Thu 10 Sep 2009
From the Star Ledger:
N.J. foreclosure filings up 43 percent in July
Residential foreclosure complaints in New Jersey were up 43 percent in July over the same month last year, but dipped slightly from June’s high, according to data from the state judiciary.
…
Foreclosure filings were up by 50 percent or more in eight of New Jersey’s 21 counties: Monmouth, Atlantic, Bergen, Hudson, Sussex, Somerset, Hunterdon and Middlesex counties.
From the Press of Atlantic City:
Bad news on foreclosures catching up to New Jersey
Foreclosure filings kept surging in Atlantic and Cape May counties in August, even as they fell slightly nationwide.
…
Atlantic County foreclosures increased 26 percent in August after jumping 36 percent in July, while Cape May County saw increases of 25 percent in August and 34 percent in July.Filings in New Jersey rose 29 percent from July to August after soaring 49 percent the month before.
“Part of the reason for New Jersey’s increase over the last two months is that the volume of foreclosure activity was so high over the last year or so that the Superior Court got behind in processing the paperwork,” Daren Blomquist, spokesman for RealtyTrac, said Wednesday. “Now they’re catching up with activity that under normal conditions would have shown up in previous months.”
From Bloomberg:
U.S. Foreclosure Filings Top 300,000 for Sixth Straight Month
Foreclosure filings in the U.S. exceeded 300,000 for the sixth straight month as job losses that boosted the unemployment rate to a 26-year high left many homeowners unable to keep up with their mortgage payments.
A total of 358,471 properties received a default or auction notice or were seized last month, according to data provider RealtyTrac Inc. That’s up 18 percent from a year earlier, and down 0.5 percent from July, the Irvine, California-based company said in a statement. One in 357 households received a filing.
First?!
well how bad can it get in NJ?
many just walking away. high taxes a problem? no, this NJ ,,wonderful way of life
Even our own territory will not hire Americans.What is wrong with this picture:they get the tax breaks and benefits,this is the thanks we get.
A top level Guam Senate team visited the country last week to finalize details on the hiring of 20,000 Filipino skilled workers for the construction of military headquarters in Guam beginning July 2010, the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) said in a statement Thursday.
Guam Senators Judith P. Guthertz and Rory J. Respicio held high-level talks with Labor Secretary Marianito Roque and Administrators Jennifer Manalili of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) and Carmelita Dimzon of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (Owwa). The two legislators also met with Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) Director General Augusto Syjuco.
http://globalnation.inquirer.net/news/breakingnews/view/20090910-224559/2-Guam-senators-offer-20000-jobs-for-OFWs
“Part of the reason for New Jersey’s increase over the last two months is that the volume of foreclosure activity was so high over the last year or so that the Superior Court got behind in processing the paperwork,”
so, the state didn’t hire 20 more workers to help the economy? These people get to live free and clear while I have to pay rent. I know people who haven’t paid their mortgage since April of 08 and could probably stay another 6 months
Jersey can raise all the taxes she wants, but if her residents can’t keep their high paying jobs or get more high paying jobs to just sustain what high level of spending there already is, it’s check mate for the current government way of life. Same with the Federal government. The President was quite the comedian last night.
One day closer to the cataclysm…
It’s called tort reform and opening up the borders so that every provider can compete for your business. Why is that not such a good place to start?
Captain Commie sez “One auto loan for new car, one building loan for new garage, one child policy” to continue:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a7_RC.LGQvXc
Does anyone have any predictions on when we should see more short sales hit the market? It seems like there are only a handful of them out there.
Here is a funny little story I heard yesterday:
One of my co-workers was talking to her realtor. He said there was a house in the Montclair/Bloomfield area where over the past year the house could have sold 4 times but fell thru because the short sale was held up at the bank. Why? No time for the bank to go looking and processing the paperwork.
Foreclosures are no problem in NJ. I had the opportunity to view a house in Monroe recently that is in foreclosure. The original purschase price was $600,000.00 in 2004, the current outstanding mutiple liens equal $800,000.00. The owner wants $950,000.00. The real estate agent stated the owner has not paid the mortage in over 2 years and has no intention of taking any offer that does not bail him out of all debts.
The above example has made it clear to me that prices in NJ are not going to drop significantly any time soon if the banks refuse to foreclose on properties for over 2 years of non-payment. The owners know that the banks are paper tigers and they can sit back and wait for a sucker to assume their debt.
