(Get your mind out of the gutter, I'm talking about the government pig.)
Whether it's a vote-buying check, a government takeover, government healthcare, or a bailout, the single biggest problem that infects our mentality and that of our leaders, is the desire for government top fix the problem. Allow me to clarify:
Vote Buying - Whether it's the Bush "stimulus check" or Obama's "$1000 checks" for working families, the idea that giving people money to offset financial strain is wrong. Simply put, when you can depend on the government to throw a check your way, you begin to plan on that cash. Which means you find a government tit to latch on. And it's a sour mil to get yourself off of. Been there, done that.
Fannie and Freddie - The only good thing about the government taking over the mortgage giants is that there's no question that it's government interfering in the market. Beyond that, these are the monsters that are responsible for helping plenty of people who had no business buying a home get a home. And now we have to pay for it. The fact is, home ownership is not a right, and some people should not be empowered to "buy" a home until they can do it on there own. Again, been there, done that.
PorkyCare - We have an addiction to other people paying for our health care. It's gotten so bad that we're looking to the government to buy it. Why not? Oh yeah, because health care is not a right either. But if we can get cradle to the grave support for our health, why not pop that titty in our mouth? It works for Medicare, right. Oh and don't forget the efficiency of Medicaid. Yet again....
Too Big to Fail - Small businesses fail all the time. And that failure means their employees get the boot. Yeah, been there, done that too. But if it's an automaker that is failing, it's important to save such a vital industry so they can be sold off to foreign investors eventually. If it's a bank or a lender, then it's something we can't let happen because somebody may be hurt. What's next?
Here's the sick part of everything I've talked about above. They are all examples of the government trying to help. The problem, though, is that the problem is not solved. The checks from the government will only create more of a line between haves and have-nots, and the haves will move their money away. The morgage industry will be bailed out, and people will expect the government to protect them from bad housing investments. People will expect more and more things in health care to be covered, until the government doles it out. And every company of size will be able to make the case that protecting them will protect the economy from terrible losses.
But this help only shields us temporarily from the effects of bad decisions, the natural fluctuations of the economy, the shifting policies of both well-meaning and opportunistic politicians, and human nature itself.
Instead of continuing this, we need to stop. We need to let the failures that are building up happen before they reach the point that the government can't fix the problem, can't afford to prop up the economy, and we discover what the nature of a depression really is. At some point, it will happen. Whether we take our lumps now and let the market fix itself or keep building debt and piling burdens on top of the pig until the pig explodes under the weight of it all, our economy is going to tank. Sometimes, it's better to take your lumps, pay your way, and rebuild.
Oh, am there, doing that.
18 comments:
The more things the government has control over, the more power we give them. Why in the world do people think that is a good thing? It's like they don't see the forest for the trees.
Not to mention these were not the principles our country was founded upon.
While in theory I agree, I have to say that you aren't seeing the big picture. If the GOP in writing up the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act for instance, over turning Glass-Steagall which was put into place after the great depression to control speculation and keep financial companies from trying to stick their hands into too many jars creating conflicts of interest, and then they let these companies run wild by selling bad debt to funds, don't they bear some of the responsibility for the housing / mortgage / bank crisis? In other words, if they created the problem, shouldn't they be the ones who clean it up. Sure, mortgage companies giving loans to homeless people was a bad idea, fund managers buying those loans was an even worse idea. Those people should be out of business but as with a Republican regime, socialism is only good when they socialize losses of their rich campaign contributors as long as it doesn't go to single black moms. Although the industry, in fact McCain staffer Phil Gramm (Mr. Mental Recession) who was working for UBS, got congress to relax the regulations put in place by Glass_Steagall in 1933 so they could essentially buy and then sell bad credit risks wanted the freedom to get themselves into this situation, congress did get it put into law.
Even though they shouldn't bow to the demands of special interests who fund their campaigns (which is why you shouldn't vote for McCain) the government is still responsible for that legislation. Along with that deregulation came giving loans to homeless people during the time of a housing bubble.
The government with their HMO laws and their tit suckling of the drug companies also bear responsibility for health care costs. Again without regulation, prices are going to sky rocket. The government has failed the consumer/citizen in this regard so maybe they should take responsibility to get those costs down to a reasonable amount. There is no reason the US has to have the most expensive health care system in the world.
