BigRedBuster Posted May 11, 2020 Author Share Posted May 11, 2020 29 minutes ago, Guy Chamberlin said: Again, while Medicare for All strikes some folks as dangerous socialism, a lot of for-profit capitalist enterprises would LOVE to get out of the healthcare business and channel that revenue elsewhere. 1 Link to comment
TGHusker Posted May 13, 2020 Share Posted May 13, 2020 1 hour ago, RedDenver said: Cobra - not a fan. I've had to use Cobra before- too costly especially for an event like this. Here is an interesting idea - allow people to tap into their future Soc Sec - up to 1% - not enough to create a future retirement crisis by perhaps a bit to help now. However, my concern and as noted in the article - you open up Pandora's box with that action. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-radical-idea-to-rescue-us-households-nowwithout-adding-to-the-national-debt-2020-05-07?reflink=mw_share_twitter&utm_source=Retirement+Living&utm_campaign=c4f52dbac5-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_06_26_03_39_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4f08bdac38-c4f52dbac5-49192987 Quote It wouldn’t have to be a big amount, write finance professors Sylvain Catherine and Max Miller and law professor Nastasha Sarin at the University of Pennsylvania. They don’t want to add to the country’s looming retirement crisis down the road. They’re talking about letting people withdraw just 1% of their future benefits. Doesn’t sound like much? It’s more than you might think. They estimate the median withdrawal would be $4,300 per household. Added to existing unemployment benefits, it would allow three quarters of U.S. households to survive three months of unemployment without cutting consumption, they estimate. “[E]ven to provide workers $2,500 today, future benefits will be cut by on average 0.5%,” they write. And Social Security is proportionately more important to us the less we earn, so the policy would be progressive, helping more vulnerable households the most. “Under this policy, the bottom 25% of the marketable wealth distribution have an additional 88 days on average until they are no longer able to cover their consumption,” they write. Oh, and as a big bonus: It won’t add to the national debt. Anything the government borrows now to pay the money out now just gets deducted from the “Social Security” line in the debt table. “From the point of view of the government, this policy transforms implicit Social Security liabilities into public debt but leaves its overall long-run obligations unchanged,” the authors point out. (As long-term Treasury bond yields are negative in inflation-adjusted dollars, one wonders if the government could, in theory, end up making a profit on the deal.) Even a 1% withdrawal of future Social Security benefits could be repaid by delaying retirement by just six weeks, they add. It would surely be a controversial proposal if it ever made it to Washington. Critics might warn that it would create a dangerous precedent. If we can tap into Social Security for this, why not for other things? And Social Security already faces a disastrous funding crisis. This proposal would move us in the wrong direction, even if by very little. Link to comment
Moiraine Posted May 16, 2020 Share Posted May 16, 2020 1 hour ago, RedDenver said: Just kinda thinking out loud here. What's a good philosophy for a Democrat House to do when the Senate is Republican and they need the bill to be signed by a Republican president? Do they put as much as possible in the bill and then go negotiate, or do they try to make it slightly closer to what they know will end up getting passed? That's the real question here. Maybe they should do the former, in which case they are making a mistake. Or maybe doing the former wouldn't do any good. And maybe they should do the former just to look good to voters. Link to comment
Moiraine Posted May 16, 2020 Share Posted May 16, 2020 10 hours ago, RedDenver said: I'm ok with them basing loan forgiveness on need. However what I've read says they are basing it on what the need was before Covid-19. The people who qualify are those who were making $0 payments before. I think they should base it on need right now and it's almost backwards to me... you'd think they'd want to help the people affected by the virus more. I'd think that'd be easier to sell to the GOP. I say all of this as someone with tens of thousands of $ in student loan still. As long as I don't get fired I'm gonna survive not getting $10,000. I'd love to have it but I'd love it more if the people who can't keep up with interest are given $20,000 and I'm given nothing. Link to comment
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