Except for the ‘entitlement crowd’, who’s saying hard work is ‘stupid’? Tell me this… do you expect to be ‘rewarded’ for not working? You expect to get something from nothing? Do you really expect that life has some level of fairness; that others, while working their butts off, are going to hand you something to make it easier for you?
Of course but this doesn't happen in a vacuum and this is why I focus on general welfare.
No
Worse, it is not necessary. We need less and less work every year. As I've been arguing, productivity gains, efficiency gains, innovation, automation, it is less and less possible for more and more people to earn a decent income. And yet we're richer and richer.
I hope your part time teaching gig isn't English or even English as a second.
Because why?
Regardless of what we think should happen or would work when it comes to a mass forgiving of consumer debt (I very much disagree with you on the effects of that), sovereign debt is a completely different situation. It works differently and the effects of failing to honor it would be profoundly different. Those people that you're referring to as drowning, you'd be hanging cinder blocks around many of their necks if you threatened other nations to accept 10 cents on the dollar for the U.S. debt that they hold (or that was held by parties in their countries).
You seem to think there are guarantees in life. Look at Steve jobs. The guy worked pretty hard to create a phenomenal product; then got cancer and died – too young. I bet you’d take the life of the guy who is still alive breaking his back to make ends meet than Steve Job’s?
I think a lot of young people do expect to be rewarded for not working. I was going to say "young people today" but it's probably always been that way, although kids these days seem much more entitled than when I was in my 20s. When I was a kid, if I wanted spending money or cool clothes or something outside my mom's budget, I had to work and earn the money for it. Therefore, once I graduated high school and moved into adulthood, working wasn't a foreign experience for me and getting a job was typically a matter of asking for one. Parents these days want their kids to be children and play instead of work, so they hand them cash and stuff for free and the kid never learns how to earn anything.
You're not hanging out with the right crowd if that's all you see. Perhaps that's the problem: the people you surround yourself with.
That money does get paid back whenever the Social Security program needs it, which to some extent it does now. Social Security takes in less now through taxes than it pays out in benefits (plus there are relatively small administrative costs), so it relies on interest from the general treasury on the savings that it has accumulated. At some point in the not too distant future it will, in effect, be withdrawing principal as well - the annual interest that it gets won't be enough to make up the annual deficit. Really, most of the savings that it has (in the form of special issue U.S. Treasury securities) represents the interest that it's been paid over the years rather than the accumulation of annual surpluses.
It is difficult for me to read the various forms of "informal language". I am an old school type of guy, ebonics, rap and other informal languages don't necessarily have a direct to English ( or even American, if you will) conversion. Your informal approach here may very well crossover into other aspects of life.
Most kids today (I’d say kids up to about the age of 30) don’t even know what hand-me-downs are. Parents will put themselves in debt to make sure their kid had the coolest Nikes or the best cell phone. For Christmas/birthdays, we got what we needed (socks, clothes, etc…); rarely anything we really wanted. My bicycle was pieced together from parts I scrounged from people’s trash and dumps and such. This sounds sad to some; but this taught me invaluable mechanical skills. When I was in Jr High, I woke up at 3am to deliver newspapers, my dad was working as a general contractor, his company hired me over the summer to help some of the carpenters, roofers, and other workers. I learned how to lay shingles, measure lumber, use electric tools, and swing a hammer. I had to dig ditches, mix concrete by hand, and carry shingles up to a roof on a ladder. It was HARD-ASS work. Then I’d go home and mow lawns in the evening. I never really had summer vacations per se.
Maybe I've misunderstood all along, weren't quite a few of the transfers from social security supposed loans to other programs?
That's an interesting point. I don't think I have thought about that before.
It's about as nonsensical as his other positions (depending on the time and day), yet he is the GOP frontrunner by a mile.
Because I'm concerned about the state of our economy?
So what was wrong with my posts. Go ahead, mister old school. Because I am not typing it out in formal essay format you can't understand it?
Take Clem's thought and go one further to include survivor benefits. It was not uncommon practice for government workers to work part time gigs just to get their "40 quarters" and double dip. Two of those I knew, died at 67 and 72, their surviving spouses are in their nineties
I'm 28. I remember getting socks and Reese cups for Christmas one year.
Went to school a year after graduating high school, took on student loan debt and got into the smart homes/home theater business, then the recession hit and no one wanted to drop that kind of money on TV's and speakers. I went to Community College, still paying off the previous student loan debt, took a class on AutoCAD and got into consulting/engineering. I've worked my way up from there to where I am now. All my student loan debt is paid off and any classes I take are paid for in full, out of my pocket. My wife is a local small business owner and we both own a home, a new car, travel, both have had 401Ks for years, and besides a car payment and mortgage (which we pay extra on both) we're debt free.