Living longer and being able to work longer are two different things. Do you really think we are at that point of such a blanket point of view? Is that the ONLY way to reform the system? NO! There are many tools currently, to adjust to the changed conditions we are facing NOW!

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/solvency/provisions/

Work longer for less money should be the last option considering the cost of living for an older person has moved up, NOT down! There is still another group who lives in rural areas decimated by job losses and high unemployment who simply cannot move to another region where there are jobs, what of them? To be frank are not the dilemma of those people what fueled the anger and frustration that led to Trump being the leader of the free world?

Of course it was, and what does the tax cuts he proposes do for them? What would your argument to keep working do for them? Not a damn thing. You miss totally that those tax cuts for the rich would be better funneled to those under these circumstances even if it costs a trillion buck against the budget (Which it would NOT!). Trump touts this notion of him and his buddies getting richer because THEY will help the economy, and that has never proven to work in the history of America. I know doctors and lawyers and tech guys still working, but factory guys? NOT ONE. (Greeters at Walmarts doesn't count)

If you could afford tax cuts for the rich, why can't you take care of your elders who have already worked their whole lives and raised families, and paid for college, and PAID THEIR TAXES for years through payroll deductions. I respectfully submit the argument that they are the ones who made America great not the Trumps of the world who got rich off the honest working class. I reject totally the premise that such people have the credibility, or will, to HONESTLY decide what adjustments are in the best interest of the ordinary citizen.

SCREW RUBIO! He is a punk, and Trump is a lying Dufus! Follow the republican lead at your own risk. I await your ideas with great interest Joy, and Clete.

I actually agree with you tal. I just feel obliged to clear up some of the background misinformation, the key FACT being that NO ONE can touch the entitlement funds (yes, the ones we are entitled to by working), and NO ONE can add to them either. They get SUPPLEMENTED with programs. I get supplemented as a low income/low asset senior. I get a property tax break from my state. I get an Advantage Plan from the state, a welfare addition to the pitiful Medicare coverage. I even get my Medicare premium paid, a rare benefit most states don't offer to seniors (called QMB). And I don't have to pay tax on my SS (I forget the limit)

I accept the fact that we are living longer, even though I don't approve of living long drawn out miserable lives in the Medical Maw, and am fighting tooth and nail to die before I get trapped in it. That means fewer perks and bennies. I wish some of the military budget came my way, but would be even happier if it went to veterans. And so on! Each piece of the pie.

Morning Joy, read this link,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAYGO

Do you really trust Trump and the rest of repubs to NOT cut your benefits? I know Trump SAID no cuts, but he has lied before, and the republican controlled congress especially speaker Ryan, has long wanted to cut OUR entitlements. I see adjustments being made the country has grown in size, and AGE, but I do not see making rich guys wealthier, at a time they are already making BOO-KOO bucks, and forcing hardships on older Americans.

Just as a matter of logic, busting the budget for tax cuts, and adding the proposed increases in military spending, and this so-called jobs bill no one has seen could certainly bring about MO"MONEY out of OUR pockets. Logic or common sense? In addition we have these FACTS based on past performance,

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...-idUSKBN1D70HX

This is during a time the CHIP program for KIDS expired in September. So can we assume the priorities of the congress is take care of the rich and screw the old and the kids? Logic or common sense?

Want more logic or common sense? The Bush tax cuts combined with the Trump tax cuts don't come close to my insurance premiums deducted directly from my pension check. I love life, so why should I rollover for the rich lying beetch in the White House?

OK, one last time: the funds cannot be raised or lowered. The amounts paid out CAN.

As I and my cohorts born in 1946 age, and those born up to 1955 age, we constitute a top heavy age group. (I can only wish I were top heavy.)
We are hogging both SS and Medicare.
Ergo, we must reduce our allotments, or die sooner, or stay unusually healthy and away from the Medical Maw.
Calculations done on those funds are NOT BASED on ANYTHING other than actuarial data regarding those who are benefiting from the plan.
No, I'm not happy that I'm part of this group, but I don't mix it up with politics. IT ISN'T!!!

