Obamacare

[DKFett]

Now imagine you don't have insurance and you get cancer, and now the company is forced to give you health coverage under the new law.

how can a company stay in business when people can just break an arm and then get insurance and can't be denied

Are we talking about arm cancer?

[BooBiesYaY]

...The US economy is like a giant Monopoly game...

Actually that couldnt be more true, except you have a bunch of kids playing monopoly with you stealing $500 orange bills from the bank then taking over all the properties and charging rents lol.

The problems of this country originate mainly from the monopolized ownership of land, stocks, bonds etc. 91% of all stocks and bonds are held by the elites. For example, even if you decided to do a massive socialism move and redistribute the entire wealth gap evenly among all 325mil US citizens, that would once again only result in all the wealth going back to the elites over 20-30 years as they own all the income streams.

I find it equally hilarious the US national debt excludes the fed's balance sheet, of which I believe was 30 trillion+ or double the stated US debt, mostly derived from laundering. And if you count the unfunded liabilities of many trillions more the real debt could be like 80 trillion.

Since pay was abnormally unfair for more than 4 decades at the bequest of lobbyists, the minimum wage stood at 33% of the 1970 minimum wage, inflation adjusted ($22.50). IE, in 1970, based on current inflation dollars today, minimum wage in 1970 wouldve been $22.50. It stands at $7.50avg now or 1/3rd.

Couple in the massive fraud and corruption. Local districts are now even trying to have towns vote on 30 year long bonds to do renovations in those towns whose contracts are probably 5x overvalued and grandfathered to family businesses at overvalued levels.

I guess what im trying to say is that theres a reason that a lot in our country is uninsured and in poverty. A lot of corruption, fraud, laws that were unconstitutional, and the enormous wealth gap rises to the top of the list.

Frankly, if i had my way, id redistribute the entire upper echelon's monies by at least half and call it "the 4 decade long corruption redistribution act". Then, break up all monopolistic ownership of stocks, bonds and revenue streams to prevent a future wealth gap. Revamp all the markets so Jeff Bezos could sell 500million in stock every 3 months to taxpayers through JP morgan's taxpayer funded accounts at a ratio p/e of 200 on the stock. Not to mention stop all the fraud in the markets.

Overall, if you raise min wage to $15, let the companies compensate by raising prices, losing all their customers, closing shops, lowering product prices, stopping absurd advertising/marketing expenses and stop paying the top brass $50mil each. Nature will sort it out.

So.. theres solutions to all these problem none of which will ever be implemented. If Obamacare represents slight socialism i could not care less. There should be more considering what went down in this country, illegally or immorally.

And companies WILL adjust if their profits fall they wont be able to pass it on to customers like described above. They will either close shop, cut top salaries, stop spending $5mil per ad in the superbowl etc.

[BooBiesYaY]

Actually that couldnt be more true, except you have a bunch of kids playing monopoly with you stealing $500 orange bills from the bank then taking over all the properties and charging rents lol.

The problems of this country originate mainly from the monopolized ownership of land, stocks, bonds etc. 91% of all stocks and bonds are held by the elites. For example, even if you decided to do a massive socialism move and redistribute the entire wealth gap evenly among all 325mil US citizens, that would once again only result in all the wealth going back to the elites over 20-30 years as they own all the income streams.

I find it equally hilarious the US national debt excludes the fed's balance sheet, of which I believe was 30 trillion+ or double the stated US debt, mostly derived from laundering. And if you count the unfunded liabilities of many trillions more the real debt could be like 80 trillion.

Since pay was abnormally unfair for more than 4 decades at the bequest of lobbyists, the minimum wage stood at 33% of the 1970 minimum wage, inflation adjusted ($22.50). IE, in 1970, based on current inflation dollars today, minimum wage in 1970 wouldve been $22.50. It stands at $7.50avg now or 1/3rd.

Couple in the massive fraud and corruption. Local districts are now even trying to have towns vote on 30 year long bonds to do renovations in those towns whose contracts are probably 5x overvalued and grandfathered to family businesses at overvalued levels.

