UnderpantsWeevil

Baby boomers are collecting 265% of what they paid into Social Security

A median-wage worker retiring in 2027 can expect about $730,000 in lifetime Social Security benefits, compared with less than $200,000 paid in taxes by that worker and their employer combined

Adjusting the $200k for inflation, that's around $800k.

If anything, SS recipients should be getting back more than $730k. That's deferred consumption which was recycled through public spending into increased domestic growth. Growth that the vast majority of these workers never got to see, as their salaries fell behind the inflation rate.

But ask the editors of Fortune Magazine what they think of uncapping the Social Security tax, so it applies to people making more than $180k/year. Ask them how they feel about paying for SS directly out of the General Fund, rather than getting a special Poor Tax that can't be exempted through deductions and credits. Ask them how they feel about paying for SS out of an Equities Transaction Tax, such that trillionaires issuing the next round of IPOs take responsibility for the millions of senior citizens who they are brain-fucking with AI slop on a daily basis.

Social Security is the promise this country (kinda-sorta) makes to its elderly. If you worked your whole life, you won't be impoverished the day your employer doesn't consider you a value-add anymore. The taxation scheme for SS is fucked, but only because it taxes labor income rather than labor value. We've seen the gross wealth in this country rise from $2.2T to $167T between 1960 and 2027. And you're telling me we're running out of money to pay our retirees?

Fuck off. Anyone should be able to see through this bullshit.

Like with the Israel lobby and the O&G Industry and the Tobacco industry before it, the "lessons learned" will be more how to mask your activities, displace blame onto individual consumers, and cement yourself within the body politic so that you can keep pissing everyone else off with impugnity.

The "backlash" such that it exists will be weaponized by the two-party system into a wedge issue. And we'll go into 2026 and then 2028 with media saying how you're either For Sensible (toothless) Regulation of AI Industry or you're A Luddite Pawn Of The Russian / Chinese / Drug Traffickers.

Get ready to be tied into knots, explaining why you're only going to support the candidate behind a trillion-dollar AI bailout and a state-subsidized ChatGPT Subscription Mandate, because the alternative is way worse.

People compare the two and Trump looks bad in comparison and he hates that.

I've seen more the opposite. Trump sees Mamdani as popular and keeps trying to hitch a wagon to his star. He did a congratulatory call, gave Mamdani a few concessions coming into office, and even invited him to the WH for a photo op.

McConnell's governor is a Democrat, so they're having to sit on his ahem condition in order to prevent Beshear from replacing him.

Trump dying would just give us President JD Vance, which the Silicon Valley / Wall Street plutocracy are perfectly fine with.

God: "Someone said to kill the big orange... truck? Weird request, but I'm on it."

Zohran Mamdani is one of the most popular politicians in the country, atm.

He was a parody of Rupert Murdoch.

In my experience, people who assume they're part of The Smarts and some vague Other group of people are part of The Stupids are the first in line to get rooked.

Parts of it, certainly.

But we have a strategic policy of enclosure and proletarianization that has been ongoing since the closing of the frontier. The Corporate American Dream is to have labor conditions on par with the The Philippeans accessible from Louisiana or Arizona or Kentucky.

Our problem is largely one of population migration. You can't find a large enough exploitable class of laborers, because Americans keep picking up and traveling to wealthier corners of the country. So the modern political project is to start closing off borders (US/Mexico and US/Canada and the various Caribbean islands), inflating the domestic population (One Billion Americans), and segregating the interior population a la South African apartheid (The Network State).

We are, if anything, too developed. It's too easy to move out of the backwaters of Alabama and find a job in Atlanta, Georgia. Too easy to become a petite bourgeois millionaire in Seattle and buy a cheap McMansion in the Boise suburbs. Too easy to get a college degree, land a white-collar job, and enter the professional managerial class.

US domestic policy is now focused on driving up the barriers between ethnic and gender cohorts (anti-DEI initiatives), shrinking PMC (AI initiatives), and turning the unemployed underclass into a paramilitary under the thumb of the plutocracy (ICE, private security services, massive spying initiatives).

Dubai is the future, baby! But we're not there yet.

Ironic, given that even Donald Trump approves of Zohran Mamdani.

you cannot see past your perceived victimhood just as bad as any MAGA extremist

This seems like the go-to any time you get into any kind of policy dispute.

"Everyone I disagree with is MAGA"

Thank god non-internet progressives actually have sense

I gotta wonder if you know any. They must have a lot of patience to listen to a guy like you heckling them constantly.

I can see Worf pounding the table and shouting "Your security isn't worth a damn!"

I’ll just say she was dog shit at politics

Sure. She should have backed genocide in Gaza and data centers squatting on your front lawn. Then she'd have won against the guy who got back in the race because a bird told him to do it in a dream.

People want the policies

Not the people profiting off the status quo

Even after defeating a objectively bad progressive

:-/

I love "objectively bad" on a subjective scale.

But I love "these Far-Leftist candidates who advocate for everything I agree with are totally unelectable, unlike the corporate empty-suite dweebs I despise" even more.

Why do you think Crowley (and the rest of his corporate media allies) campaigned on frivolous bullshit and made the election about Hong being Too Woke? Where do you think he got all his money to run attack ads?

Fucking morons.

The other 2 should’ve never entered.

Zohran Mamdani and Abdul El-Sayed? They did win

She's polling within margin of error against a guy with near-zero name recognition, after Dems were forced to choose between the country's least popular governor and a Nazi rapist.

Honestly have no idea what you're complaining about. Troy Jackson has better odds of winning than either Platner or Mills ever did.

Am I mistaken? Or did she vote for every SCOTUS judge that overturned RvW?

You might think 9-5 is more illuminating, but you can really club the shit out of the bourgeois with Marx.

Anyone regularly using LinkedIn is already a lost cause.