Dr. Frankel: Obama Puts Away The Childish Things He Found In W.H.

[cieldumort]

Fiscal Responsibility:
Obama Puts away the Childish Things He Found in the White House Feb 23rd, 2009 by jfrankel |

Now I am a believer.

Few readers of my blog will be surprised to hear that I supported Barack Obama in the election.   But I was always skeptical that he would be able to achieve

Comments

[girlfmkitty]

Highly informative post - thanks so much!

[cieldumort]

y/w :)

[girlfmkitty]

Icon &hearts for the Pimp!Tigh!

[cieldumort]

He's the XXXO!

hehe

[cajunfleur]

I don't see anything in the posting rules, but could you put at least part of this under a cut, please? My flist would be oh so pleased if you would! :D

Thanks.

[bord_du_rasoir]

He's the creator/maintainer. So, he makes the rules.

I do understand the need to sometimes place images behind cuts, because sometimes images take a while to load or are so wide that they expand the layout and force words to go off the screen. But I don't understand the need to place two screens worth of text behind a cut. I do understand how if an entry is excessively long (in excess of three screens), scrolling could become slightly burdensome, but in the end, how much time does it take to scroll passed a long entry? One second?

I don't mean to be rude. You are far from alone in this type of request. Lots of people think that entries in excess of one screen belong behind a cut. I just don't understand why and am curious.

[xforge]

Scroll wheel finger fatigue syndrome.

[cieldumort]

I scroll with my middle finger, so that it gets to go through the motions, so to speak ;)

[bord_du_rasoir]

When the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010, it will mean that income above $400,000 will be taxed at 39% rather than 35%. If we allocate that additional 4% to payroll tax rather than to income tax, I believe we could cover the Social Security and Medicare shortfalls (without burdening people with incomes between $107,000 to $400,000 with any more payroll tax).

Additionally, the age at which people begin to receive Social Security benefits should increase from 65 to 67 in the next few years, as the average life expectancy when Social Security was created was 68. Today, the average life expectancy is 77 (74 for males, 80 for females). Exempting manual labor is a good idea.

[cieldumort]

I think moving them over to payroll rather than income sounds like a great idea on the face of it.. have no idea off the top of my head what the particular downsides would be, and there likely are some.

I'm not wild about increasing the age at which people qualify for their social security, tho. That sounds like something Speak Like A Pirate & Friends would be pushing. Paying in to the system for 20, 30, 40, 50 years only to be awarded 7 years on average if you're a male and 13 years if female...

If you're going to raise it, raise it on women but not on men. Call me biased ;)

[bord_du_rasoir]

I think raising the retirement age by a couple years on women and not men is fair. But then, we'd have to establish laws mandating maternity leave (I have no idea what laws currently exist).

[cieldumort]

I can argue that it's not fair that women live on average six years longer than men, and yet the retirement age is the same

[meant to ad] but I have no need for maternity, so I won't go there ;)