a plan that I should add will do nothing but eventually make government the sole provider of healthcare, drastically reduce its quality and availability – to cut costs – and guarantee a level of intrusion and suppression of our personal freedoms that would be on par with the very tyrannical forms of government so many Americans died fighting off.
Can’t wait for the IOUs to be given to all these old Baby Boomer idiots that voted for this guy. Be it as their primary form of income as the economy continues to tank, as they find themselves looking for energy to meet their needs, or their critical healthcare needs as Obamacare becomes the law of the land. Hope and Change, indeed!
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Sunday, November 23, 2008
HAH!
Just HAH!. Guess what Obama is gonna do? The change he is making is to have government spend even more than the republicans did, and he is not even going to tax anyone supposedly to get that money. Fiscal responsibility? Not from these people. As Obama puts together what looks like a return to the Clinton years (change huh?), guess what’s becoming clear?
WASHINGTON - President-elect Barack Obama wants the new Congress to approve massive spending and fresh tax cuts in January, “a big number” probably far distancing a $175 billion campaign proposal, so he can sign it after taking office, top aides said Sunday.
Obama over the weekend outlined the framework of a plan to save or create 2.5 million jobs by the end of 2010 and prepared to introduce leaders of his economic team Monday. Aides said they soon would fill in the details and Democratic lawmakers, already working with transition officials, pledged to act quickly when Congress convenes Jan. 6, two weeks before the inauguration. Guess what?
“We don’t have time to waste here, “ Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said. “We want to hit the ground running on January 20th.” Echoing that, the second-ranking House Democrat, Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, said, `We expect to have during the first couple of weeks of January a package for the president’s consideration when he takes office.”
Yeah right. What a bunch of bull. Want to see what those jobs Obama is talking about are going to be?
During the campaign Obama had proposed a $175 billion economic recovery package. The new one will be significantly larger and would incorporate his campaign ideas for new jobs in environmentally friendly technologies _ the “green economy.” It also would include his proposals for tax relief for middle- and lower-income workers.
This stuff can not be made up. People moving around fake green credits that amount to nothing or coming up with ideas that will make the creation of real jobs even harder to the tune of 2.5 million jobs? Let’s get real please! Besides, if we can look at Obama for direction it already looks like he fails the grade. But they all do. It is about us doing like they say, not like they do. Anyway, remember how Obama was gonna stick it to the rich?
But aides said the plan would not offer an immediate tax increase on wealthy taxpayers. During the campaign, Obama said he would pay for increased tax relief by raising taxes on people making more than $250,000.
I guess those people Obama wanted to fleece have all moved their cash out of the market - nobody wants to get screwed by socialist government no matter how often Biden tells us how patriotic this shit is supposed to be - and these retards finally figured out that without their money there is no gravy train for the parasites. Thanks for the recession guys. My bet is you make it a depression too. You wrecked the economy to get elected - of course the MSM helped you blame Bush like they even did for natural disasters - and now you get to deal with the consequences of it. While I am sure you and the MSM will keep blaming Bush, sooner or later people will realize you are full of it. Besides, most of the really rich are democrats. If you are worth between 1 and 10 millions you are almost guaranteed to be a republican. If you are worth $20 million or more, you are a democrat. The reason is simple. $20 mil or more, and you can ask government for special favors, and despite the lies about how only republicans lobby, the biggest lobbying gets done by democrats for democrat fat cats. Not that the average moonbat would ever even believe these facts when they are drawn with crayons. People are starting to notice the bull.
Besides, it looks like the cooks that helped Obama get the job are already hating on him. Guess what you losers? Now that he understands that he will be blamed for the decisions, he is not gonna do what you want. Iraq or Afghanistan? We will not be leaving there anytime soon. In fact my guess is that the MSM will soon be singing a different tune and telling us all why we need to not just stay there, but do even more. suck wind you idiot peaceniks. These idiots where lying to you from the start because they knew pulling out would put us all at risk. It was just not cool to agree with Bush. And like I pointed out above: ripping off the rich? Not after they showed the donkeys what will happen when they make their wealth vanish. And what about that national healthcare thing? I am sure most of us would want a pass if we are going to get it from these kinds of people. Like I said: if government takes over healthcare, we will be asking the same people that treat us like a nuisance at the DMV for permission to have a doctor save our lives. Same applies to Social Security. Watch it slowly implode.