Sorry to vent but waiting out this insanity is getting tiring.
Summit listing (2712310) in my inbox this morning proudly lists “Convenient to the Recycling center”. Definitely sounds worth $625k to me.
Martin Wolf interview with Rubini
escape (11)-
Wrong. It ensures that the most patient buyer will get this place at a price that reflects its eventual implosion.
You can stuff a dead fish in the closet, spray it with air freshener and wrap it in ten towels, but eventually, it just stinks up the joint.
#11
I hear ya!
Gator: saw tha one too - real appeal is that the neighbor has a tennis court - you could easily sway dinner conversation w/ guests away from the loud garbage, I mean recycling trucks rumbling by to your neighbors tennis court.
Gator: saw that one too - real appeal is that the neighbor has a tennis court - you could easily sway dinner conversation w/ guests away from the loud garbage, I mean recycling trucks rumbling by to your neighbors tennis court.
[29][last thread] Cyclonic
As you are doubtless aware,the protectionism will happen. It has to.
Whether you are for or against health care reform, you have to recognize that Obamacare will be a job killer for several reasons: First, it targets entire sectors by shifting revenues from those sectors to the government. That will cost jobs in those sectors. This is not central to the trade issue but it is simply an overlay of job losses that will exacerbate the trade issue.
Second, Obamacare almost guarantee that there will be more offshoring and reliance on foreign suppliers, which results in a new race to the bottom. After all, when a business can reduce its health care cost by reducing headcount, resorting to more part-timers, contract workers, or using independent contractors, it would be foolish not to do so. This is also bad for union businesses with non-union competition since the lower cost structures will permit them to compete more effectively with union businesses. If the unions and administration successfully force changes on classifications so that businesses can’t avoid the costs by reclassifying employees, then offshoring and headcount reduction, as well as automation, will increase further.
The loss of jobs overseas or to automation, and the hits to union businesses will heighten calls for changes to the tax code as a form of indirect protectionism, or outright trade barriers. The administration has to address job losses. Ultimately, you end up with protectionism.
Gator,
Never ceases to amaze me what they pt in bylines as special features for properties.
I once saw one that listed window air conditioner included…..that really would be a dealbreaker if it didn’t have one.
12 - a very odd thing to put in a listing. its not actually near the center but that makes it sound like its right next door.
I’ve met several homeowners that didn’t realize a lot of things about the immediate surroundings of their home. Three examples - two of which are trains which need to blow their horn a couple times every time they cross an intersection and the third a submerged pipeline in what would seem a wooded, secluded backyard. A small pipeline security plane files back and forth fairly low apparently all the time.
I’m sure this was commen to overlook stuff when you were in a bidding war and never really had time to to vet before buying.
All hype - Snuggler - Escape,
I believe that banks are hoarding these distressed homes on purpose.
This started with removal of MTM and its royally screwing up the inventory.
They dont want to release the foreclosed assets because they are writing them down and taking the benefit to strengthen their balance sheets.
When they are fully written down, they will probably look to dump them for 50-60 cents on the dollar since its all profit at that point.
The question is how long before this starts to happen and i dont have a clue.
This is just my guess based on a few conversations and a small amount of quality time looking at some bank financials - which dont disclose a whole hell of alot.
Also, even if they do intend to start dumping these properties on the market, i think it will be a mess, as most banks are not set-up to handle an operation of this magnitude - they will simply be overwhelmed.
Cheap And Plenty Housing
Forbes’ housing experts debate whether the housing surplus will drive home prices lower.
Stan Humpries, Zillow.com: I pick 812,000. That’s the number of homes added to the for-sale market in July, according to National Association of Realtors.
Compare that with 532,000, which is the number of homes sold in July. The big news discussed was that home sales in July increased 7.2% over June numbers, but buried in the data is the fact that inventory levels increased from 3,811,000 in June to 4,091,000 in July. Downward price pressure will continue to exist as long as inventory is so high, and it’s going to be hard to push inventory levels down with foreclosures pouring in, negative equity spurring foreclosures, and sellers who’ve been on the sidelines the past couple of years trying to get back into the market.
plume (19)-
Well put. We are digging ourselves a tunnel to hell.
veto (23)-
The real danger is that the banks hold the houses so long, they deteriorate to the point of being uninhabitable…therefore, unsellable.
