The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    MrSmith1's picture

    Mitt Romney wants to privatize Unemployment benefits!

    By MrSmith1 on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 1:05pm |

    Just when you think they can't find another way to siphon money out of your wallet, some GOPer comes up with a new and even crazier idea.  This time, it's 'Catcher's' Mitt Romney.  Instead of those poor, put-upon, over-taxed, and overly regulated employers paying into the Unemployment Insurance fund, Mitt wants you, the potentially future unemployed, to pay for your own unemployment insurance!!  Just think of how NOT paying all that money into the system will free up corporations and allow them to create more jobs! (Sorry, I can only withhold my sarcasm for a short time when dealing with GOPers.) 

    http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/12/romney-slams-tax-cut-compromise-concept-of-unemployment-benefits.php

     

    Comments

    Goldman-Sachs may manage and collateralize your Health Savings Account, your Romney Unemployment Savings Account, your Retirement Savings Account into one CDO leveraged 33 to 1, hedge a bet against your ARM while raising the interest rate, use the profits to buy off some bigshot DC politicians to loosen regulations and oversight, invest in one of those 'dead-serf-life-insurance'  policies to bet you won't live to collect any of the savings accounts,and add the proceeds to a $25 billion dollar kitty to pay themselves bonuses while claiming they are essential to the future prosperity of the American economy.


    by NCD on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 2:16pm

    So, I guess what you're saying then NCD, is that I should be grateful to be so well-taken care of and appreciated by a firm as prestigious as Goldman-Sachs, for I am the raw material out of which they can create America's future prosperity (for themselves, which we all know is the only prosperity that actually matters). (Sorry, my sarcasm button seems to be stuck in the 'on' position today.)


    by MrSmith1 on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 2:56pm

    I guess for this to be fair you'd have to:

    1) Cut my taxes since some of that money goes to unemployment benefits that the government will no longer pay.

    2) Allow me to make unlimited tax free contributions to a savings account that I would be allowed to draw on, also tax free and without penalty, at any point where I'm not receiving a paycheck whether voltuntarily or not.

    See, because then I might try to turn it into a "retire early" fund.


    by Michael Maiello on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 2:55pm

    So that's how they'll create more jobs, by enticing Boomers to retire early.  So will they include a clause that says once you retire, you must remain retired so as not to negatively impact the 18-34 age group's future earnings?  


    by MrSmith1 on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 3:03pm

    Well, they'd never go for my plan.  Remember, the Republican plan is that you never retire, you work in some capacity until you die.  I was kind of kidding around.  But if you're going to take away a basic social safety net like government provided unemployment insurance, then something like what I've suggested would be the only near fair trade off.  Of course it's still not as good.  If you get fired before you have time to build your account balance you'll starve and die.


    by Michael Maiello on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 3:17pm

    Yeah, the starving and dying earmark is already figured into the collateral damage part of the plan.


    by MrSmith1 on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 3:25pm

    I am just thinking of those making minimum wages; $7-$15 an hour. They have to pay half the workers' tax--SS et al--and the Mitt would beat them even further into the ground.

    I assume a million dollar quarterly bonus on Wall Street would be exempted of course.

    Sometimes I just give up worrying about it.


    by Richard Day on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 4:16pm

    Yes, it's another take from the poor, give it to the rich program, that is the essence of Republican politics.  The Repubs are the anti-Robin Hood.


    by MrSmith1 on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 4:23pm

    Self-generated unemployment benefits; now that is pulling yourself up by the bootstraps.

    The next step after this must be a state of complete Self Employment. Think of how much companies could save if I pay myself all of my own wages.

    Hiring will go through the roof.


    by moat on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 7:21pm

    For the win, moat.  +1.


    by LisB on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 7:29pm

    Genius! The extrapolation of the day, Moat!  LOL


    by MrSmith1 on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 8:01pm

    We've seen the future and it is ours.

    And the bulldogs will have rubber teeth

     


    by Flavius on Wed, 12/15/2010 - 3:14pm

    ...and the same gang of GOP sociopaths and 'Saddam Getters' said the Iraq War would pay for itself.

    Maybe the Pentagon needs a 'War Savings Account' to draw on, because killing thousands of people, pillaging, torture, breaking countries and blowing stuff up is a very expensive employment program.


    by NCD on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 9:05pm

    I think we're on to something ... Maybe we can bring it full circle, and insist that millionaires should be forced to open 'tax cut accounts' that they can draw on in times of 'financial need' (i.e., whenever their tax cuts expire), then we have the Federal government 'privitize' the millionaires' tax cuts. (It'll be like the deriative market, only with less actual substance.)  The Federal Government would, of course, then pass regulations making them the 'lender of only resort' in all tax cut privitization transactions, thus ensuring the Fed gets a hefty commission back on the privitized tax cuts, which would, in effect, be taking a commission from the debt that the tax cuts would engender, thus taking back some of the money that we would otherwise be sending to China. This could be just the head-spinning, logic-numbing accounting procedural sleight-of-hand that we've been praying for! Privitize tax cuts for the wealthy NOW!  (This is a joke, this is only a joke, do NOT try this at home.)


    by MrSmith1 on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 11:04pm

    I think I need a lawyer just to explain this comment to me in language I can understand, hee.  But it makes me think of a new game show or lottery that we could have....wherein we guess how many US millionaires have Swiss bank accounts, and then we guess how many US dollars they have hidden over there.  Kinda like guessing the number of jelly beans in a jar.  The person who comes closest to the actual amount wins.

    Speaking of which, I keep hearing ads on my alternative rock station about some new show called "Storage Wars", which I can only hope is a joke.  According to the disc jockey who mentions this show, all the storage spaces that are left abandoned get on a list and people bid on them, ending up with the contents (which can - supposedly - be worth a fortune). 

    Makes me wonder what in hell is next.


    by LisB on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 11:14pm

    Where is Goldman-Sachs in this??

    I liked an idea that if the millionaires tax cuts don't produce X million jobs in 6 months they are retroactively rescinded!

    This would work well with your 'tax cut savings accounts'-GS could hold the TCSA money, charge a fat fee for doing so, and meanwhile gamble with it leveraged 33-1 until the job figures are in...!


    by NCD on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 11:15pm

    " ... if the millionaires tax cuts don't produce X million jobs in 6 months they are retroactively rescinded!"

    Incentive!! Genius!

    Lisb, yes, I've heard about that show. It sounds like a reality show hybrid of 'Let's Make a Deal' (Instead of what's behind door number 2, it's what's in the storage locker"), and  "Pawn Stars"... Proof once again, that you can make a reality show out of anything.

     

     


    by MrSmith1 on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 11:40pm

    When ever I hear these people from the right speak, these tea party types and republicans. They always reminds me of the utterings of another small minded, egotistical, megalomaniac, selfish and self centered individual who spoke from the Reichstag in the 1930s.


    by cmaukonen on Wed, 12/15/2010 - 10:59am

    I don't think you have to go that far. Just think about the small minded, etc etc individuals who spoke from Washington in the 30s.

    And since.

     


    by Flavius on Wed, 12/15/2010 - 3:10pm