Duane B
Business & Commercial Broker, Sustainability Business Development Contractor
How do we make sure our children will have Social Security and functional infrastructure for to support commerce, lifestyle?
How do we hold our elected officials accountable for maintaining our Social Security fund as well as necessary funds to ensure adequate maintenance, upgrading of our infrastructure like Mpls. bridge---i.e., how do we prevent them from "stealing" our critical funds by moving them into the "General Fund"; or diverting them into self-serving legacy or "pork" projects?
Answers (5)
Les D
Software Quality Assurance Lead
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I do not think there is any hope for these objectives.!!
OTOH, a couple of actions would help,
Make all government employees, at all levels be in the same social security and medical system as other citizens with no extras. This includes the retired and disabled.
Require that social security and other future obligations (entitlements) follow rules similar to those being applied to private pensions, no promises based on future income, no "imaginary funding", realistic expectations.
Going further, and thus even less likely to happen,
require that funded projects and laws before presentation for a vote have
several analytic statements about the proposal presented to the public
1. Costs and necessary taxation including maintenance cost and identification of the benefits and who receives those benefits. This section should have requirements for projections out to two generations or 100 years and actions to take such as shut down or automatic repeal when costs increase beyond the projects or necessary taxation is not no longer present. This is a limited defense against the patterns of "poorly constrained spending", "feature and benefit creep" and "growth by change request"
2. Constitutionality....perhaps with a penalty, if the sponsors say it is constitutional and the courts say no, sponsors are removed from office.
3. How much freedom is being taken, how many individuals will be inconvenienced by the law, how much privacy right is being removed
4. How many people will the laws make criminals, force to become scofflaws or tax cheats.
5. Environmental and health impacts. These reports should have sections for time frames out to 500 years.
6. Forced Actions to take about the project or law when conditions in above are changed or appear to be incorrectly projected.
(at some point, I thought I had seven "attachements" but today only 5 come to mind)
Kam N
Hedge Fund Manager, Venture Capitalist, Commodity Trader, Mega Broker, Investment Banker
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We are lucky, if we get our share of the Social Security Benefits. IMHO, Privatization of Social Security benefits and Infrastructure which supports our commerce will be the solution. Also we should take advantage of our democratic rights and let our representatives know what we think and what we are expecting of them by showing to the ballot boxes and vote.
Thomas D
Technical Consultant - Data Warehouse, Giant Eagle, Inc.
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Knock down the taxes and let them learn to invest for themselves ... leave government out of their lives ... it only makes a mess of it.
Patrick R
Senior Programmer at Physical Sciences Inc. / MSCS Student at Boston University Metropolitan College
Because constituent services (aka earmarks, aka pork) are more important in a re-election campaign than issues politics - and so incumbents hold an enormous edge in elections - it isn't going to happen. Sure, the approval ratings for Congress as a whole may drop through the floor, but each individual congressman and congresswoman remains popular with their constituents insofar as they deliver to their districts.
Richard J
Managing Partner
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Hi Duane,
IF you could come up with viable answers, please run for President!
I personally am not counting on SS to help me in any way. Seems that by the time I am ready for SS, the funds will be all gone.
IMHO, I would cut out all projects that do not have a direct affect on helping people succeed. For instance, We could save alot of money if we modified the welfare program to require receipients to work XX number of hour per week. Multiple generations of families on welfare show that the system is broken.
Let me know if you decide to run!
Best regards,
Rich
