Comments by "Digital Nomad" (@digitalnomad9985) on "Social Security Won't Give You Security | 5 Minute Video" video.

  1. "You do not need to use force, army, police, etc., because you have reprogrammed your mind and brain, and will change all your instincts, habits, and wills unconditionally." This is not a workable replacement for personal responsibility. If the programmee determines the program, those who programmed themselves for peaceful philanthropic docility will be at the mercy of those who programmed themselves for Machiavellian psychopathy. If the state decides the program then I leave you with O'Brien's words to Winston in the novel "1984": " There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever. .... "We control life, Winston, at all its levels. You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable." ... "If you are a man, Winston, you are the last man. Your kind is extinct; we are the inheritors. Do you understand that you are alone? You are outside history, you are non-existent." or from C.S. Lewis' "The Abolition of Man": “It is in Man’s power to treat himself as a mere ‘natural object’ and his own judgments of value as raw material for scientific manipulation to alter at will. The objection to his doing so does not lie in the fact that this point of view (like one’s first day in a dissecting room) is painful and shocking till we grow used to it. The pain and the shock are at most a warning and a symptom. The real objection is that if man chooses to treat himself as raw material, raw material he will be: not raw material to be manipulated, as he fondly imagined, by himself, but by mere appetite, that is, mere Nature, in the person of his de-humanized Conditioners.” ... “For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please… ... "At the moment, then, of Man’s victory over Nature, we find the whole human race subjected to some individual men, and those individuals subjected to that in themselves which is purely ‘natural’ – to their irrational impulses.” ... “Man’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man.” +Duy Anh N H "You do not need to use force, army, police, etc.," I need police and armies to keep evil men from enslaving me (or killing me). Slaves or robots don't "need" them because by definition the "needs" of these two classes of entities are for whatever makes them more useful for the master. The sole legitimate role of government is to force men to mind their own business, because left to themselves they will not. Your "cure" is far worse than the disease. "Most importantly" In this very tragic world abounding with evils and ills you think that the removal of police and armies is of UTMOST importance? There are far greater evils than these. Where I come from the police and the military are still the sheepdogs of society, keeping the wolves at bay. I realize you may live in a place where this is not the case. In some countries the police and military work for the wolves.
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  2. "I admit freedom of speech, for my purpose is to build a better society." What is the good of admitting freedom of speech, when you suppress freedom of thought?
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  3. "I really don't understand what did you say? please answer satisfactory and clear." We have so much difficulty understanding one another that I fear we cannot profitably discuss such a profound and abstract idea. If I have distorted your ideas accidentally, I apologize. My attempts at engaging your posts were, I assure you, undertaken with the utmost honesty and goodwill. I wish you the best in your attempts to improve your society even as I strive to improve mine. Farewell.
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  4. I am sorry that you are frustrated. We obviously can't proceed without a translator, and nobody else cares enough about our discussion to serve.
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  5. As far as I understand, this is similar to the idea of the socialist utopia which Marx said years ago was bound to happen. It didn't happen. Despite untold efforts by millions, it never has happened. Productivity may be increased by artificial intelligence and robots, I agree. But, we are so far from being able to humanely program ourselves, that I can't see any profit in discussing it, even apart from the ethical considerations involved. But this much seems clear. History has shown us that men cannot be trusted with too much power over other men. If mind programming proved possible, this would be the ultimate temptation, and men are not to be trusted to resist it. There is a saying "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." The power to "reprogram" men is absolute power. I do not think one world government can be good. Different people throughout the world have different moral values. The only way to get them into a worldwide government is by deadly force. The only way to get them to keep codes of conduct not their own is by deadly force or by programming their minds when this becomes possible. The only way to force them to program themselves to your program is by deadly force. You are asking me to accept a program involving "mind programming", a technology or technique not yet invented, for the purpose of eventually making a peaceful society, when even after it is invented applying it to all men to bring about your pacifist utopia can only be achieved by a world war. People have sold us a "war to end all wars" before. This time we have sales resistance. Men will not agree on the program. If you let them choose, they will refuse. If you don't let them choose you are a tyrant, and I will oppose you, and all good men will join me. You say "If everyone does what I want the world will be perfect." This is what all tyrants say. The only difference between you and the tyrant is the tyrant has power and you do not.
