State of the Union

[speculative]

Wow, pretty ambitious. And finally, we're getting a foreign policy that makes a bit more sense than Clinton's "Oh, I'll intervene if it makes me look good" policy. I hope the Democrats can pull it together - a two-party system doesn't work when one party can't pull its head out. Their response to the sou speech was pretty weak... Someone needs to be able to actually work with Bush on social security besides just saying "I don't want to fix social security because I can't really see with all this sand surrounding my head." And interesting how the media has picked Obama or whatever his name is to be next president before he even got elected. I don't see the allure I guess.

-spec

[Fallguy]

Hah,
you mean foriegn policy is supposed to make sense.....

Americas social security sounds like a real mess from what I have heard of it - I grant Britains ain't great but it seems to be in better shape than the US. I would have thought the US wouldn't have that issue because they aren't anywhere near as left wing as most European states, and neither do they have quite the problem with an ageing and shrinking populations.

Who the hell is Obama???? Sounds like a not very clever disguise for Osama....

Fallguy

[speculative]

Lol... that's what I always think of when I hear the name.

Actually, CBS (Communist Broadcast Station ) was trying to scare us away from privitized accounts last night before the address by saying that Britain has private pensions and they aren't working so hot because they don't have the roi that they thought they would. I didn't know if they were blowing smoke or not.

Remember Gore's "lock box?" A news program went to the famous lockbox in a bureau (I forget where) and opened it up, and found a stack of IOU's a foot high that were for 11 billion each.

-spec

[lechumbl]

Hi all,

The idea behind Social Security is and was a very sound one, work hard all your life, have the government keep some for retirement, and you have an income after your retire.
The problem is/was, is that the government keeps taking money out illegally, using it for other programs and such, and not replacing it.
Who are you going to complain to, the government?
There would never have been an issue of running out of money, had it not been stolen and misused for the past many years.
To be fair, both Democrats and Replublicans have been doing it for so long.
Can't take out $1.00, have the workers put in 75 cents and expect it to last.
My math is not too good, but even I can see a problem with that train of thought.

Lee is done ranting and raving now.
At least I get a few bucks of it before it is all "borrowed" out.

Take care.......

[Fallguy]

Originally Posted by speculative

Lol... that's what I always think of when I hear the name.

Actually, CBS (Communist Broadcast Station ) was trying to scare us away from privitized accounts last night before the address by saying that Britain has private pensions and they aren't working so hot because they don't have the roi that they thought they would. I didn't know if they were blowing smoke or not.

Remember Gore's "lock box?" A news program went to the famous lockbox in a bureau (I forget where) and opened it up, and found a stack of IOU's a foot high that were for 11 billion each.

-spec

Well in Britain we have an ageing and shrinking population, and because we have a bunch of right wing Nazis in government (and actually in opposition too) they don't seem to have grasped the fact that we need to encourage immigration to keep our economy going...

Private pensions in Britain haven't worked that well because they are obviously based on the stock market, and when that went belly up so did the pensions. I know one guy who put a fair bit of money into a stake holder pension scheme, lost it all and ended up owing fees. So by not taking part in the scheme I was in fact better off (I declined a stakeholder pension to put my money in a cash ISA instead).

Fallguy

[speculative]

Originally Posted by Fallguy

Well in Britain we have an ageing and shrinking population, and because we have a bunch of right wing Nazis in government (and actually in opposition too) they don't seem to have grasped the fact that we need to encourage immigration to keep our economy going...

Private pensions in Britain haven't worked that well because they are obviously based on the stock market, and when that went belly up so did the pensions. I know one guy who put a fair bit of money into a stake holder pension scheme, lost it all and ended up owing fees. So by not taking part in the scheme I was in fact better off (I declined a stakeholder pension to put my money in a cash ISA instead).

Fallguy

I hear that many people in Mexico are looking to move out of that country to the tune of about 3 million a year if you are looking for immigration.

Lee - I agree, this isn't a partisan problem - that's why I wish the Democrats would do something besides just letting the thing go bust. They are all going to need to work together on this...

[Fallguy]

Hmmm,
Mexicans hey.... how's there English....

I think there are a great many countries which Britain could draw from to supplement our work force, it doesn't have to be any particular destination. However we need to do it in an organised fashion, and we need to start soon, else it will be done in a great mess and at the last minute. Or it won't be done at all. At the moment we are allowing 135,000 folks per year in, which kinda sucks compared to Americas 3,000,000 a year...

No wonder America ended up a super power - high birth rate AND high immigration combined with large natural resources...

Just done a bit of reading on population, and believe it or not the UK's population is actually projected to grow slightly over the next 2 decades from 60 million to 63 million (although Americas growth rate is frightening). I guess maybe we could import some Americans hey....

Linky:

http://www.popco.org/press/articles/2004-1-myers.html

Fallguy

[Fallguy]

Ouch,
if you think Europe has a problem, look at Russia:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/988723.stm

15% of the population are infertile, man that is a scary number! Thats like almost 1 in 6 couples cannot have children without medical assistance they are unlikely to recieve. Worse I would guess due to the sheer amount of polution caused by the USSR (particularly heavy metals) that's going to get worse rather than better for the next few generations....

Fallguy