FFS. So you think it okay to dismiss legitimate, valid, and relevant criticism of your supposed "solution" as being the result of someone's mental illness? And then you tell them to "lighten up"???
As said, stop being a twat.
US Debt hits $40 trillion
- Thread starter Sarkus
- Start date
As said, stop being a twat.
Setting it at $10m net worth might save... 1% of the outgoings (quick chatGPT estimate). So not much at all. Yes, it'd be a start, and would at least get people used to the idea of means-testing. But the level would need to be much much lower to be a meaningful solution (or part thereof), I think.
At some point you either piss people off by not paying them what they think they are owed, or piss people off by raising taxes to pay for it, or piss people off by ramping up the national debt to pay for existing obligations while a new system is introduced. Or some combination thereof. Whichever way... pissed off people!!
Well, there you go. "Just fix the problem"... all sorted then. Nothing else to see. Just raise productivity. Just lower taxes. Stop spending. Sorted. What's next on the agenda? Ah, yes: solve world hunger. Simples: just feed everyone. Sorted!
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
Can you show me the exact plan, footnotes, complete details, just send me the 300 page operating manual, could you please? When I say the operating manual I don't mean the overview or the specs but just the manual, just to be clear.
Well, there you go. "Just fix the problem"... all sorted then. Nothing else to see. Just raise productivity. Just lower taxes. Stop spending. Sorted. What's next on the agenda? Ah, yes: solve world hunger. Simples: just feed everyone. Sorted!
With healthcare I want to know if cosmetic procedures are covered and is there any co-pay and what is the limit, if any? Which doctors can I go to. I just have to know all this or I will go nuts so please help me to help myself. Thank you.
To what? Your claimed solutions? I'd be happy with a coherent idea from you that doesn't have glaring holes that you just hand-wave away, and try to deflect from with clumsy appeals to mental health issues, and now mocking a level of detail that was never requested other than as part of your own effort to deflect. As said twice already: stop being a twat.
Absolutely. And that is an advantage. You can sell it as "basically does nothing bad, but keeps millionaires from getting the money that should go to Aunt Edna."
But there are two advantages here.
One is that it makes it easier to change with time, once it's proven that removing SS from the 2% of top earners will not cause a Great Depression.
And two, even if you never change it, with time and inflation, a larger segment of wealthy SS recipients will lose it.
Agreed. Which you could either 1) phase in over time or 2) do nothing and let it increase naturally.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
Please do not troll.
You said the end goal was fine and then argue over details incessantly. Surprise...
Stop being so OCD.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
Sure, you could start a wealth tax to fix a badly constructed program, you could tax salary more, you could keep taxing the other guy until that guy is you. See the UK system and it is still highly in debt.
The end point, the goal, is not a problem. It's an ideal. Your "solution" would not work in the time frame you said. I repeatedly said as much, and highlighted that issue, among others, with your "solution". You had, and still have, no answer to those criticisms other than to distract and dismiss with insults. I have never asked for the level of detail you suggest. Just for coherency and to address the glaring issues. You haven't. So please, stop being a twat.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
Please stop the OCD behavior. I have addressed my solution. How would you address the debt problem in the UK, please be very specific. Just to be clear, twit is an insult, correct?
This isn't OCD behaviour: this is just me telling you that you have not addressed the criticism of your so-called "solution", beyond your vagueness and hand-waving. Dismissing those valid and reasonable criticisms, as you have done, as if simply the result of someone's mental illness, claiming I have wanted too-detailed a "solution" when I have not, is unacceptable behaviour on your part. I have repeatedly asked you not to. And "twat" is as much an insult here as calling you a "jerk" or "dick" - i.e. a coarse rebuke rather than anything as significant as appealing to someone's mental illness to dismiss their valid and reasonable criticisms.
So let's just agree that you don't have a solution. You have vague "concepts of a plan" for which your claimed time-frame is either way off and/or doesn't address the massive growth in national debt that would result.