I guess what im trying to say is that theres a reason that a lot in our country is uninsured and in poverty. A lot of corruption, fraud, laws that were unconstitutional, and the enormous wealth gap rises to the top of the list.

Frankly, if i had my way, id redistribute the entire upper echelon's monies by at least half and call it "the 4 decade long corruption redistribution act". Then, break up all monopolistic ownership of stocks, bonds and revenue streams to prevent a future wealth gap. Revamp all the markets so Jeff Bezos could sell 500million in stock every 3 months to taxpayers through JP morgan's taxpayer funded accounts at a ratio p/e of 200 on the stock. Not to mention stop all the fraud in the markets.

Overall, if you raise min wage to $15, let the companies compensate by raising prices, losing all their customers, closing shops, lowering product prices, stopping absurd advertising/marketing expenses and stop paying the top brass $50mil each. Nature will sort it out.

So.. theres solutions to all these problem none of which will ever be implemented. If Obamacare represents slight socialism i could not care less. There should be more considering what went down in this country, illegally or immorally.

And companies WILL adjust if their profits fall they wont be able to pass it on to customers like described above. They will either close shop, cut top salaries, stop spending $5mil per ad in the superbowl etc.

I dont know enough about obamacare in general i have private Blue Cross BS. But, my impression is this harms the middle class people by raising their premiums. Which, in my opinion, targets the wrong class of people for socialism, but hey its better than tens of millions of people going with illnesses without being treated because all they can do is get covered under charitycare presumably through only emergency room visits.

[Ephemeral]

Although I too am concerned about a smaller percentage of people owning a larger percentage of the wealth I fail to see how this is a major impact to the economy. Wealthy people don’t stuff cash in their mattress or horde large amounts of money. They spent it. They invest it. They use (redistribute) their wealth. And even if they die without spending their wealth be rest assured that their hires will spend it. (Truth is that since the majority of manufacturing has left the US shores the only thing we really have left is ‘feeding’ off each other for ‘services’. Wealthy people are huge consumers of all kinds of services.)

There have always been power struggles between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’. But redistributing the wealth, or socialism, has been tried and failed many times throughout history. In fact I cannot think of a single time in history that is has worked on any scale (including the 1970s communes that were popular when I was still naïve and idealistic). On an empirical level it is always fun to discuss a ‘kinder, gentler world where everyone is on more of a level playing field’ but reality does not support this. The only reason we are even discussing this topic is because humans suck and aren’t willing to care about each other enough to make real sacrifices.
Consider it this way. If you busted your ass for months working to get a good grade in a class, are you willing to donate part of your grade to the other person who didn’t work as hard as you? Are you willing to put in 10 hours overtime every week at your job so you can donate some cash to others who aren’t working or don’t have health care? Frankly if everyone cared this much and was willing to do this then redistribution of the wealth would not be needed.
eph

P.S. Even if you have Blue Cross insurance now, get ready to see a large increase in its cost and lowering of your benefits.

[BooBiesYaY]

Jerome,
To my way of thinking this is consistent with their perspective of having capitalism as THE answer to all of society’s woes. eph

We havent had capitalism in this country for decades. Capitalism doesnt entail having 30-35trillion printed then laundered into third party banks, of which you can launder out and fleece under the guise of stock options into perpetuity, sell your insider stock at taxpayer funded levels (200 p/e), be bailed out of all the fraud you did, and so forth.

The wealth gap is 91% for the top 5 or 10% I forget, and 9% for the other 95%. And who knows if you can even trust government statistics frankly. They write fiction half the time.

Capitalism also cannot work without rules. I cannot be 100% laize faire. Picture there being no minium wage for example, you would have sweat shops in the USA paying $1 an hour at best, or kids working in chimneys like 150-200 years ago dying from lung diseases.

Since we've had crony capitalism and other conspiratory happenings in this country for at least 4 decades, id welcome socialsm, against the very top. I think thats the only way to fix things frankly, unless you think its normal and fair for 91% of the entire ownership and money supply to be in the hands of a few dozen people, buying our government as well.

