I would consider your description to fall under my first option - they're basically idiots. It's just that the idiocy is convenient to their consciences.

miasmo.com

I think the real problem is no one trusts Congress to do anything right. We hear of deals Obama made with big pharam, insurance companies crafting bills and frankly, that is "all she wrote" in terms of a lot of people being willing to support it. We just went through this with the Medicare prescription drug bill, where big pharma made out like bandits and Seniors not only had a donut hole, but were confused to oblivion on how to choose a plan.

Then, Obama first did a "Stimulus" where everyone said BS because it didn't generate immediate jobs, did not stop that money from going to offshore outsourcers, did not limit the funds to go to citizens, could go to illegals and so on...then we have the "pet projects", no bid contractors...i.e. political favoritism.

(I'm listing the criticisms)

But the biggest thing is probably the financial crisis, they went and gave more TARP money to banks, have done pretty much nothing about regulation, let many CEOs stay and let many of those same financial institutions have outrageous executive bonuses.

Right there....that blew the trust of many.

the problem really is in the details. Then there are lies.
There is a huge fraction of the public that is outraged, completely disgusted, that U.S. taxpayer dollars are funding social services, costs for illegal immigrants. Now take for example the claim this is all fiction illegals will get covered. Those groups are talking about how the government refuses to check/validate social security numbers, backgrounds on pretty much any service, including if someone has the legal right to work in the U.S....hence one can have something not in a health care bill...but due to other policies....they are covered simply because the governments will not check immigration status, valid identity and literally fight the idea every step of the way.

Another example is emergency rooms....they will not check in emergency rooms immigration status (after that person is treated) or after that person is well, to deport them. Now obviously that's some serious ethical issues rapped up in that...but the costs of using the emergency room for health care as well known. I believe some Hospitals in areas heavily populated with illegals literally were closed due to these costs.

California, you cannot mention these costs even when their budget is crashing and burning...which are ~$10.5 billion a year.

So, special interests, political favors, trump economic realities.

So, in other words, you don't get straight talk on even on what's really going on here.

And you can see, just how much attitudes on health care leak over into other policies and actions....since the administration refuses to do anything about these costs...

often the answer from these groups is to join "starve the beast" and try to keep the government from getting any more of their money.

i.e. the government, through multiple administrations, has broken the trust with the American people.

So of course many in this country look at government as corrupt, full of special interests and cannot be trusted.

In all seriousness, with many of the moves over the last 30 years...can one blame them?

Now, if the Obama administration simply said they were going to expand Medicare, Medicaid and the VA...plus fix it
(for example, force all Doctors to accept Medicare/Medicare patients)...

People know those systems and would have a little more trust, esp. if there was going to be increased efficiencies, and things like stopping MDs, Hospitals etc. for refusing to take these patients who are on these services.

Something as simple as expanding nursing and medical school seats in the U.S. and providing funding....to increase U.S. nurses and Doctors...I think people would say yippie to that because it also provides Americans with jobs.

Expanding specialists, increasing Doctors, giving incentives for rural Doctors and most of all, expanding the number of Americans in American medical schools....graduating...(the AMA has a LOCK on this!) ...all of this would increase the quality of care.

Then, simple stuff like funding medical technology startups, organizations to do things like reduce costs of many common lab tests...the technology is there but we have this "bloat" for profit system, which makes a lot of these test costs just through the stratosphere.

I don't think the U.S. medical system has every heard of the word productivity.

I don't like the idea at all of a 15% to a HSA, that seems to be another donut hole where if the person has a misfortune of getting sick, that wipes out, per individual all of that income, so it's almost a penalty.

The idea of insurance as well as universal single payer is to have the entire society "pay in" and basically "take care of" those who have the misfortune of getting seriously ill. It really is a societal feature...do we care for our fellow citizens or leave them to rot when they fall?

It also spreads out the cost burden across the whole citizenry. It's one of those things, like social security or say the police, fire department, EMTs, libraries, schools...where as a citizen, i.e. a member of a nation, you pay into the system, like every other citizen and you also get benefits for being a citizen.

You might look at citizenship and nations as simply insurance pools.

So, personally I think they need to just expand what we've got, keep private as an option, do something about portability from employer to employer or stop working and focus on fixing the efficiences, incompetence and the details of these systems.

I also think they need to tell the health care sector lobbyists groups to go piss up a rope, tell them they are going to bankrupt this nation and guess what..."you're regulated" and "we're going to take your profits"...
basically nationalize the insurance companies in effect.

