daesleeper on February 4, 2010 at 1:47 PM

Saaaay, isn’t it the customary thing to have them pay for dinner and a dance first before they do that kind of thing to us??

Don’t get ahead of me, but I *already* know their solution:

CAROUSEL!!</a.

Won’t happen as long as we’re still flooding the market with over a million legal H1-B visa holders a year. Most of those have some form of hard science or engineering degree.

DFCtomm on February 5, 2010 at 8:51 AM

It’s disgusting to me how lazy American kids are.
I encourage my students to avoid the BA degrees & get a BS in something.
You don’t even have to have a hard science major-just take some hard science & math as electives.
I’m not a genius, but my BS is way more valuable than the PE’s teacher’s BA in physical ed.
And I will always be able to find a decent paying job, unlike a phy ed major.

meanwhile the IRS is packing heat!!!

I have a cousin in that same boat. 3M, engineer, work there for life? Not anymore.

That’s got to change, soon. The sheer numbers of today’s generation taking worthless majors, would say the older generations would have to become a hot commodity someday. It’s not like Junior, with his Communications/minor in Moron-Studies degree will design the next 3M product, cure the next disease, or such.

Then again, looking at companies like GE, maybe the Moron-Studies degree holders are designing the latest products, as long as they last, now…

MNHawk on February 5, 2010 at 8:01 AM

Won’t happen as long as we’re still flooding the market with over a million legal H1-B visa holders a year. Most of those have some form of hard science or engineering degree.

So, what to invest in? Spices? A cow and some chickens for the back yard?

NTWR on February 4, 2010 at 1:49 PM

Yeah, that is exactly what I would recommend, and if you don’t have a backyard suitable, then invest in that first. I hear now is a good time to buy.

Adjusting SS retirement age by one month a year would have worked 30 years ago. It’s way to late now.

An immediate 3 year jump is needed then we can start adjusting by one month a year.

Second, SS needs to be adjusted by inflation, not by the rate at which incomes increase.

MarkTheGreat on February 4, 2010 at 5:06 PM

Or…We just start requiring a clean drug test to participate in any entitlement program.

I’ve got no problem with that. However, having some experience with Fortune 500 machinations to get rid of 55-60 year old scientists who have achieved high compensation levels and can be replaced cheaply, I doubt there will be much of a job market for 67 year old workers unless you are talking about Walmart greeters.

a capella on February 4, 2010 at 4:41 PM

I have a cousin in that same boat. 3M, engineer, work there for life? Not anymore.

That’s got to change, soon. The sheer numbers of today’s generation taking worthless majors, would say the older generations would have to become a hot commodity someday. It’s not like Junior, with his Communications/minor in Moron-Studies degree will design the next 3M product, cure the next disease, or such.

Then again, looking at companies like GE, maybe the Moron-Studies degree holders are designing the latest products, as long as they last, now…

Well folks, according to a report by the Congressional Budget Office, Social Security is broke. . . busted. . . bankrupt. Oh, you won’t hear those words from the Democrats and Republicans. Nope, they’ll go on record about how Social Securit…

The proper analogy for the US and other “rich” countries is the man with a syringe in his arm from which a rubber tube runs into his mouth. He survives by sucking his own blood. Well, he survives for a while and then the fainting fits come. He can only be kept alive with food donated by outsiders and those outsiders will eventually call the shots. That’s what is happening with the Chinese and other buyers of US debt. Obama is just making sure he sucks most of the blood now, while it is still available.

Originally people were suppose to pay a small part of each paycheck into the government fund and when they retired receive a pension that insured they had something to live on if they had not provided for their old age when they were able to work.

Of course all that money was too much of a temptation for politicians to ignore, especially in those progressive times, so they began borrowing some of it, then as in today, they just took it and toss in IOU’s written of bathroom tissue. Worse they began using it to pay for social programs like SSI (another form of welfare), and real or claimed disablities.

Now it is broke and going under with no help in sight, except making the tax payers pay a higher taxes to cover the stolen taxes they already paid or find a way to grab their personal retirement funds.

Could it have been different if they had kept the greedy hands of congress out of the social security cookie jar?

We can look for Texas for that answer. Teachers in Texas are exempt for paying into Social Security and instead pay into our own Teacher Retirement System, that for the most part was based on the original Social Security law.

As I understand it there was a loop hole that exempted academic professors and teachers from paying into the SS fund. Why it is that way I don’t know, but it must be unchangeable, or at least it is in Texas. Texas is a republic tied to the United States by a treaty, so a lot of things are seperated in what we do or have from the way things are or done in other states.

The one of the big differences between the TRS and Social Security; TRS funds are not accessable to the legistlators, unlike the SS funds are to congress. TRS is stable and has adequate funds to meet the needs today and far into the future. The fund is not used to pay for welfare related programs nor to pay out diabilites.

Teachers penisons are based on what they have paid into it, not on the highest year of income. There are provisions for a member to buy retirement years or to transfer other retirement pensions into it.

It might be of interest to note that the baby boomers are not a concern. The reason is simple. TRS is not running a ponzi scheme where a smaller number of younger workers are trying to pay the SS penisons for an increasing number of retiries.

The only way to reform social security is to destroy it and start over with one that does only what it is intended to do, save from embezzlement of its funds by congress. Let there be a way to enroll the younger people, and the goverment to figure out a way for them to manage their ponzi scheme without them.

It’s the brainchild of 5 lefty orgs (SEIU, AFL-CIO, EPI …) that have come together to find a fix to the current retirement system.

They want “UNIVERSAL, SECURE, AND ADEQUATE,” retirement for all, even if it means subsidizing those who haven’t managed to save enough on their own. It’s like Social Security part 2. It’s in the works and it doesn’t look pretty.

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