All Things Probama

[kapkomet]

There is a balance though. I mean I'm all about "OMG FREE MARKET" but there has to be some form of government intervention so it doesn't get out of control (because it will), although not to the point of socialist-style price controlling etc. And it has to be done the right way or the free market will be f***ed up worse. Case in point: Health care industry

You think the health care industry is bad now? Wait until the government screws it up but good.

[lostfan]

You think the health care industry is bad now? Wait until the government screws it up but good.

In so many words that's what I was saying.

 

Medicare for instance - originally a good idea, but ended up indirectly raising the price of prescription drugs.

[southsider2k5]

There is a balance though. I mean I'm all about "OMG FREE MARKET" but there has to be some form of government intervention so it doesn't get out of control (because it will), although not to the point of socialist-style price controlling etc. And it has to be done the right way or the free market will be f***ed up worse. Case in point: Health care industry

 

It isn't about government regulation, its about how it is regulated. For example. Each individual piece of the financial markets have a governmental regulating body. None of these bodies know what the other agency is doing, and have no connections to each other. Things like futures, stocks, options, banks, bonds, etc should all be regulated in the same manner so that the related industries are in sync with each other. Now we have a mismash of contradictary rules that make doing business confusing and more expensive than it has to be. To top it off, most of the regulations regarding the financial industry were written in 1933!

[lostfan]

It isn't about government regulation, its about how it is regulated. For example. Each individual piece of the financial markets have a governmental regulating body. None of these bodies know what the other agency is doing, and have no connections to each other. Things like futures, stocks, options, banks, bonds, etc should all be regulated in the same manner so that the related industries are in sync with each other. Now we have a mismash of contradictary rules that make doing business confusing and more expensive than it has to be. To top it off, most of the regulations regarding the financial industry were written in 1933!

During the Depression... lol

 

It just trips me out when people think that we can do away with all regulatory bodies, and then they cite the fact that the 1880s (which was practically the Wild West) had some of the most success for businesses ever. Well yeah... it was also some of the most corrupt and abusive to workers, too. I don't really want to return to that.

[BigSqwert]

Like I said a few pages back...McCain is really going to wind up in a bit of trouble because of the media's constant adoration of him...he's constantly, over and over again, been booked on shows over and over again...and within the last few years has had a chance to answer questions on every issue probably a dozen times, over and over again, to the point where you can stick just about every clip together and wind up with things that contradict. Over and over again.

And here's another perfect example. He might blow Kerry away in the flip-flop contest with all the years of sound bites they have on him.

 

John McCain tried to deny past comments on Social Security reform yesterday, a move which has exposed him to criticism from his rival as well as obscuring the record on what entitlement changes McCain would seek to correct.

 

During last night's pre-screened town hall, John McCain took a hard line against George Bush's plan to privatize social security saying, "But I'm not for quote privatizing Social Security, I never have been, I never will be."

 

But that doesn't quite fit with past comments made by McCain on social security. In fact, he was a big supporter of privatizing social security in 2004:

 

"Without privatization, I don't

s

ee how you can po

s

s

ibly, over time, ma

k

e

s

ure that young American

s

are able to receive

S

ocial

S

ecurity benefit

s

."

He also told the Wall Street Journal this March that "as part of Social Security reform, I believe that private savings accounts are a part of it - along the lines of what President Bush proposed."

 

[HuskyCaucasian]

And here's another perfect example. He might blow Kerry away in the flip-flop contest with all the years of sound bites they have on him.

This guy has no clue what he's said in the past. He doesnt knwo how to use a computer, so he's probably never heard of YouTube.

 

To date, the media has REALLY drooped the ball on coving just how many times he has changed his tune.

Edited June 13, 2008 by Athomeboy_2000

[HuskyCaucasian]

And here's another perfect example. He might blow Kerry away in the flip-flop contest with all the years of sound bites they have on him.

I am compiling a list for a future "project" Did I miss any?

 

Privatizing Social Security

2004: "Without privatization, I don't see how you can possibly, over time, make sure that young Americans are able to receive Social Security benefits."

06-12-08: "But I'm not for quote privatizing Social Security, I never have been, I never will be."

 

Bush Tax Cuts

“Sen. McCain once knew better. He said that he couldn't vote for the Bush tax cuts in good conscience because they were too skewed to the wealthiest Americans. But now he wants to make those same tax cuts permanent and now give even more to those same folks."

