Social Security Act: 1935

Life Expectancy in 1935: 61.5
Age in which SS benefits could be collected in 1935: 65

Life Expectancy in 2010: 79.4
Age in which SS benefits could be collected in 2010: 66

(up to 67 for those born in 1960 and after, which would be 2027!)

Solution:
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2011: 66
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2012: 67
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2013: 68
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2014: 69
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2015: 70
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2016: 71
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2017: 72
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2018: 73
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2019: 74
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2020: 75
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2021: 76
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2022: 77
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2023: 78
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2024: 79
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2025: 80 (or average life expectancy)
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2026: 81 (or average life expectancy)
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2027: 82 (or average life expectancy)
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2028: 83 (or average life expectancy)
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2029: 84 (or average life expectancy)
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2030: 85 (or average life expectancy)

The longer we work the more we produce and the stronger our country is. So when we are expected to live to 110 on average and we have 80 years of productive life, which is almost twice what people are doing now, we will be that much stronger without overspending to supplement retirement.

It’s all very logical, the real problem isn’t the facts, which all check out, it’s that the pervasive view of people in the US is entitlement and precedent. Everyone thinks they are entitled to retire at age 60 because they put in their “time” like their parents did, precedent.

They don’t care about the facts because their sense of entitlement has skewed any logic that may cross their tiny selfish brains.

Instead of thinking, “I want to make more money and have a higher standard of living, so I’ll go back to school and become a lawyer instead of remaining on the line at Ford” they think “I’ve put in my time, I deserve to retire at 55. I started here when I was 18 and I better get what’s due me or I’ll commit some violent anti-social crime against the ‘man’ for denying what I’ve earned. I DESERVE it damit, its MINE, MINE, MINE!”

The problem is these people are not like our grandparents, who actually WORKED while on the line at Ford, shaping the country and making a fare days wages for a fair days work. Now, our parents and our generation think they should get the same wages and a shit load of entitlements for much less work and per-person productivity.

Add to that ideology, like the kind that not only panders to these ‘selfish’ people but also makes efforts to give everyone the ‘American Dream’ at the expense of The Rich. And listen – I understand. I hate rich people! But contrary to this ideology’s imagination, The Rich don’t keep all this ‘wealth’ in a big money bin, ready to be ‘raised’ by increasing tax rates. The Rich are businesses and investors – one and all. You can’t take their money and do their job for them. People have tried. Everyone starves to death and ends up living under a paranoid dictator – every time.

When you raise tax rates on The Rich you are increasing the price of business, whether it’s increasing business costs directly or increasing investment costs. You’re not hitting the actual rich people, they keep up their precious fancy lifestyles. That tax you had aimed at The Rich simply passes through them, like watermelon seeds, none the worse for wear.

You increase capital gains tax - The Rich adjust their portfolios for lower risk (risk/reward), sending new ideas elsewhere for money, outside the US, or the ideas take longer to implement, or aren’t implemented at all, or, most likely, they’re implemented somewhere cheap, like China.

You increase income tax on The Rich, Barb at Barb’s Beauty Salon raises the chair rental fee, stuffing your tax down the throats of lower-middle class beauticians (single moms and stuff). And Brutus and Roy at B&R Roofing look at their excel sheet and see they need to wait until next season before they invest and hire that fourth crew – again, lower and lower-middle wage earners eat your tax by not getting hired by Brutus and Roy.

You raise the corporate tax, Big Mean Co. hires fewer people and works the ones it has an extra hour – hitting the little guy again. Or maybe Big Mean Co. raises its prices, again, hitting the consumer, the little guy. Or maybe it’s already dealing with tight profit margins (can’t raise prices without losing business/money) and can’t function with fewer employees. Well, off to Mexico with the whole enchilada!

Better to make the US a hospitable place for business, where new ideas can spawn, salon chairs are cheap, roofers have room to try hiring that fourth crew, Big Mean Co. is always looking for good people, prices stay competitive with garbage being shipped here in containers, and business comes to America rather than flees from it. That way there will be more business and investment (The Rich) to tax, and tax revenues will increase the healthy way, through growth.

In the recent primaries and elections, the Tea Party has proven itself a political force. I still don’t know what to make of them, though. They’s stated they don’t want to create another political party, but reform the ones we’ve got. I like that. Yet there’s something about their decked out patriot costumes and slogans that shouts Obama Birthers and 9/11 Truthers. What do you think? Is the Tea Party something to support?

Movements can be powerful. A powerful movement is good or dangerous – depending on your politics.

The Tea Party is a unique type of movement for the United States. It’s large and quiet. Most US movements are small and loud, representing specific minority issues, and are often organized and financed by unions and other organizations.

The Tea Party movement represents the general ideas of efficiently small government and personal responsibility, which are ideas held by the majority of working Americans, regardless of past voting habits. And the movement is ‘grass roots,’ meaning it simply sprang up comprising numerous like-minded people throughout society. That’s why Tea Party rallies are held on the weekend, so the whole group doesn’t have to get the day off, unlike the common Hippy-Liberal rallies that appear on weekdays intentionally to be disruptive.

You can tell the Tea Party movement is powerful just by how nervous it makes outspoken Liberals. And the Liberal criticism of the movement is weak at best. Liberals, including Obama, describe the Tea Party like they’re Anarchists, wanting no government – but the Tea Party just wants government to stop growing wildly. They agree government is a good thing.