I don’t know of any bank that has an internal program or outside vendor maintaining their REO.
The growth industries in this space will be bulldozers and carting services.
#19 Nom
Yea, The biggest “reliance on foreign suppliers” will be the prescriptions getting filled in Canada.
Whats “NomCares” answer to the joke that is healthcare in this country, beyond “do nothing” or “not this”
Here’s how you can start a civil war: make people without pensions pay for those who do.
http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/story/2168570.html?www.Morgan7.com
For folks concerned about the income gap, this one’s for you.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125254156520197777.html
Any means necessary I guess.
Fed’s Evans expects Fed to complete entire MBS buy program
NEW YORK, Sept 9 (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve will likely buy the entire amount of the agency mortgage-backed securities it said it could buy, Chicago Fed President Charles Evans said on Wednesday.
While it was a “fair question” to wonder whether the Fed needs to buy the entire $1.25 trillion of MBS it said it could buy, given the better tone in the U.S. economy and the beneficial impact the purchases have already had, he said:
“I expect that we would continue with the entire amount.”
Evans is a voting member of the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee in 2009.
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSNYC00328220090909
“The real danger is that the banks hold the houses so long, they deteriorate to the point of being uninhabitable…therefore, unsellable.”
This burns me up… Govt is using our future tax dollars and pouring money on banks, who are being paid to destroy perfectly good homes and manipulate the market.
Not only are our taxes going up but we’ll have to overpay for a house too if this keeps up.
I’d say at this point, the gubmint has pretty much declared open war on us.
They are our avowed enemy, yet we keep munching pork rinds.
What We’ve Learned: Ugly Truths About Housing
Finally this loophole is closing.
Tax free era for Irish artists may end
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8245598.stm
Lets see U2’s true colors. I suspect they will be Monaco residents in the near future.
Veto
50-60cents onthe dollar is probably already a pipe dream.
The toxic Chinese McMansions aren’t going to hold up anywhere near as well ad homes built in the 60’s-80’s
should get my license for heavy machinery and see what a repossesed bulldozer goes for…..
Why Bubbles Happen
Everyone involved in the bubble falls victim to “disaster myopia” (meaning they’re too near-sighted to see the longer term risks) either because they simply can’t imagine a downturn happening, or they assume the probability of it happening is so low that it really isn’t worth worrying about.
People often make poor economic choices because they are overly optimistic about what they will do in the future. For example, people transfer credit card balances over to cards with high long-term interest rates because they believe they will pay everything off before the much lower teaser rate expires. (Most don’t.) Borrowers who default on payday loans typically pay interest amounting to 90% of the loan’s principal before they finally give up and stop making payments.
One study of a health club found that members who worked out on average just four times a month chose to pay a monthly membership fee of $85, even though the gym also offered a pay-as-you-go rate of $10 per visit. When people are polled about their beliefs as to what they’re going to do, there often is a refusal to accept reality.
There’s also a more cynical way to look at things; when completely unsophisticated “investors” are clamoring to get into a market, in general it means that the market is at, or very close to, a top.
[27] PGC
I don’t suggest. I react. And I advise.
I don’t much care if Obamacare passes or not. Further, Obamacare may not much alter the landscape of healthcare, business and taxation, but I expect it to have a pronounced effect. What I have to do is figure out what the effect will be if it does pass (we already know the effect if it doesn’t), and how best to capitalize on the good and avoid the bad.
In that vein, I must accept that Obamacare and other proposals will have the effect of prolonging the slump. I don’t like it, but if I can, I will try to make a buck off of it. It’s my duty as a taxpayer and a parent. I do care that healthcare will likely be adversely affected for people I care about under the “one size fits all” program that I expect will result. I do care that people I know will lose jobs as a result. I’m not happy about that, but I don’t see it as within my power to change, or within my duty to address.
For me, I plan to make sure that I get legal business from employers looking for options under Obamacare. Will I be counseling companies on how to cut benefits? Probably. Will I be terminating pension plans as an indirect result? Maybe. But I am okay with that.
It also informs my investing. For now, my fund investments will be in overseas companies. My only domestic investments will be targeted and likely temporary as I see a continuing of the pattern where the rest of the world gets richer off of us. I can’t change it, but I can make a buck off of it.