To pay for it all, I liked the surtax on $1M+ U.S. incomes...wealth inequality is beyond the pale and for creation of the concept health is a right of every citizen....health care is a right, not a luxury..using good old fashioned wealth redistribution for this benefit I think is a good idea. I think they should tax the super rich, any corporations who offshore outsource jobs...tax the insurance companies themselves and levy a hefty penalty tax on any company who does not offer health insurance...

I think they should also massively increase SEC fines to give a serious blow to companies, individuals who violate regulations...like a fine...PLUS all of the profits made by said illegal/violation transaction....are seized by the U.S. government.

If drug dealers cannot make money and their assets are seized....why not corporations and while collar crimes?

How about removing the cap on SS taxes and increasing payments for everyone.

Or firing the people who made the bad investment choices and replenishing the losses to the pension funds with federal $ if they submit to more stringent guidelines, and jack up taxes on the class of weasels who caused all the problems (banks, hedge funds, ratings agencies, etc.) with transaction fees or whatever. Jack up the taxes enough to get back all the bailout money over a reasonable period of time. This would result in more deficit spending now while we are facing deflation and then bringing the money supply back in through the taxes during the time that inflation will be a more likely problem.

[I realize that practical solutions like these are not acceptable to the people who run things. So I don't expect their minions Tim and Larry to actually consider anything like this.]

miasmo.com

You're not going to believe this but a malformed link in your signature crashed the site layout. It shouldn't have done that, but it appears I need to limit signatures for my HTML correcting software doesn't go into sigs! But just be aware to check the site after posting to make sure the post did not destroy the layout or site.

Believe me I was shocked to find this and see what else I can do to make sure that doesn't happen and your post was all formatted correctly.

The notion that an economy built on debt-fueled consumption rather than production would eventually unravel seems like a no-brainer. The obvious question is "Why?" Why have our wise rulers done nothing to steer the ship in a different direction? Are they simply idiots? Or are they just sociopaths who are grabbing all they can while the ship goes down and fuck everybody else because they have luxurious gold plated lifeboats for themselves?

miasmo.com

Stephen Colbert once made a comment about our economy eventually consisting of everyone scurrying around serving salads to each other.

miasmo.com

it still takes a lot of time to understand what the graphs mean, if making your own, how to do them, which data to include, etc.

More just a list of resources....writers still have to do their homework...

hey, our productivity would increase. ;)

beyond Barron's and Bloomberg. Well JV, EP is here to write a different perspective.

There is no doubt from the industrial production graphs that cash for clunkers had a serious impact, but once that program ends....what happens next is a very good question!

Then, on home purchases, there is another one, something like a 8k first time homebuyer tax credit and a host of incentives. What happens with those run out?

I don't know about you, but I'm getting kind of sick of these gimmicks to give little boosts to EIs and GDP...
all the while the big issues, i.e trade, China currency manipulation, offshore outsourcing, repressed wages, corporate tax structure, the giving of large government contracts to outsourcers....good god this list goes on and on and on....these major structural problems which many can be addressed through legislation...

are being ignored! Jesus, we just had "almost" Financial Economic Armageddon (supposedly) and where is all of the Financial regulatory reforms that were so touted by so many experts?

Bonddad and the radio host were touting how Cash For Clunkers being the catalyst that would save the auto industry. The former highlighting how auto companies were re-hiring. The problem is, they were re-hired to meet the demand on oversold cars, that is the dealers managed to make deals for cars that weren't on their lots. But all of it was fueled by a government program with a finite lifespan.

My argument was, what happens afterwards? We can't keep the C4C program on indefinitely, that would be fiscally stupid. Most of the cars that were sold, 8 out of 10 in fact, were Japanese cars, including the still-mainly-made-in-Japan Prius. The consumer has no credit, and what cash they got coming in, they're saving or paying off what they can to avoid further destitute.

We are mainly a service economy, and a huge chunk of that is hourly paid workers, who (not to make this even more complex) a sizable chunk are minimum waged. Businesses are seeing lower costs, but they're also having to lower prices on goods and services sold to businesses. One need only look at today's PPI numbers. If you read all the earnings statements, what has been the prime mover of keeping companies healthy? Cost cuts and reduction of inventories, because top line growth is not organically growing. Regarding inventories, unless it's discounted and it isn't something with inelastic demand, it's not moving.

This gets us back to our worker. If the above isn't happening, then the cuts will. Please tell me, outside of being irrisponsible, would banks lend money out to consumers? Major purchases are financed. Banks cannot be bastards with credit now, so they will be more restrictive. Secondly, many don't want to go hat in hand to Uncle Sam, especially with Obama in the White House, if their consumer loan portfolio gets sour on them to that critical point.

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www.venomopolis.com