Liberals describe the Tea Party as hateful and dangerous – but the Tea Party has harmed no one, committed no property damage (unheard of at Liberal rallies), don’t cause disruption, and even pick up after themselves. The favorite Liberalcriticism of the Tea Party, of course, is that Tea Party activists are anti-Obama racists – but the only examples of racist behavior has been by Liberals planting themselves at Tea Party rallies. There’s even a $100,000 reward for evidence of a Tea Partier using a racial slur – unclaimed!

The Tea Party has proven a strong force in the few special elections held since its appearance. And if you believe in its basic principles – not further growing/financing more government bureaucracies – then supporting it is natural. The few goofballs wearing the 1700s gear, birthers, and 9/11 truthers are few at most. As far as political rallies go, you’d expect to see more weirdos. But the average Tea Partier is the average working American. Don’t be fooled by the press and its tendency to show only the most eccentric or dangerous looking members of a protest in its news reports. Yeah, the Tea Party is mostly white, but so is America.

The real question is strategic: What will this movement mean for the direction of the country? Movements like this can be extremely productive in promoting their ideas – but can be equally as destructive to them.

Electing Brown in Massachusetts was an example of a productive direction of power. It stuck a republican into one of the most traditionally Democratic seats in Congress. An example of a possibly destructive direction was the Tea Party induced victory of Rand Paul over Trey Grayson in Kentucky’s Republican primary election for the mid-term Senate race. Grayson was the more electable candidate, the one establishment Republicans were backing. And Rand Paul, somewhat a radical, has since already said a few ‘unelectable’ things…

So we’ll see. If this were a Democrat upsergence I’d predict that the eventual result would be repetition of history: Dems splitting the vote and handing victory to the minority, how Lincoln got elected. But the Tea Party is mostly Republican and Libertarian. The Libertarians worry me, but Republicans are generally a big-picture type of people who will recognize the necessity of electing electable people, rather than ideal people.

And by ‘electable’ I don’t mean moderate. Indeed, America wants a moderate government, one that will provide expert non-ideological solutions. But that would require expert non-ideological people. And those kinds of people rarely run for political office and even more rarely are elected (they’re usually ugly and/or awkward). So we have to settle for electing the most reasonable seeming ideologs in even numbers on each side of the spectrum. Right now we’re dealing with a swinging pendulum in that respect.

A Value Added Tax (VAT) is a tax on the estimated value of products at each stage of production and distribution. And like all taxes on business, it’s passed on to the consumer – making everything more expensive.

A VAT is similar to a sales tax in who actually pays it, but the difference is that the VAT hides the amount the consumer pays. When you look at your receipt from the grocery store you can see the sales tax. It’s right under the subtotal. When you buy a car there’s a special line just for the sales tax.

But the VAT is charged at each state of production and shipping. It’s not marked anywhere for you or me to see. With a VAT, the auto manufacturer would be charged based on the value of the car when it’s sold to the dealer. The shipper for the car would be charged a VAT for the value of the shipping. The subcontractors, the companies that make all the parts for the car, would be charged a VAT for the parts they manufacture. And the producers who make the material the parts are made of, they would pay a VAT too, as would the shippers, as would the producers of the packaging material.

And this huge and complex system would apply to most everything. All the materials and equipment everywhere in between the above process would carry the VAT hidden in its price – everything from tools to toilet paper.

This is why sneaky politicians like the VAT. They can make promises of monetary gifts to get into office, once in office establish expensive entitlements and pass huge goody bills for their friends, and pay for it by raising the VAT without anyone noticing. Historically that’s what has happened in Europe anyway.

If a sales tax is raised everyone sees it. But you can raise the VAT quietly, incrementally, with few people raising a fuss.

So why am I bringing this up? The US doesn’t have a VAT. We have income and sales tax. Well, I bring it up because the US is spending huge amounts of money, adding to the immense pile of debt, and otherwise over the past couple years has been moving in the direction of of a European style of heavy tax/entitlement. Also, Obama says the VAT is, “on the table” with regard to fixing the county’s serious budget problems.

And seriously, what else is there? Is anyone going to cut precious programs in this Liberal climate? Hell, we’re passing new ones. The answer Obama and his Dems have offered to EVERY problem so far is a huge pile of cash or a huge new bureaucracy – but usually both. He promised (pfft) not to raise taxes on anyone making less than blah blah. But he can’t raise income taxes on the rich anymore. They’re already on the down slopping side of the bell curve. (raising their taxes will result in lower tax revenue) What else is there?

So watch out for the VAT. It’s a sneaky tax. Every tax is bad for the economy – but this one dodges accountability with the consumer. It hits everyone including the poorest, which is actually good for the Democrat’s style of campaign/governance. They can suck money out of our society then distribute it back as the clumsy, slow, expensive bureaucracies see fit – VISIBLY – so the politicians can take credit for ‘giving’ assistance to people in need.

My chef’s knife. I use it two of three times a day everyday and haven’t really cut myself in like five years, so I was due, and getting arrogant. About a week ago, I was cutting up some lettuce and baby green really fine for the salad I like to make, just chopping away, feeding the lettuce in, and suddenly I felt the numb feeling of a slice. It wouldn’t stop bleeding unless I kept pressure on it, so I wrapped it tight with a bandaid and slept with it elevated. It had stopped by morning. I found the piece… LOL

The top photo collage is of photos I took the day after, about 14 hours, after the actual injury. The bottom photo collage I just took. Isn’t it cool how fast the skin heals from even such deep avulsions?