Finally, it informs my estate and business planning. I’d tell you what I, and anyone who has net worth over 250K, should be doing, but for that, I have to charge you my hourly rate.
Cynical, cold and callous? Sure, I admit it. But I will, as I must, do what I legally can to protect family and finance in this new reality. The pie is no longer growing, and as I predicted, the have-nots will try to take from the haves that which they cannot get on their own. It is a pattern that goes back to the beginning of mankind. Only the methods have changed. And Robert Tytler predicted the new methods long ago.
So, I do what I must. And if you disagree with my predictions, well, you know what they say about free advice.
[34] pgc
Crap! I was counting on that one, and had researched what constititued artist income in Ireland.
Comrade sometimes you read like the bad guy in an Oliver Stone flick.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/32773345
Meredith says another 25% down from here.
If they succeed in passing health care reform legislation and they don’t include a government funded/controlled insurance option then here is what I propose…
I plan on creating my own insurance company and creating a very crappy health insurance plan named “the opt-out plan” that covers nearly nothing and with premiums that amount to pennies a year.
I will call my insurance company “The Public Option” or TPO for short.
That way the millions of Americans who wish to remain without health care can continue to do so.
I don’t know of a state the requires automobile insurance but doesn’t have some type of insurance provided by the state.
“Meredith says another 25% down from here.”
Make,
I keep telling everyone that prices will go to zero. But nobody wants to listen.
I will buy a 4/2 acreage with one gold chip filled with chocolate when this thing is said and done.
[11] I feel the same frustration, but I’m not biting. I like my fat stash of cash and investments, and I like knowing I can ditch NYC/NJ at any time without the ball-and-chain of an overpriced house around my neck.
My family needs more space, but we’ll be looking for a larger place to rent, not buy. I refuse to buy into a manipulated market. My ego is not tied to a deed of ownership.
Make,
I keep telling everyone that prices will go to zero. But nobody wants to listen.
I will buy a 4/2 acreage with one gold chip filled with chocolate when this thing is said and done.
veto,
I own a lot of RE. It’s in my best interest for prices to double every 10 yrs. If I’m wrong I can always sell my shiny. I’m not just saying sh*t around here. I put my money where my mouth is. Over 90% of my retirement savings is sitting in a vault in Australia. I don’t have a 401K. I rely on collecting rents to “get by”.
If you’re buying what NAR is selling then step up to the table and make an offer for the full asking price. I did that twice back in 1998.
Veto,
Yes. I’m sure you’ll be able to buy your 4/2 one acre Mcmansion with 100 ounces by the time Omama term is done.
Make,
i dont doubt you and i hope your gold investment pays off hansomely. My post was meant to be funny, im not trying to clown anyone.
Dont feel like you have to put me in my place because im not an extremist.
I see 30% correction in NJs future, maybe more. thats a pretty big crash - and i’ve felt that all along.
If we see a bigger crash, i’ll eat crow. big deal. Its better than not having a prediction at all and saying that everyone else is wrong.
You dont have to make it seem like im oblivious because i dont buy into a 60% re correction mixed with desperation in the streets.
wtf do i know anyway. Im no economist, and they dont know either.
This is the only place most of us can discuss this stuff without people taking it personally.
If i mentioned real estate at the water cooler, i would get the look like im the devil as if its people like me who are causing this collapse because i dont spend enough.
Hell, some in here are forecasting a real deal apocolypse. It doesn’t bother me that you or anyone else is more bullish or bearish. In the end, whoever is right will barely get an honerable mention.
I might buy soon, but i still think we have another 8% to go so im not rushing. if i see the economy worsen, i may try to wait a little longer.
#37 Nom.
I think the difference between us is where we both see haves and have nots, I would rather change it to the have basic needs met and those that have more.
I don’t have a problem with the acclimation of wealth. If you work and are successful, you should enjoy the rewards. But the work should be ethical and not at the expense or exploitation of others and you should give back into the pot to ensure there is something left for those who follow.
Instead of thinking that the masses of have nots will rise up and take what is yours, think of it from philanthropic terms. What can you do to make the lives of all people better. What can you do to make the world a better place.
You can throw Darwinian theory into the mix, if the kids are playing musical chairs, the big kids should not use their weight to shove the little kids out of the way. Should the big kids give something back to the game or should they always try to win.
