The American Spectator

Bob| 2.5.10 @ 1:24PM

Finally, Philip, someone is taking Ryan's plan seriously. Thank you. The Republican leadership doesn't want this plan to come to reality because it will be a cut in Medicare and Social Security and they can be saddled with "It will kill Grandma". Make no mistake, this plan will ration care to senior citizens and this is a far more credible claim than it was against the health care plan of the Democrats.

That said, entitlements must be reduced and this is fundamentally a VERY good plan. I usually rail against the stupidity I see here at AmSpec with all of the misinformation about Obama and economics, but if you are really a fiscal conservative, you should support this plan and ram it down not only the Republican leadership, but the Democrats as well.

The way to get this done is with a campaign to senior citizens telling them that their grandchildren are at risk if they don't take responsibility of using a lot more money than they put into both Social Security and Medicare.

I encourage everyone to read Ryan's plan and support it.

win| 2.7.10 @ 7:04PM

I have read it and do not consider that "it will kill Grandma", bad thing is, I am Grandma to at least to at least one little girl. I am not old enough for medicare or Social Security for quite a while, but I do try to think ahead, so I tried to take a look at the plan from when I would be older.

Depending on what you mean by "ration", current Medicare rations care as well, and it is costly for many as well.

Maybe you would be able to tell me what about the bill you see as killing Grandma?

I realize that it does "cut" Medicare and Social Security, but those cuts are made up in other ways from the way it reads to me.

Oldefarte| 2.5.10 @ 2:46PM

The essential point of the budget defecit/debt is the governmental EXPENSES, not whether or not taxes should be raised or lowered. The former are [and have been for decades] extremely too high. D' and R's both need to be made aware by the American voters/taxpayers that either you lower the expenses or start looking for a another job immediately [whether your tenure is 1 or 20 years in congress; and no matter what your political party affiliation]. Foreign aid, farm aid, military hardware, the space program, and [especially WELFARE] need to be thoroughly reduced or eliminated. There is no reason why, with 10-20% unemployment and the enormity of our deficit/debt, that taxpayers' hard earned money should be used to give money to other countries, to wealthy farmers, to stupid/lazy individuals whose families have been living off of the government for decades, and to armamant defense contractors to build weapon systems etc that are not needed and a waster of money. Every American needs to contemplate/calculate all of the federal, state and local taxes/fees that they are forced to pay in a year; and then to realize that that same money could be used to support themselves and their families. Wake up, America!!!!

HeyDipShitBob| 2.5.10 @ 3:06PM

Ryan's plan is what many Republicans have been advocating for years. You act as if these ideas are new!

Guess what DSBob, allowing consumers to control their own money for health care will result in both LOWER COSTS and MORE CHOICE - you know, basic ecomomics. There will be less rationing of care for granny than there is right now, even if total relative expenditures go down.

As for Obama and Democrat economics - there is NO defense for what they are doing, even if YOU are the defender.

Bob| 2.5.10 @ 3:49PM

DipS__t,

The Republicans were in control of the White House and Congress for at least 6 years in the immediate past. If you think they were advocating this plan, you have your head up a certain crevice. You have to be a fool to believe otherwise.

HistoryBuff| 2.5.10 @ 11:18PM

I'm pretty certain I remember former President Bush's administration proposing the privatization of social security or at least a portion of it. Among other proposals in the same vein. The socialists in congress and the old media squealed pretty shrilly when that was proposed.

Austin Powers| 2.6.10 @ 3:12PM

There is a reason I tend to pick on Bob in this forum so much: it's simply because he's a pompous ass. There is a scientist whom I admire a lot named Richard Feynman - the late theoretical physicist. He lived a fascinating life, doing a lot of crazy things and looking at life and learning in a different sort of way. I came to appreciate his way of learning because it always involved curiosity about the way things worked and the fact that you may be wrong in your assumptions and, therefore, your conclusions. He also disliked pompous blowhards (and dimwitted government).

And that is Bob's problem. Bob is you basic blowhard. Bob knows that he knows that you know nothing and he knows this so well that he plans to tell you about it in excruciating detail. What I learned from Feynman was that you may know more than I do but may not know how to explain it to me the way that I can understand, so listening to someone explain their point of view takes a little patience and curiosity on my part. I also learned that people who know something for sure are the last to realize they are wrong.

