AppleBonker wrote:Does a senior who hasn't worked their entire life receive SS/Medicare benefits? My grandmother pretty much never worked a day in her life (typical stay-at-home mother for the time) yet received both until the day she passed. That's earned? Money was collected from MY paycheck to pay for my grandmother's SS and Medicare, not collected from hers and banked until she needed it. Is that not how all these other programs you mention work? Additionally, I pay into all of those "un-earned" programs you just mentioned. If I fall on hard times and start collecting from them, would you argue that I haven't "earned" that benefit?
Edit: should mention my grandfather obviously worked.
If you never worked you can't collect SS. You need 40 quarters of employment to be eligible for SS benefits. Your GM might have received SSDI, which is different, but still requires work credits. She may also have received your GF's SS once he passed. I'm pretty sure the amount of SS you receive monthly is also tied to the amount you paid into the fund.
Here's a link.
Regardless, like I already said, we're not referring to SS nor Medicare as a welfare benefit.
Also, slow down speed racer, no one said you don't deserve anything. No one said to get rid of anything either. We ALL pay taxes, therefore we ALL pay into the system. The problem is, the system is bankrupt. I'm trying to fix it, where as you're complaining about the effect of fixing it. The country IS going to feel the pain...we've put it off for way too long already. Is your idea to simply keep ignoring it? If I fall on hard times I have a savings account. I live within my means and save monthly. I buy used etc.
Try this, examine our current budget deficit, it's over 1 trillion, give or take a touch, in the red annually. We have to trim that much money from our out going before we can come close to balancing things. That's before we even work on the 16 trillion dollars we already owe. We spent 119 Billion dollars in Afghanistn in 2011. So lets get rid of that so we can no longer blame the wars for our economy problems. That leaves about 880 billion dollars that we need to cut from the rest of the budget. I'm all ears dude. Find me 880 billion in cuts that aren't going to hurt. These are all very inaccurate numbers just for conversational topic mind, the true numbers are quite a bit worse.
What are YOUR suggestions. Rather then point out the so called "unfairness" or "mean spiritedness" in everything I say, why don't you offer up some solutions. Right now we're on track to implode, that's just fact man. Over 6 billion a day gets added to our budget because of the debt alone. Who's going to provide for the needy when America totally fails economically? In reality, I'm doing my best to help those that need it by trying to save the country. So far you've offered up nada except for criticism.
While you're worrying about the needy and the unfortunate we dropped 360 billion bucks on interest payments on our already accrued debt. This number goes up daily because we borrow money on a constant basis just to have a functioning Gov. For perspective, we invested 57 billion in our own education.
So you'll have to excuse me if I've taken off my rose colored glasses Apple.
Hijacker wrote:
The issue isn't how you perceive the windbags. They have an audience that listens to them and use those opinions to form political alliances. They do affect voting, that can't be denied. A fairly educated person can easily understand that the verbal diarrhea being projected from them is just that, but unfortunately, there are quite a few people who take it more as gospel. Thankfully, the reality of politics isn't as extreme as what the pundits on the media would let us believe.
Are you seriously going to talk to me about the media swaying the vote? I hate to break it to ya bud, but if you want to consider things that are based on fact rather then bias, the rest of the main stream media was completely up Obama's a**. Fox is a news network that is pro Republican, nobody is going to deny that. But getting uppity about it while you ignore that the rest of the main stream was in bed with Obama for the last 4 years is just silly dude. Cmon..if you're going to judge, judge all of them. Else you're just another one of "them".
Media outlets are FOR profit organizations, leave the rhetoric and bias they constantly portray, take the facts and develop your own opinion. I watch all the channels anymore, it's the only way.
