Re: Is Anyone In This Group Enthusiastic About Any Candidate?


"Islander" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:8Lidnf2b5OtI-hDanZ2dnUVZ_oOnnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
John Galt wrote:
"Islander" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Oq-dnXO3zsFPmxDanZ2dnUVZ_h-vnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
John Galt wrote:
"Islander" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Y7CdnbAeSdG2cBHanZ2dnUVZ_v6rnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
John Galt wrote:
"Islander" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:BbednRY5lK_kAxbanZ2dnUVZ_uCinZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
John Galt wrote:
"Islander" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:rpadnW1kX4BcBBbanZ2dnUVZ_gudnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
John Galt wrote:
"Islander" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ceednRU-wZD3WBfanZ2dnUVZ_qGknZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
John Galt wrote:
"Islander" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1-ydnU-zevozxhfanZ2dnUVZ_t2inZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
John Galt wrote:
"Rumpelstiltskin" <PleaseDoNotReplyByEmail@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote
in message news:ounio3d3ka0ufksseg2it59avk16kv5gdi@xxxxxxxxxx
---[snip]---
Carter only ran up a fraction of the deficits that Reagan
and the
Bushes ran up for the same period of time. Yeah, I guess I
would
have bitched about the Carter deficits if I'd been paying
attention
at that time, but there's no comparison with what came
later.
No, but at the time, the deficit was one of the issues that
propelled Reagan into office. It was, at the time, considered
"runaway", and in the context of the overall economy (not
gross dollars) it wasn't much different than it was today.

I recall that period very well since I was in the DC area at
the time. It was not the size of the deficit that was the
issue at the time, but the out-of-control interest rates that
everyone including the federal government was paying. There
was a great deal of concern over the amount of credit that was
being bought up by foreigners and speculation about how that
might influence US foreign policy. The deficit was low during
the Carter years, but the interest was killing us.
I remember it differently as far as emphasis, but both were in
play, IIRC.
While Carter gets most of the blame for the high inflation
rate of the period, the blame really goes back to Fed Chairman
Arthur Burns who increased the money supply in an effort to
get Nixon reelected in '72.
The inflationary period was substantially attributable to
Nixon. In "Money Mischeif", Milton Friedman notes that the
hyperinflation was largely the result of Nixon telling Burns to
crank up the printing presses so as to pay of Vietnam debt.

Carter's deficit spending (as a percentage of the GDP),
despite the higher interest rates, was less than the
Nixon/Ford administration which preceded it and the Reagan
deficit spending was nearly twice that of the Carter
administration. If it had not been for Paul Volcker
(appointed by Carter) who deserves the real credit for ending
the runaway inflation, Reagan would have been in very serious
financial difficulty.
Correct, but to be fair, let's note that the POLICY followed by
Voelker -- crank up the interest rates and choke the inflation
beast -- was a consensus policy developed by Voelker and
Friedman and authorized by Reagan. In fact, Friedman notes that
one of the reasons why the debt went up so far under Reagan is
because they expected the Fed's tight money policy to take
longer to be effective, and thus they counted on more tax
bracket creep than they got. No creep, lower tax receiepts.

JG


Yep, the hidden tax increases of the Reagan administration!
Didn't work just as the trickle down economy didn't materialize.
Left the mess to GHW Bush to eat the necessary tax increase.

Economy wise, Reagan was more of a disaster than Carter!
Carter was simply feckless. He had no idea how to solve the
problems he was left with, but he didn't do any additional
damage. Considering the record of the other presidents from
Johnson on, that's high praise.

Was Reagan more of a disaster? Like most things economic, you
have to first decide what statistics you think are most
important, which is a subjective exercise. One of my annoyances
with partisan analysis is that the stats are always cherrypicked
to justify the desired conclusion, not the other way around.

We had staglation at the beginning of his term. Unemployment in
1981 was 7.6% and inflation was almost 11%. On the way out, 5.5
unemployment and 4.6% inflation. Good results by any measure.

The increase in the debt is, of course, another matter.