The NSA probably is only spying so rampant because the rich elite fear terrorism against them more than anything, and ordered the abuse of laws/constitution. What they say trumps anything most of the time.

Anyway, in a perfect world, capitalism would work with reasonable and fair rules. But the way things went down for decades, nothing will solve the problems except massive redistribution or as Id like to call it, confiscating the stolen wealth of people who hold $500mil or higher probably. Start at that threshold.

[BooBiesYaY]

Although I too am concerned about a smaller percentage of people owning a larger percentage of the wealth I fail to see how this is a major impact to the economy. Wealthy people don’t stuff cash in their mattress or horde large amounts of money. They spent it. They invest it. They use (redistribute) their wealth. And even if they die without spending their wealth be rest assured that their hires will spend it. (Truth is that since the majority of manufacturing has left the US shores the only thing we really have left is ‘feeding’ off each other for ‘services’. Wealthy people are huge consumers of all kinds of services.)

There have always been power struggles between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’. But redistributing the wealth, or socialism, has been tried and failed many times throughout history. In fact I cannot think of a single time in history that is has worked on any scale (including the 1970s communes that were popular when I was still naïve and idealistic). On an empirical level it is always fun to discuss a ‘kinder, gentler world where everyone is on more of a level playing field’ but reality does not support this. The only reason we are even discussing this topic is because humans suck and aren’t willing to care about each other enough to make real sacrifices.
Consider it this way. If you busted your ass for months working to get a good grade in a class, are you willing to donate part of your grade to the other person who didn’t work as hard as you? Are you willing to put in 10 hours overtime every week at your job so you can donate some cash to others who aren’t working or don’t have health care? Frankly if everyone cared this much and was willing to do this then redistribution of the wealth would not be needed.
eph

P.S. Even if you have Blue Cross insurance now, get ready to see a large increase in its cost and lowering of your benefits.

First of all wealthy people do "not" spend it or that would contradict the entire factual evidence of the wealth gap expanding every year for decades. They hoard it. Bloomberg had 2billion in 2001 and has 25billion+ now.

Your reading way too much mainstream nonsense about Bill Gates or Buffett pledging their money to charity lol. Buffett is the one who bought $6billion in Goldman Sachs stock and bonds, of which taxpayers bailed it all out, and the long story short of that is Buffett took 6billion in taxpayer money in 2008/2009. He clearly knew it would be bailed out and he also clearly knew taxpayer would have to subsidize HIS investment.

Also, you note that the wealthy are major consumers. First, the wealthy im talking about arent in the $1mil to $50mil level. Im speaking of the $400mil+ level or higher. The wealthy doing 90% of all the consuming in the economy does not set forth a fair, reasonable, or unbiased system where there is healthy and fair trade between citizens. It sets forth dozens of nobels and few Kings.


Also, we are not simply talking about a moderate level of "haves" or "have nots" in 1950-1970, the wealth gap was 40% in the few hands, and 60% in the many. now its 91% vs 9%. Its in poverty land right now, where 50million are in poverty and there is zero disposable income for anyone and you have to work 3 jobs to pay rent. There is zero money slushing around in disposable income for 200+million people, none at all.

If you know anything about the markets another example would be the trillions in fleeced money by offshore fraudsters. There was a thing called the Asian stock frauds that occured from 2001-2013+. It fleeced trillions from the US markets to asians who will not prosecute or do anything as is Chinese public policy. That money came right out of US taxpayers since the entire market is taxpayer funded right now.

Also, everytime a CEO or board member prints stock to sell for the last 5 years +, he sells it to taxpayers since all stocks are 100% supported by taxpayer money for any stock SALES.

Anyway, we are so far from capitalism that at this point in time, id 100% support temporary, targetted socialism that attempts to minimize any impact to those with incomes under 1mil/yr and assets under even as much as 150mil or so. the rest are fair game as far as im concerned for forcible redistribution since auditing and analyzing each and every fraud in the country since the 1970's would take more paper than there are trees on planet earth.

