CharlesUFarley

Australia has one level of Social Security benefit: 100% of the poverty level.
Their SS systems is designed solely to keep people out of poverty. Compared to ours, it is a small percentage of the Gov. Budget.

We should do that for younger people, You should only have to pay in until you accumulate enough credits to fund that payment for life. However, we should keep the 12.4% tax in effect, give a credit for SS taxes paid against them, then allow a deduction for the remaining amount to go into 401K or IRA, etc. If a taxpayer doesn't fund those things, just tax them.

Everyone should note that the investing world is different today than when I entered the workforce. Even fifteen years ago it was too expensive for brokerages to have millions of small accounts. These days, they can do it. That was one barrier to all the grand privatization plans back in the day.

There's no reason why we couldn't introduce a series of annuities with low costs that everyone could have access to that could replace SS and do better. We could probably do the same thing with medicare.

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We have seen abysmal job growth, GDP growth south of 2%, inflation in the mid-3%, increased deficit spending and he’s losing the bond market…. again. He, statistically, is on track to go down as one of the worst Treasury Secretaries in modern memory.

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Sounds like Timothy Geithner

Mexico claims the Western US because Mexico rebelled against Spain and won. Why doesn't the United States claim Canada on the same grounds?

Texas rebelled against Mexico. Separate issue.

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The only reason Japan didn’t try to invade the west coast was they saw the large number of hunting licenses distributed. They knew it would be a death sentence.

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They never had the fuel or equipment to even think about invading the mainland, nor any way to supply the fleet at such distances. Even if they had won at Midway, it's doubtful that they would have been able to physically invade the Island. They didn't have the equipment for it, even in their invasion force. They would have had men in boats trying to get ashore without much support and those men would have been burned down.

They couldn't even resupply the two garrisons they had in the Aleutians, they all died on one island and evacuated the other when they knew we were coming. Midway had only destroyed Aircraft Carriers, and after Midway, we couldn't deploy Carriers to the Aleutians. There was nothing stopping them from resupplying there except the fact that they just couldn't do it.

I like guns, but that didn't stop the Japanese.

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I think a better way if we were starting today would be to invest it at the government level instead of the private level

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If you did that, the Dems would demand you invest the money in low income housing and companies that hire minorities, etc. If you demanded that it be invested in index funds then the dems would probably place Dems on the boards of all the companies that create indexes to keep the companies they don't like out of them.

The Gov can't be in charge of investing.

We have annuities, and have had them through insurance companies for years. We have a means of regulating them, of examining their books and making sure they can pay their obligations. One thing that could be done is have qualified companies bid for a pool of future annuity payments based on a basket of risk for a given amount of money. The private companies could then invest to meet their future obligations and generate a profit, the bidding process would lead them to offer a higher return to score more AUM, the regulatory process would examine their books to make sure they could deliver. We have well established regulations for this. We might have to tighten them in this case, but get the investment decision out of the Gov's hands.

Second, teachers, preachers, firemen, railroad workers, and gov employees don't pay into SS (mostly dems). Why is that good for them and bad for us?

You might try Gavalia Traditional Roast. I think it's whole bean only. I sometimes get it when it's on sale and though I like darker roasts, the Gevalia is a nice change up that isn't lacking in flavor or body.

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She has been unemployed for 2 years.

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Trump has only been president for 1.5 of those years, and this has been a time of explosive growth for her field.....

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The December 4 Legal Committee, which has raised more than $1.5 million for Mangione’s defense fund, is raising awareness about jury nullification,

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They just might end up guilty of Jury Tampering. How are they going to introduce this idea to Court Proceedings?

My father served in WW2, so he counts as Greatest Generation (1926). He looked at his watch right after I graduated college in 1988 and said "My Daddy (that's the name he preferred so it's also what I called him) was born 100 years ago today". Later this year, I will do the same.

I am Gen X, I was on the leading edge (1965). I have three boomer siblings, they and their friends and classes were night and day compared us. Boomers, even as kids, were just way more social and made many more social things like school dances and parties work. We were cliquish, never came together, never really played in the reindeer games. My younger sister is also X.

My mother is silent generation (94 now, still kicking, still tries to rearrange all my furniture when she comes to my house). All of her siblings have departed, she is the last one.

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… it’s a public park / monument that’s open 24/7.

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Key word monument. There are laws against people climbing on monuments. I suspect that such laws would also apply to jumping into the reflecting pool.

Don't they have this guy on video in the pool? and didn't he claim that he entered the pool but didn't vandalize it?

Sounds like trespassing at the very least.