Get used to a shitty next few years. As a conservative I am now doubly glad McCain did not win this last election. People will soon pine for the Bush days. You know, the ones before Congress got taken over by democrats in 2006. By coincidence it seems that is also when lots of things started going pretty bad for this country. Welcome to power donkeys. You can now sleep in the bed you made.
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Monday, October 13, 2008
Obama explains his real tax plan..
For those of you that really believe Obama will limit his tax hike to those making $250K and over, have a look at this video over at Breibart. Basically Obama’s point is that he wants to spread the wealth. Does not matter how you got the wealth he feels it is unjust that you have wealth. So if you sacrifice, work hard, do not make mistakes or fall prey to the common vices that drag people down, and then make it, Obama basically feels you stole from those that did not do anything. be prepared to give up a huge chunk of your cash if you make $40K or more. There is no way the democrats can offer all the “bennies” they want to to their constituents without basically stealing all the money from those that make anything over $40K. Have a look at what they already have planned, and this is a new $300 billion expendature over what Obama has teed up already. If you think we are in an economic mess right now you are dead wrong. Can you say bye-bye economy? We are hosed, hosed real bad.
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Friday, September 26, 2008
How our economy lost it’s groove..
The sad fact is that people saw this coming and republicans tried to correct it only to be blocked by democrats whom used PC knock down tactics to intimidate and shut up anyone that would not let their scheme keep makign them big cash! Remember that these are the same people blocking our change in energy policy, reform of Soical Security, Medicare, and all those other colelctivist boondoggles. This crisis is just the first one. Their constant attempts to block any and all proposals to dirll at home for natural gas & oil, build more nukes, and use our coal are going to basically cripple this nation in a decade or so. And I think that is exactly the plan because then government can take everything over. By then we will likely get taken over by the people that have told us to either submit to Allah or die and these democrats will welcome it.
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Thursday, September 11, 2008
Can’t say I am surprised…
When the democrats ran on a promise that they would fix the out of control republican spending in the 2006 election, I was baffled how many people actually believed that collectivists - people that gain and maintain power by having government steal from the productive to spend on lavish programs they coin as “social justice” but which serve to do nothing but redistribute wealth in such a way as to give government control of people’s lives and buy the people in government votes - could actually come close to do anything like cut spending unless it was military spending. And of course, as this WSJ article points out, the democrats have taken the spending to an even higher level. But will we hear this?
Here’s a prediction: The media will report today that the federal budget deficit is big and getting bigger. What most of them won’t report, alas, is that the cause of these deficits is an explosion in federal spending. The era of big government is back, bigger than ever.
Heh, that is not a prediction. That is a fact. Why would a media that was complicit with the democrats in propagating that horrible lie tat they would be more fiscally responsible than republicans, even out of control republicans, ever want to point out they where shills for the democrats back in 2006. For that matter they continue to be shills for democrats. Every story that hurts democrats, and especially Barry Obama’s chances in November, gets ignored or white washed. In the mean time every negative rumor about Palin or McCain gets published as if it was factual, with no corrections to follow once they are debunked. In fact the MSM is hard at work trying to invent a scandal about Palin because they all have figured out that Obama is toast. Remember that the media put more effort into finding dirt on Palin in the last 3 weeks than they have put on researching Obama in the last 3 years. Anyway, back to the meat of this story.
The real news in yesterday’s Congressional Budget Office semiannual report is that federal expenditures on everything from roads to homeland security to health care will on present trends reach 21.5% of GDP next year. That’s a larger share of national output than at anytime since 1992. If the cost of the federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac prove to be large and are taken into account, next year federal outlays could be higher as a share of the economy than at anytime since World War II. In this decade alone, federal spending has increased by almost $1.2 trillion, or 57%.