Take economics. Bob will have charts and graphs to explain, say, that tax cuts in the Reagan era really didn't have any effect on taxes as a percentage of GDP and therefore were irrelevant (this is a hypothetical example. It may or may not be true - it doesn't matter for my purpose). A person will post a reply pointing out that while the taxes/GDP observation may be true, the tax cuts mattered because the targets of the cuts responded in a certain way boosting productivity in certain sectors while maybe penalizing other sectors to give the same percentage of total taxes, etc. (again, this is hypothetical). Bob will then tell the poster that he/she simply doesn't understand economics or taxes or percentages or graphs or charts or something and that unless the person has graduated from, say, Harvard, they just will never understand how little they actually know. He will then go on to inform you that he has been in the top echelons of business and that that is how it is done or viewed and your experience or data is therefore invalid or you don't know how to interpreted the data correctly - Bob uses authority (even anonymous authority) to prove to you how stupid you are.

Bob will tell pilots that they don't understand the airline business and doctors that they don't understand how to run their offices profitably if they disagree with his notions of taxation or mandates. They're just not smart enough - they don't get it. That if they jiggled business-lever A and wiggled business-knob B then business-hatch C opens and releases profit-ball D which will strikes business-flappers E - P and viola! You have a successful clinic operation no matter what taxes or mandates the government has in store for you. There is always a tax scrubber or mandate closet that can be utilized and stuffed. It's just that simple. But you don't know that because you didn't get your MD at Yale.

It's "The Smartest Man in the Room" syndrome and it is never pretty. And Bob is correct in many of his theories. What he does not question - and never will - is the possibility that a theory itself is wrong (or his usage is wrong). You see, he learned it . . . in class . . . from a book . . . at Harvard . . . from the guy who wrote the book. So how can it be wrong? Besides, all of his cohorts in business learned the same thing and they all talk to each other every day about these exact things and come to many of the same conclusions. They are all the smartest guys in the room, never questioned, never challenged, never wrong. That's why people who have a different view are always stupid.

And Bob is a smart guy, you have to agree with that. Harvard, Yale, Brown, etc. are full of smart people. Their problem is that they think others who don't attend these schools are not smart. That we have learned the inferior knowledge that other schools work from. That the Ivy League has the real knowledge - the knowledge that only they are allowed to possess - they give us the table scraps of useless knowledge that is not worthy of any consideration.

So that's really it in a nutshell - why I love to puncture Bob, The Macy's Day Balloon of Pompousness. I love to hear the whistling sound of him deflating.

Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery

noBolshevik| 3.20.10 @ 12:26PM

Well said ! Bob ,your assignment is to reflect on the meaning of humility and how you may utilize this concept in your future blogging activities . Also , consider your own entitlements
and the possibility that you will one day , if you are lucky , live to an advanced age and how you might feel should some young and brilliant
scion decide that your medical care is just too expensive and needs to be rationed.

martin j smith| 2.5.10 @ 3:13PM

I hope that there will be an "honest"debate on who has the better ideas and plans to fix our economy. For too long, the same political sound bites. Democrats -Nice Republicans -mean. Time to actually show the plans and debate forcing both parties to defend their positions and actually explain the pros and cons. That would be refreshing.

goreshade| 2.5.10 @ 4:42PM

The only way to get the budget under control is through Social Security and Medicare, but these proposals are a bad idea. I suggest you guys look into the book Comeback America for some responsible suggestions on taming the budget.

Louis Kaye| 2.5.10 @ 10:46PM

Ryan's rehashed plans are nothing new or different than what he has been peddling since GWB appointed the Wall Street hack to draw up a plan to dismantle Social Security. With that said, there is an insidiously evil element buried within all of Ryan's roadmap novels. They are all based on marketing a brand of Randian individualism that attempts to shame people away from the success of collective power. Aptly demonstrated by Bob's comment "get this done is with a campaign to senior citizens telling them that their grandchildren are at risk," presupposes the notion that our grandchildren's future relies heavily on whether each individual senior will kill themselves, rather than let the collective (government) do it for them. Pure evil. Pure Rand.

win| 2.7.10 @ 7:38PM

The savings fund is similar to the federal thrift savings plan, which is not considered a route to help seniors kill themselves.