The robber barons of the 19th century are an interesting comparison, they made lots of money, from dubious practices, but there is an argument that their underlying businesses advance the country and the people as a whole. But on the back of that, there was a lot given back through philanthropy (mainly to NYC). I suppose the modern day equivalent would be Buffet giving most of his fortune over to the Gates foundation balanced off against the likes of Leona Helmsley.
45 - yep- we are pretty much screwed in that area.
Sept. 10 (Bloomberg) — Household incomes decreased in 2008, the first full year of the recession, and the poverty rate rose to the highest since 1997, a government report showed.
The median household income fell 3.6 percent to $50,303, snapping three years of increases, the Census Bureau said today in its annual report on incomes, poverty and health insurance. The poverty rate climbed to 13.2 percent from 12.5 percent. The number of people living in poverty rose to 39.8 million last year, an increase of 2.6 million from 2007.
http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aTRD0zaW3jFg
Paul Krugman,
How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?
Hot off the press - here is some positive spin from the latest CS Homebuilders equity research.
Monthly Survey of Real Estate Agents
Solid Traffic, Driven by First-time Buyer Tax Credit
■ Traffic up slightly; highest demand levels seen in investor-heavy
markets. Our Monthly Survey of Real Estate Agents indicated another
increase in traffic levels in August, with the key theme being buyers moving
forward to take advantage of the first-time buyer tax credit before it expires
at the end of November, along with demand from investors looking for
foreclosures. Our buyer traffic index inched up to 44.5, from 43.4 in July. The
traffic index has shown traffic near the expectations of agents (a reading of
50) for five months. The foreclosure heavy markets continue to see multiple
bids on foreclosure sales and a heavy investor presence.
■ Arizona, California, Florida, New York, and Washington, D.C. saw the
highest traffic levels. In general, it was the typical foreclosure heavy areas
that saw the highest levels of traffic, but we also saw noticeable
improvement in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. For Atlanta
and Chicago this is a quick rebound after one weak month. The
improvement in NY likely reflects stronger demand, as a result of
improvement in the financial markets, and some pent-up demand after many
months of limited activity.
■ First-time buyer tax credit helping buying to get “off the fence”.
Throughout the markets, we heard frequent mention of first-time buyers
making purchases now (or looking with the intent to make a purchase
shortly) based on the first-time buyer tax credit. We hadn’t sensed a
dramatic impact from this in prior months, but the coming expiration of the
tax credit (closings must occur by November 30th , meaning that most
contracts should be signed prior to the end of September or early October)
has brought more of these buyers into the market. The expiration of the
credit could create a lull in demand (if demand is pulled forward), but we
think that the improving tone to the markets and positive momentum are
likely to mean more to buyers than would the $8,000 tax credit.
■ Price declines still occurring on higher-priced homes, but low end
stabilizing. Our price index moved slightly higher in August to 34.5, from
33.6 in July. In many markets, we heard of multiple bids on foreclosures and
low-end homes, with prices appearing to have bottomed for those price
points. Agents indicated rising prices over the past 30 days in the Inland
Empire, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., with stable prices in Dallas, Ft.
Myers, and near-stable in Phoenix. Agents saw the weakest pricing trends in
Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte, and New York.
More…
New York-Northern NJ – More Confident Buyers
Look to Take Advantage of Lower Prices
(8,941 single-family permits in 2008, 6th largest market in the country)
Positive momentum continues as buyers regain confidence. Buyer traffic continued to
improve in August, as our buyer traffic index increased to 53 from 42 – the highest reading
we’ve seen since January ’07 – indicating traffic in-line with agents’ expectations (a
reading of 50 points to traffic in-line with expectations). The improvement in financial
markets, along with more realistic home prices, low mortgage rates and the $8,000 firsttime
homebuyer tax credit have been the key behind the improving traffic in recent months.
“Seller have brought their prices down to more realistic levels. That, combined with low
interest rates, is moving more buyers off the sidelines,” according to one agent. However,
another noted, “The buyer tax credit is helping, but the majority of buyers are not first-time
buyers, but investors looking for good deals before the market rebounds.” Agents’
comments seemed to indicate a split among buyers, as many indicated a desire to get in
at what they perceive to be the bottom, but an equal number are convinced prices will go
lower and they can get a better deal by waiting. Only time will tell who gets the better deal,
but we see a greater risk of further declines given the still-elevated inventory levels.