The federal deficit is expected to hit $407 billion for fiscal 2008 (which ends at the end of this month) and $438 billion next year. Still, the deficit is expected to be only 3% of GDP, which is in line with the average of the last 30 years. We hope Congress and the Presidential candidates don’t obsess over the deficit per se, because the real fiscal drag from government comes from how much it spends, not how much it borrows.
So there ya have it. The democrats are already spending like there are no worries - a lot of it to fix & hide problems they created like this Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac disaster that the MSM will also never report on because it would hurt their election chances in November – about cash. And they have not even won the election yet. Of course they are already figuring this will be solved as soon as they win. Once they control the show, they plan to tax everyone making more than $35K – they are rich after all – and tax corporations, dividends, investments, and anything else that helps grow the economy and they might have enough cash to cover some of what they plan to spend. Of course they will cut military spending drastically too. Who cares if we are at war? The only war that counts is the ideological war to make us all socialist slaves of the state. But for now they lie about only taxing the people making $250K and above, and the MSM helps them propagate this (and many other) lie(s).
Of course they can do what they always do too: blame Bush. The MSM will help with that for sure. But is that true?
The Bush tax cuts also aren’t the budget problem. Until this year federal tax collections have been surging. In the four years after the 2003 tax cuts become law, tax receipts exploded by $785 billion. This year revenues have declined by 0.8%, but a major reason is the $150 billion bipartisan tax rebate that has hit the Treasury without spurring the economy. Without these nonstimulating rebates, federal tax payments would have climbed another 2.5%, according to CBO. Revenue is expected to be a healthy 18.5% of GDP next year without any tax increase.
Damn, guess not. Well let us rephrase that. Most of the democrat stooges in the MSM have already blamed the tax cuts for everything, so they will go along with the left and tell people that letting hard working Americans keep more of their money is not just a bad thing, but it shows how vile these greedy-Americans are for wanting to do that in the first place. After all, we should all follow Marx’s ideological beliefs. So I guess not much but the DNC party line will go out on taxes. The thing is that I suspect that even the DNC and the MSM (yeah I know same thing) probably know that Obama is in the tank because many people have figured out that the donkeys will stick them hard in the pocket book (that’s the “Change” they have been talking about: what they will leave in our pockets after they tax us). And once they cancel these tax cuts and add more taxes they will have to do some “splaining”. So they will need more excuses.
Another myth is that the war on terror has busted the budget. While operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are expensive, defense spending is $605 billion this year, or about 4.5% of GDP. That only seems large by comparison to the holiday from history of the 1990s, when defense fell to 3% of GDP. As recently as 1986, defense spending was 6.2% of GDP.
Oh yeah. Blame it on the spending to protect Americans! Evil people that think the government actually should be spending money on things like defense and protecting the American citizens should shut the hell up. There is nothing in the Constitution allowing government to do this kind of crap! Government needs to be promoting “social justice”! Oh wait. Actually I can find the words saying that the government should actually spend money on defense and that the elected officials should protect us citizens in that there Constitution. Its is that bloated spending tied to this “Social justice” concept the democrats tell us about that I am having trouble finding in the Constitution. So maybe the democrats are going to have to show where the money is going…
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Now get the hell out of here! I say blame Bush! As long as we can fool the people until November and they elect more people with (D)s next to their names these people will be happy. And the spending will continue. But there is something we need to keep in mind, something I already pointed out above:
The point to keep in mind is that this big spending blitz is coming even before a new President and Congress arrive next year with far more spending promises in tow. As they contemplate their choice for President, voters might want to consider which of the candidates is likely to be a check on Congressional appetites, rather than a facilitator.
You think this is bad? Wait until they win. The only spending that will go down will be military related spending, the defense stuff, the homeland security stuff, and anything that involves us killing people that want to kill us first, while the rest goes out of control. Viva collectivism!