So you are saying health care is not a right in the richest country in the planet?? Mr. Pro Life is ok with having the highest infant mortality rate in the western world?? How is that Prolife?So you hate babies? A kid without insurance who gets shot in his school should just die because health care isn't a right? Your taxes might go up?? Is that what Jesus would do? Again, republicans only care about life before it is able to breathe.
All your complaints stem from too little government, too little regulation not too much government.
The free market has failed yet again and apparently the tenants of socialism are they to pick up the pieces yet again.
But no, the government shoudln't just hand out checks for no reason nor should they bail out a failed business who should have known better. The CEO's should bail those companies out of their own pockets, they are the ones who let this happen. But I guarantee all of the CEOs of those companies will probably make more money this year than they ever have before.
While in theory I agree, I have to say that you aren't seeing the big picture.
No, I'm concentrating on the big picture, even though it may mean some serious unemployment, business failure, and misery. Government has always tried to fiddle with private business, but always had some limiting factors. We lost that fear of letting the government regulate us during the Great Depression. Since that point, it has been an increasing web of regulation, taxation, and obfuscation that has made our entire economy more dependent on government control. This, in turn, led to the ability of businesses and PACs to influence politicians to write the laws to their benefit.
Of course, you only want to blame the GOP, when the problem is one on both sides of the aisle. And I think both candidates are talking about solving that problem. Whether either one will actually do it is yet to be seen.
So you are saying health care is not a right in the richest country in the planet?
Yes. A right is something you can exercise without imposing on another person's rights. To get health care, someone else must do it. And for the government to provide healthcare, they must mandate by force that someone to provide it. So it's not a right.
That doesn't mean I oppose creating ways to provide health care for people who would otherwise be wholly unable to afford it. But there's a world of difference between compassion and creating "rights" to solve every inequity.
Again without regulation, prices are going to sky rocket.
Uh, with ever-increasing regulations the prices are sky-rocketing.
Mr. Pro Life...
Who are you talking about?!?!?!
All your complaints stem from too little government, too little regulation not too much government.
You are kidding, I hope. Wait, I guess you're not.
The problem with all of the things that I listed are that government is insulating them from real failure. It's not just the regulations.
It's similar to drug addiction in a way. You'll never be able to get away from it unless you hit your rock bottom and choose a different course. And the government is the ultimate enabler.
The tax burden on corporations has only decreased since the depression while the tax burden on the individuals has increased. In 1956 for instance corporations paid 28% of the nation’s tax revenues, today they only pay 11%.
Citizens for Tax Justice recently conducted a study of 275 profitable Fortune 500 companies that reported more than $1.1 trillion in profits to shareholders in their annual reports from 2001 through 2003, yet during that three-year period, 82 of these companies had at least one year during which they paid zero taxes.
The report reads: "In the years they paid no income taxes, these companies earned $102 billion in pretax U.S. profits, but instead of paying $35.6 billion in income taxes as the statutory 35 percent corporate tax rate seems to require, these companies generated so many excess tax breaks that they received outright tax rebate checks from the U.S. treasury totaling $12.6 billion."
And yes, among them Exxon, Phizer (drug company), JP Chase, Citigroup (financial)
In 1986 Congress lowered the highest corporate tax rate from 46% to 34%. In the 50s to early 60s the top corporate tax rate was 50% or more depending on the year.
According to the Government Accountability Office 2/3 of US corporations paid no income tax between 1998-2005.
Under the Reagan years there were all kinds of deregulations some of which spawned McCains S&L scandal, some spawned or started the housing/mortgage crisis and yes some of it has been positive such as the deregulation of the trucking and airline industry. Well, actually, deregulation has been very bad for a lot of airlines but good for the consumer.
So, you can no longer argue that corporations are constantly being hit up for more taxes by Democrats who want to give it to poor people who don't work. In fact, the number of people in poverty has increased, the number of the working poor has increased and the number of people in extreme poverty has increased since those corporations have seen their tax burden decrease which clearly helps the pay of their CEOs, whose pay have drastically increased as well as their stockholders who typically, not always, are wealthy but never the poor.
Now if you want to argue that environmental and safety regulations have increased then fine but I don't hear you bitching about the 40 hour work week, weekends, or OSHA standards or your kids drinking water without mercury but you have an empty bucket when arguing that the federal government is more intrusive and prohibitive and ever increasing the tax burden of poor, corporate America. It's like the "no thanks" to the bridge to no where statement, it simply isn't true.
"Mr Pro Life"
Are you not pro life? If you are pro life and you don't think a kid without insurance should be treated for a gun shot wound then you are not prolife, period.
