If you think the debt crisis is bad now ...

[titaniumsalute]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43929476/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/

Great article.

[alcibiades_mystery]

1. Bushistas spinning their nonsense

[dkf]

3. It's actually common sense that it's easier for three workers to fund one retiree

Than for two to fund one retiree.

How is this nonsense?

[originalpckelly]

5. Except that workers today are 80% more productive, but aren't paid anymore accounting for inflation.

The problem is that the money that should be flooding into social security and medicare is going to the richest 10%.

Because of the fact that we are so much more productive, the net burden is just about the same!

But the work we are doing is not being properly rewarded and is going to people who make their income in ways either not at all taxed by the FICA taxes, or by people who are maxing out on the SS taxes, by making more money than the cap.

So SS and Medicare are being starved.

And if we raise the cap and/or apply the tax to capital gains and other non-payroll income, then they will scream bloody murder about wealth redistribution.

What we need to do is re-empower the middle class, and make sure that they are being paid for the work they do. That the 80% productivity increase is properly rewarded, and this will flood SS and Medicare with money.

[dkf]

7. Our productivity is due to automation.

If energy gets expensive that looks to be reversed.

[dkf]

2. This is what I've been saying...demographics are destiny.

Sharply rising per-capita health-care spending, coupled with the graying of the populace; a generation of workers turning into an outsize generation of beneficiaries. Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Michael J. Boskin, who was President George H.W. Bush’s chief economic adviser, says: “The word ‘unsustainable’ doesn’t convey the problem enough, in my opinion.”

[WhiteTara]

4. Spewing garbage. Put SS into bonds? meh! n/t

[Warren Stupidity]

6. so now we have to accept draconian cuts demanded by the banksters?

Oh fuck that.