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  6. "Digital Nomad So what is your first language? And I'm Vietnamese !!!" I am a citizen of the United States, having lived my whole life in that nation apart from visiting Canada briefly in my childhood. I have studied Spanish a little in high school, and ancient Koine Greek in college, but my birth tongue is English in the American dialect. I try to keep American slang out of my posts on international subjects, because I know that those who learn English as a second language learn standard English, not regional slang. When speaking on topics of interest only to Americans, I don't bother with this nicety. Your name sounded Vietnamese to me, but I did not wish to presume, because some are offended if you guess their nationality wrongly.
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  7. I have already replied to this. I understand you want to reprogram humanity, and because you several of your goals will solve current problems as you see them, you believe that your goal will justify anything you have to do to accomplish that goal. This is a common belief of totalitarians and has led to many wars and billions of political murders throughout history. You do realize that there exists no means, now or in the near future projected, to reprogram human minds against their will or even with their will as completely as you advocate. So, firstly, you are arguing in favor of doing something which cannot be done, which is a waste of words. Secondly, you realize, do you not, that many, probably most of the people in the world alone, and more the universe perhaps, disagree with you about your goals and are not willing to be programmed to serve them. To program them against their will is as permanently wrong as it is currently impossible. "Do you understand?" Yes, I understand you completely. You are a frustrated despot, and if you ever get the power do do as you wish, humanity as we know it is dead, and that is a bad thing. Your government has taught you to believe that a self-selected elite can and should choose for all people and this will be good for the people. In your dream you are this elite who can choose for all. You have been taught that for people to be able and free to choose is a bad thing. I was taught that for people to be free to choose is a good thing. The difference between the sort of society these two beliefs make is the difference between Vietnam and the US, poverty and prosperity, ignorance and knowledge, folly and wisdom, evil and good. To most in the world, the depravity of the vision you have explained is obvious. Perhaps, with your upbringing and political education, you cannot see it. If so, across such a gap in views of the world, no argument is possible, because arguments turn on shared assumptions, and you and I don't share enough common assumptions to even argue.
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  8. If Social Security was a legally vested pension plan, you would be right. FDR set it up as pay-as-you go: the first recipients hadn't paid anything into the system at all. So you're wrong about him distorting the picture. You aren't wrong about the Social Security "Fund" being theft, or, more precisely, fraud. But Prager is NOT ignoring this fact. He is telling you the truth. "WHERE IS ALL THE MONEY THAT THE RETIRED PEOPLE SAVE DURING ALL THEIR LIFE??" Those people did not save it. They paid it in the SS TAX to the government who spent it. NOBODY EVER PROMISED THEY WOULD SAVE YOUR MONEY FOR YOU. They sure implied it, but it was doubletalk. You can say they were lying to you. You have no basis for saying Prager is lying to you.
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  9. Thanks, is there a way to filter the site to show JUST the banned videos? (I'm hard core.)
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  10. No, an unskippable ad is irritating because you want to get to your selected content. This is content you selected and it is not keeping you from watching anything, and no downside to closing the video if you don't want it (unless you count the lost enlightenment as a downside).
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  11. Governments don't pay anything. Taxpayers pay. The SS "fund" has always been an accounting gimmick. You weren't embezzled. You were swindled. This was ALWAYS the deal, the deal you supported when you supported the SS program. You didn't care, you didn't pay attention, we all pay the price. When anybody tried to rationalize and fix the program, like Bush after 2000 and other Republicans before him, the REFORMER was labeled a thief (by the thieves) and was not allowed to fix the problem. Years of bad choices and credulity by the voter have brought this to pass. And it is too late to "Make it didn't happen."
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  12. Household income 30 percentile is 32K, not every individual income is a household income.
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  13. My, that was incoherent!
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  14. Brett B. " it would have been better to use life expectancy at 65" That would have distorted the point, which was the ratio of workers to retirees. If you are leaving out the factor of those who contribute to SS, but die before collecting, you are missing an important part of the comparative picture. Life expectancy from 18 or 20 might have been better.
