Medicare is looking pretty weak too.
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Any comment for AOC?
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Somebody on FB said it’s good the world is ending in 12 years, since our retirement accounts will be gone.
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Dangit, I’m missing a lot not being on Facebook anymore. Meteor? Second coming? Rising seas? How does it end?
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Global warming/climate change, of course! That’s what AOC says, anyway.
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Why aren’t you on FB anymore, and when did that happen?
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I quit about the first of the year because I wanted to keep a few friends. I must run with a stupid crowd but I got so tired of women my age vague booking, posting selfies three or four times a day, and bitching about the same train (not kidding about this, it really happened) making them late for work every day and wanting the county to pay for an overpass – this went on weeks. I decided the problem was clearly me since no one else seemed rubbed to the bone like I was so I closed the account.
Facebook sends me emails and asks if I like them to help me find new friends. I’m temped to ask if they can screen by IQ.
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I am SOOOOOO glad I never darkened Facebook’s door. (And “Alexa” doesn’t live here, either!)
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I like FB, especially so I can follow my daughter and her family (they live in another state), and some of my cousins. I also have some good “friends” who have lively conversations, and post really great stuff. Some live in NYC and DC and have current or past careers there, so they know people and what is going on.
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I agree about Alexa or any other intrusive electronic busybodies.
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You can just stop following people without unfriending them. I’ve done that with a couple of people. You can also set up lists to post to, and exclude the people who you don’t want to see your posts. I do that too.
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I am not convinced that there’s anyway you can touch the Facebook flypaper and not get stuck. I know that under Obama if you visited the White House site on the internet you could ALLEGEDLY get a tracking cookie designed to file your browsing history in real time ALLEGEDLY with government sites. Theory was that bad people visit the WH site and it’s always a good idea to see what nefarious things they were up to…after all, if you’re an honest person you have nothing to fear with an honest government following you.
Folks balked at the idea that Facebook was gathering all of the info it could on you, that Mr Z was anything other than a millennial geek trying to unite the world with his benign creation. The folks in the DC business knew better as they were trying to do the same thing, make your life transparent to the core with them. We used ‘anonymous’ Facebook accounts to track people, our rules prevented us from using the accounts to do personal contacts yet a few would get those ‘you might know’ leads for real friends and family so something was going on.
I don’t think old Mark’s done with the revelations and being dragged across the coals yet, there’s more to come about Facebook spying, we ain’t seen it all yet.
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Thing is, if you are on the internet, you can be tracked. Doesn’t have to be Facebook.
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Oh true, your carrier keeps a record of your travels for ages and that pesky old NA vacuums up the metadata sooooooo.
Thing is that Facebook not only tracks you but created association webs and mines/sells your data. It isn’t like you can clears the cookies from your system or, like many sites, even warn you they’re tracking you and selling your data to heaven knows who – they virtually fleeced the folks that use it and lied each time they were caught.
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My days on FB are limited, I received a 30-day suspension for sending out too many friend requests. I will very rarely send out a friend request and only accept a few. Truthfully, I think it has something to do with my conservative views since I am very careful about my word choice. It took an effort to even find out what I was supposed to have done wrong.
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That’s happened to so many people! You will never get any answer out of FB, and there is no consistency in their application of punishment.
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As a matter of fact yes!
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And here we go again, the great Social Security shell game.
SS is only allowed to invest in government debt securities so the money that is left over after what comes in and goes to pay those on the program gets dumped into government bonds. Those bonds are then counted as ‘surplus’ and used to lower the amount of debt…don’t you wish you could have personal accounting like that?
If Medicare is as screwed a pooch as were hearing it is then what’s going to happen when EVERYONE is on it? Oh yeah, those same accountants who tell us that younger and healthier inputters will use fewer services and their contributions will fund the rest. And all of that surplus will go into government debt equities and those equities will be shown as a credit and the debt figures will be lowered…
Let’s face it, without going to a 40% or better tax base without deductions we’re just going to be moving money from point A to point B in a huge three card monte game until the mess crashes. Use what you can while you can and hope for the best.
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I may have missed something in your comment, but …
I thought the 1968 Finance Reform Act placed all incoming revenue into a single account and then paid all bills out of that account. While this seems to make sense, it actually placed incoming monies into that account and then used them to pay general fund bills. Before then, it took a special act of Congress to use the trust fund monies from Social Security or Medicare, even though the latter was a couple of years old.
Besides, if the govt cannot live on their incoming tax revenues, how can they even hope to redeem the so-called debt securities?
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SS gets 85% of its funding from payroll taxes, 3% from taxation of SS benefits and about 11% from net interest income, zero comes from the general fund. The ’68 (actually enacted in ’69) changes were accounting actions only and were undone in 1990 when the SS fund was taken off-budget. Much of the magic movements of SS are designed to, in an accounting sense, make the budget hole not look as bad as it is. SS is not directly funded by the general budget, it’s supposed to be self funding but if you consider that it can only invest any ‘surplus’ in government debt equities then it is connected to the general budget.
SS has it’s ‘surplus’ invested in US debt equities and the interests the bonds earn depends upon when the were purchased; however, during times when outlay exceeds income, the SS has to cash in some of those bonds to meet needs and for the last decade or so interest rates on Fed junk bonds….errr, debt equities…has been low.
The unemployment we had pre-Trump added to the mess as the numbers of those receiving SS benefits goes up while payroll taxes drop, leaving just taxes on benefits (which also helps fund Medicare), interest on investments and redemption of investments to fund it.
We’re looking at a worker squeeze and an increase in recipients as the tail end of Baby Boomers slides thru and the first of the Gen Xers starts receiving benefits. We’re all living longer, taking higher benefits as the CPI goes up and helping drain the pot. Those debt equitiers the SS bought in the low interest times will be cashed in as they’ll be needed and the meager returns they provide won’t suffice to keep the tap running.
Congress may well have to bleed $$$ from the general fund but the amounts we’re talking about will surely cause problems so the only way out of this is to rewrite the law, somehow find a golden goose and sell the eggs or keep on taxing and have a ‘means’ test for recipients.
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Social Security and Medicare were all pie-in-the-sky socialist giveaway programs designed to get immediate votes and kick the can down the road. As the programs evolved from their basic Model A Ford self to the ultra-slick Mercedes S-class coupe with all of the factory bells and whistles the ‘how the %^&*$#@ are we gonna fund this’ question was sidestepped with all of the glamour of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers.
We loosened the definition of what ‘disabled’ was, tied benefits to the CPI, allowed a lotta folks with no contributions to collect it, instead of a SUPPLEMENTAL income program it became THE retirement income for many. Funding it became an accounting exercise in the absurd, each Congress facing it doing some magic handwork and a little band aiding that pushed the pig thru the hose but now the pig’s reaching the end of the hose and…
I’m seeing some smart(ass) Congressional cookie suggesting the Federal government take a European stance and make the SS folks THE retirement program for ALL Americans. The Feds will take in all individual and business contributions and give out retirements based on a means test and funds input. Why with the experience they have from nearly a hundred years of running SS it should be a snap.
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