tswiftchair

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (15 children)

All involve increasing taxation or making it needs based...

Some involve increasing payroll taxes while others involve taxes on corporations or investments. There's also non-tax based proposals like raising the retirement age.

I have zero interest in paying more to a mismanaged program...

The program is not mismanaged.

That’s the problem with socialism. You eventually run out of other people’s money to spend.

This is not socialism. Further, every US president, including Republican, has supported or enacted legislation upholding social security since its inception.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Yeah I agree with the sentiment, use whatever is good for you, but I feel like most advanced linux users are not using Mint. They typically come to the realization that everything is either Debian, Arch, or build it yourself so they use one of those.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Election of 1860: am i joke to u?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (17 children)

It's "running out of money" in the sense that there's a projected shortfall, not that it's going to be bankrupt in the near future. The projected shortfall means covering 80% of benefits in 2034 and covering 74% of benefits in 2097. But there are many proposals to address this shortfall and the Office of Chief Actuary collects all proposals and even provides a summary of each proposal and how much of the shortfall it will cover (PDF). So you don't need to "have it both ways"; we can address the shortfall without reducing benefits.

You're also claiming it's a scam when it isn't. The purpose of Social Security is to alleviate poverty for seniors and it does that. Further, people receive more in benefits than they pay into the program, especially those of low-income who need it most (PDF). Lastly, regardless of your personal situation, the notion that private retirement investments would be better than social security for everyone is disputed.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (19 children)

You are in the minority, even amongst conservatives.

Amid doubts about the soundness of the Social Security system, most Americans reject the idea of reducing benefits for future retirees. When asked to think about the long-term future of Social Security, only 25% say some reductions in benefits for future retirees will need to be made, while 74% say benefits should not be reduced in any way.

Democrats and Republicans differ modestly on the need to cut Social Security benefits. Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say reductions in future benefits are inevitable (31% vs. 22%). Still, majorities across nearly all demographic and political groups say Social Security benefits should not be reduced in any way.

Source

Pew Research Center, for example, recently reported that "74 percent of Americans say Social Security benefits should not be reduced in any way," and previous Pew research found that only 6% favored cutting government spending on Social Security. A Marist/NPR/PBS poll last year found that six in 10 Americans would prefer to reverse the 2017 tax bill rather than cut entitlement programs like Social Security if necessary to reduce the deficit. Gallup pollinghistorically has found that Americans would rather raise Social Security taxes than reduce benefits. A 2014 survey (PDF download)conducted for the National Academy of Social Insurance found "77% of respondents … agree it is critical to preserve Social Security benefits for future generations, even if it means increasing Social Security taxes paid by working Americans."

Source

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Do you have any particular policies or are you just going to make claims? Trump’s policies were not good for the American working class, which is the vast majority of Americans.

His landmark legislation, the 2017 tax cuts, gave temporary marginal cuts to working people while giving substantial permanent cuts to corporations. He promised to fix healthcare. He didn’t. He promised to stop jobs from going overseas. He didn’t and, in fact, more jobs went overseas under him than Obama. He promised to fix the national debt. He increased it. He made a terrible deal with OPEC to cut oil production, which led to short term gains but eventually caused oil prices to skyrocket when economies recovered from Covid. His trade war with China hurt the US economy (for example, farmers who he had to bail out).

These are just some examples. There are many Biden policies that I am against but if you’re going to claim this admin has been worse for Americans than Trump’s admin, you need to provide examples.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I think the most hypocritical part is obviously the guise of data privacy. But even regarding national security or foreign influence, I think there is some hypocrisy because we know that there are foreign actors on Facebook, for example, as well.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

This is interesting because I literally found out about the Hong Kong protests on TikTok and have seen a lot of content about the Uyghurs on there as well. Of course anecdotal evidence isn’t really evidence but it’s interesting nonetheless.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

Ah I did not see that, makes sense. Thanks for the response, as I said I'm happy to be on lemm.ee! I also understand there are legitimate reasons for blocking or defederating and appreciate that lemm.ee doesn't do it all the time like other instances.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Thanks, these look like good resources for seeing who blocks who. fba.ryona.agency shows reasons for some instances that have blocked lemm.ee but none for the instances that lemm.ee has blocked unfortunately.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Then there would be 2,639 billionaires instead of 2,640 billionaires.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

…it’s not moving the goalposts. My initial comment stated it was a problem and that’s what my second comment said.

Again, cancer only kills ~600k in a year, which is only 2/10ths of 1% of the population. Better yet, it kills over 10x more people than car accidents. Does that mean car safety isn’t worth talking about?

And I’m not saying there isn’t a problem

This statement makes me think you are saying that:

…do you see why some people are saying this isn’t really worth talking about?

I do think this is worth talking about, just like I think the hundreds of death row convictions that have been overturned are worth talking about or the ~500k homeless Americans are worth talking about or the kids who have been killed in school shootings are worth talking about. These are all tiny percentages of people but they are still problems that are preventable so we should try to prevent them, which requires talking about them.

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