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  15. " Once the reserve runs out " There is no reserve. It is an accounting gimmick. It has government IOUs in it. "You are supposed to have pension and savings with social security. " Is there an echo in here. That's what he just advocated, except that pension plans per se are gone, you get 401Ks. "Once you survived childhood you could expect to live to a much older age than 65." As my grandmother used to say "No, not so much." Here is a quote from a Social Security website trying (and obviously failing) to make the point you are making: Life Expectancy for Social Security "If we look at life expectancy statistics from the 1930s we might come to the conclusion that the Social Security program was designed in such a way that people would work for many years paying in taxes, but would not live long enough to collect benefits. Life expectancy at birth in 1930 was indeed only 58 for men and 62 for women, and the retirement age was 65. But life expectancy at birth in the early decades of the 20th century was low due mainly to high infant mortality, and someone who died as a child would never have worked and paid into Social Security. A more appropriate measure is probably life expectancy after attainment of adulthood. "As Table 1 shows, the majority of Americans who made it to adulthood could expect to live to 65, and those who did live to 65 could look forward to collecting benefits for many years into the future. So we can observe that for men, for example, almost 54% of the them could expect to live to age 65 if they survived to age 21" https://www.ssa.gov/history/lifeexpect.html 54%! Gee whiz! And they go on to admit that it was worse for women. A current life expectancy FROM BIRTH of 75 for men and 80 for women (the adult life expectancy is , of course, higher), means that there has been significant change in this demographic, which is a significant contributing factor. Probably at least as significant is the decrease in family size. Anyway, what is your point? We used to have many payers supporting few retirees, now we have few. That's all he needs to make his central point. Are you denying that?
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  16. Not a conspiracy. Conspiracies are secret.
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  17. Here is a quote from a Social Security website trying (and obviously failing) to make the point you are making: Life Expectancy for Social Security "If we look at life expectancy statistics from the 1930s we might come to the conclusion that the Social Security program was designed in such a way that people would work for many years paying in taxes, but would not live long enough to collect benefits. Life expectancy at birth in 1930 was indeed only 58 for men and 62 for women, and the retirement age was 65. But life expectancy at birth in the early decades of the 20th century was low due mainly to high infant mortality, and someone who died as a child would never have worked and paid into Social Security. A more appropriate measure is probably life expectancy after attainment of adulthood. "As Table 1 shows, the majority of Americans who made it to adulthood could expect to live to 65, and those who did live to 65 could look forward to collecting benefits for many years into the future. So we can observe that for men, for example, almost 54% of the them could expect to live to age 65 if they survived to age 21" https://www.ssa.gov/history/lifeexpect.html 54%! Gee whiz! And they go on to admit that it was worse for women. A current life expectancy FROM BIRTH of 75 for men and 80 for women (the adult life expectancy is , of course, higher), means that there has been significant change in this demographic, which is a significant contributing factor. Probably at least as significant is the decrease in family size.
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  18. Well, not all at once. Unless they live 60 years past 62.
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  19. What lie? That the life expectancy is 75 for men and 82 for women? That is documented fact.
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  20. "selective"? You accuse me of being selective, then demonstrate that you are by telling me who you are selecting. Life expectancy counts EVERYBODY, you just want to count SOME. "who in the their right mind believes anyone over 35 (another study showing hiring personnel ditching resumes of people over 35) but certainly 50 can secure employment" I was hired by my current employer at 44. "r trust private investment companies especially after the Wall Street heist of 2008? The government is dirty, dirty, dirty" The real estate theft of 2008 was the upshot of the crisis caused by Carter era laws which forced lenders to make real estate loans to "customers" who couldn't pay them back. They then, through certain agencies, promised to guarantee the loans. This is certainly dirty government, and taints the business that went along, but they had to go along or go out of business. An even simpler and more obvious case of theft is the General Motors "bailout". Instead of letting GM go bankrupt, the Obama administration cut off the creditors, who were entitled to the balance of GMs assets, gave the government and the unions (who caused the failure in the first place) in for a cut of stock they had not bought, then took over the company. The only point of the video is that SS is a scam, and is insolvent. You have not refuted, or even contradicted, this point.
