Carly Fiorina gets PWND on Fox News

[slim 1,530]

Slim were you in the navy by any chance?

Nope.

[mawilson 2,133]

SS should be private anyway, with 9% on top of your salary pumped into a retirement account of your choice. How well has it worked in practice, well Aussies do have over $1 trillion in retirement accounts versus the ~$2.3 trillion in SS here. Not to mention they have the largest amounts saved in retirement per capita. Since these funds are private, they cannot be borrowed or touched by any government.

I think you're comparing apples and oranges. From your description, the Australian system

sounds more like our 401(k) than Social Security, the main difference being that employer

contributions appear to be mandatory in Australia (and probably fully vested), whereas here

matching 401(k) contributions are optional and typically have a vesting schedule.

I'm not sure exactly how much money Americans have invested in 401(k) and IRA plans, but

I've heard numbers ranging from $2 trillion to $4.5 trillion.

Edited October 21, 2010 by mawilson

[Heracles 417]

Well yeah, it's a lot like the 401k, though it's more secure and you get to pick where your money is invested; from ultra safe to high risk, high growth. Your employer basically contributes 9% on top of your salary to a retirement account of your choice, which cannot be accessed until 55. 65 if you want to withdraw the money tax free.

Then on top of that they have the age pension for people who have below x in assets and income, excluding the primary home. $1,290 USD per person a month or $1,945 a couple. In light of the OP, even with these logical and generous benefits, eight straight years of federal government surplus was delivered by conservatives.

We couldn't even spell Austerity, let alone know what it is. We're like the younger sibling who had it all handed to them.

Edited October 21, 2010 by Heracles

[mawilson 2,133]

Well yeah, it's a lot like the 401k, though it's more secure and you get to pick where your money is invested; from ultra safe to high risk, high growth. Your employer basically contributes 9% on top of your salary to a retirement account of your choice, which cannot be accessed until 55. 65 if you want to withdraw the money tax free.

Secure because you can't touch it at all until age 55, even with a tax penalty?

That's probably a good idea, seeing how people raid their retirement accounts to pay

credit card bills or fight foreclosure.

[Heracles 417]

Secure because you can't touch it at all until age 55, even with a tax penalty?

That's probably a good idea, seeing how people raid their retirement accounts to pay

credit card bills or fight foreclosure.

Yeah you cannot touch it unless you are facing foreclosure and have been unemployed for over a year. Cannot even touch it if you move abroad.

All of the providers have a low risk investment option, ensuring it cannot be wiped out. I also like how due to conservative government mandates, you no longer need to stick with your employers choice and can have an account with a provider of your choosing.

You also have the option of establishing your own family trust private superannuation fund; where you basically do all of the investing. As a small business, it also saves you tax dollars, when you supplement your own income towards retirement.

You'll never guess who privatized it either, the labor party of all people. Try suggesting this to the Dems Wha! Wha! Wha!.

Edited October 21, 2010 by Heracles

[luckytxn 2,264]

Roll back the Federal government expenditures to the year 2000 levels then we can just abolish the IRS and have enough left over to start paying down the debt. Simple but then Socialism would have to be reduced too.

[Danno 1,228]

Today on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace gave Fiorina a chance to lay out her actual plan. Touting her “tough, bottom-line business executive” motto, Wallace pointed out that Fiorina also wants “to extend all, all the Bush tax cuts which would add $4 trillion dollars to the deficit…where are you going to find $4 trillion dollars to cut?” But when Fiorina retreated to recycled response of government waste and an earmarks ban, a frustrated Wallace begged Fiorina seven times to “name one single entitlement expenditure you’re willing to cut” because “that’s where the money is.” Fiorina’s only response? “You’re asking a typical political question”:

WALLACE: You’re campaigning and you just alluded to it, to your record as a tough, bottom line, former business executive. But you want to extend all the Bush tax cuts which would add 4 trillion to the deficit. You say balance the budget by cutting spending. Question, as a bottom line businesswoman, where are you going to find $4 trillion to cut?

FIORINA: …We don’t know how taxpayer money is spent in Washington, D.C, which is why I think we ought to put every agency budget up on the internet for everyone to see, ban earmarks, and we ought to give citizens the opportunity to desginate up to 10% of their federal income tax toward debt reduction. If we did, that we would reduce our debt by $95 billion a year.

WALLACE: Miss Fiorina, the traditional ways that people talk about non-discretionary – I mean discretionary, non-defense spending is only 16% of the budget. You could cut all of that out, all for education and energy, and for police support and government worker support around the country, it wouldn’t be anywhere close to $4 trillion. Where are you going to get that kind of money if you extend all of the Bush era tax cuts. That only adds to the deficit. It doesn’t even deal with the deficit we already have.

FIORINA: Well, of course, first the thing we need to do, to deal with our debt and our deficit is to both cut spending and grow the economy. That’s fundamentally what we have to do. Those tax cuts are central to growing the economy. Indeed, I would argue there are some additional tax cuts we need to make.[...]

WALLACE: Miss Fiorina, let me ask you a specific question because I still haven’t gotten many specifics on how you will cut $4 trillion and more out of the budget. Back when there was talk about a non-partisan, or a bipartisan deficit, debt commission you blasted that idea in January and said we know all the solutions. We don’t need another commission to study it. Now…you tell me specifically what are you going to do to cut the billions, the trillions of dollars in entitlements?

FIORINA: First, I didn’t blast the commission saying we already had solutions. I blasted the commission because I believed it was a feint for tax increases.[...]

WALLACE: But forgive me, Miss Fiorina, where are you going to cut entitlements? What benefits are you going to cut? What eligibility are you doing..

FIORINA: Chris, I have to say, with all due respect, you’re asking a typical political question.[...]

WALLACE: It may be a typical political question but that’s where the money is. The money is in Medicare and Social Security. We have baby-boomers coming. There will be a huge explosion of entitlement explosion and you call it a political question when I ask you to name one single entitlement you are willing to cut.

FIORINA: Chris, I believe to deal with entitlement reform, which we must deal with, we ought to put every possible solution on the table, except we should be very clear we are not going to cut benefits to those nearing retirement or those nearing retirement or those in retirement.[...]

WALLACE: I’m going to try one last time, and if you don’t want to answer it, Miss Fiorina, you don’t have to.

FIORINA: It’s not a question of not wanting to answer it!

WALLACE: Let me ask the question, if I may, please. You’re not willing to put forward a single benefit – I’m not talking about the people 60 or let alone 65, or 70. I’m talking about people under 55. You’re not willing to say there is a single benefit eligibility for Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security that you are willing to say “Yeah, I would cut that?”

FIORINA: What I think we need to do to engage the American people in a conversation about entitlement reform is to have a bipartisan group of people who come together and put every solution on the table, every alternative on the table. Then we ought to engage in a long conversation with the American people so they understand the choices.

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/10/17/fiorina-spending-flummoxed/

WOW, thats pretty good, we could have only wished Mr. Wallace had questioned Obama so hard during the election and during the Healthcare debate....... at that time he and the rest of the MSM settled for "It's in there Chris".