What the Americans are REALLY doing

@sonhouse said
ATT I had a 401K that my company, Varian set up in such a way as anyone under a certain age, which was 59 to be exact, anyone under that age had no control over where our money was managed, so I could not buy say Microsoft or Amazon or whatever else was a strong buy.
EVERY slot, like eight of them were ALL banks and it was growing pretty well till the collapse in I think it ...[text shortened]... y of about 50K.
Not a penny left for anything else so we are in financial difficulties as we speak.

Ouch.

That sucks.

I can see why you're upset.

@sh76 said
Medicare for all might cut costs over-all, but it wouldn't cut government spending. It would increase government spending on healthcare. Whether it's a good idea is another issue, but it's not a way to cut government spending.

Sure it would. 😆

Medicare just fixes reimbursement at 33% of current charges and forces healthcare to accept it or go out of business. Private insurance becomes an optional add-on for the wealthy.

This is the system all over Europe. I lived it for 9 years and it works fine. Just costs WAY less.

Doctors who today earn $450K/year earn $150k. Boo hoo. They don't starve. 😆

@sonhouse said
ATT I had a 401K that my company, Varian set up in such a way as anyone under a certain age, which was 59 to be exact, anyone under that age had no control over where our money was managed, so I could not buy say Microsoft or Amazon or whatever else was a strong buy.
EVERY slot, like eight of them were ALL banks and it was growing pretty well till the collapse in I think it ...[text shortened]... y of about 50K.
Not a penny left for anything else so we are in financial difficulties as we speak.

Really sorry to hear that. You should not have to worry about your SS payment.

There are at least three obvious fixes to ensure SS forever: a) means testing, which would remove rich people from reimbursement (i.e. if they ever become NOT rich, payments would resume), b) removing the income cap on SS contributions, and c) SS levies on all income including capital gains, dividends, etc.

As your future President, I promise you all these things. 😆

@spruce112358 said
Really sorry to hear that. You should not have to worry about your SS payment.

There are at least three obvious fixes to ensure SS forever: a) means testing, which would remove rich people from reimbursement (i.e. if they ever become NOT rich, payments would resume), b) removing the income cap on SS contributions, and c) SS levies on all income including capital gains, dividends, etc.

As your future President, I promise you all these things. 😆

As for means testing, I don't think subtracting rich folks from the list would do much since there are a LOT less rich folks than poor folks.
So if there are say one million folks getting 1000 a month, that would be one billion a month. So if I say rich folks are 10% of poor folks, I think a high number just for grins, than taking out 10% means there are 900,000 getting 1k/month. So now SS spends 900 million instead of 1 bil, saves .1bil.

Now lets say richies are 5%. So now we have 950,000 getting 1K/m
so we now save only 50 million.
You can see how this leads. Richies, 1% 990,000 left, 990 mil spent saving 10 million.

So the savings depends greatly on what percentage are called rich.
So the gummint, ALWAYS looking out for its people, say ok, richies are anyone in the over 50% bracket. Now THAT saves a bunch, but of course BURNS the most folks. Now if the money is the same, Gummint only has to spend a HALF bill and a bunch of folks gets screwed.
So if President Musk is in with Trump as his puppet, what do you suppose THEY would set the % of what defines 'rich'?

@spruce112358 said
Sure it would. 😆

Medicare just fixes reimbursement at 33% of current charges and forces healthcare to accept it or go out of business. Private insurance becomes an optional add-on for the wealthy.

This is the system all over Europe. I lived it for 9 years and it works fine. Just costs WAY less.

Doctors who today earn $450K/year earn $150k. Boo hoo. They don't starve. 😆

$150k for a doctor?

4 years of college, 3 of med school, 3 of residency. The stress of the MCATs and the medical boards and overwhelming competition.

To make 150k at the end of the tunnel? I don't know where you live, but in the NY area with a family, 150k is barely enough to survive.

Dropping doctor's salaries to that level would be a disaster for the profession. you'd clean out most of the best minds in the profession.

@sh76 said
$150k for a doctor?

4 years of college, 3 of med school, 3 of residency. The stress of the MCATs and the medical boards and overwhelming competition.

To make 150k at the end of the tunnel? I don't know where you live, but in the NY area with a family, 150k is barely enough to survive.

Dropping doctor's salaries to that level would be a disaster for the profession. you'd clean out most of the best minds in the profession.

And yet somehow countries with healthcare that costs 1/3 of what we pay have doctors. 😆

@kmax87 said
As long as some concrete bunker hawk doesn't convince him that War is America's best option.

The Christian Nationalists are absolutely stoked that he is setting the scene for the rebuilding of the 3rd Temple in Jerusalem.
I don't know that people credit how deep and widely held this futurist view of end times prophecy runs through Trumps support base. But it does, and thos ...[text shortened]... lt see him being successful due to God's leading as part of a new vision of American exceptionalism.

trumpy moving the US embabssy from tel aviv to jerusalem in his last presidency was proof enough of that...

@sh76 said
Don't have time to read the whole manifesto, but I do want to comment on this line:

no time to read someone else's post but you expect us to read yours? odd.

@uzless said
trumpy moving the US embabssy from tel aviv to jerusalem in his last presidency was proof enough of that...

Yes. We now seem to be inexorably moving into the end game. But what happens if something happens to the Dome of the Rock?

@uzless said
I don't know what you have against immigrants but most of our ancestors were immigrants at some point. My father was an immigrant to this country. Worked his butt off.

I'm sorry!?!?!?!? I'M SORRRYY!!?!?!!?!??
YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT WE HAVE AGAINST IMMIGRANTS, THE ONES THAT ARE ILLEGAL!?!/!/?!/!/
You are pitiful if you do not know what 'we have against' illegal immigrants.

We natually assume that you mean the ones that are illegally here? The illegal immigrant aliens? If I am wrong, then your post is wrong, because its premise is that we dont like immigrants. That is incorrect. Don't be a Sonhouse.

Yeah my great great was an immigrant, whooop de do , so what?