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

YES, I hear YOU on the rich and the tax cuts and all the unequal jazz going on.

Tal I told you I was playing Devil's advocate and once again I expected to be hoisted by doing so. We all know there is an element who don't want to foot the bill, who have a percular idea that the poor and the old can materialise money, probably from the deposits they have made in their backyard to avoid these draconian taxes that you don't want reduced for anyone. Get used to it Tal, Taxation is theft, legalised theft. And pork barrelling by government is legalised theft.

Hey I'm a cohort, and I hope what you say is true, as I have no wish to be a Walmart greeter, or be bossed around by an ambitious 40 year old, who doesn't like the pace of my work. I also have no wish for my kids and grands to be kicked around by some rich lying greedy beetch either.

Please understand my friend, that it's not just Trump that has me riled up, but the whole mess of stuff going on with those DC idiots. I think I might have lost it when my own senator started airing his re-election campaign ad.

No fair, I didn't hoist you at all (this time 8D !), just ranted my position along with the links. In this country no taxes means your city cannot provide services like cops, teachers and fire departments and its worse in the small rural communities have little or no tax base to depend on. I do agree that taxation is theft when its used improperly, immorally, or wasted on someone who already has a bundle under the mattress. Ditto for that pork barrel stuff that makes a politician look good to the locals.

Reduce taxes, not when there are bills to pay, and work to do. Raise wages is the simple answer. Whatever happened to goodwill? Maybe we get it back after this ideological war.

Hey Tal, we understand it is hard to drain the swamp when you are up to your arse in alligators, but Trump is a big old salt water crocodile, he likes it in the swamp. You say your own senator, no ordinary person owns a senator, that is reserved for those with money

What I say is true, true true truer than true.

I look around my bankrupt state of CT. Almost bankrupt. Everywhere I look, I see waste at the tiniest level. I see small town grammar schools having soccer coaches. TWO, one for boys and one for girls. I see grief counselors everywhere, when my generation relied on parents, each other, and teachers for FREE. And two principals and two superintendents and so on. My tiny grammar school has the highest per student cost in the US, for under 70 students, going down every year for years, yet people INSIST, smack in the face of that FACT, that if a town HAS a grammar school, people will want to live there. I get an answer to my property tax question from some under secretary to some liason person because the person in charge of senior property taxes doesn't know anything because he got the job from a crony. I get 3 different phone books in my mailbox, despite the fact that no one wants even one, because they are partly funded with taxes. I see so much waste I want to kill myself. And NOT ONE CANDIDATE for governor is willing to sell recreational pot!!! People are brain dead clueless self serving illogical idiots.
And this goes right to the White House. NO ONE wants to give up their job, their agency, their program, no matter how unnecessary it is in hard times. I can't stand it. I'd rather be dead.

Ok so now we are coming to it, a living minimum wage. You want to know what happened to goodwill, it went out the door when the unions got too much of the cake. You raise wages for the low paid jobs and cut the salaries of those dullard CEO

Okay you tell me how you get a living wage without a union? You are aware that before unions, working conditions and wages were abominable don't you? Do you think the Trump tax cuts will cut CEO pay, and give workers higher wages? Don't you think this bill should carry with it a requirement to raise wages as a condition to get the tax cut?

Why doesn't it? Why are middle class tax cuts eliminated after 5 years and corporate rates made permanent?

Historically there is little goodwill when greed is involved.

I agree that greed is the source of all evil, however, you want to be competitive and attract industries, you have to move with the times. Your nominal corporate tax rate was high by international standards, you have to divorce this from personal taxation, which is structured to be progressive, in other words, the more you earn the more you pay, and this fuels tax avoidance and evasion. Five years is a long time in politics. Think about how this works, industries have an incentive to invest, so a short tax holiday, but to keep the holiday they have to keep doing it. The alternative is to sit on their cash as they have been doing, interest rates are low so no profit in that. The middle class are always the cash cow, they don't have the same ability to avoid tax. Trump said he didn't get anything out of this. In order to benefit you have to have a tax liability and all he is good at is making losses.