JG


The economy is not zero sum, but it is clear that there are
trade-offs.
Absolutely.

One can get the appearance of better times by borrowing.
Ultimately you have to pay.
That's true, and easy credit distorts the market. You can sell more
cars if they are "$500 a month, nothing down" as opposed to "$400 a
month, 20% down" and certainly more if they are "$40,000."

On one hand, easy credit is good, because it stimulates production
for the goods easily acquired. On the other hand, it's bad, because
it encourages the manufacturers to jack up the prices until the
monthly payment hits the consumer pain point, as opposed to the
cash price hitting the pain point.

At this point, and with the situation we're in, I have to take the
hard line and say that any President who proposes a nonbalanced
budget is irreponsible, and any Congress that approves a
nonbalanced budget is irreponsible. Sending up a balanced budget
requires a rearragement of national priorities, but it's quite
possible to do.

JG


And, a balanced budget may be achieved by cutting programs or by
increasing taxes.
Sure. The net has interesting lists of programs that were set up
during the Depression and WW2 that still get tens of millions of
dollars to do this or that thing, the need of which has long since
past. The largest of these is ag subsidies, which started out to
support the family farmer, but which has now mutated into a defacto
alternative energy program.
No argument on this point. The ag programs no longer serve the family
farmer and cause a number of problems, not only locally, but
internationally too.
Just as an auto manufacturer needs to raise prices to cover costs or
else go out of business, so also must government raise prices
(taxes) to cover costs.
Not correct. Tax receipts increase with economic activity, the number
of going concerns, increase in the labor force, and a number of other
variables. It's correct to say that the financial needs of the
goverment increase with inflation, and that gross tax receipts have
to increase to cover, but not that tax rates have to increase to
cover.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/tax_tot_tax_wed_sin_wor-total-tax-wedge-single-worker

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/tax_tot_tax_as_of_gdp-taxation-total-as-of-gdp

Suffice to say that these are metrics that you don't want to "win",
because they indicate high levels of taxation as expressed as a % of
either labor costs or GDP, take your pick.
Nice data, but their relevance depends on whether or not the the
citizens of these countries are getting what they are paying for.
Different countries have different needs, different cultures, and may
reasonably elect to pay the government for some services that others
may prefer to purchase from the private sector. I've objected to
these kinds of comparisons in the past because they really don't tell
us anything about how well our government is performing.
Granted, but they do serve to bring into the debate how other countries
manage their affairs, particularly if you're discussing adding a
program that they're already doing to your own social portfolio. All
this data shows is that nations that have high standards of living and
more extensive social portfolios than ours (including universal health)
get by on similar levels of taxation to what we have today. That
negates the "we must raise taxes in order to have X" argument.
My salary might fluctuate with my economic well being, but I still
have to pay for the essential services like mortgage, insurance, etc.
Likewise, the government has the responsibility to provide the
services that we decide that we need and they have to charge for them
accordingly.
Now, we've been hearing from the Demosocialists (the leftist wing of
the Democrats) that we need to raise taxes because the goverment
needs money, we need a heath care system, we need to improve
education, etc. Do we?
No name calling, please! Socialism is government operation of some
function. No one that I am aware of is arguing for government owned
and operated health care.
Only the minority of far leftists. I suppose their candidate is
Kuchinich, but quite right, no mainstream candidate is going there.
On the other hand, a self-avowed conservative friend of mine IS
arguing that we should convert to nuclear power and that the power
plants should be owned and operated by the federal government. His
justification? The safety record of the US Navy.
Interesting thought.
Look down at where the US is on both of those charts, particularly at
Japan, Australia, and Canada, and where they are in relation to the
US. Not too far off. These are three countries where no sane person
would argue that they do not have (1) a more desireable health care
system than we have, (2) a better educational system than we have,
(3) a desireable standard of living, PLUS, Japan is certianly not a
low-population country, which is a legitimate point that could be
raised vs. Canada and Australia.

So, where's the money go, and does the govt. really need more?

