Comments on: Fisking Tom Tomorrow

By: Jon H

Jon H — Thu, 31 Jul 2003 23:03:22 +0000

Matthew Menefee writes: “Sorry, you are wrong here. The Republican congress balanced the budget. Clinton just signed the bill. As I remeber it, Clinton accepted their balanced budgets very unwillingly.”

And now we’ve got a Republican congress and a Republican President, and deficits out the ass.

Hm. Maybe it has something to do with the tax increase Clinton put through, as opposed to the insane tax cuts Bush has put through?

By: Matthew Menefee

Matthew Menefee — Thu, 31 Jul 2003 22:02:23 +0000

“If privatizing Social Security were such a rational proposal people would have elected politicians who would have privatized it. Either the privatization crowd are imbeciles at marketing or there are serious problems with the proposal.”

Well, one thing is for sure. The current system is a miserable failure.

By: Matthew Menefee

Matthew Menefee — Thu, 31 Jul 2003 21:57:03 +0000

“Bush is a leftist?

Clinton balanced the budget. Bush is the one making sure we’ll have deficits for the forseeable future.”

Sorry, you are wrong here. The Republican congress balanced the budget. Clinton just signed the bill. As I remeber it, Clinton accepted their balanced budgets very unwillingly.

By: Ricky

Ricky — Thu, 31 Jul 2003 14:52:15 +0000

I know I enjoyed the glorious surpluses, which only drove up the national debt to the tune of $18 billion dollars in the great surplus year of 2000.

Almost as much as my 1993 middle-class income tax cut.

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 31 Jul 2003 06:23:06 +0000

For those of you who still think Social Security should be a private venture, have you not read the business and want ad sections of your local papers in the last 3 years? I know 3 years ago many of my baby boomer friends were talking about early retirement and now many of them are wondering if retirement is possible. Just remember there are alot of wealthy folks just waiting for the day the government says go ahead and dump your Social Security into the markets. They will be standing with there hands out and a huge profit taking smile on their faces. I wonder how long before the stock you bought on Tuesday at 20 and by Thursday it’s worth 10 will make it back to 20?

By: jesse

jesse — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 22:52:32 +0000

Second, to portray Bush as “the one” driving up the deficits is absurd. Have you heard of the legislative branch?–

DAMN those Democrats in control of both houses of Congress for the past ten years! DAMN THEM TO HEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLL!!!!

By: dcthornton.blog

dcthornton.blog — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 03:32:27 +0000

Taking on Tomorrow

Fellow libertarian Radley Balko fisks a recent four-panel where Tom Tomorrow makes a feeble attack on libertarian ideas. Check out…

By: The Mind Of Man

The Mind Of Man — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 22:59:20 +0000

I’ve Never Seen This Much Stupidity Crammed Into Four Panels

Radley Balko does the dirty work here. This cartoon is just jaw-droppingly stupid. There’s not one intelligent word in any…

By: Travis

Travis — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 22:56:21 +0000

Claude, “For example, to match the market you have to have a portfolio that mirrors the market as a whole. In practice that is impossible with less than $100,000. Then there are the transaction costs – the transaction costs are the real killers.”

Are you for real? If you’re really as smart as you think you are, you would know that no matter how big (or small) a retirement portfolio you had, you would never invest in individual stocks as an individual investor. The beauty of privatizing SS is having a choice of what to invest in, yes, but these would consist of aggressive and conservative funds, not individual stocks. You can easily diversify enough in nearly any fund(besides those stupid pink slips) to maintain risk repellant. You could start out your forty year work life investing in mainly stock, move to mortgages and eventually mostly bonds.

Frank has it right. If you were invested in primarily government bonds and overseas currency, you could have retired within weeks after the crash and maintained a entiltement larger than that which you put in. Likewise, if you had just started shortly before the crash, you could have easily gained your money back and more in pure stock before 1960. If you were in bonds and then shifted to stock, you could have even done much better than that.

By: The Mind Of Man

The Mind Of Man — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 22:48:03 +0000

I’ve Never Seen This Much Stupidity Crammed Into Four Panels

Radley Balko does the dirty work here. This cartoon is just jaw-droppingly stupid. There’s not one intelligent word in…

By: The Mind Of Man

The Mind Of Man — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 22:44:05 +0000

I’ve Never Seen This Much Stupidity Crammed Into Four Panels

Radley Balko does the dirty work here. This cartoon is just jaw-droppingly stupid. There’s not one intelligent word in…

By: max power

max power — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 22:39:05 +0000

Tomorrow is ignorant and profoundly unfunny. I saw this cartoon a while back and just shook my head at the idiocy of it… thanks for the dissection.

Some of the comments on this board are pretty inane too. Here’s one:

“Bush is a leftist?

Clinton balanced the budget. Bush is the one making sure we’ll have deficits for the forseeable future.”

First of all, everyone knows that the only Clinton “balanced the budget” due to the enormous windfall of income and capital gains taxes he got during stock market bubble.

Second, to portray Bush as “the one” driving up the deficits is absurd. Have you heard of the legislative branch?

I’m all for criticizing Bush on the deficit, but can we try to be rational about it?

By: digamma

digamma — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 22:06:43 +0000

July 19, 2000 is the date that cartoon was published in the American Prospect. Why the sudden fury?

By: PaulD

PaulD — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 21:53:27 +0000

Scared Stiff:

No. As I said earlier, SS contributions are in no way an investment, they are a tax. The return to the individual so taxed is the payments he/she receives in the future. This so happens to be adjusted over the years largely in line with (or even better than) inflation. The return on the SS “fund” has no bearing on the return to the retiree…. really, the way to make the most from it is to live longer….

By: Themadlibertarian

Themadlibertarian — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 21:47:12 +0000

Logical holes in Libertarianism?

By: Rommel

Rommel — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 21:28:07 +0000

Except when Social Security means Free Lunch… like those first retirees who made no contributions into the SS system but were lucky enough to get benefits.

No free lunch means you’ll pay for it later… as in I’ll pay for it when I retire (but get nothing in return).
P.S. I’m 22 y.o.

By: Scared Stiff

Scared Stiff — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 21:26:17 +0000

“I would add that one should consider any period of returns in REAL (post inflation) terms….”

But then the same measure must be applied to SS returns as they are now.

By: PaulD

PaulD — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 21:17:40 +0000

I would add that one should consider any period of returns in REAL (post inflation) terms. Using that as a measure, then there have been very long periods of very poor returns in the stock market.

By: Chip Taylor

Chip Taylor — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 21:01:47 +0000

Claude:

Actually you can buy into an S&P500 index fund for around a thousand or so. Most index funds have very low fees (transaction costs) as well.

By: claude tessier

claude tessier — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 20:36:19 +0000

Sorry but “BTW- There is NO 40 year period that you could lose money in the market, including investing the day before the crash in 1929.” just doesn’t work.

For example, to match the market you have to have a portfolio that mirrors the market as a whole. In practice that is impossible with less than $100,000. Then there are the transaction costs – the transaction costs are the real killers.

There would also be political pressure to intervene in the markets. Look at how Greenspan is artificially keeping interest rates low. It just might work – until Bush gets reelected. Then that bubble will burst.

Sorry folks, no free lunch means no free lunch.