I agree that the government is insulating these companies from failure and the leadership of those corporations will get rich off the deal while the employees loose their jobs along with their house and pension. That is 100% true. And I think its obscene that Bush keeps doing this shit.
I know plenty about enabling and again, this industry learned from the S&L scandal that you, the tax payer will pay for their mismanagement.
But again, that isn't because of too much regulation, it happened because there wasn't enough regulation. And who needs regulation when you know you can do what you want and the government will bail you out. It makes sense.
"Religion is the only thing keeping the poor from killing the rich."
Toad: did you ever consider brevity. Especially since volume does not reflect intelligence.
Citizens for Tax Justice
Okay, now I know where you get your talking points whenever the FairTax is brought up. Don't even waste my time quoting numbers from these asshats. Strangely, their ideas for taxation read like the DNC platform.
And if you haven't figured out the concept of embedded taxes yet, then you probably never will.
So I'm going to just ignore the rest of the anti-business blather and get to something that interests me.
Are you not pro life?
Good question. I will have to answer that in detail in the fullness of time, as the short answer is yes and no.
If you are pro life and you don't think a kid without insurance should be treated for a gun shot wound then you are not prolife, period.
You're not much for nuance. If it were a 6-year-old caught in a crossfire, hell yeah you try to save them. If it were a gangbanger, not so much. Either one, however, is an emergency. In those situations, you treat first, figure out the insurance later.
I agree that the government is insulating these companies from failure and... [yammer, yammer, yammer]. That is 100% true. And I think its obscene that Bush keeps doing this shit.
Yeah, it's all Big Bastard Bush's fault. Do you know how myopic these petty observations make you sound? Considering I blame the entire political establishment, and all you can do is rub your nuts on the Blame Bush Bandwagon, who do you think is objective here?
I know plenty about enabling and again, this industry learned from the S&L scandal that you, the tax payer will pay for their mismanagement.
You're at least seeing what the problem is. And yet you want the government to get more involved and therefore have more reason to enable. And more regulation is part of that justification.
The solution is simple. The government needs to stop enabling. When a company is about to go under and crash, wiping out jobs and a market segment, we're at the point where we need to let that happen, no matter how much it sucks for us to do so.
Right now I am too sick and caught in a morass that so far is leaving me uninsured so I can't really concentrate long enough to make sense of all of this but I will say
that
it boggles the mind to think that you're ok with seeing your kids go without healthcare
meaning in the event that MC/MA were dismantled and healthcare became 'no pay/no play'.
And you know I love you but really.. fuck brevity.
Agreed the government needs to stop enabling.
And I even agree with the gangbanger getting shot but who decides who is or isn't a gangbanger....aside from gang tattoos? Or how do you know if someone got shot by accident but still has gang tattoos even though they may now be a preist?? Again, a doctor can't make the call whether or not someone was indeed a gang banger 90% of the time. That is uless of course you are going to play God.
As far as the bail outs go there were plenty of .com collapses in the 90s, the government never gave them loan guarantees nor did they give them subsidies and when they got rich from producing nothing, only the companies and the morons who thought it was a good idea to invest in a company worth nothing lost their money. It did the tax payers no harm. Why is that? If the big 3, big oil, big banks or big Agri business gets a bruise the government typically comes in to heal the boo boos. Now, who do the Ag businesses, oil companies, energy, and financial companies mainly employ, who are they more likely to contribute to, and who is the party most likely to loosen restrictions on them so they can go for another land / wealth grab without doing their due dilligence?? I think the answer you will come up with more often than not will be Republicans and you didn't see that when the .coms (mostly liberals from California) went under. Is that just a coincidence?? Who knows. Sure both parties are responsible and who knows if a Democratic president would bail all these fucks out but if he did, he wouldn't let the rich CEOs who ruined these companies walk away with their employees pensions richer than they were when they were working. And I think I just heard McCain say something about that today, perhaps Obama, with his CEO accountability plans, will be coming up with something shortly. So no, its not all Bush's fault but you are seeing what a laissez faire approach to the economy does. Again, all these problems are stem from deregulation, typically bills either initiated by or signed into law by Republicans. The problem isn't too much regulation, it isn't enough. How do you not see that? If Glass-Steagall was never repealed would we be in this mess now? The answer is no. So yes, I admit that it isn't all Bush's fault but the problems stem from Republican logic and actions and of course the greed of these financial institutions.