Indeed! It is legitimate to demand to know how the government is
spending our money and even in the short time that the Democrats have
had the majority in Congress, there has been some commendable progress
in revealing who is asking for what. It is a start.
This is going to be a long hard battle. The Dems came in saying they
were going to do this and that, and the earmarking Democrats (Murtha et
al) scuttled a lot of those plans. There are tons of folks on both
sides of the aisle that don't want to upset the gravy train.

But it's more than just that. At some point, the 21st century Grace
Commission is going to have to start picking through that budget and
deciding what stays and what goes. The military is going to have to be
scaled back -- we're going to end up hunkering down in a defensive
posture, what some have called isolationism, just because it's cheaper.
We'll probably have to figure out how to take a third of the long term
cost of Medicare out of the system. Lots of tough choices are going to
have to be made, and they're not going to be pleasant.
The larger issue is to decide who is better at providing certain
services. No one would argue that we should have privately competing
fire departments. There are some who propose that some of our roads
should be privately owned and maintained.
And this is happening in some parts of the country, with success, but
under the licensure of the local govt. Obviously, somebody has to be in
charge of central planning, and the notion of central planning is not
foreign to the Constitution.

But, the major controversy now is health care. Personally, I am fed
up with the private insurance based system. It is not serving us
well, is increasingly expensive, is extremely difficult to use, and
places an oppressive overhead on the entire health care system. I
find Medicare much easier to use and understand and in talking with
the various doctors that my wife and I have used, they would welcome a
single set of rules to live by. This is a case where the private
system has failed us and it is time to give the government a chance.
Yea, but Medicare is going broke, so you can't use it as a model. If
Medicare was scaled back to the point where it was self sustaining
(even if you doubled the Medicare payroll tax), I doubt you'd like it
much. So, it's not much of a model, and in fact, MANY of these great
health care systems in other countries that we're envious of are *also*
not solvent over the long term.

Hell, who *wouldn't* like to drive a Rolls Royce that you were were
able to force your kids to pay for?

JG


Apples and oranges. Medicare, unlike Social Security, is not funded out
of debt except in the same sense as anything in the general budget.

Granted. However, it is still nonsolvent.

The cost of Medicare is escalating just as the cost of health care is
escalating and that is the fundamental problem.

Just as fundamental is that we don't have enough kids.

But, regardless, health care inflates at a rate over and above CPI all
over the world. This is a complex problem and significantly tied to the
cost of research and medical advancement. It's not directly addressable
through policy.

The cost of administering Medicare (about 2%) is not increasing beyond
inflation despite the fact that it addresses the health needs of those
who use medical care most heavily, the elderly. The cost of
administering private insurance (about 5.5%), however, is increasing
more rapidly than inflation despite the fact that it primarily addresses
younger clients. So, I don't see that Medicare is the problem, per se.

I don't see how the removal of that 3.5% delta solves much of anything.
Chickenfeed. Besides, the insurers do a lot of admin that the goverment
doesn't, such as fraud detection, and they negotiate with providers,
where the government simply sets a limit, causing some providers to opt
out of the system.

Suffice to say that the insurers provide some benefits for that 3.5%, and
if you make it go away, there will be unintended consequences that may be
larger than the savings.

Rather, putting negotiating power in the hands of Medicare
administration would go a long way toward reducing costs.

I doubt it. It would have to deal with the opt-outs, for one issue.

As it stands, the individual has no negotiating power. Not being able
to afford medical care is not negotiating power despite the arguments
that have been presented by some.

I dont' agree that the situation is as black and white as you present. We
(personally) negotiate for medical services all the time, and prices come
way down when you tell them you're paying cash and they know you'll shop
around.

JG


Some people might shop around for anything elective, but most of the time
you don't have the time to do any comparison shopping, nor does the
average person have the knowledge to evaluate the expected quality that
he/she would receive if they did. When your house is on fire, you don't
want to bicker about calling the lowest cost fire department. Likewise
when you are in the throes of that heart attack or stroke, you don't take
the time to comparison shop.