As far as unions are concerned, workers need protection, but not to get greedy as they have done. You get a living wage when governments get serious about protecting the people who elected them, You can't give an aussie a lesson on the effectiveness of unions, but ours had to be tamed, many criminals find their way into unions

Don't get me going on unions. They are mere ghosts of what they were originally. They are now just greedy bastards sitting on billions in assets, fighting for ever more bloated contracts each year that are totally out of the realm of what is going on in the world economies, putting family and cronies in jobs right out of high school that pay double what anyone else gets, doing nothing these days but toll booth collecting and other stuff that isn't in the competitive world like knowing how to run that computer that builds that mechanical part. UGH! I despise unions. Labor laws cover everything a worker needs.

I agree that greed is the source of all evil,

Good luck getting a capitalist to agree with that, because to them greed is good!

however, you want to be competitive and attract industries, you have to move with the times.

How are Corporate Americans not competitive making more money than they ever have in history without tax cuts? You are buying into the GREED! Their words and bank accounts don't march!

Your nominal corporate tax rate was high by international standards, you have to divorce this from personal taxation, which is structured to be progressive, in other words, the more you earn the more you pay, and this fuels tax avoidance and evasion.

Free slave labor attracts business! We had a war over it. Now they take cheap labor as their motive. So tell me about being competitive with lower tax rates when companies don't pay that rate in reality. Too many loopholes that are still there. The disparity in the corporate written tax bill is the good old boy has to honor it in ways that make it work correctly as advertised. There are no guard rails he has to obey to get the tax cut, and fact is they never have and already we see them passing on the fruit to their boards and buying back their stocks, so the whole premise that workers will have higher wages has yet to be realized and while we hope they do, it won't happen enough to create DEMAND which is the REAL way to grow the economy. Of course that brings higher interest rates and prices as demand increases, but supply also has to increase and that's just the balance for profits and wages that investors and worker can all benefit from. The Reagan and Bush tax cuts bear that out, as wages flattened and recession followed. Now if they wrote requirements into this bill, a thing NEVER done before, and got rid of those legal cheating loopholes, not only do you incentivise the goal of greater demand, and higher wages, and make it much harder to cheat and get away with it.

Five years is a long time in politics. Think about how this works, industries have an incentive to invest, so a short tax holiday, but to keep the holiday they have to keep doing it. The alternative is to sit on their cash as they have been doing, interest rates are low so no profit in that. The middle class are always the cash cow, they don't have the same ability to avoid tax. Trump said he didn't get anything out of this. In order to benefit you have to have a tax liability and all he is good at is making losses.

It doesn't have to be a short tax holiday, but keeping high end tax cuts and eliminating middle class tax cuts was just a gimmick to make the short term numbers look better, as by law the process they are using, reconciliation, to only need 51 senate votes caps the overall costs of their tax cuts, and as an accountant you should have picked up on that, but without knowing the LAW here, of course you couldn't know that. Most Americans don't know that either.

As far as unions are concerned, workers need protection, but not to get greedy as they have done. You get a living wage when governments get serious about protecting the people who elected them, You can't give an aussie a lesson on the effectiveness of unions, but ours had to be tamed, many criminals find their way into unions

There is greed driven corruption everywhere, always has been, but even you Aussies and the whole world has benefited from the good stuff unions have done while you only point out the corruption. That's a perfect example of throwing out the baby with the bath water. Actually the things that made the unions necessary, factories, mines and industrial complexes have been replaced by technology,at least here, so the need for great labor numbers has been slashed by nearly 80%, while actual production is way up almost double. Even you accountants have gone tech to survive RIGHT?

Thanks for your thoughts I enjoy the interaction.

HEY! I've been a capitalist since I don't know when, I guess when I stopped wanted to work for anyone, gov't or another capitalist.
Greed may be the root of evil, but it doesn't have to be the root of capitalism.
I have never met a social gov't agency that wasn't populated for the most part with greedy individuals out for one thing - their job, the guarantee of it continuing, and increasing pay and benefits.
In other words, survival is built into humans because we are animals and survival is part of life.
We have CONTROLS for capitalism gone amok.
Socialist democracy. Doesn't matter what you call it.