 

Tax Cuts During War

"Later, John McCain said it was irresponsible to cut taxes during a time of war because we couldn't afford them. But now he’d continue running up hundreds of billions of dollars in debt while spending billions of dollars a day in Iraq. There’s nothing conservative about that. There’s nothing fiscally prudent about that.”

 

527s

March 2008: McCain Says He will Try to Stop all 527s

 

June 2008: "I can't be a referee of every spot run on television," McCain told the Herald in an exclusive interview. "I admire Sen. Obama and his accomplishments, but we all know there are groups who want to attack me."

 

A Third Bush Term??

June 2005: “the fact is that I have agreed with President Bush far more than I have disagreed. And on the transcendent issues, the most important issues of our day, I've been totally in agreement and support of President Bush.”

 

June 2008: "You will hear from my opponent's campaign in every speech, every interview, every press release that I'm running for President Bush's third term. You will hear every policy of the president described as the Bush-McCain policy. Why does Senator Obama believe it's so important to repeat that idea over and over again? Because he knows it's very difficult to get Americans to believe something they know is false."

 

Jerry Falwell

McCain criticized TV preacher Jerry Falwell as “an agent of intolerance” in 2002, but has since decided to cozy up to the man who said Americans “deserved” the 9/11 attacks. (Indeed, McCain has now hired Falwell’s debate coach.)

 

Charls Wyly

In 2000, McCain accused Texas businessmen Sam and Charles Wyly of being corrupt, spending “dirty money” to help finance Bush’s presidential campaign. McCain not only filed a complaint against the Wylys for allegedly violating campaign finance law, he also lashed out at them publicly. In April, McCain reached out to the Wylys for support.

 

Campaign Finance Reform

McCain supported a major campaign-finance reform measure that bore his name. In June, he abandoned his own legislation.

 

McCain gave up on his signature policy issue, campaign-finance reform, and won’t back the same provision he sponsored just a couple of years ago.

 

Grover Norquist

McCain used to think that Grover Norquist was a crook and a corrupt shill for dictators. Then McCain got serious about running for president and began to reconcile with Norquist.

 

Torture

McCain took a firm line in opposition to torture, and then caved to White House demands.

Bob Jones University

McCain was against presidential candidates campaigning at Bob Jones University before he was for it.

 

Confederate Flag

McCain was both for and against state promotion of the Confederate flag.

Abortion

In 1999, the “moderate” version of John McCain said that overturning Roe v. Wade would be dangerous for women and he would not support it, even in “the long term.” Here’s McCain in the San Francisco Chronicle:

"But certainly in the

s

hort term, or even the long term, I would not

s

upport repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerou

s

operation

s

."

Now: I don’t think a constitutional amendment is probably going to take place, but I do believe that it’s very likely or possible that the Supreme Court should — could overturn Roe v. Wade, which would then return these decisions to the states, which I support.

[Balta1701]

Thank you for posting that. This is EXACTLY what I want John McCain to bring to the debates and here is why. When Jimmy Carter the second starts in about the economy, John McCain can put a torpedo right into his hull by mentioning the damage that this tax plan will do to our economy. Who hires people in this country? Its the rich people. What happens when rich people lose money? They cut costs. What is the #1 cost in a company? Employees. So is the rich guy going to take a paycut, or fire the poor guy? Bye, bye, poor guy. Don't believe me? I really, really hope this comes up.

In principle your argument makes sense, but in practice, I can respond to it pretty easily with a simple graph. I ask you to accept for a moment the claim that the Clinton Administration performed one of the biggest tax increases in history early in its term and the Bush Administration performed within its first 3 years one of the biggest tax cuts in history between the 3 large cuts/stimulus packages enacted within its first few years. If you accept those points, then I present this graph:

 

 

Your argument is that there is a direct connection between the tax situation and job creation. Practically and logically your trickle-down style proposal does make sense. However, just based on the last 2 years of job creation data, the prediction that your proposal makes simply is not found to be true. In a much lower tax environment, especially on the wealthiest of the wealthy, who received by far the largest chunks of the Bush tax cuts, job creation staggered along. After Bill Clinton's large tax increases, which by definition had to hit the wealthiest pretty hard otherwise they wouldn't have increased revenue and helped balance the budget...job creation surged along.

 

This leads me to 1 of 2 conclusions. Either:

 

1. Your proposal is simply wrong, which is something I don't believe, or

2. You are correct that job creation is affected by the tax rates at the uppermost levels, but those effects are minimal and are swamped out by other, much larger and much more important effects and feedbacks within the economy itself. This is what I'll point to as my answer. And if other forces swamp out the signal you're pointing at so easily, then in terms of job creation, it makes far more sense to focus on encouraging the other positive forces that have the much larger impact.