[roxxkatt]

BUT BUT

SOCIALISM

[Summa]

I had hopes for this thread when I saw it and read the first couple posts, but then it kinda never got past superlatives and fairly unsupported principles. So I guess I will respond to some degree on the same level.

1) I don't really believe that there is any ethical grounds, moral grounds, or objection based on principle to claim that every single person on this planet or at least in your country should be provided with health care. Now, if you wanna disagree over who should pay for it or the system by which it is implemented, then by all means we have something to talk about. But if you can't get past step 1 then there's no real point to be in the conversation at all.

2) Eph said something about if we extend the health care system to cover everyone on our dime, then why not extend it to people outside our borders? Why don't we slippery slope? Well because slippery slope arguments are a fallacy and invalid form of argumentation, however the simple answer is social contracts. They don't exist within our border or as a citizen of our country, so they don't sign the same social contract. They are not held to the same standards and as a result do not get the same benefits. If the entire world would like to become American citizens, then I personally would be happy to extend them all health care.

3) I hear a lot about costs going up, costs going up, costs going up. While I think they will rise slightly for some people, in general I don't necessarily think costs will shift drastically up. I believe benefits of your current plan will lessen, which is a problem, and you would have to pay more to maintain your current level of coverage. However, this also ignores highly rural areas where people were getting GOUGED on health care because there was only 1 provider and nothing could be done. Those people saved tons of money, but I digress. I mean, being that there is no statistical evidence of how the new health care marketplace is effecting things (seeing as how we are a month in?) it is hard to make any judgments. But it is a marketplace that should have a government provided plan setting as a minimum bar (at least in it's intention); I mean you understand market economics, if you deviate too far from the lowest, and the lowest provides comparable service then you're gonna go out of business. Now whether this will act out as planned in implementation is another fucking story altogether (as our recent government is fairly incompetent).

4) Taxes, Taxes, Taxes! Again a fairly large misnomer about the health care debate is that it will cost the government more money. Actually it really won't cost that much in effect. It may, indeed, cost the tax payer more money because the money is being added directly to them instead of directly to the debt (which is actually a better thing imo). Currently the system exists to where hospitals can write off expenses to be reimbursed to the government if some1 who is uninsured rolls up into their ER and they treat them. Those costs then either get passed to the tax payer (less so) or just straight added to our debt. So in essence you're already paying for emergency health care for the entire country or at least the government is (which is indirectly you). Why not just stop with the facade and just pay for it? Oh because...

5) Corporations are bitching. If all they care about is maintaining or increasing profit margins, then that seems like a flaw in the corporation; not in the health care system. To some degree as well, there was already two backdoors built into the bill for corporations as well. I hope you knew this, but all you have to do is downgrade your workers to 29.5 hours and you don't have to cover them; or wait!!!!! It get's better, let's say you need full time employees and that average price tag of $8000 on your end over the course of a year is just too much for you to handle in regards to your profit margin. No worries, there's a $2000 dollar fine you can pay and then kablow you're off the hook! Now does this fuck small businesses? Absolutely, but that's cuz the current health care system is an utter joke in most regards compared to a single payer system or a completely socialized system. You can continue to think that this is bad for x and y, but in my opinion it is a system designed to take a baby step toward a single-payer system that still jacks off corporations that line the pockets of law makers due to Citizens United and a Lack of Public Financing of Campaigns (a different bag of worms altogether). However, my final point here would be this: during the industrial revolution of England child labor and hazardous work conditions were at their peak because the major companies at that time were solely interested in profit margin; and it took the formation of unions and strikes to break that mentality. Unions in this country suck and are gasbags, but companies not giving a damn about those who work for them or those who buy from them and only caring about a board of 6 ppl; well that's a mentality that needs to be ousted from this country.

