Combine the decrease in Social Security and Medicare payments with the following worsening condition in America:The Ryan plan would raise taxes for most middle-income families, privatize a substantial portion of Social Security, eliminate the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance, end traditional Medicare and most of Medicaid, and terminate the Children’s Health Insurance Program. The plan would replace these health programs with a system of vouchers whose value would erode over time and thus would purchase health insurance that would cover fewer health care services as the years went by.
"All in all, the Ryan Roadmap charts a radical course that, if they understood it, few Americans likely would want to follow."
These new numbers are important because some might try to pass off the old way of measuring poverty to lessen the negative inhumane reality:The Wisconsin Poverty Report shows the rate of poverty in Wisconsin worsened in 2008, with more than 11 percent of the state's population living in need, including one in seven children and one in 10 elderly residents.
The Wisconsin measure also indicates a steep increase in poverty among the elderly, whose rate jumps to 10.4 percent - compared with 7.1 percent under the official measure - and an increase in children's poverty rate, which is 13.6 percent under the Wisconsin measure, compared with the 13.3 percent rate under the official measure.
The official federal poverty measure considers pretax cash income (but) not work-related expenses, such as transportation and child care, or out-of-pocket medical expenses, whereas the new Wisconsin Poverty Measure counts other resources as well, such as food assistance and tax credits.
The new Wisconsin Poverty Measure also looks at geographic differences in cost of living both within the state and relative to the nation as a whole.
Ryan wants to privatize social security and Medicare because private industry can give campaign contributions and public entities cannot. Thus politicians can share in the profits. But can you imagine what would have happened to your retirement account had Bush succeeded in privatizing just before the market crash?
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