 

The tax rates on the upper classes, including your friendly wealthiest of the wealthy, certainly do play a role in job creation...and it is likely possible to make a tax increase on that group so large as to truly show a major impact. But once we're away from the 1960's style 90% highest tax rates...changes of the order of 10-20% in the tax rates on the wealthiest of the wealthy over the last 20 years have been divorced from the job creation rate, and that is a hard point to argue around.

[kapkomet]

During the Depression... lol

 

It just trips me out when people think that we can do away with all regulatory bodies, and then they cite the fact that the 1880s (which was practically the Wild West) had some of the most success for businesses ever. Well yeah... it was also some of the most corrupt and abusive to workers, too. I don't really want to return to that.

I understand you can't have a 100% "free market", but I also don't think government should be "running" anything such as health care, for example.

[HuskyCaucasian]

And here's another perfect example. He might blow Kerry away in the flip-flop contest with all the years of sound bites they have on him.

For Privatization...

Against Privatization..

For.. well... taking tax dollars and putting it into a personal, private, non-government run account with their name on it.. aka Privatization

 

[Balta1701]

I understand you can't have a 100% "free market", but I also don't think government should be "running" anything such as health care, for example.

There are several reasons why I might be willing to argue that the government can actually do a solid job of running a health care system. It's not something that will make sense for every industry, but in the case of health care I think there are useful points.

 

1. Economy of scale. Right now, something like 20-30% of the money this country spends on health care is spent on administrative costs, paying for different paperwork for different insurers, paying the salaries of all the people who's job it is to find excuses for the insurance companies not to cover specific procedures for people, etc. In a streamlined system where you can assume everyone is covered by 1 setup, the paperwork and administrative costs should drop dramatically because everyone can follow the same standardized procedures.

 

2. Direction of spending. Right now, the way our system is set up, positive health care results are returned as an externality to the system. The main thing our health care system is designed to do is to produce profit for the companies involved, not to produce positive health care results. This leads to clear inefficiencies within the system...easy, cost saving measures not being adopted because the companies involved don't have motivation to save money, over-purchasing and over-ordering of some of the most expensive exams and treatments regardless of need or effectiveness, and direction of research dollars (i.e. in the pharmaceutical industry) to treatments that are more profitable rather than more effective. You will lose something in efficiency if you go to a government based system, you always do when you lose competitiveness, but in many cases worldwide, we see that actually focusing on providing better health care rather than focusing on profits more than makes up for the difference.

 

3. Preventative care. It's long been shown that the most effective type of care is preventative care for many diseases. Hit things early and they go away. But if you're in a situation where you're uninsured, or you don't know if your insurance will cover a treatment, you're likely to not see a doctor until a condition has advanced more. And then, you often wind up going to the emergency room, which is dramatically more expensive for all sides, and is a major drag on the economy in that it keeps sending people in to bankruptcy and pulls large amounts of money from the government. If you know you're going to get non-banrkupting care, you're likely to seek treatment earlier and find it to be more effective.

 

4. Need to do something. At the current rates of growth, within a few decades, basically our entire economy will be made up of the energy sector which creates energy that is used to power the health care sector and the health care sector itself. The fact is, the semi-private system we've built in this country is failing rapidly. The private system has had its shot and despite all the "reforms" over the last 20 years, HMO's, the medicare insurance company bailout bill, etc., nothing has gotten better. It's time to try something creative and new.

[lostfan]

I understand you can't have a 100% "free market", but I also don't think government should be "running" anything such as health care, for example.

I'm with you...

 

My stance on specifically health care has been that I don't want it to be government-run because it just won't work the way we want it to. The quality of health care in this country isn't an issue, so since that isn't broken we shouldn't fix it. The problem is the cost and availability, separate issues that tie into each other. So that's where the reform needs to happen - not simply pumping tax dollars into a new program.

[lostfan]

I also was in some conservative Facebook group yesterday reading their opinions and there were a couple of guys that were saying the money we spend on AIDS research is a waste of money. LOL. Okay...