Bloated inventory continues to pressure home prices. Home prices fell further in
August as inventory levels increased and sellers adjusted pricing to lure buyers (and
because of low appraisals). Our home price index was virtually unchanged at 27 in August
from 26 in July, with any reading below 50 indicating sequentially lower home prices.
Inventory still increased, however, as our home listings index fell to 42 in August from 46
in July, with any reading below 50 indicating higher inventories.
Comments from real estate agents:
■ “There is a rush to meet the Nov. 30 deadline for the $8,000 tax credit.”
■ “More realistic prices, especially at the lower end. At the lower price points, fed
incentives or state incentives are adding some enthusiasm to buyers. Upper end
houses are finding much less success unless they’re drop-dead gorgeous and
priced right.”
Toll Brothers and Hovnanian have the greatest exposure. Toll Brothers and
Hovnanian have the most exposure to the New York-Northern NJ area market, generating
the largest percentage of sales in the area with 5% each.
Escape from NJ,
The above example has made it clear to me that prices in NJ are not going to drop significantly any time soon if the banks refuse to foreclose on properties for over 2 years of non-payment. The owners know that the banks are paper tigers and they can sit back and wait for a sucker to assume their debt.
Sorry to vent but waiting out this insanity is getting tiring.
Exactly why I have been renting for all these years. I actually started looking in 2004 and thought prices were crazy. 5 years forward and happily not in debt and still building my savings. I’m not tired of waiting at all. I’m doing what is in the best interest of my family.
“5 years forward and happily not in debt and still building my savings. I’m not tired of waiting at all. I’m doing what is in the best interest of my family.”
hard, this is commendable, i wish i could get my wife to agree to this philosophy. She sees that we did the right thing by waiting but now she wants to move forward with our original plans to buy.
The investment risk for people on the sidelines like us, is real - bank failures, currency collapses, hyper-inflation… How do you protect against that?
some gld etfs, physical gold, tips, foreign sovereign bonds?
There is risk to all of those too.
NYC’s Tavern on the Green files for Chapter 11
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090910/ap_on_re_us/us_tavern_on_the_green
Maybe the food will improve.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/nyregion/10stuy.html?_r=2&ref=business
Stytown still on the brink of foreclosure.
55 hehehe
these guys should be faced to go to debtors prison. Claim bankruptsy right before the sale. Nice move.
The food is excellenet at the boat house. My cousing is a manager there. My wife loves the gondola rides. Good times.
PGC 47
Interesting. The catch would seem to be that you approach only works when the majority play along by either helping to “provide” if they have the resources, or consuming “provided” resources responsibly if they are on the receiving end.
In a world of escalades and beamers for all, big macs and big screens all round, obvious consumption, you are not going to see overall responsible consumption by those on the receiving end of provided resources due to both culture and the government using hand outs as social bribes, following you principle would put one at a financial disadvantage.
#47 PGC -
I look at it another way.
If you (generic You, not you personally) were born to peasants in a shack in Sierra Leone, educated yourself, negotiated machete attacks, survived slavery and built an empire up from nothing -then that person can say they did it all themselves.
What if you were born in a secure nation, protected by an army; police, fire and ambulances at your beck and call, travelled on public roads, were educated at public expense, offered a safety net in old age, given the right to have your debts absolved and the right to choose the government?
What if your business is provided an educated workforce at the public expense, infrastructure to flourish (roads etc.) at the public expense, international treaties and structure at the public expense, customers who also flourish due to public expenditure, benefits from government contracts, or even from people attempting to hide their money from the government?
Person number 2 not only didn’t “do it all themselves”, they owe, big time.
soosh (59)-
I think it’s a major fallacy to give gubmint credit for creation of anything. Gubmint is the most wealth-draining, disruptive force known to man.
Screw the gubmint. All I owe them is my middle finger and some hot lead.
I disagree Clot.
Government has been good to me.
Believe me, the gubmint does not believe they owe anything to the people from whom their power derives.
Their only goal is to drain us of wealth, enslave us and use their ill-gotten gains to enrich both themselves and their corporate accomplices.
“…they owe, big time.”
Nicholas (62)-
What did you have to give up?
[47] pgc
First, I posit that you are still reading and seeing a philosopby when I suggest the absence of one (or at least the attempt to avoid one).
Now, on to your thoughts:
“I think the difference between us is where we both see haves and have nots, I would rather change it to the have basic needs met and those that have more.”
