The solvency issue with Social Security will resolve itself spontaneously when "the last" of the baby boomers die. Once we grasp this time-certain fact, we no longer find ourselves confronting an intractable, "infinite" problem, but a manageable problem whose solution requiries a modest amount of sacrifice for 20-25 years.
At bottom, Republicans are alarmists who constantly misrepresent finite, manageable problems as boundless, impossible problems...
... unless, of course, the "offending program" is eliminated.
Hence Republican tax crusader Grover Norquist's call to shrink government: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." Mr. Norquist, who impresses me as a vile human being who would design the destruction of the Unite States, also said: "Our goal is to inflict pain. It is not good enough to win; it has to be a painful and devastating defeat. We're sending a message here. It is like when the king would take his opponent's head and spike it on a pole for everyone to see." http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist (Ronald Reagan's "sanctification" of Grover Norquist is another of the long-haul catastrophes that Dutch seeded for subsequent harvest. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/11/norquists-tax-pledge-what-it-is-and-how-it-started/)
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"Ronald Reagan: The Vilest American President"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/04/why-is-ronald-reagan-vilest-american.html
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1.) Don't just raise the Social Security income ceiling but lift the income ceiling altogether so that citizens pay FICA on all earnings, not just earnings in excess of $100,000.00 or $200,000.00
2.) Lift the Social Security income ceiling until the baby boomers (of whom I'm one) die off.
Rationale:
The Fat Cats owe the nation serious payback.
How much payback do they owe?
Reagan Budget Director, David Stockman, who oversaw the biggest tax cut in the history of humankind, made this observation: “In 1985, the top five percent of the households – the wealthiest five percent – had net worth of $8 trillion – which is a lot. Today, after serial bubble after serial bubble, the top five per cent have net worth of $40 trillion. The top five percent have gained more wealth than the whole human race had created prior to 1980.”
David Stockman interviewed by Leslie Stahl of "60 Minutes" (the source of the above quotation): http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7009217n&tag=contentMain;contentAux
And here's another helpful "visualization" to contextualize Top Dog’s savaging of Underdog - http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/03/viral-video-shows-huge-gap-between.html
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Inconvenient Truth:
At bottom, Americans want big government - not huge, but big.
At bottom, Americans want big government - not huge, but big.
Furthermore, big government costs money, a fact Americans are beginning to accept.
To generate enough revenue to pay for the big government Americans want, they will approve higher taxes on the wealthy.
Romney's desire to cut taxes on the wealthy -- a policy consistent with Grover Norquist's No Tax Pledge -- is the bedrock reason why Mitt lost.