[southsider2k5]

In principle your argument makes sense, but in practice, I can respond to it pretty easily with a simple graph. I ask you to accept for a moment the claim that the Clinton Administration performed one of the biggest tax increases in history early in its term and the Bush Administration performed within its first 3 years one of the biggest tax cuts in history between the 3 large cuts/stimulus packages enacted within its first few years. If you accept those points, then I present this graph:

 

 

Your argument is that there is a direct connection between the tax situation and job creation. Practically and logically your trickle-down style proposal does make sense. However, just based on the last 2 years of job creation data, the prediction that your proposal makes simply is not found to be true. In a much lower tax environment, especially on the wealthiest of the wealthy, who received by far the largest chunks of the Bush tax cuts, job creation staggered along. After Bill Clinton's large tax increases, which by definition had to hit the wealthiest pretty hard otherwise they wouldn't have increased revenue and helped balance the budget...job creation surged along.

 

This leads me to 1 of 2 conclusions. Either:

 

1. Your proposal is simply wrong, which is something I don't believe, or

2. You are correct that job creation is affected by the tax rates at the uppermost levels, but those effects are minimal and are swamped out by other, much larger and much more important effects and feedbacks within the economy itself. This is what I'll point to as my answer. And if other forces swamp out the signal you're pointing at so easily, then in terms of job creation, it makes far more sense to focus on encouraging the other positive forces that have the much larger impact.

 

The tax rates on the upper classes, including your friendly wealthiest of the wealthy, certainly do play a role in job creation...and it is likely possible to make a tax increase on that group so large as to truly show a major impact. But once we're away from the 1960's style 90% highest tax rates...changes of the order of 10-20% in the tax rates on the wealthiest of the wealthy over the last 20 years have been divorced from the job creation rate, and that is a hard point to argue around.

 

Or

 

3. There are other factors in the world.

 

The commodities inflation and mortgage bubble have more to with the collapse in job creation right now than anything else. That Krugman graph totally ignores those realities. Not to mention things like the Clinton recession and 9-11 that also caused huge hits in the economy. If you want think it is prudent to increase taxes on the people who are the creators of jobs in an enviornment where we are losing jobs as it is, there isn't much I can say.

[EvilMonkey]

There are several reasons why I might be willing to argue that the government can actually do a solid job of running a health care system. It's not something that will make sense for every industry, but in the case of health care I think there are useful points.

 

1. Economy of scale. Right now, something like 20-30% of the money this country spends on health care is spent on administrative costs, paying for different paperwork for different insurers, paying the salaries of all the people who's job it is to find excuses for the insurance companies not to cover specific procedures for people, etc. In a streamlined system where you can assume everyone is covered by 1 setup, the paperwork and administrative costs should drop dramatically because everyone can follow the same standardized procedures.

 

2. Direction of spending. Right now, the way our system is set up, positive health care results are returned as an externality to the system. The main thing our health care system is designed to do is to produce profit for the companies involved, not to produce positive health care results. This leads to clear inefficiencies within the system...easy, cost saving measures not being adopted because the companies involved don't have motivation to save money, over-purchasing and over-ordering of some of the most expensive exams and treatments regardless of need or effectiveness, and direction of research dollars (i.e. in the pharmaceutical industry) to treatments that are more profitable rather than more effective. You will lose something in efficiency if you go to a government based system, you always do when you lose competitiveness, but in many cases worldwide, we see that actually focusing on providing better health care rather than focusing on profits more than makes up for the difference.

 

3. Preventative care. It's long been shown that the most effective type of care is preventative care for many diseases. Hit things early and they go away. But if you're in a situation where you're uninsured, or you don't know if your insurance will cover a treatment, you're likely to not see a doctor until a condition has advanced more. And then, you often wind up going to the emergency room, which is dramatically more expensive for all sides, and is a major drag on the economy in that it keeps sending people in to bankruptcy and pulls large amounts of money from the government. If you know you're going to get non-banrkupting care, you're likely to seek treatment earlier and find it to be more effective.

 

4. Need to do something. At the current rates of growth, within a few decades, basically our entire economy will be made up of the energy sector which creates energy that is used to power the health care sector and the health care sector itself. The fact is, the semi-private system we've built in this country is failing rapidly. The private system has had its shot and despite all the "reforms" over the last 20 years, HMO's, the medicare insurance company bailout bill, etc., nothing has gotten better. It's time to try something creative and new.

#2 can be explained in part by lawsuits and the CYA attitude most have adopted after multi-million dollar judgements get passed for missing something that you had no real chance of finding anyway until it was too late. Run every test you can think of, then you can't be blamed for 'missing' something.

#3 is a good thing, but in practice could bankrupt whatever system you put in place as people go running to the doctor for every little sniffle or scrape. Yes, they do it now in the emergency room, which is also a huge problem. Those little clinics you see inside some Walmarts and Walgreens now can help with that particular problem, but they are being fought by the AMA. They should be encouraged.

