Wonkette
You know that oft-repeated line about how Social Security will be screwed when the Boomers all get old at the same time? Well according to this graph from the CBO, we crossed that threshold into “screwed” territory right around, say, 10:36 this morning. You know what would be a great way to solve this? Taxing rich people, constantly. HA HA, NEVER. [Brad DeLong]
Suddenly the idea of involuntary death panels is considerably more appealing.
Why doesn’t some one outline the obvious solution. Tax every penney of every income of every being and entity. If so, the rate would probably be less than 1%.
Two words…death panels.
That might even by why our Olds are so susceptible to “death panel” lies. All they’ve been hearing about for the last thirty years is “HOLY SHIT IT’S GONNA SUCK WHEN YOU GUYS RETIRE WE HAVE NO MONIEZ!” Or it is because they are Olds and Olds believe stupid shit.
i hear a fat lady singing. sounds like something in german, from the days of the weimar republik. and it ain’t “life is a caberet, old chum.” sounds more like something from “gotterdammerung,” revised and updated.
Simple, just raise the retirement age to 112.
KEEP THE GOVERNMENT OUT OF MY SOCIAL SECURITY
How big of a tax cut do we need to solve this problem?
My solution? A national referendum on socialism! No more Medicare, no more SS (you know who also had an SS? Hitler, duh).
I also suggest this is the time to redo the patriot act. Just call it obamaveillance and it will die the death it deserves.
You whippersnappers keep working and paying your 6.2% FICA, and the 1.45% Medicare too, please. Remember, your employer is paying the other half, and if he weren’t, you’d get that too! There might not be much left by the time you’re old, but then again, maybe there will be. Ha ha ha….
Those Depends don’t pay for themselves you know. And I need a new battery for my power chair.
They came for the cougars and nobody said anything because we still had the MILFs. They came for the MILFs and nobody said anything because we were sleeping. They came for me and nobody was there to say anything because the damn punk kids were all off fucking each other.
SayItWithWookies: Snark par excellence.
If we switch the Outlays and Revenue tags, we’ll be fine.
By the time a person reaches a certain age, “health care” can be viewed as merely postponing the inevitable. I vote to let them go. With dignity.
Just end all public healthcare at age 80.
Seriously.
Let’s tax the fuck out of fast food for medicare. And stop buying fucking hoverounds for everyone.
SAY YES TO DEATH PANELS.
I WANT MY FLORIDA BACK!!!1!
Hmmm - nope, I can’t think of a single reason not to… soooo… “BRING OUT THE DEATH PANEL TELEVISIONS, playing endless loops of ‘Matlock’!”…
Obviously, taxing the rich would easily make up the difference. But since the teabaggers would have a fit, and since the town hall geriatrics are shouting “no health reform if you can’t fix social security!” I guess the answer must be…Death Panels. Seeing these wrinkly, pinched-faced social insurance beneficiaries scream “no socialism” makes me hope for it.
That graph looks like the big blue finger of God getting ready to revile our outlandish hubris.
Michelle Bachmann, stay close to the phone! God may need you!
I’m doing the truly patriotic thing. I’m giving my child the clearance to pull the plug on me when I get old and infirmed. First sign of dementia, incontinence, arthritis, or coronary disease and he’s allowed to drop me into the Grand Canyon.
I think the right answer is to make all younger people work much, much harder so they can contribute much more to Social Security. (Now that my monthly check is safely deposited, I think I’ll have a leisurely lunch and go for a bike ride before grilling a delicious salmon dinner.)
Social Security is a single-payer government run program.
It reaks of nazi, fascist, communist, libral, muzlin, socialism. The Olds should quit Social Security just like they’re quitting the AARP. Only a terrorist would support Social Security.
Is the “Scooter Store” partly responsible for the fats merging with the oldz? But they are a corporation, so they can’t possibly be part of the problem. Now you can go for a “walk” in the park with the grandkids. A round of scooters for all!!!
Why all this fuss about Youth In Asia? After all, there are so many of them.
(Okay, okay, I stole that from David Sedaris. So sue me.)
My choice. My Wonkette.: Nah. The rich are mostly okay with it but their plumbers are going to be pissed.
I’m sure glad I’ll never get old.
