U.S. News - California governor calls for higher taxes, 4-day state workweek to fill $16 billion gap

[majoun]

Originally Posted by malamute

third world nations with their third world birth rates.

Third world birth rates?
You mean like those of Cuba and Thailand? (both lower than the US" birth rate)

The countries with the highest birth rates are overwhelmingly Islamic countries, in fact there is only one Latin American country amongst the countries with the 50 highest birth rates (Guatemala at #50)

[Malloric]

Originally Posted by malamute

Actually you're wrong.

The number of retirees is nothing like the exploding birth rate and the retirees are a dwindling population -- even if the lifespan has increased. Remember the retirement age has also gone up.

Even if some of the retirees are getting a higher pension than we think they should, they will get it for a limited number of years. Then what? Then where do your politicians look for money to raid for their massive spending programs?

You can throw every retired person out onto the streets and confiscate all their investments and you will soon be left with nothing for your massive out-of-control government spending.

You simply have to cut spending on the programs that have no limits of new recipients. The welfare programs are bringing in millions of indigents from other countries because all one needs to do is give birth to babies in order to access those programs.

Huh? Have you ever heard of the baby boom? They're about to start retiring. The retirees is not dwindling. Birth rates are at an all time low, fertility rate is 2.05... meaning each woman has 2.05 children. And we've already confiscated all of their social security money long ago. I guess we could raid their private pension and retirement funds, but that would be more difficult than just forcing the social security and medicare trusts to buy T-bills with their deposits.

Yes, we've pushed the retirement age up three years from 65 to 68. The problem? People live 20 years longer. If we pushed the retirement age up 20 years to go along with the 20 years longer life expectancy, there wouldn't be a problem.

[mountainrose]

Chris Christie, Scott Walker, and Mitch Daniels all inherited states that had been run into the same fiscal mess by liberal progressives' policies as CA. Their states were hugely in debt and all three have totally turned their states around with major political, union, entitlement, and spending reforms and are now all on sound financial ground or close to it.

WHY, WHY, WHY can't CA learn from these other states that are succeeding with the same problems as CA except they do not have as large of an illegal immigrant population that they have to mega $$$ support----but they had all the other problems. Scott Walker did it without even raising taxes, and now because they are in such good fiscal shape, he is actually going to lower them.

[jaypee]

Originally Posted by felinius

There's a very big cultural difference between Asia and the typical America, which is probably the same reason that Asians are apparently dominating the UC system.

What is missing? A respect for teachers, and a respect for learning. What happened to the era of education in America?

Agree here. I'm first-gen Asian and where I'm from, I'm taught to hold my teachers in the highest regards -- second to my parents.

[Pretzelogik]

Originally Posted by Bulldogdad

Run it into the ground. Lot of people gonna get hurt but I currently see no other way.

Guess cutting mega government and freebie giveaways are out of the question.

[.highnlite]

WHY, WHY, WHY can't CA learn from these other states that are succeeding with the same problems as CA except they do not have as large of an illegal immigrant population that they have to mega $$$ support-

huh, baloney

[RedJacket]

Originally Posted by mountainrose

Chris Christie, Scott Walker, and Mitch Daniels all inherited states that had been run into the same fiscal mess by liberal progressives' policies as CA. Their states were hugely in debt and all three have totally turned their states around with major political, union, entitlement, and spending reforms and are now all on sound financial ground or close to it.

WHY, WHY, WHY can't CA learn from these other states that are succeeding with the same problems as CA except they do not have as large of an illegal immigrant population that they have to mega $$$ support----but they had all the other problems. Scott Walker did it without even raising taxes, and now because they are in such good fiscal shape, he is actually going to lower them.

I live in WI and everything you said about Scott Walker is bullchit. What he has managed to do is put WI DEAD LAST in job creation. Dead last as in number 50.

[malamute]

Originally Posted by Malloric

Huh? Have you ever heard of the baby boom? They're about to start retiring. The retirees is not dwindling. Birth rates are at an all time low, fertility rate is 2.05... meaning each woman has 2.05 children. And we've already confiscated all of their social security money long ago. I guess we could raid their private pension and retirement funds, but that would be more difficult than just forcing the social security and medicare trusts to buy T-bills with their deposits.

Yes, we've pushed the retirement age up three years from 65 to 68. The problem? People live 20 years longer. If we pushed the retirement age up 20 years to go along with the 20 years longer life expectancy, there wouldn't be a problem.

Retirement age has been pushed to 68, but the life expectancy is not at 88, it's less than 82 for women, less than 76 for men.

Contrary to what you may think, many retirees are not costing the government billions of dollars, they own their own homes, they were responsible and paid into social security for 50 or more years and in addition saved up other retirement savings. Many are active and healthy and use very few health care dollars.

Children cost much much more if they are on welfare handouts -- add up the costs of Medicaid, food stamps, WIC, Section 8 housing, and of course the costs each year of schools for them. Of course children born to working taxpayers are not costing the government, it's the exploding welfare that has no limits on numbers that you need to cut -- you simply cannot keep adding so many people to welfare handouts and think you can do this forever.

The birth rate isn't the only reason for our exploding population increases.

Getting back to the elderly -- even if you do manage to rob them of their retirement incomes and take their houses from them to redistribute as you wish, it's only a temporary fix -- where will you look for money after that?