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Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Illegal Immigration and a National ID system
I was driving into work this morning and listening to a local talk show and the topic being discussed was a national ID card. The people calling in to make their point seemed equally divided over the whole idea. You had your usual privacy advocates that felt it was a given that the government was going to abuse such and ID system, and you had those that felt it would actually despite the privacy problems and potential for abuse be a valuable tool. The most common arguments of the proponents of such an ID system, including the arguments by the host of the program - and they are totally right about this - was that government already had all kinds of information on its citizens, and especially the law abiding ones. If you drive, own a passport, have been married, own a bank account or credit card, pay bills, own a fire arm, and file taxes - all things most law abiding citizens do - there is no way to avoid the government collecting a ton of information about you. And even if you are not such a law abiding citizen, these many and broad requirements for documentation to function in our society make it nigh impossible to hide from government effectively.
So the privacy argument is moot. It still does not do away with the potential for abuse that such a system would give our government, but that is why we have the second amendment. I should add still to that last thought. On the other side such an ID system does have some values, but that is predicated on the system being used to stop certain abuses. But what struck me as ridiculous was the belief held by many proponents of such an ID system that government would do exactly that when it comes to illegal immigration. I am one of the first people to point out that our immigration system is broke and in dire need of fixing. But I am also of the opinion that the people that circumvent it should not be rewarded for their lack of respect for our laws, but punished for doing that. No matter how good their intentions or their efforts after the fact are. The point is that they broke a law, and allowing people to break laws they find inconvenient, leads to nothing but anarchy. But I digress. The issue is how so many believe a national ID system will suddenly make the government care about enforcing immigration laws.
If your argument is that government already is able to collect so much information about its citizens that a national ID system will simply be a minimal step up on the already existing level of intrusion, then please answer me why government is not already able to control illegal immigration? The answer is simple: they do not want to do so. Democrats like the illegals because of many reasons. They help enforce the images of a poverty stricken populous that requires government intervention to address all the evils of society. From lack of insurance and the need for “free healthcare” to every other two bit socialist program intended to make the people dependant on government hand outs can be made more urgently needed when you pad the numbers with illegals living outside the system. While many come here for a crack at the American dream the fact remains many also suck, and suck very hard, at the government’s teat. Often by design. And do not forget the illegal, and often repeat voters, the democrats could not win elections without either.
Republicans love the illegals because it is huge force of cheap labor. A sad but direct response to government’s attempts to regulate the market and doing a terrible job of it. And many of them also see an influx of a few score of million potential workers as the only alternative to shore up a social security system that will soon have way too many people taking out compared to those paying in. Conservatives have given up on their attempts to do away with that SS Ponzi scheme and have settled for prolonging the agony and leaving the though decisions up to someone else down the line. They see that in the near future SS will either end up paying out so little it means nothing, be forced to take such a huge chunk of the income of those still working to stay viable that it basically becomes a disincentive for work, or simply goes belly up. To correct that they are hoping to skew the ratio of those paying in to those collecting back in favor of those paying in for at least a few more decades. Stupid by any kind of logic because what we need is for SS to be killed off and people to get their own way of saving for their retirement if we want to prevent that system from going belly up and leaving one or 2 generations to suffer the consequences on that dependency.
Anyway, back to the national ID system and the lame argument of how it would help enforce or curb illegal immigration. If the government has no incentive to curb illegal immigration right now, and while it has so much information about its citizens already, and turns a blind eye to the entire illegal immigration issue, why do we thing a national ID system will suddenly make them change their minds? Basically the people claming that such a system would be a powerful tool to combat illegal immigration forget that the only reason we do not have a much better response to illegal immigration is that government itself has no desire or reason to enforce the law. Getting such a system will not change that underlying problem. So it is a dumb argument to begin with. it is like the constant lawmaking around gun violence when existing gun laws are not enforced. It is meaningless. Let it go. If your concern is illegal immigration address the problem now by making our government change its mind about enforcing it more rigorously first. Everything else will be a waste of time.
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