grimmeissen
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Join Date: 1/14/2004
Posts: 1217
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Posted: 3/11/2008 8:21:33 AM
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New statistics released show that the Iraq War spending is now approaching $12 billion per month. To put this into perspective, let's see the statistics broken out even further.
That's approximately:
$395 million per day
$16.5 million per hour
$274,000 per minute
Also, look at it in the context of the Iraqi people. The United States government is spending $436 per month on each Iraqi citizen in order to "promote democracy" in their country.
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mccracken
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Join Date: 1/16/2004
Posts: 262
Location: USA
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Posted: 3/11/2008 12:03:43 PM
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That's $40 a month for every citizen of the United States. Change that to US taxpayer and it's closer to $80-90 a month that could be coming out of our pocket.
Lucky for us our government doesn't pay it's bills or that'd be coming out of our checks.
Check it out.. check it out... and then pick it out....... Then show me my dinero!!!
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grimmeissen
Administrator
Join Date: 1/14/2004
Posts: 1217
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Posted: 3/11/2008 1:12:46 PM
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It does come out of our checks when you calculate in the inflation. The rising deficits are the major source of inflation right now.
I always ask supporters of the war if they'd be willing to cut a $200-300 check to the government in support of it. Most people would say no, yet that's essentially what they are heading towards with the price increases we are seeing over the past few years.
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mccracken
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Join Date: 1/16/2004
Posts: 262
Location: USA
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Posted: 3/13/2008 11:21:01 AM
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I was talking to my buddy Nasser yesterday, and he said that he checked his social security statement to see how much he'd put away. In his 22 year career he'd paid about 275,000 into social security.
When you think that every tomahawk missile we fire costs about 22 years of someone working, I think it realy brings home the cost of the war.
Check it out.. check it out... and then pick it out....... Then show me my dinero!!!
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grimmeissen
Administrator
Join Date: 1/14/2004
Posts: 1217
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Posted: 3/13/2008 11:25:47 AM
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Think about the investment gains on that $275,000 he would have had by now if he was allowed to keep his own money. Instead, the government runs their little retirement scheme and we'll be lucky to see any of it.
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SeekerDarksteel
Corporal Sucka
Join Date: 10/11/2005
Posts: 25
Location: Champaign-Urbana
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Posted: 3/13/2008 2:32:07 PM
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Quote: hen you think that every tomahawk missile we fire costs about 22 years of someone working, I think it realy brings home the cost of the war.
Not just 22 years of someone working, but 22 years of someone making decent money. If you look at the median household income, we're spending the equivalent of 78 years of the typical household's input into social security every minute.
I mean I'm no fan of social security as a whole either, but if they're going to take nearly a tenth of my income every paycheck, I'd much rather see it go to pay back people they've taken money from in the past (and feel confident knowing that when I'm old and gray I'll get money taken from the poor working saps) rather than see it used to blow up a tent and a couple camels, knowing I'll probably never see it again.
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grimmeissen
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Join Date: 1/14/2004
Posts: 1217
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Posted: 3/14/2008 8:23:58 AM
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That's pretty much how it is working now. The old folks getting paid are being supported by the payments that we're putting in. But what happens when the baby boomers start to retire? There will be a lot more people dropping out of the workforce than there are new ones paying in.
There are a few major problems with Social Security right now. First off, the funds that we deposit were supposed to gain interest over time. That was part of the promise. However, the interest from SS is constantly pulled off the top and used as if it were earnings by the government. For example, in the Clinton years when we supposedly ran a "balanced budget," that was technically a lie because SS funds were being used to balance other areas.
Another problem with Social Security is the fact that nearly all of its holdings are in government treasurys. This is precisely how we've come to the situation where future obligations to Social Security are now a debt to the country. The "assets" that SS holds are a liability to the government as a whole.
You don't see the sovereign wealth funds in the oil producing countries holding only the cash and bonds issued by their own countries do you? No, they are much smarter than us. They are taking the oil wealth and buying up properties around the world with it.
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mccracken
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Join Date: 1/16/2004
Posts: 262
Location: USA
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Posted: 3/20/2008 3:04:19 PM
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I'm not sure where in the Constitution the government was authorized to take and hold 10% of my wages, then possibly give it back to me in 50 years. I wonder if I called and asked them to stop if they would.
Check it out.. check it out... and then pick it out....... Then show me my dinero!!!
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grimmeissen
Administrator
Join Date: 1/14/2004
Posts: 1217
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Posted: 3/21/2008 2:34:26 PM
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It looks like I was right on the money with my post above from March 14. I just got the March 31 Fortune Magazine and it includes an interesting article by Allan Sloan. In the article, he makes the exact point I was making a few weeks ago. Because Social Security holds all of its funds in Treasury securities, it really doesn't have any wealth. All of its wealth is a debt to the rest of the government.
Sloan estimates that Social Security will begin having negative cashflows around 2016, when the debt it holds and its promised payments begin to outpace its receivables.
I have found an online version of the article from CNN Money. Here is a portion.
Quote: Forget all the talk you'll hear about how Social Security is okay until 2040 or thereabouts. That is, as we'll soon see, utter nonsense. The real problem starts only a decade or so from now, when Social Security begins to take in less cash than it spends.
How can I say that, given Social Security's $2.3 trillion (and growing) trust fund? It's because the fund owns nothing but Treasury securities. Normally, of course, Treasury securities are the safest thing you can hold in a retirement account. But Social Security's Treasuries won't help cover the program's cash shortfall, because Social Security is part of the federal government. Having one arm of the government (Social Security) own IOUs from another arm (the Treasury) doesn't help the government as a whole cover its bills.
Here's why the trust fund has no financial value. Say that Social Security calls the Treasury sometime in 2017 and says it needs to cash in $20 billion of securities to cover benefit checks. The only way for the Treasury to get that money is for the rest of the government to spend $20 billion less than it otherwise would (fat chance!), collect more in taxes (ditto), or borrow $20 billion more (which is what would happen). The spend-less, collect-more, and borrow-more options are exactly what they would be if there were no trust fund. Thus, the trust fund doesn't make it any easier for the government to cover Social Security's cash shortfalls than if there were no trust fund.
Social Security's negative cash flow becomes so horrendous - hundreds of billions of dollars a year - that our nation's twenty- and thirtysomethings aren't going to let the government cover it, regardless of how many Treasuries the trust fund holds. So forget about 2039 or whenever. Starting worrying about 2016 or 2017.
As I've said before, it is imperative that the Social Security trust fund begin to act like the sovereign wealth funds of the commodity producing countries. It needs to get all of its assets out of the U.S. government and put them to work around the world.
We're watching Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and China buy up the world while the only thing our brilliant government invests in is more of its own debt.
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