6) Socialist programs and socialism have always failed - Eph 2013
Wrong - summa 2013

China is the current #1 superpower in the world, and guess what? They are primarily socialist/communist. I mean they have added more capitalistic aspects to their economy over time, but they remain primarily in their original state. Canada, has socialized health care and the #1 bad boy of all socialism: a solitary national bank. Canada has not had a recession since 1904, and their income disparity is pretty fucking amazing for a country with such geographical size and population. But let's move even closer to home, and look at America. The social programs which are widely regarded as the most successful and which changed our nation's type to a Welfare State are a little thing called The New Deal; and they are almost entirely socialist in nature. This isn't even examining the EU, especially the smaller nations which essentially prove that socialism can at least work on a state level.

Should we switch to socialism in this country entirely? Fuck no. But things like having no recessions in 110 years and not having the largest income disparity since the great depression are things that are looking kinda good right now. Maybe we should start looking at what the rest of the world is doing and give them some credit rather than always thinking our dick is biggest.

[Ephemeral]

Summa,
Thanks for joining in, you always bring value to these kinds of discussions.

1 & 2. Understood. I raised the moral/ethic aspects to get the reader thinking about insurance in that context because I think it is germane to the issue. Somehow humans have survived for thousands of years without insurance yet now it seems we cannot live without it. Why? What effect has this had on the world? IMO, insurance has had a huge negative effect on us all. Going back to its inception, those guys sitting in English pubs and betting on which ships would arrive back to port, it has effective dismantled our traditional support systems. It is simply a corporate answer for walking away from family, friends, church, and others who we have traditionally turned to in times of need. Additionally it changes the way we make health care decisions; it is far easier to stick it to a faceless company than to have gone to your family and friends for the same kind of help.

3. I completely agree with everything you said with the following addition. I hear a lot about cost going down, costs going down, costs going down. Like you I want to see some real data and metrics. But this is a huge change to our country. Should not those leaders who are pushing this sweeping change be the ones responsible for producing those numbers? Why are they not saying ‘here is the metric, here is how we are going to measure the success/failure of this plan and we will revisit this every 6 months to see how it is going’? Somehow people think that being a Democrat or Republican matters, my opinion is that there are no leaders in Washington; there are selfish individuals whose primary concern is more about self-preservation than helping the country.

4. Again, we can banter back and forth about tax numbers but let’s see the data/metrics so we have something substantial to talk about. Those who are promoting this new direction to our country should be required to produce these metrics. And they should be required to stop calling this an ‘Act’, I thought that we would have learned this lesson back in the 1770s (Tea ‘Act’). It’s a tax.

5. I come from a different kind of corporate background. My corporations were typical of the majority of them in the US, small companies of less than a few hundred people. These are companies where everyone knows each other and we covered 90% of the employees health care for decades even in the face of our insurance agent coming in every year with ‘good news!! Your costs are ONLY going up 30% this year’. Yes, I sat on the Board of Directors. Yes, I pulled less salary/benefits/income/wealth than the upper staff of my companies. In my circle of business associations I know many, many partners/owners and these small corporations do the exact same thing. When someone says corporation I think about the vast majority of corporations (small businesses make up 99.7% of U.S. employer firms) and their workers (the majority of private sector employees) and not mega-corporations those like Ford or Microsoft.

6. I should have been clearer. Pure Socialist programs and socialism have always failed. Surely no one will argue that at any time in history pure socialism has successes. All the historical examples of pure socialist countries that I can think of are those in which people were desperate to leave. If we agree on this, that the examples you gave are examples that are clearly feeding off of capitalism, then we can move on to discussing hybrid systems. This brings me to the one of the primary points I was trying to make, does mandating morals and ethics in a society ever work?
eph

[DKFett]

Health before profit. That's really all I have to say.

[roxxkatt]

BUT SOCALISM

AND OBAMA

[DKFett]

BUT SOCALISM

AND OBAMA

you for or against?

[Tone]

Depending on the person, Obamacare raises premiums between 50% and 500%

You need to start understanding these things are by-design on-purpose destruction, and not incompetence

[DKFett]

these things are by-design on-purpose destruction, and not incompetence

Asshole. Stop talking like that.

[roxxkatt]

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