Old people love to send the youth of their country off to fight in wars.
If they love wars so much, then send the old ’uns off to lubricate the gears of war with their blood.
That could solve a lot of financial headaches back home.
PrairiePossum: Yes, as soon as we pay back (to the cent) the amount they contributed during their working years, we cut them off. Should have put their money into the market. Losers.
Speaking of putting the Old Yeller-teeth ‘to sleep’ - has anyone seen ProudGrampa around? No-one saw a Death Panel-truck in front of his place, did you?
SayItWithWookies: FTW - that’s a laffer-riot.
Did anybody think to ask, maybe, we the country needs to support three air forces? Maybe one of these could, you know, FUND THE WORLD FOR DIAPERS AND HAPPY PILLS.
See Obama was merely being a fiscal conservative - by offing the olds he’ll balance the budget in no time.
This never would have happened if we would have just taken all that social security money and invested it into the stock market like Bush said we should.
The solution is simple: A battle royale amongst a couple hundred of teh oldz on a desert island. The last old standing gets all the losers’ social security checks re-diverted to him/her (only twenny nan nana-nan on paypuhvyoo!).
If we could eliminate the social drains by a factor of a hundred every year, those lines up there will re-cross very very fast!
The whole digital teevee switchover thing makes complete sense now - it was a ploy to keep the Olds from learning about the death panels coming for them and their precious bodily fluids.
What does Soylent Green taste like? McDonalds?
Nothing a little cyanide in the chicken Marsala wouldn’t fix.
Gopherit: Exactly. The SODA tax is way overdue. I would expand this to include a huge tax on any product that contains corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, &c.
Problem solved.
dum librul: Yeah, but only the unlicensed ones.
Bearbloke: There’s some kind of Pythonesque skit in this thread with death panel-trucks rolling around suburban neighborhoods (with ice cream man music), the Scooter Store and all the olds being brought before the panels on their scooters, and the panels composed of Black Panthers passing judgment on Whitey: “You gots to go!”
Without the olds, what would be the readership/participant numbers be for Wonkette? Viz.: Cronkite, history, reminiscences.
Well, snark, yeah, but not well-seasoned.
So the World Government was making a two-pronged attack on overpopulation. One pronging was the encouragement of ethical suicide, which consisted of going to the nearest Suicide Parlor and asking a Hostess to kill you painlessly while you lay on a Barcalounger. The other pronging was compulsory ethical birth control.
—(snip)—
There was a Howard Johnson’s next door to every Ethical Suicide Parlor, and vice versa. The Howard Johnson’s had an orange roof and the Suicide Parlor had a purple roof, but they were both the Government. Practically everything was the Government.
Practically everything was automated, too. Nancy and Mary and the sheriff were lucky to have jobs. Most people didn’t. The average citizen moped around home and watched television, which was the Government. Every fifteen minutes his television would urge him to vote intelligently or consume intelligently, or worship in the church of his choice, or love his fellowmen, or obey the laws—or pay a call to the nearest Ethical Suicide Parlor and find out how friendly and understanding a Hostess could be.
-Welcome to the Monkey House, Kurt Vonnegut, 1968
The SS shortfall could be solved if we used our authority:
1. Under NAFTA, to sell Hounduras to Canada. (It never be missed.)
2. Under the United Statesian Constitution, to auction off a few Red States to the EU. (Boy, won’t those Redders be sooooooooo pissed when they wake one morning to find that they have socialized health care? Well, fuck ‘em.)
Monsieur Grumpe: No, chicken.
Atheist Nun: “compulsory ethical birth control” — if by this Vonnegut means “mandatory sterilization for all,” then oh God yes, please? In my lifetime?
That Revenues curve looks suspiciously flat. It’s like believing that crop circles are made by aliens.
Monsieur Grumpe: Tastes like freedom!
Once you euthanize the boomers and things still go to hell, who are you going to blame? Rush? How old is HE, anyway?
El Pinche: As the last American to have left the state (c1983)I will be glad to bring back the flag. Little did I know it wasn’t the Cubaricans ruining things but the olds. As for me, I welcome our Argentine Sparklers Overladies.
widget09: “Simple, just raise the retirement age to 112.” That’s called the Specter Plan.