There is no question that for a society to survive, it must address the needs of the underprivileged. And unless you plan on kiling them, these can be addressed in two ways: Philanthropy or exaction. Currently we have both. I am all for philanthropy, but it doesn’t come at the expense of my family’s middle class needs or wants. If I had Buffett’s kind of money, I would have a grand time running my foundation. I don’t. As for exaction, if all agree on the rules of the game, no problem, but we don’t. The rules change constantly and this causes more distortion and avoidance, which is a manifestation of dissent. If we had baseline priniciples that restricted the government to this far and no farther, then we would have far less distortion and dissent. We used to have a belief in this country that exaction for the good of all should not lead to expropriation of wealth simply to equalize everyone’s standard of living; that belief is in jeopardy, which is actually good for my line of work.
“I don’t have a problem with the acclimation (sic) of wealth. If you work and are successful, you should enjoy the rewards. But the work should be ethical and not at the expense or exploitation of others and you should give back into the pot to ensure there is something left for those who follow.”
Here, you are saying that there should be rules for commerce and that isn’t really in debate, though to avoid all “exploitation” would be quite hard. You also say that successful, hardworking people should enjoy rewards, but that they must also give back, a sort of enforced noblesse oblige. In theory, these are diametrically opposed concepts, but they work because of assymetry, meaning that because the tax structure doesn’t take all of my extra gain, I tolerate it. When it takes considerably more (getting closer to symmetrical), the productive class will shut down. Why study medicine and put myself into debt and grief when I can have a union job as a bus driver and make the same money? At its logical (and symmetrical) extreme, you are advocating a system where each contributes what they can offer (talent, muscle, ingenuity) and takes from it what they need for survival. I didn’t write this, but someone very famous in economics did. And remember, we live in an assymetrical world, which is why the workers of the world, not just the US, have to unite to make this symmetry happen. Otherwise, the productive capital and talent will get their assymetries out of here.
“Instead of thinking that the masses of have nots will rise up and take what is yours, think of it from philanthropic terms. What can you do to make the lives of all people better. What can you do to make the world a better place.”
I would, but the government, and the democratic party in particular, has already done that for me.
Think your gubmint loves you? Hell, your great-grandkids will be paying for the festering turds known as the GSEs.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/gao-finds-us-government-likely-stuck-holding-gses-forever
“It may be very difficult to credibly privatize [the GSEs] as largely intact entities. The financial markets likely would continue to perceive that the federal government would provide substantial financial support to the enterprises, if privatized as largely intact entities, in a financial emergency.
Which basically means that as more and more foreclosures keep hitting (see RealtyTrac report this morning) and as agency and MBS borrowing standards are loosened ever more (see Credit Bubble formation ref: Alan Greenspan), US taxpayers (and China) will be forever on the hook for the next credit-housing-liquidity bubble.
Chairman Ben, by creating the largest Mutually Assured Destruction scenario ever, has effectively put a gun to everyone’s head and proclaimed the Fed’s balance sheet TBTF. If only Bernie “Scam of the Century” Madoff had access to the same (Made In Heidelberg) gun…”
lisoosh,
that to me is called winning the lottery of conception. someone who starts a company from scratch and becomes wealthy and successful has most likely worked very hard for it. Such an achievement is an exception not the rule.
while your african scenario is certainly an exception to the the rule as well, it does not diminish the achievement of the example i illustrated above.
The infrastructure and society we live in comes from the people as a net result it takes visionary leaders as well as visionary followers to build a successful empire.
While it may be in everyone’s best interest for the highly successful to act philanthropically you do not “owe” that to anyone unless you were successful due to daddy’s fortune or political connections as opposed to self-made.
Tax News of the Day (and further to my point)
“House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) said Sept. 10 he was surprised President Obama discussed paying for health care reform with a tax on insurance companies, but said he would consider anything that would facilitate House passage.
Specifically, Obama said Sept. 9 he would like to partially offset his plan with revenues from pharmaceutical and insurance companies, including charging insurance companies a “fee” for expensive policies. The Senate Finance Committee is contemplating a tax on insurance companies and insurance administrators for any health insurance plan that is valued at more $21,000 for families.”
Here, I have to ask: What ill is Chairman O trying to cure? Are expensive policies for executives abhorrent because they cost Treasury when the costs are deducted from corporate profits? If so, the answer is to deny the deduction over $X dollars.