There are many features which the current system does not offer.

The plan does look like a good place to start though there does need to be discussion, more analysis, estimates, and perhaps tweaks in it.

Nick| 2.6.10 @ 12:18AM

Yikes!

When I saw that chart, I thought 3/5 Bob took control of AmSpecBlog!

LucidThought| 2.6.10 @ 5:52AM

Louis, just what exactly are the "successes" of collective power? Social Security?! A ridiculously inefficient institution that promises to return to taxpayers a mere pittance of what they invested DESERVES to be dismantled! SS has become nothing more than another collectivist redistribution scheme. Lest we forget, individual liberty is the bedrock upon which this great nation was founded, its very reason for existence. I'll take Randian individualism over Marxist collectivism any day. The former produced the greatest economic machine and the highest standard of living (for all, I might add) in history, while the latter resulted in the wholesale slaughter of tens of millions and the systematic destruction of the human spirit. That you seem unable to discern which of them represents "pure evil" can only lead to one conclusion: your moral compass is seriously askew...

George| 2.6.10 @ 6:35AM

Oh yes, "success of collective power", is there a better example of oxymoron?

Naught in human history(yes, I used a definite), has a collectivist government accorded even a minor semblance of success for its citizenry.

Contrasting, capitalism(the king of individualism) has freed more people from the kind of abject poverty that "collectivists" aspire to solve. The reasons for this are not obvious, but if you wish to learn read Milton Friedman or Adam Smith.

Aside:Something I learned, capitalism does nearly everything socialists want... just in a far more efficient and actually beneficial way.

As for this article, as for Paul Ryan's legislation. It isn't what I would call "perfect", but it is the best budget proposal I have seen from a politician, and I would be glad to see it become law.

Louis Kaye| 2.6.10 @ 8:09AM

Transcendent Beauty

The world is the ultimate example of "success of collective power." If you don't like it, perhaps you should get off.

LucidThought| 2.6.10 @ 12:29PM

Thanks for your reply, Louis. You have removed all doubt as to whether you were even worthy of engaging in discussion. Is that really how you view the world, as some sort of "global collective?" That manifests itself... how? Where? The United Nations? Your response could be a textbook definition of the phrase "mush-minded liberalism." Good luck making your Chomskyite dreams come true, nitwit.

martin j smith| 2.6.10 @ 12:46PM

I would bet that BHO would not use the term "collective power" too often because he would be called on to explain what he meant by it. BHO by indirectly denies that he is a "Bolshevik" at a recent meeting with Republicans. However his behavior says other wise. The democrat Party leadership and their " true believers" in my view are a mixture of communists,socialists and some element of fascism mixed in. Their beliefs may be OK with Europe but thge majority of Americans do not buy it. I think in some way the 2010 elections ( and 2012 ) should and will be a referendum on the Democrat ( communist,socialist,fascist ) agenda. So far the results do not look too good for them. If the job situation does not significantly improve very soon and there is word of many increase taxes on the "middle class" the vote may not be for the republican Party but it will be overwhelming AGAINST the so called Democrat agenda. People are not as stupid as Robert Reich thinks they are.

Louis Kaye| 2.6.10 @ 1:20PM

Hey Lucifer's Thought, what's wrong with that answer? There was no name calling. But was it a wittle too harsh for your tender wittle ego?

Just for kicks, here's another example of the success of collective power, it's called the U.S. Constitution... it begins "WE THE PEOPLE" not "I the individual." Hey, if you don't like it, GTF out of the country. Too simple for you?

Yeah, the world is a ridiculously inefficient institution. Oh, the ignorant, petulant masses of humanity. So why do you allow yourself to suffer so in the presence of such morons, your hienie? If you and your collective find the time to stop hand jobbing your own individualism, maybe others would find your extremists ideas worth reading.

Nick| 2.6.10 @ 1:38PM

You know who the first collectivist was?

Satan.

He tried to get the angels to overthrow God.
He lost.

And so will all you followers of The Enemy.