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  21. Rated AAA because the government had promised to guarantee them. " do not say they were forced to make loans to people who had no means to repay the loans at the volume that it occurred knowing full well a default avalanche would occur" The volume was the result of the rules. It was illegal to refuse the toxic loan apps and accept the profitable ones. Every one which the government would attribute to "discriminatory practices" or "blacklisting". Bush saw this coming and tried to fire the administrator overseeing this mess and fix the problem. He was blocked and villified for his pains, just as he was when he tried to fix SS.
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  22. Your remark is incoherent. You explain why SS must fail, and then say to talk of failure is bogus.
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  23. +Neal Kelly "understand the Republicans control everything right?" Including the past?
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  24. Your protest is incoherent. Entitlements are where the money FDR promised you has gone. Social programs are the overwhelming bulk of the budget, the unconstitutional part. If enough had been slashed, a fund could have been made from FICA inflows which could have kept the program solvent. Certainly money was taken from you, and money promised to you. There is no relationship between the two. It was always "pay as you go". The first recipients had paid NOTHING in.
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  25. " Please block me i beg you." Nope, that's a leftist thing.
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  26. Wars and all, defense is not a majority of the budget, despite being essentially the only thing the government is legitimately supposed to do.
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  27.  @louisphilippe1100  No, inflation is not simply higher prices. Inflate is a verb, it is something the government can to do a fiat money supply, and ours does it a lot. It is misleading to measure "inflation" by how much less your money can buy than 10 years ago. That is one way to measure inflation's EFFECT. But inflation itself is printing money (beyond replacement of worn-out currency). Supply and demand, increase the supply and you reduce the demand. Printing money does not increase the GDP, the mix of goods and services purchased with it. So the loss of value is implicit in inflating the money supply. It is the government taking some of the value of everybody who holds money.
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  28. "Locking the box" now is like shutting the gate after the cows have gotten out.
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  29. He did not just advise "pay the minimal amount" on all debt. I am not going to repeat what he did say. Why bother to comment on videos you're too lazy to listen to? I will summarize that he advocated using the part of your budget allotted for debt retirement to pay the highest interest or smaller debts FIRST, making minimal payments on the lower interest debts till you have paid off the high interest ones first.
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  30. Yes, when the SS tax was taking in more money than SS spent, the surplus was squandered. Nowadays, SS is spending more than the SS tax takes in, and the deficit comes from the general budget.
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  31. +Mark Smith Where do you get those figures? Infant mortality rate is very low nowadays and a man's life expectancy still is not quite as high as 80. Here is a quote from a Social Security website trying (and obviously failing) to make the point you are making: Life Expectancy for Social Security "If we look at life expectancy statistics from the 1930s we might come to the conclusion that the Social Security program was designed in such a way that people would work for many years paying in taxes, but would not live long enough to collect benefits. Life expectancy at birth in 1930 was indeed only 58 for men and 62 for women, and the retirement age was 65. But life expectancy at birth in the early decades of the 20th century was low due mainly to high infant mortality, and someone who died as a child would never have worked and paid into Social Security. A more appropriate measure is probably life expectancy after attainment of adulthood. "As Table 1 shows, the majority of Americans who made it to adulthood could expect to live to 65, and those who did live to 65 could look forward to collecting benefits for many years into the future. So we can observe that for men, for example, almost 54% of the them could expect to live to age 65 if they survived to age 21" https://www.ssa.gov/history/lifeexpect.html 54%! Gee whiz! And they go on to admit that it was worse for women. A current life expectancy FROM BIRTH of 75 for men and 80 for women (the adult life expectancy is , of course, higher), means that there has been significant change in this demographic, which is a significant contributing factor. Probably at least as significant is the decrease in family size. Anyway, what is your point? We used to have many payers supporting few retirees, now we have few. That's all he needs to make his central point. Are you denying that?
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  32. You mean the same percentage of income. Everyone over the cap currently pays the same AMOUNT.
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