The debt problem in the UK can only be solved by finding a way to improve productivity, which has been stubbornly low for far too long, and growing GDP above the annual increase in debt. There is no easy solution to that. Careful control of spending is one thing they can do in the meantime, ensuring it is focussed rather than broad, and not wasting £100+bn on the debacle of the HS2, for example. They can rein in inefficiencies, carefully cut out waste so as not to remove beneficial programs as well, etc. No simple fix. Successive governments have failed to put in place a coherent plan. The Tories tried "austerity" for a number of years, and that probably crippled us more than helped in the long-term. And any solution really needs to be long with successive governments adhering to it. Unfortunately, parties get elected on short-termism, with such long-term ideals pretty much a non-starter. But, hey, I'm sure you can offer a solution of "fix it" to help them along.
We certainly don't have a need to fix our equivalent of the SS system, though. We really do have a ring-fenced fund for it, and it has a surplus of c.£80bn at the moment, with an annual surplus of c.£10bn annually going forward. That will eventually change, but not in the short-term, and probably not medium term. But that's not to say that it can't be improved, to make the current surplus fund work harder. It's smaller as a % of annual payments than the current US "surplus" (50% compared to c.150%) but it is genuinely ring-fenced, and growing with a surplus each year to mid-30s at least. And being ring-fenced, it hasn't been spent by the rest of government, so any shortfall, when it arises, won't increase the national debt until that fund is depleted. Unlike in the US that only has a notional fund. Yes, it's intragovernmental debt, but it still feeds the headline $40tn.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
OCD here is no more than twat there. So no solutions? Well, at least that's not too simple. The UK could be good at something. That would be the start of a solution I guess?
Sure it is.
TheVat
Valued Senior Member
Sad that words for female genitalia are so often recruited to be insult words. Having entered this world by passing through a twat, and later in life discovered twats as sources of delightful recreation, I feel that they have some merit and shouldn't be made symbolic of stupidity and obnoxiousness and other negative attributes.
I think he's running out of "clever" insults so he's just switching to "twat" and the like.
I have often been amused by people trying to insult me by calling me a woman. What does that even mean?
I am no better a skydiver than Eliana Rodriguez, who they are now making movies about?
I am no better a pilot than Patty Wagstaff, who won the world aerobatic championships several times in a row?
I am no more successful than Gwynn Shotwell, a US engineer who is now running SpaceX?
I am no more brave than Hannah Betts, who worked in SCO19 and the SVU in the police in the UK, and now makes a living as a stuntperson?
I think it's a holdover from boomer days when calling someone a woman meant someone incapable and weak.
No more so than calling someone a dick, a cock, a knob, a bell-end, a dick-head, etc. In the UK I would put calling someone a twat on a similar level. If you'd rather I'd have asked him to stop being a cock, okay, point taken. But it's not particularly relevant to this thread, is it? There's a linguistics sub-forum you could take it to, perhaps.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
A psychiatrist would have a field day with this one.
By the way, I am no more brilliant than Einstein, no better a pilot than Chuck Yeager, no more brave than Audie Murphy and overall I'm great but no more so than at least one other person but supposedly I'm here to defend the honor of someone else.
Moderator note: Seattle has been warned for posting what he meant to be insults, in the first instance. Also, trying to turn a legitimate mental illness that people actually suffer from into an insulting put-down is a pretty low thing to do, just generally. Just thought I'd mention that.
Seattle has also been warned for trolling, since he was asked to stop with his weak insult attempt several times yet he chose to repeat the same inappropriate behaviour. Moreover, he was the one who originally put out the troll bait, having apparently lost an argument about the thread topic.
Seattle: please review the site Posting Guidelines before you post to sciforums again. Thanks.
Seattle has also been warned for trolling, since he was asked to stop with his weak insult attempt several times yet he chose to repeat the same inappropriate behaviour. Moreover, he was the one who originally put out the troll bait, having apparently lost an argument about the thread topic.
Seattle: please review the site Posting Guidelines before you post to sciforums again. Thanks.