George| 2.6.10 @ 3:51PM

Your point is society is a collection of people? We and Webster agree, and I will even go as far as to say capitalism, the king of individual freedom, lends itself to the function of the "collective". In as much as "collective" is a collection of individuals.

The difference between institutionalized "collectivism" and "individualism" is freedom and knowledge. Contrary to what is taught, individuals and not governments hold a monopoly on relevant knowledge. A Czar knows naught of what I want for lunch(an example), so to cede my freedom to choice to said Czar makes little sense.

Capitalism in the end, nets much of what socialists want: labor ownership of production(investment/401k ect), environmentalism(strong correlation between $ spent and environmental impact, unwanted items not produced), the destruction of poverty(after 7 years only 5% of people in poverty(1% after 15, but you can thank permanent welfare for that) remain so in the US), and equality(the real kind of equality, equality of opportunity not outcomes).

Capitalism does not do several things socialists want, namely absolute control of the masses. Who in their eyes are too stupid to make decisions for themselves(nevermind they hold nearly all knowledge, and from my experience are generally more intelligent).

noBolshevik | 3.20.10 @ 11:35AM

How do credit default swaps help the average person ? Is this an example of your utopian vision of capitalism ?

Louis Kaye| 2.6.10 @ 4:07PM

George, why are you bringing up Socialism? The problem with most deniers such as yourself is, your brand of individualism excludes the collective, but not when it can be worked over for your own self-interests. My brand of collectivism includes individualism, it embraces it by offering any person the necessary tools to reach the heights of their own promise. It is what built countries like America.

Paul Ryan and his personal capital investment cronies on Wall Street had their chance to prove Social Security unnecessary – and they failed - miserably. So miserably in fact, that they had no choice but to run to the collectivist system of taxation (government) for a series of huge capital injections to stay afloat. The fact is, these failed capitalists turned socialist for refuge and approached the collectivt government - not the other way around.

Nick, your comment doesn't deserve a response.

Nick| 2.6.10 @ 4:25PM

And yet, you did respond Louie!
You commie pinko.

George| 2.6.10 @ 4:39PM

We just plainly disagree, I would characterize humanity as naturally individualistic which appears collective because of interactions between individuals. My "brand" is to accord governance in a way to meet the natural disposition of humanity. Whatever that is, the only way to reach that is via freedom of choice, not the dictates of an oligarchy.

We may actually agree on what is needed(tools of success), but I doubt we agree on their implementation.

About social security, believe it or not, history did not begin in 1935. Their failure is a political one, or the fear of angering those people "next in line". This is a somewhat legitimate fear as those people "next in line" have lived to this point expecting SS, so to revoke it without enough warning would lead to disaster for said people.

The reality is, SS is going away(Search: Social Security Bailout). Almost entirely because the government does not care about effective management(quite the opposite of capital markets, as it is their life).

Social security may go bankrupt this year, but even if it doesn't it current trajectory is insolvency that no bailout will be able to rectify. When that happens, many old people who assumed they would be getting benefits, and did not save will find themselves in a very bad situation.

Finally, even without government forcing people to pay into a fatally flawed system, it is quite possible for SS to exist for those who want it. All it would take is for someone like George Soros to setup a non-profit retirement savings account that anyone could join. Actually, the same could be done to make a "public option" for healthcare too.

At least, in that scenario, if it was mismanaged it would just cease to exist(instead of being bailed out every 10-20 years). There is no point throwing good money after bad(management).

Louis Kaye| 2.6.10 @ 4:44PM

Nick, why do hate my individualism? I don't hate your collectivism.

Nick| 2.6.10 @ 5:39PM

Louie,

You respond, yet again!

"Commie pinko" deserved a response, huh?

Louis Kaye| 2.6.10 @ 5:41PM

'crickets chirpin'

Top Savings Plan| 5.4.10 @ 8:27AM

Eventually, flatbottom without governance forcing fill to pay into a fatally flawed group, it is quite workable for SS to survive for those who want it. All it would swan is for someone like Martyr Soros to equipment a non-profit withdrawal savings statement that anyone could link. Actually, the unvarying could be finished to excrete a "semipublic alternative" for healthcare too.
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smith

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helena| 5.8.10 @ 3:51AM

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