Oh and I'm sick of the term 'living wage.' It's meaningless. You don't get out of high school, get pregnant, get a 2 bedroom apartment, and a PT job, or even 2 of you with 2 meager incomes, and get to demand enough wages for it. You do what I did - live with roommates and use birth control and work low level jobs and learn a skill and save. Yes, I had the privilege of being white and having books in the home, but I didn't go to college or trade school. I taught myself a marketable skill.

HEY! I've been a capitalist since I don't know when, I guess when I stopped wanted to work for anyone, gov't or another capitalist.

Greed may be the root of evil, but it doesn't have to be the root of capitalism.

Unless you are a greedy capitalist. You and me cannot buy a politician or even be an influence to one. Greed does not drive us, nor do we need to hoard money at any cost. I know how frugal you are though I've read your stuff for years. I think you are like most of us just trying to keep what we work for, and save a few pennies when we can.

I have never met a social gov't agency that wasn't populated for the most part with greedy individuals out for one thing - their job, the guarantee of it continuing, and increasing pay and benefits.

Lets not mistake everyday workers with the execs who run them, and carry out policies from above. Big difference. Not to say some of them need serious retraining, but there are plenty who are just humans who want to survive, and most who want to do a good job. I blame the BOSS or the bosses boss!

In other words, survival is built into humans because we are animals and survival is part of life.

Totally agree on mostly every level.

We have CONTROLS for capitalism gone amok.
Socialist democracy. Doesn't matter what you call it.

Disagree totally! Somebody somewhere is profiting mightily from capitalism gone amok! It's entirely by design no matter what its called, democracy, socialism, or communism. I guess I don't TOTALLY disagree....HMMM! 8O

Oh and I'm sick of the term 'living wage.' It's meaningless.

Living wage has a lot of meaning to me. It mean you can support yourself without a government handout every month. I always use the Walmart example a working person who needs welfare benefits to even survive. There should be NO working poor in America. Not if you work for a highly profitable multinational company. What's wrong with that picture?

You don't get out of high school, get pregnant, get a 2 bedroom apartment, and a PT job, or even 2 of you with 2 meager incomes, and get to demand enough wages for it. You do what I did - live with roommates and use birth control and work low level jobs and learn a skill and save. Yes, I had the privilege of being white and having books in the home, but I didn't go to college or trade school. I taught myself a marketable skill.

I have a PHD from the school of hard knocks myself Joy. :D It wasn't as easy as I made it look either!

Capitalism gives the smallest of us some meaning. It can be a small farm stand, or lawn mower repair, or landscaping, or any number of ventures that STILL need to be local. (O wait, the farm stand doesn't)

Greedy capitalists are horrible.
Nations made up of gov't agencies, each with their own self serving agenda, are just as bad in a mind numbing way that to me is worse than fighting Big Daddy Warbucks. There's no one to fight!

I come from generations of New England farmers followed more recently by entrepreneurs.
I will take on the fight against the bloated profiteers over the insidious behemoth gov't agencies any day of the week.

IT'S THE BEST WE'VE GOT.

Also, Athos, your 'truth' about the tax bill is just plain flat out wrong when you say no more charity deduction.
Where do you get this crap?
I may not like it either, I may agree that it favors the rich, but I won't lie just to get people to not like it.

Hey again my friend,

Before it became capitalism, it was called commerce, or trade. Yeah they were greedy back then too, but it was more market based I believe as opposed to market driven. It's still the arena for the better off and poverty persist all over the place still, but I can concede the bureaucratic red tape of government can be both cumbersome and unfair, just as the distribution of wealth is unfair and unequal.

It's likely more accurate to say our system is the best in the world, but can it be BETTER? Sure it can. I just don't think Trump and the repubs are going to move us in that direction, but as you say we will survive these idiots as we have survived the idiots before them. People can thrive despite the obstacles governments, or greedy b@stards put before them, and that's the point.

I wonder though if our elected officials are working for us or the greedy b@stards who give them BOOKOO bucks! That's the scam that's perpetrated on the citizens, and the idiots of vote against their own self interests.

You must love rhetorical questions.