The Fair tax thing isn't the issue here. You said that corporations taxes were increasing and they passed those costs on to us. I clearly showed that corporate taxes have only gone down since the 50s as individual tax burdens have increased and at the same time consumer are paying more for everything, even when adjusted for inflation and these companies are making more money than could even be dreamed of in the 50s and the corporate brass are now pulling salaries which would make corporate profits of the 50s jealous.
My parents make jewelry. The cost of gold fluctuates just like oil. Gold prices have gone through the roof since they have started and continue to rise and fall every day. My parents have not only lowered their prices since the price of gold has increased but they also don't adjust the prices of their jewelry to exactly match their raw material costs. If the cost of Gold goes up 10% they don't pass that on to the consumer. The market will only bear so much for a gold bracelet...to a degree. Now, are they the only business that doesn't pass their costs on to the consumer or are they like most businesses who just assume some raw expenses as a cost of doing business? If these companies have massive profits and their CEO's are making obscene salaries they can take the difference off the top as opposed to on the price of goods because you can only sell an Ipod or pair of Nikes for so much. You wont ever sell a pair of Nikes for $500 so at some point, if we raise Nike's taxes because they export jobs for instance, at some point, due to market conditions, they have to take that loss out of their own pockets and not pass those costs on to the consumer. So yes, you can levy modest taxes on a corporation and prices don't have to rise. They can also choose to cut costs elsewhere. If you have ever known anyone who has ran a business you know that you can't always pass those costs on. Gas is another example of this. If you are a service technition and drive from location to location and all your competition charges $100 per hour as you do, but you now pay twice as much for gas, sometimes you just have to write that off as the cost of doing business. I have a friend who now just puts hourly minimums on service calls but it took him a long time for that to fly and if they meet the minimum, he is still out the gas money.
Saty: First, I hope you get better soon. You're certainly one of the more interesting people on the liberal side of things. Two points on your comments:
it boggles the mind to think that you're ok with seeing your kids go without healthcare
I didn't say that, nor will I ever say that. However, having spent some time wrangling all the paperwork and stuff involved, I surspect there are a whole lot of things need fixed, the least of which is our dependence on these programs.
I can't speak to your specific issues, but the simple fact that your life is focused on trying to find a way for someone else to pay for the medicine you need is indicative of the problem with the system itself (although I do hope you get the insurance).
fuck brevity
You're okay to ramble, because there's some originality in your thoughts, unlike Toad, who has to respond with paragraphs of crap.
Toad: I'm fine with playing God. Haven't you noticed.
That argument about who does and doesn't get bailed out might hold up if there wasn't the mess with Fannie and Freddy, who were specifically under the oversight of fruit loops (pun intended) like Barney Frank.And interestingly, their second favorite person to donate to was none other than Barack Obama. Just because you want to blame one party for behaving like asshats doesn't excuse the other asshats.
I clearly showed that corporate taxes have only gone down since the 50s...
No, you showed me where you get your financial numbers. And I call BS on anything that those half-asses produce, because their mission is not to fix the tax mess, it's to punish the rich for being successful. Now I could research the numbers and refute you, I'm sure, but it's easier to just dismiss you offhand.
But if their numbers do hold and taxes have gone down since the 50's, it's because the corporations that could have shifted their operations to countries that don't punish them for success. The people who can afford it move to where the taxes are low. Take your most hated talk show host, Rush Limbaugh. He moved to New York to do his national show. The show still bases out of there, but he moved to Florida specifically because NY taxes the shit out of people.
Now as for your parents, it's their choice on their pricing based on material costs and based on the market. I've seen many companies try to hold the line on prices. The problem comes when we get into discussions of things that fall under the category of necessities (oil and food most prominently).
Too often, you and many others try to decide what is "fair" and what is "obscene" when it comes to executive salaries and profits. This is where you forget the nature of the marketplace. CEO's used to be paid a certain amount of cash, and some stock. But then their taxes got jacked. So they took less cash and more stock (and stock options) because these were taxed less than income. And it turned out that they made a whole lot more money this way. And when you "punish" the executives and the companies for doing this, then they'll find another way to pay them. And as they have the money to figure out how to use the tax system, you'll simply attract people who are more adept at hiding money to the top slots in business.
The market, if left alone, will adjust based on simple rules. Every time government puts its foot in, prices go up, and market forces get moved away from equilibrium. How you reconcile that with the idea of letting the government sink its claws further in, Freddie and Fannie style?
