That's reminds me of how the debt ceiling is like my weight ceiling. 5 years ago it was 170. Well, I hit the limit so let's raise it up to 173, I hit 173 I push that weight ceiling to 177. Meanwhile this morning I was 182, if I hit 185 that's the hard ceiling, food austerity time!

If I hit 185 I'll be running around showing everyone my abs like The Situation. Only 75 lbs to go!

Internet randos are saying its obvious that there is going to be a massive recession in 2016 and the other group is saying I trust the free market over Internet randos.

Like, the essential difference between pokerdudebro99 and.. well... everyone else, isn't some disagreement about how well the marketplace works or the role of gov't. It's him thinking that Janet Yellen is a sorceress who has enchanted the market with her QE magecraft into ignoring the looming inflationpocalypse, and everyone else who thinks the economy is likely going to hum along in 2016 pretty much the way it always does.

But we're buying our freedom and safety man, and you just can't put a price on that!

Bush kept us safe from Saddam Hussein.

Twice.

why not just privatize s.s. and let the workers keep there hard earned dollars in the family? is this not how the rich get rich? by passing down accumalted wealth to their children?
sounds like a plan no one can refuse except the folks that don't want to work

A+ spelling, grammar and argle-bargle combo.

GWB proposed a privatization option and the Dems basically stated no way, no how. On this one the Dems are right, it is part of the safety net and should not be exposed to high risk in my view. However, trust fund assets being what they are, pretty sure that those assets aren't as solid as a lot of folks might think. I would feel a lot better about marketable securities in the trust fund. Of course public sector unions do fine with their asset allocation strategies where a great deal of their assets are invested in the stock market. So there is s case to be made for taking on more risk. To me though, it compromises the idea of a safety net.

that would have worked out REAL well for "workers" approaching or in retirement when the market crashed...

i wonder why they are always "hard earned dollars"? surely, some of those people are sloths at work, i know every place i've ever worked has people who are just collecting a paycheck... are those people allowed to just wantonly waste those dollars, instead of saving them? hardly seems fair... if i had known i would have been able to make it rain, rather than investing, i never would have worked hard at all...

you are making the (very faulty) assumption that people would "accumulate and pass down" the relatively measly amount of dollars that they pay in ss tax*... i would place a VERY large wager and give odds that most of those dollars would get spent...

look at it this way... ss is basically a forced retirement account for those who will likely need it, and those who are fortunate enough not to need it get money from it anyway... and given:

- that the tax is a payroll tax... for "the rich", a payroll rax is the least of their worries...
and
- ss benefits are essentially collected by all, even "the rich"...
and
- basically EVERYONE who lives to their life expectancy takes out more than they put in... edit: and guess which group of people is most likely to not only make their life expectancy but exceed it??? hint: it ain't the mr. hard earned dollars group...

it's not like "the rich" are supporting "the poor" here, nor is anyone losing out...

side note: you need to educate yourself about how "the rich":

a) acquire, accumulate and pass on wealth...
and
b) judging by the construction of your post, how badly they are screwing you...

* you MIGHT try to make the argument that people spending those extra dollars would be good for the economy... you would be very very wrong...

Why don't the poor just accumulate more wealth?

Are we work-shopping punchlines for an snl sketch on the republican debate?

On the hard earned $ thing, 80% (90%?) of success in life is just showing up maybe?

We are due another recession by 2018, as the trend is one major downturn at least every 10 years.

Between now and then the nay sayers will say there will be an event in 2016/2017 and the BAU fan bois will say in 2018 that everything is totally hunky dory right upto the day of the 5%+ drop.

So you're saying recessions happen because of the passage of time?

Seems dubious.

Aren't we overdue an extinction level meteor strike? Maybe the two events have decided to happen together as cause and effect in two to three years.

I just wanted to point out that more or less ever since 1971 when the US ended the conversion of currency to gold and ended Bretton Woods, the claim has been the central planners have been obfuscating and delaying inevitable economic disaster. But this is pretty clever of those central planners to keep the scheme going for literally decades. At some point you have to tip your hats to these thugs, you may live your whole life with the central planners never letting you know you were consistently this close to total economic depravity, keeping you well fed and happy. And dumb, I guess.

Shame on them. Think, the horror of that.

All I want to know is how long the central planners can keep the charade going. Someone might get the idea if the time horizon is pretty long, this might just be a good idea.

When the simulation is all there is, the simulation is reality.

Have you considered whether we are in fact simulated brains in a vat in a holographic universe living under a illusory prosperity? Didn't think so.

Better to take all accumulated wealth and spread it evenly among the population. Why should children be entitled to the wealth of their parents anymore than the rest of us? The children of rich people should have to work hard and save like everybody else.

Not even remotely what I was saying, what a weird literal take.

That said the business cycle is a thing.

certainly said meteor strike would have bad effects upon the economy. at that point, unfortunately for them, the doomsayers won't have the opportunity to say "i told you the economy was gonna crash".

then why even bother even allowing people to accumulate past a certain amount in the first place if you are going to just take it away from them when they die?

what if their motivation to accumulate is because they don't want their children to work hard?

also, if those children of the rich didn't work hard and invest (not "save", "invest"), that accumulated wealth would run out. hint: every rich child isn't arthur. the great majority work hard and make their own money, they don't live off their parents. that is not to say that they do not have great advantages, but they aren't just a bunch of paris hilton sloths living off the family fortune.

geez.

well, i was joking about how posts like that always reference "hard earned" dollars.

that being said, the "how much of success is just showing up?" question has a real answer. from a sample size of one (me):

when i was a rat running in the corporate race, i would say 90%. there are that 10% who have the drive to run harder. those are the people who advance beyond a place where they have a "comfortable life" (e.g. nice home, car, can go on vacation, put money in their 401k). for 90% of people a comfortable life is "enough". i fell in that group.

the 90% contains two groups, about 75% in one, and 15% in the other. the former group shows up, shuts up, does their job and collects their paycheck. the latter group shows up, whines, does everything possible to get out of doing actual work and collects their paycheck.

as to how "hard earned" those dollars are for the entire group, it depends on the job. in the corporate world, i worked "hard". long hours, stress, etc. but my dollars were certainly much more easily earned than a ditch digger's dollars (not to mention more plentiful). his "hard work" certainly will take a much greater physical toll in the short and long run than mine.

now that i run in my own race, some of my dollars are harder to earn than others. it all depends on how much of a pita the client is.

I saw Blanchflower (prominent UK economist) on the TV talking about how we are more likely to be closer to the next recession than the last one and how worrying that was as recovery from the last one was so limited and we had no levers left.

Some of it was based on data which maybe fair enough but the 'cycle' idea seems flawed as if the recovery is slower we aren't as far into the cycle - the cycle is 'down follows up ...' rather than 'down every ~x years'.

Citation needed. IME, half globe trot and do minimal charitable giving/work, the other half get hooked up with ridiculous jobs they're not qualified for and work no harder than the average dude.

Paris Hilton is a weird choice there. She makes "over $10mill" a year from her own ventures like perfume and fashion.