Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
We’re 8 Years Away From an Automatic 23 Percent Cut in Social Security Payouts
https://reason.com/2025/06/19/were-8-years-away-from-an-automatic-23-percent-cut-in-social-security-payouts/
““No senator wants to be the reason their local hospital shutters its doors, and now is their opportunity to stop that from happening,” said a source familiar with hospital industry thinking, granted anonymity to speak freely on strategy.
More than 250 hospital leaders flew into Washington on Tuesday to urge senators to preserve Medicaid as part of an American Hospital Association lobbying campaign. The association spent almost $8.5 million on lobbying in the first quarter of the year, a high water mark dating back almost two decades.
“There are aggressive conversations ongoing … to make sure that all senators recognize the vulnerability that it is going to potentially put all of our hospitals in,” said one stakeholder granted anonymity to speak on strategy”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/17/hospitals-senate-medicaid-megabill-taxes-00410769
The Republican claim that their bill’s Medicaid cuts won’t take away people’s health insurance because people will get employer health insurance is either spoken out of dishonesty or ignorance. Many people on Medicaid will not be able to get a full time job that supplies benefits like health insurance. They will be paid little and not receive health insurance. Medicaid expansion has not shown to increase unemployment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x99Dk844qZY
“Basically, the feds impose damaging new taxes and trade restrictions on farmers for reasons mostly related to ideology and rent-seeking, then undo their effects by making farmers more dependent on government largesse. Often lost in the discussion, but one reason that U.S. farmers are so dependent on selling commodity crops to China and elsewhere is that past policies essentially subsidized them to do so.
Like with all things political, various federal farm policies have created a series of odd bedfellows. Many environmental groups have lauded past farm bills because they provide incentives for farmers to set aside land as open space, but overall the federal meddling has harmed the environment. For instance, federal sugar subsidies have greatly diminished the Florida Everglades by encouraging the conversion of wetlands into sugar fields.”
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“All these policies drive up food prices for non-farmers and reduce our choices in meats and produce.”
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“Instead of creating this convoluted, counterproductive policy that mimics a Rube Goldberg farce, the government should do the basics to help farmers. It should scuttle tariffs, halt subsidies, eliminate costly shipping levies, create a guest-worker program so farmers can have a consistent labor source, lower taxes, bolster water infrastructure and let markets do the rest.”
https://reason.com/2025/05/23/farmers-need-free-markets-not-tariffs-and-welfare/
“Several former Republican governors in the Senate have sounded alarms over a controversial House GOP plan to help pay for the Trump megabill by pushing billions in federal food aid costs to states.
Now there’s a would-be governor raising similar concerns. Behind the scenes in recent days, Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama raised issues over the provision with GOP leaders and pushed for the plan to be scaled back, according to three Republicans granted anonymity to describe the conversations.”
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/06/04/congress/tuberville-raises-alarms-on-gop-food-aid-plan-as-he-seeks-governorship-00387161
To take advantage of the exponential investment curve, people need to start investing as early as possible! If you wait too late, it will be much more difficult to retire comfortably, if not impossible. Because lots of people will fail to invest early, this makes Social Security incredibly important.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyGsH_oa8nY
Trump-GOP Tax Bill Cuts Medicaid, SNAP To Give Handouts To Billionaires
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gaiK08hph0
More than half of all retired Americans rely on Social Security for over half of their revenue. Social Security is very important to helping people retire.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoxFNhY17gQ
Elon Musk makes basic attacks against Social Security that Republicans have been making for many decades, and Joe Rogan is impressed like these are new ideas. Elon’s attacks are wrong or misleading in multiple ways.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C12IdscHGNo
“Social Security is the biggest federal expense. The next priciest items are other entitlements including Medicare and Medicaid, and Americans want to spend more on them, too. Defense is next, and while there’s room for cutting there, it’s nowhere near enough to close the deficit and save Social Security.
Some politicians claim that we can grow our economy enough to make up for Social Security’s shortfalls. But that won’t work. “Because Social Security benefits are indexed to wage growth, as wages increase, so do benefits,” explains the Cato Institute’s Romina Boccia and Dominik Lett. “Therefore, while higher wage growth boosts revenues, it simultaneously raises the future benefits owed to retirees.”
Complicating the issue, add Boccia and Lett, is that “improvements in life expectancy and a declining birth rate mean that a shrinking group of workers is supporting an increasing number of retirees even if macroeconomic conditions are sound.”
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Boccia also points out that retirees over the age of 65 have on average triple the net worth of workers between the ages of 35–44. It’s perverse to tax hard-working younger Americans for the benefit of wealthier older ones. She suggests that “Congress should means-test Social Security, returning to the program’s stated purpose of antipoverty protection in old age.”
Some more savings could be found by linking cost-of-living adjustments in Social Security benefits to the chained CPI, which is more accurate than other measures in reflecting how consumers respond to changing prices.”
https://reason.com/2025/03/03/doge-and-congress-should-look-hard-at-reforming-social-security/