Economic policy is not executed in a pure world. Ours is a world full of immoral, unethical, and irrational behavior that are part of human nature. If it were otherwise, we would have no need for laws as there would be no crime.
If you take a close look at the market, you will see that it is those institutions that had regulations in place that have suffered the least.
The part of AIG that was safe was the insurance busness, because the insurance business is closely regulated. The part that went bad was the unregulated risk insurance business (i.e., default swaps).
Deregulation is a nice theory that has proved to be a wrecking ball on our economy.
If you can find one source that shows corporate taxes have gone up since the 50s I will mirror all your posts on my blog for a week.
And I didn't get information from one source. The fact is the tax burden in this country has shifted from corporations to individuals since the they instituted the sales tax, which was by no coincidence the same year the Federal Reserve was created.
Corporations have rewarder our lower taxes by cooking their books, incorporating off shore and moving manufacturing to China or Mexico. Those things all started happening once taxes on corporations started to fall, not rise.
Feddie Mac and Fannie Mae were private corporations whose loans were backed by the government. That allowed them to be a little more risky because they knew they had a fail safe. From my knowledge Bear Stearns and UIG were not so why were they making such risky investments? And Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae would have never gone after high risk mortgages if Wall Street wouldn't have bought them.
Now, you can talk about how Freddy contributed money to Obama all you want but I don't know how that discredits Obama's judgement or credibility because he wasn't making their policy unlike Phil Gramm who was both writing the bills allowing this to happen and serving on the board of UBS.
Almost every Nobel prize winner in economics are coming out and saying self regulation and the free market place does not create a balance, it creates greed, corruption, mismanagement and financial crisis:http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/17/stiglitz.crisis/index.html
The solutions these people are talking about don't include less government intervention and in fact they call for a roll back to way the things used to be before Phil Gramms bill.
Rush moved to Florida to be around other rednecks and closer to good sources of Oxy Contin. He was a fish out of water in NY, or perhaps more like a pig in the water.
So all we have to do is make it illegal for US companies to move over seas. If your CEO and board of directors are American, your company has to stay that way... its that simple.
We don't need to punish companies for paying their CEOs we need to punish their CEOs when they make millions while stocks loose their value and people loose their jobs. There is no reason Richard Fuld Jr, the CEO of Lehman Brothers, should make 71 million dollars this year like he did last year but you know what, I'll bet he does along with extra cash from Barclays. How can you justify rewarding someone who bought loans given to homeless people?
And ya, what Shawn said.
Shaw: I'm fully aware of the nature of the world. I disagree that it is "full of immoral, unethical, and irrational behavior", but I don't discount that behavior where it can be found. I also do not favor chucking out every known regulation in favor of trying to achieve a pure capitalist system.
However, the idea that the solution is to have the government continue intrusion into the private sector is the wrong one for most of the reasons I have articulated. Most of the economic problems we face today involve the foot of government, either in overregulation, interference, or some form of legislative deep dicking. And the reaason deregulation causes so many problems is that it's a change of the rules that the businesses operated under. That's always messy.
Toad: I did a quick search and found this chart on the IRS site.
I stand corrected on the corporate rates. If you find a good site to cite, then I'll accept figures readily. Also, you should just mirror my blog for a week just to entertain people more. :)
However, even in the chart I cite, it went from two simple brackets to eight, with changes to the amounts and rates every few years. Add to that regulatory amounts, fees, payroll taxes, wage requirements, matching payments, loopholes and shelters (which requires lots of accountants and work), a lawsuit-friendly environment, and the shifting moods of politicians, and the cost for a business to do business in the USA is astronomical when compared with countries trying to attract more business. And when you understand the embedded taxes, you realize that much of this falls back on us, which makes my taxes and your taxes increase, because the price of many goods increases.
Either you missed all that or are willfully ignoring it. There's a point at which it's cheaper to outsource labor and pay the transportation cost than it is to keep operations in the USA. And the more things you want to pile on, the faster everything that can move to China will.
For someone who is all upset over importing goods and exporting jobs to China, your ideas for making businesses play "fair" is sure to guarantee it will happen.
So what, do you think I would just make up stuff? If I made up something that I knew you could easily refute I wouldn't post it and make myself look like a dumbass. Mikes America takes the cake in that department and I don't want to end up looking like him. So, when I post something, 99% of the time it is going to be a fact. I may not always know the entire story and history behind it but what I say isn't going to be false. I never pull information from one source I always check with at least one other source before I post.