#1 How will the economy react to the huge amounts of people that will be out of work thru the economies of scale? And can our government afford anybody else on the government pension plan instead of social security? SOMEBODY has to keep paying into it. As for streamliing it, how about coming up with a system like ISO9000 but only for the medical field. A system of standards regarding coding and billing to ease the paperwork on all. Incent them to work together, and in the long run it will lower costs to the average person.

#4 I'll admit that something needs to be done, but how about other things. Tort reform. Free/low cost clinics for preventative maintenance. Taxbreaks for docs to do work at previously mentioned clinics.

 

But you can count on one thing. if you get government run healthcare, Congress and the rich will still have the best care available to them, and it won't be the one the rest of us are on.

[Balta1701]

Or

 

3. There are other factors in the world.

 

The commodities inflation and mortgage bubble have more to with the collapse in job creation right now than anything else. That Krugman graph totally ignores those realities. Not to mention things like the Clinton recession and 9-11 that also caused huge hits in the economy. If you want think it is prudent to increase taxes on the people who are the creators of jobs in an enviornment where we are losing jobs as it is, there isn't much I can say.

Exactly my point! There are other factors, and they're easily swamping out the effects of the 10-20% changes in the tax rate on the upper percentile. That graph isn't ignoring anything...it's showing which ones are winning right now.

[southsider2k5]

Exactly my point! There are other factors, and they're easily swamping out the effects of the 10-20% changes in the tax rate on the upper percentile. That graph isn't ignoring anything...it's showing which ones are winning right now.

 

So why again is taking money out of the hands of the people who create jobs going to help the poor?

[lostfan]

Or

 

3. There are other factors in the world.

 

The commodities inflation and mortgage bubble have more to with the collapse in job creation right now than anything else. That Krugman graph totally ignores those realities. Not to mention things like the Clinton recession and 9-11 that also caused huge hits in the economy. If you want think it is prudent to increase taxes on the people who are the creators of jobs in an enviornment where we are losing jobs as it is, there isn't much I can say.

How does this explain the 8 years of expansion under Clinton in spite of his tax increases, though?

[StrangeSox]

How does this explain the 8 years of expansion under Clinton in spite of his tax increases, though?

 

I'd say that the extremely rapid expansion of the tech sector counts as "other factors," and that turned out to be a big, huge bubble.

[lostfan]

I'd say that the extremely rapid expansion of the tech sector counts as "other factors," and that turned out to be a big, huge bubble.

The burst of the bubble made the economy stumble, but not really collapse since the overall economy was in relatively good health. Oh and it should be added that Clinton didn't really have anything to do with that, neither the expansion nor the recession.

Edited June 13, 2008 by lostfan

[HuskyCaucasian]

I'd say that the extremely rapid expansion of the tech sector counts as "other factors," and that turned out to be a big, huge bubble.

The TECH bubble had a lot to do with the growth of the economy when Clinton was president (and did nothing to help regulate it) and then the deflation when Bush stepped in and the bubble burst (not bush's fault).

I watched a quasi-documentary on the bubble not too long ago. It was very fascinating.

[StrangeSox]

The burst of the bubble made the economy stumble, but not really collapse since the overall economy was in relatively good health. Oh and it should be added that Clinton didn't really have anything to do with that, neither the expansion nor the recession.

 

Right, that's my point. The tech bubble was going to happen whether or not Clinton raised taxes, so citing economic expansion during that period as evidence that tax increases don't hurt the economy doesn't work. It isn't that clear-cut.

[lostfan]

Right, that's my point. The tech bubble was going to happen whether or not Clinton raised taxes, so citing economic expansion during that period as evidence that tax increases don't hurt the economy doesn't work. It isn't that clear-cut.

I wasn't saying that though. I was more saying that tax increases are just one factor, and too often people act like they're the only factor that does anything to affect the economy.

[HuskyCaucasian]

Obama Surges Ahead!

You're not likely to hear this in the corporate media, but as of yesterday Obama has taken a massive lead on McCain in the one area that truly matters.

 

The Electoral College (via Electoral-Vote.com)

[HuskyCaucasian]

And here's another perfect example. He might blow Kerry away in the flip-flop contest with all the years of sound bites they have on him.

 

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/6/1.../415/541/535436

Obama ripped into McCain earlier in the day...

"You know, John McCain has proposed a series of debates, and I’m looking forward to having them. But when it comes to Social Security, he might want to finish the debate with himself first."