My day job keeps me on the road and in the air an awful lot of the time.

So what is your solution? How do we keep a program like Social Security paying out more than it takes in? People live much longer now.

Wouldn't you agree that the age of getting your Social Security should be upped? Maybe 70 years old before you collect? I'm not sure even that is gonna save it.

The real problem is this: Politicians can say words. But words aren't reality. And in the end if SOMETHING isn't done about it, there will not BE any money to pay Social Security. And it doesn't matter how many "rich" people get their taxes raised. From what I read you could tax every millionaire in the country at 100% and it won't even make a dent in the out of control spending deficit we are in.

And has the govt. even slowed down spending? You know like you or I would do in real life?
Nope. Not even by a penny. We're still running military crap all over the world like there is no problem. And politicians are still sending billions home to their cronies right now as I'm typing this.

They aren't gonna "sacrifice" even one bit. It's not their money anyway. They will still get paid and still keep on stealing.
The only people who they want to "sacrifice" are the people with drive, ambition, and talent who are making money.

Trust me Tony...those politicians don't give a DAMN about you or me or anybody but themselves. All they want is to get their hands on that money. And by making false promises to senior citizens, they get those votes. And by taxing the "rich" they get the votes of everybody who ISN'T "rich".

It's all about money and power in my humble opinion.

And back to the original thread:

If Warren Buffet wants to pay MORE taxes...then why is he over ONE BILLION dollars behind on his back taxes? I'm sure that the govt. would be happy if he would just pay that.

The Kennedy's got rich from BREAKING the law and running liquor.

The Hearsts made their wealth in the 1800's. Before income taxes and before federal highways (that were created by Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950's to be able to move tanks and heavy military machinery quickly throughout the country)

Point is that ALL people who were rich in the early days up until the beginning of the 1900's got that way in our country despite the govt. and not because of it.

Police and firemen are paid by city govt. which gets it's money from people actually paying taxes in the city (mostly homeowners). Poor people don't pay an awful lot of that. They don't have any money.

I think those arguments about all the "wonderful" things the govt. does to make our lives so much better do have merit. But put all the highway work, police depts. and fire depts all in a big pile...and there's no way in hell it costs TRILLIONS of dollars that the federal govt. spends like drunken sailors.

I can't believe you can't see that. If all we had to pay for was our countries highways, etc and essential services, we could drop the tax rate to almost nothing.

But they are occupying over 200 countries with our military. And the pentagon is wanting to spend more and more on big weapons systems that are pretty much useless against "terrorism" (whatever that is). And the congress is ALWAYS in session making new laws and spending trillions of dollars on shit that is NOT highways, policemen, or firemen, or infrastructure.

I'm 100% for pulling out of the wars and closing all oversea bases and killing most aid to other Countries. It's gotten crazy ass out of hand.

With Hearst, he made his money after the Civil War... I bet he used the new railway system and the pony express and enjoyed keeping his scalp on his travels :) We also had Tariffs, some of the highest after the war and he would have had to deal with the first income tax as well. He was mayor of NY in the early 1900's, we had roads, city taxes, etc...

For about a 100 years our Country survived on old wealth, once we started to move West and our Gov started to kill off the Indians for us, we "found" some new wealth up in them there mountains and all the rest is history after that.

As opposed to DEBT & SPEND of the republicans? Reagan exploded the national debt, George W Bush added 7 trillion or so.

You think Bush spending billions while cutting taxes on the rich was a success? You think the economy was better after the removal of financial sector regulation and years of Bush running up debt?

It's just conventional economic theory to stimulate the economy as both Bush and Obama did/are. However the USA is in such a deep hole with the manufacturing sector collapsing and a huge amount of long term unemployed that stimulus won't cut it.

It's just the slow and gradual collapse of an empire that got into too many wars, let corporations shift jobs overseas while taking profits in the USA and removed too many regulations and let the financial sector's greed run rampant.

Americans will have to accept a lower standard of living and for the first time in many years thanks to the greed of mostly baby boomers, the next generation will be worse off financially. Many will just have to accept a huge house and bling isn't necessary for a happy life.

They are a ponzi scheme plain and simple. People pay money into a system their entire lives and meanwhile the funds get used for another purpose. Politicians get away with it. But they have been taking money out of medicare and social security since it started, using it as their own slush fund.

This is his bio, and I think it disproves that academic quote that implied "Nobody in this country ever got rich" without the governments "help" or because of what the federal govt. did. Hearst and many other of the richest people in the country did just that. There was no strong federal govt. then:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hearst