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Posts Tagged ‘Social’

Each year since Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Social Security into law in 1935, it took more money through payroll taxes it paid. That is, until last year.

Social security is now officially gone negative cash, which means a nation that has borrowed the surplus Social Security revenues for decades will begin to repay that money.

Over the years, Social Security collected about 2,500 billion dollars more than what he paid. These additional funds were used to purchase special obligations of the Treasury Department, to build what came to be known as the Social Security Trust Fund.

What about That Lockbox?
When George W. Bush first ran for president a little more than a decade ago, he proposed taking a trillion dollars’ worth of bonds out of that fund to put into private investments. At a debate with Democrat Al Gore in St. Louis, Bush dismissed concerns that his plan might weaken Social Security.

“Now remember, Social Security revenue exceeds expenses up until 2015,” Bush said. “People are going to get paid.”

But Gore had a very different proposal: “putting both Social Security and Medicare in an ironclad lockbox, where the politicians can’t touch them.

“To me,” he said, “that kind of common sense is a family value. Hands off!”

Neither the lockbox nor the private investments ever came to pass. Nor did Bush’s prediction that Social Security revenues would outstrip expenses until 2015. At a recent Senate Budget Committee hearing on the nation’s economic outlook, Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) noted there’s been a sea change in Social Security’s finances.

“My staff informs me under the new report; Social Security has gone permanently cash negative now. Is that the case?” he asked.

“Yes, that’s right,” came the response from Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Elmendorf, whose agency prepared the report.

Conrad added that the time had finally come for the money Social Security has lent the federal government to be paid back.

“How’s it going to be paid back? It’s going to be paid back by the other general expenditure of the federal government having to be reduced to make way for the payments that we’re going to have to make on those bonds,” he said.

Time to Revise?
Lawrence Lindsey, who was Bush’s chief economic adviser, says the purchase of the bonds came from Social Security revenue, “so you’re just paying back something you owe.”

But Lindsey readily acknowledges the money that must now be paid back to Social Security has all been spent.

“That’s a flaw in the design of the … fiscal system. I think it points up one of the reasons why you do not want to have the nation’s retirement based simply on Social Security,” he says.

Republicans say the time has come to revise the Social Security program.

“It’s very significant that this year, Social Security has more money going out than coming in,” says Lamar Alexander, a member of the Senate GOP leadership team. “And it’s very significant that in the next 10 years, Social Security will add half-trillion dollars to the deficit. Social Security would be a good place to start when dealing with these mandatory entitlement programs that are 57 percent of our budget.”

But some prominent Democrats are pushing back:

“Social Security has not contributed one penny to the debt, and as I’ve said before, people should leave Social Security alone,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said earlier this month. “I will do everything that I can in throwing my legislative body in front of any efforts to weaken Social Security.”

Politics’ Third Rail
Republicans, for their part, say Democrats should make the first move on Social Security. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is waiting for President Obama to make that move.

“There will be no entitlement reform without presidential leadership, and to the extent that the president is willing to join with us, and discuss how we deal with these long-term unfunded liabilities, I think virtually every Republican is ready to have that discussion,” McConnell said.

McConnell’s deference to the president is hardly surprising. It’s not for nothing that Social Security is known as politics’ third rail touching it can prove politically perilous.

But the program is now functionally red, a new wave of baby boomers retire and live longer, and the proceeds to further reduce the high rate of unemployment and tax cuts on wages, there are some who think that social security is not vulnerable today than ever before.

Social Bookmarking websites are principally the sites that store and categorize ‘bookmark links’ for a specific website with specific tags. Most of the people go to social bookmarking web-sites and search for a specific information. The main idea about social bookmarking is to put the links that land on your web-site on those social bookmarking sites. Afterwards, you specify the tags which will be categorizing your web-site.

Some Bookmarking software is designed for making social bookmarking easier and more effective. In general, social bookmarking is too time consuming and tedious. Bookmarking Software solves those two problems and helps you to increase adsense income, product sales and affiliate commissions. The price for the software is the lowest on the market. Bookmarking Software also does not require any monthly fees and the updates are free of charge.

One of the users of the Bookmarking software, Jeffery, says: “automatic social bookmarking software have a powerful randomization system that helps to randomize all descriptions and incoming anchored links and even set the customization level. This beat the crap out of those expensive social bookmarking submission services. The ability to add my own scuttle social bookmarking list is a bonus.

Analysts jobs are relatively straight-forward: they analyze everything that is taking place in the social web economy and produce reports on them. They can work inside or outside of companies. The companies can be any of the primary companies in the social web economy or they can even work at actual analyst companies (like Forrester Research).

Analysts pay attention to detail and they can also double as a journalist sometimes. Unfortunately for journalists, there are too many stories to write to have anytime to do in depth analysis. Occasionally though journalists overlap with analysts and they end up producing substantive reports. Both journalists and analysts cover their space obsessively.

In my own opinion, the primary distinction between the two is that journalists focus much more of their effort on working their sources and writing articles. The analysts spend a lot more time doing research which can include working the same sources as journalists but for other types of information.

In the social web economy, I would say that one of the most substantial differences in comparison to other industries is how bloggers are accepted as journalists. While they may not always hold the same standard for reporting, blogs have a substantial reach in the technology field. As such web attending any conference that pertains to the social web economy you will see as many bloggers as traditional journalists if not more bloggers.

No matter who they write for, analysts, journalists and bloggers all are important because they help quickly spread information regarding the companies and people in the social web economy. The primary tension for this group is with other analysts and journalists as they compete for valuable information. Additionally, there is occasionally tension between analysts and journalists and their sources as the journalist will push to expose information that the source didn’t initially wish to reveal.