Sure, but the exception doesn't prove a rule. The point is that doctors
negotiate like hell if you're paying cash. Emergency care is always going to
be top dollar -- hell, if I want to get something shipped from Amazon
tomorrow, I have to pay for it as well. Even the CBO affirms that if
Americans had an incentive to shop price for their med services, the
inflation rate of health care services would be markedly lower.

As to not enough kids, if you look at the nation's demographics, the
employment age population is nearly flat at 40M per decade. The problem
is that wages have not kept up with the cost of living (medical care and
housing are just to examples). We are living with the consequences of the
loss of manufacturing jobs.

We're also replacing educated workers with immigrants that aren't as
educated, therefore lower pay, therefore lower tax payments. That's why the
workforce remains stable.

Personally, I don't see any benefit of the extra 3.5%, unless it is the
extra effort that the insurance companies put into finding ways to deny
coverage. As to opt-outs, I question if that is really a possibility.
What evidence do we have to support that threat?

We have the worst doctor to population and hospital bed to population ratios
in the developed world. The reason for this is the defined tendency of
doctors to change careers due to the hassle of practicing medicine in the
US. I'd hate to exascerbate that trend.

The private sector insurance industry has badly abused their power here
and I think that they deserve to have the market taken out of their hands.
Not that that is likely to happen!

I'm a little pissed right now after having battled with Blue Shield over
coverage for colonoscopies for myself and my wife. I was covered under
Medicare with no problem, but after assurances from Blue Shield that my
wife would be covered, it turns out that she wasn't. So, how was that
shopping around going to work, once again?

Now you beat the living hell out of Blue Shield until they pay. My wife does
it all the time with Aetna. She refuses to pay any doctor prior to them
filing for insurance, and when the payment comes in, if it's even a buck
lower than she expects, she goes to telephone war. It's *always* less than
she expects, and when she's done with them, they almost always pay *more*
than we expect them too. We have doctors and dentists that just shake their
heads saying "I've never seen them pay THAT before....."

However, she doesn't try to fight the battles she knows she'll lose, like
trying to get a colonoscopy (since you brought it up) more often than the
five year AMA recommended period. I'd like one every three years for risk
reasons, but she'd probably prefer to start calling doctors to negotiate a
cheap cash up front total cost. I wouldn't be at all surprised if she got me
one for three hundred bucks or less. (I still kid her that at our wedding,
she negotiated the photographer down until he paid *us* to do the wedding.)

JG


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Is Anyone In This Group Enthusiastic About Any Candidate?
    ... It was not the size of the deficit that was the issue at the time, but the out-of-control interest rates that everyone including the federal government was paying. ... The deficit was low during the Carter years, but the interest was killing us. ... No one that I am aware of is arguing for government owned and operated health care. ... I find Medicare much easier to use and understand and in talking with the various doctors that my wife and I have used, they would welcome a single set of rules to live by. ...
    (soc.retirement)
  • Re: Obamas Remarks on Retirement Security
    ... pensions, health care, greedy CEO's, and all the rest? ... the government or some general thing about we care for them. ... Who is going to pay ... Taxes on ALL income. ...
    (soc.retirement)
  • Re: OT government healthcare and it is more expensive & not as comprehensive
    ... Probably because his movie is about health care for the average ... libraries and fire departments don't cost the individual user extra ... What happens now when government proposes to cut Medicare services? ...
    (alt.autos.toyota)
  • Re: BUSH IN ISREAL
    ... The primary function of government is to serve and protect the vital interests of all the people. ... This gives control to the individual, fosters competition and incents the health care industry to control costs and improve service. ... In addition, this is the same big government bureauracy that screwed up medicare, medicaid and all but bankrupted the social security system. ...
    (rec.gambling.poker)
  • Re: Why we need the Govt to take control of health care......
    ... USA was far down the list on the effectiveness of its health care ... had an ultra sound and a blood test -- and the entire cost was ... Of course it is only because of a government program - ... Medicare may be at risk, ...
    (soc.retirement)