Calm down.

My comment was not on military retirees. It was on improper disability ratings upon being discharged from the military. Now if someone retires and/or is discharged from the military with an improper disability rating, yes that is parasitic.

I was not commenting on military pensions.

People don’t want to work anymore. We are going into deer season here and I have to hire 12 to 15 people in the next two weeks. Haven’t had one person come in to apply. It’s pretty sad.

The local Dairy Queen had to cut it’s hours and close the drive up window, grocery store had 4 quit the other day so pretty much few are looking for work now.

Work is for suckers it seems. LOL

Have you ever served in the military? Have you served in a combat zone? Do you know what it takes to get a disability from the VA?. If not you should look into it. It is not given just because someone, says "hey, I'm gonna be a good guy today, and give out disability awards".

Heck, even guys that lost both legs, lifts weights, and can make most weight lifters look like sissies. You don't know about that guy, he could have suffered a TBI, and if it wasn't for his working out, he could be going postal on lawyers.

He served in a non-combat role in a non-combat era for the Navy. I am pretty sure he was a machinist mate. I know him really well. Other than taking money for a disability he doesn't have, I like him a lot.

I know a few others too. I haven't studied this and my opinion is based on anecdotal evidence, but there seems to be an issue.

I am not too concerned about it. I am way more concerned about the way more prevalent forms of disability fraud.

Buy some gas and you just paid user fees. You cannot avoid all taxes if you earn money and buy stuff. Try avoiding your property taxes. The government seems uninterested in raising tax revenue these days anyway. If they needed tax revenue, they wouldn't close down the private sector businesses that provide for the parasites. The parasites seem to be doing fine with printed money.

The host produces wealth. The parasite consumes wealth. The parasite needs the host.

"What's the difference between a lawyer and a tick? — Both are bloodsucking parasites, but one stops when you're dead."

I like that!

I have a few colleagues whose kids (usually only a couple or maybe just one) never had a part-time job in high school before going off to college. Too busy with extracurricular events for school. Of course mommy and daddy made decent to good money. A lot of kids now go into adulthood without ever really breaking a sweat doing anything for money. Again, as the article said, lots of money out there sloshing around. But what the article didn't say, taking away the illegally made money, a lot of money sloshing around is based on debt somewhere...

"parasite" "host" ....... Thank God there are millions of symbiotic relationships in our economy that make it work and work quite well in spite of a lot of the negative rhetoric.

Bryce

I just sent in a few thousand dollars of estimated tax payments last week. If I could have saved that money I'd have likely put it toward student loans. What a messed up system. I get to pay tax on my income, plus tax (interest) on the loan. At least I get a $2500 deductible on my thousands of dollars of debt.

Symbiotic:denoting a mutually beneficial relationship between different people or groups.


Most of the Federal budget is wealth transfer or redistribution of wealth. How is this mutually beneficial? Take my money, I could spend on my survival, and give it to somebody else to spend on their survival.

It does nothing for the overall economy either.

"In other words, 70 percent of everything the federal government will spend this year will amount to writing checks to benefit individuals. That's up from 28 percent in 1968 and 50 percent in 1991. At $3.2 trillion, these federal money transfers will equal the entire economies of Canada and Mexico combined.

Here's another way to think about it.
An enormous wealth transfer engine

This year, the government will collect a little more than $3.4 trillion in revenue. It will hand all but $200 billion of that back in the form of direct payments to individuals or for services on their behalf.

It will then borrow nearly $1 trillion to pay for everything else the government does — military, roads, parks, environmental protection, law enforcement, research, education."

I do not agree with the wealth distribution the government does.

Poor people generally spend all to almost all of the money they earn or are given. The middle class and the rich are more likely to save their money. By giving the money the middle class and rich earned to the poor, the democrats do make it more likely that money will be quickly spent and taxed, instead of saved.

Driving up inflation penalizes those who thought of the future and saved. It puts more of that money into the government's coffers as tax revenue too, as people are forced to dig in to their savings to pay for the higher costs of goods and services.

Keith

"This amounts to a vast, and largely unheralded, shift in the role of government — from one that focuses on things like national defense and basic services to one that functions as an enormous wealth transfer engine. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. Who would object to the government shifting money from the wealthy to the less fortunate?

Except that's not what happens. What's remarkable, in fact, is how little of all this money goes to the poor and downtrodden.

Just $102 billion of that $3.2 trillion will go to provide food and nutrition assistance money to the needy, and only $196 billion on other public assistance programs. Direct payments to help offset the cost of education, training and employment services will add up to only $77 billion.
Government robs Peter to pay ... Peter?

By contrast, the federal government will hand out $88 billion worth of pension checks to retired civil servants.

The vast bulk of all the money paid to individuals will, in fact, go to the middle class, and even the upper middle class, largely through Social Security and Medicare — programs for which even the richest Americans receive benefits. Almost 12 percent of retirees collecting Social Security checks have incomes $100,000 and over, according to the Social Security Administration. A 2011 report by then-Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., found that millionaires were collecting $9 billion in retirement checks from the federal government.

Medicare results in "net transfers from the poor to the wealthy," both because of how it's paid for and the fact that wealthier retirees tend to live longer and spend more on health care, according to a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

In recent years, one of the fastest growing check-writing programs in the federal budget has been in the category of "veterans benefits and services," which aren't means tested. The Department of Veterans Affairs writes more than $64 billion in disability checks to veterans — almost triple the amount spent in 2000 — and most of those checks go to vets who have jobs.

In short, while there is no doubt that redistribution of wealth is going on — the richest 1 percent pay 39 percent of federal income taxes — the fact is that much of what the federal government does today is rob Peter to pay …. Peter."

I never called you a parasite. I said something like this:

Everybody has a risk of serious or catastrophic injury or illness. You can cover that risk in two ways I can think of: with health insurance, or by setting aside enough assets to pay the cost.

If you don't cover your own risk yourself, somebody has to. You've shifted the risk, and eventual cost, to the rest of us, who carry insurance or pay in cash. If you've got a million bucks or so sitting around to cover your medical risk, you can disregard what I'm saying.

Now, Dirt, I've never heard you renounce hospitals and doctors. It my be a wrong guess to say that you won't, that you'd run to the hospital like the rest of us if you or one of your family got sick or injured.

No more of this "parasite" business, you hear. Hold your head up, man! I'm sure you'll never get sick or injured.

Jim

I'd get my hip boots on, but they have a leak in the bottom.

I don’t consider anyone that keeps money from someone who doesn’t know how to spend it wisely a parasite. I wish more Americans would do it.

People who take their hand off the wagon without climbing on the wagon should be praised not demonized as well.

I don't do a lick of work for money.
50 years of doing that was enough.
just

Then you're probably in the age cohort (16-64) of guys this article is talking about...

Im not trapping this year. Prices are terrible. I might just get a 2nd job to work in my off time.