It's cheaper to move over seas because of the limitless supply of communist slave child labor and absolutely no pollution or environmental oversight. Those are bad things. But if it gets someone that badly needed $40 DVD player which they need for their survival, who am I to critisize. And if you want to talk about fuel usage and shipping everything 5000 miles as opposed to 100 miles and what that does to fuel prices and demand, I will be happy to do that as well. And Americans wouldn't have to buy such cheap shit if they had a job that paid more than working 30 hours a week at Walmart. You could afford a $500 DVD player if you had a job with benefits that paid you a living wage and your neighbor also had a job and wasn't in forclosure on his house driving your net worth down.
Please sight more than one example of how any of our current financial situations are because of too much government intervention. Or better yet, find me any financial crisis that stemmed from too much government intervention as opposed to not enough. I want examples because I don't believe you. I think that's what you believe but I don't think you are basing that on any actual facts. I mean, aside from bad trade agreements, the government fucks that up all the time such as with NAFTA.
Toad: Sometimes you just make me laugh.
So, when I post something, 99% of the time it is going to be a fact.
Somehow I'm pretty certain this number is not accurate, because you don't agree with me 99% of the time. :)
It's cheaper to move over seas because of the limitless supply of communist slave child labor and absolutely no pollution or environmental oversight. Those are bad things. [emphasis added]
Yes, but we're talking entities that look at the bottom line and decide it's cheaper to move overseas and spend the cash to ship across the Pacific than to deal with the myriad regulations and bullshit of the USA. That's a free market at work. Punishing companies for making a profit or for paying their people (including those thrice damned CEO's you loathe) whatever they want will only accelerate the process of America divesting itself of jobs.
Now if I were going to list all the problems caused by government intervention, the list would be too long. But I believe the situation with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, formerly quasi-government "private" businesses are perfect examples of this. They had the backing of our tax dollars, didn't have to play by the rules of every other lender, and the government's solution was to get in deeper by taking over. It might have been the only viable option short of chaos, but it's a situation will cost us money, only because the government got involved in the first place.
Exactly, so how ofter are you wrong?? And again, what I say is fact it doesn't mean you have to agree with it. If I say the reason the cost of goods go up is because of greed and not taxes, you don't have to agree with that but when you know taxes have decreased and labor costs, due to union busting and outsourcing to Mexico and China, have also decreased and profits and executive pay have increased, that only leaves you with greed. You may not agree but you may also think the earth is 10,000 years old, human life begins at conception, Jesus walked on water and is the son of God, the flat tax is good, etc. but again, it doesn't make you right.
As far as Fannie Mae is concerned you are right, they had little accountability knowing they had the backing of the Feds; again, too little regulation, not too much. You proved my point precisely. We should have had more oversight if the losses were to come out of our pocket.
And again, you seem to think that there is a correlation between cheap labor, not environmental laws and low costs to consumers. Sure, Walmart forces their vendors to cut corners and their own profits and workforces and do more times than not, end up with a cheaper (both in price and quality) product than before. But that is about the only example where that is the case.
Look at shoe prices in the 70s-80s vs shoe prices now. Look at clothing prices in the 80's (levis, Gap) compared to now. The prices of these things have not gone down, they have gone up since they have been made over seas. The only differnece is the guys at the top of those companies are getting richer. So don't pretend they have to export jobs in order to stay in business or that producing a product in the US is impossible due to the US government and unions. All those American made cars, built by unions, are still cheaper than the imports....Of course they are all bankrupt but thats mainly because the US doesn't have a national health care system and Japan, Germany and Sweden do.
Patrick:
1. My life in the past week has mostly been focused on work (or hadn't you seen my timesheet)
2. If you had medication that ran you $700 a month you'd be looking for some relief too
Toad:Exactly, so how ofter are you wrong??
Never. Except when I am.
Beyond that, this is devolving into dueling stats. I think we're going to have to wrap this up and agree to disagree. You base all your arguments on statistics over a period (post-depression) government has entwined itself in perverse ways into our economy. I base most of mine on the nature of humanity, and whatever facts and stats I can recall between tech calls and children.
Plus, I sometimes write this shit when I should be sleeping, thus I sometimes lack absolute command of the position I'm arguing (even though I'm right). That, and I'm an egomaaniacal fuck.
Saty: Saw the timesheet. And I could tell you were off your game. I can say that your pill bill, if it came out of my monthly pay, would eat the majority of it. All I can say is that I can't speak to a specific problem, only to principle.
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