My brother the paramedic spends an inordinate amount of his professional day seeing to the considerable needs of the geriatric demographic, known in the profession as “goobers” or “goobs” –as in “turn off the goob-attractors (ambulance’s flashing lights), fer chrissake!”. Just wanted to explain the provenance of the term, which I have co-opted and shall use henceforth to identify said demographic:
If the insurance lobby’s successful exploitation of the HC reform issue (vis-a-vis Death Panels) has taught us anything, it is that goobers’ll believe any number of ridiculous things so why shouldn’t Obama get on board and start letting Grampa Simpson & his legions that only Republican goobers’ll be subjected to Death Panels-the ones who vote as per the Kenchurian Candidate will be spared to enjoy Matlock for another voting cycle. Since they appear, when left to their own devices, to live forever at least we’ll get a permanent majority out of this whole sorry-assed debacle…
Taxing rich people - How about not letting old people retire. Ha ha. Actually I think that is the plan once Calpers goes bust.
Maybe we should invade Afghanistan. That always worked in the past.
Downtheroadapiece: “First sign of dementia, incontinence, arthritis, or coronary disease and he’s allowed to drop me into the Grand Canyon.” If you added diabetes to that list, every citizen in Arizona, including the Native Americans, would have to go into the Canyon. You’ll have the wonders of Phoenix all to yourself.
Heeeey, Let’s sell Guantanamo to the Chinese. Along with Guam and Diego Garcia.
Carrousel! Carrousel!
Monsieur Grumpe: Well I thought it was supposed to be given as a diet drug not something to savour so we could save on healthcare. Most of congress would have to be on it that is why they are so opposed…
RoscoePColtraine: “… as soon as we pay back (to the cent) the amount they contributed during their working years, we cut them off.” My brother will be thrilled with your plan. He puts up with a 95-year old mother-in-law who’s never voted for a Democrat in her entire life and has never earned a single penny in her entire life. Yet she happily cashes all those Social Security checks she doesn’t need, goes to the free Medicare doctor for recreation — and complains every day about how crappy her life is.
trickyrick: “…include a huge tax on any product that contains high fructose corn syrup.” Hey! Exactly how much are my Strawberry Twizzlers going to cost?
Dear Olds!
I have an exciting new OPPORTUNITY for you! For only a small investment and a modest monthly fee, I will reserve a personal iceberg on which your beloveds can place you to float away, where angels will find you. You must hurry because Obama is killing most of the icebergs and polar bears and the Palin family are standing on many of the rest.
Save your family heartache, grief and their inheritance. Sign up now. You can control you own end of life without some Washington bureaucrat being involved. Act now and we will throw in a free calendar with pictures of Bible places.
It’s the Ice Way to Go!
Jukesgrrl: Yeah, he’ll probably live long enough to collect.
Jukesgrrl: Strawberry Twizzlers? Those iz fruit.
Barrett808:
I’m pretty sure Wonkette is overrun by Nothingheads:
A nothinghead was a person who refused to take his ethical birth-control pills three times a day. The penalty for that was $10,000 and ten years in jail.
—snip—
It wasn’t just Billy the Poet who was attracted to Hostesses in Ethical Suicide Parlors. All nothingheads were. Bombed out of their skulls with the sex madness that came from taking nothing, they thought the white lips and big eyes and body stocking and boots of a Hostess spelled sex, sex, sex.
4tehlulz: The Reptards already tried that one. For some reason nobody bought the Private Option for Social Security. What were some of the totally great arguments Back in Aught-Five… Invest your social securities in the stock market and EAT grandma….
Atheist Nun: It would be cool for emo girls to have a career track but would even the lack of drugs make them sexy?
My father was gentlemanly enough to pop off six months after he retired, so all these selfish olds should get with it.
Except my Ma who pays her way in unpaid babysitting her grandchildren. And a couple of her nice friends. And my auntie who is funny.
Oh, gawd.
The government prefers the oldz to suckle at her teat because poor people still have most of their teeth.
Euthanize the young first. They are all ungrateful wretches, and play their crazy music too loud.
Plus, once they are gone there will be no more wars, and (eventually) no people to clutter up the planet either.
Plus GM stopped making the Olds some time back. Now, there was a real car!