Here, we have a tax that is likely to be quite stiff, and is intended to make sure that higher income folks don’t have better health care than everyone else (what I call the Slowest Common Demoninator rule).
So answer me this: How does it benefit the little people by preventing upper income people from purchasing more expensive health care?
Further, if the folks who have these policies make less than 200K, is that a violation of his tax pledge?
Bueller? Bueller?
Clot,
In September 2001 I was completing my Bachelors degree in Engineering and didn’t think it would benefit anyone if I stopped before I was finished. Many of the dollars that were spent to send me to school came from Pell Grants, Congressional/Representative Grants, and government guarnteed loans.
After I graduated I applied to the USAF to serve. I was accepted in 2004 and had to go through 13 weeks of discipline. I consider that discipline to be a net benefit from the government.
After OTS I went on to attend the Air Force Institue of Technology (AFIT) to obtain my Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering while getting paid to do so.
During my stay in the military I recieved thousands in benefits across the spectrum such as dental, medical, and optical.
Shortly after obtaining my degree I applied to be released from the military which was granted.
What did it cost me? It cost me the luxury of waking up at 12:30 in the afternoon and walking out the door unshaven and not feeling guilty. Discipline has a funny way of affecting your whole life.
It put my life at risk in the event that I was ordered to defend the United States through combat, something I felt committed to after the 2001 attacks.
I hope that this hasn’t come off as preachy but even if your life hasn’t been positively affected by the government there are plenty of others out there that have been.
I was walking into a McDonalds to get breakfast one day in uniform and a group of war veterans came to me and thanked me for my service to the country. You could see from their eyes that it was warm and heartfelt. I humbly took their thanks and shook their hands but what I really wanted to say to them was that it was their support, time and money, that allowed me to succeed and that it should be me thanking them.
[59] lisoosh,
Depends on what you mean by “big time.”
If it means that, at the end of the day, I am no better off than if I cleaned houses, then I don’t think I would be taking on that kind of risk.
At least not in this country.
Clot,
My response to your question about what I had to give up is in moderation.
Clot - I didn’t say gov., I said “at the public expense”.
Corruption of the government in a democratic nation is the fault of the people.
Regardless. I’d rather live in a nation (and there are many) with standard laws and some form of organization that one without. The ones without are generally warlord ridden h@llh0les.
Nom -
” Why study medicine and put myself into debt and grief when I can have a union job as a bus driver and make the same money? ”
Prestige, interesting challenging work, sense in doing something good. It’s not all about money.
Kettle - I don’t think you “got it” at all.
Like it or not, to beat a phrase to death, “no man is an island”. We are essentially part of a collective that puts money into the pot.
Not to say that those in charge of the pot do a great job with it, but that is what we have.
If you take continually from the pot and don’t put back in, eventually everything goes to h2ll. It is just as true societally as it is in deficit terms.
#58 Kettle.
Its a good point. The current system in the US relies in the most part on the honesty of it’s citizens. You fill out your tax return where you state how much you think you should pay. Itys down to the gvmt t validate that number and pursue if its wrong. Other parts of the world the tax is taken at source. It’s down to the employer to ensure the gvmt is paid.
As for the consumpsion,. If they all own the Big Screen or the Caddy, then they fail the means test for social services. If they are up to their necks in credit, its down to the banks and the lending agencys to ensure they get paid.
I don’t see McDs taking WIC.
“We are digging ourselves a tunnel to hell.”
But at least we can finance the construfction with state-issued bonds, so it does not really cost us anything.
Comrade Nom Deplume says:
September 10, 2009 at 12:57 pm
[59] lisoosh,
“Depends on what you mean by “big time.”
If it means that, at the end of the day, I am no better off than if I cleaned houses, then I don’t think I would be taking on that kind of risk.
At least not in this country.”
Nom - aren’t you a tax lawyer? So without taxes to avoid, exactly how would you be making a living? Your entire livelihood, indirectly comes courtesy of the good old USofA.
“Cynical, cold and callous”
That is an AmLaw 100 firm, no?
#59 lisoosh
That is the main distinction between the 3rd world and the 1st world.
What is the percentage of population that fall into the groups you describe. How many SL empire builders are there.
An interesting comparison would be the comparable levels of heathcare. While the majority of the SL population will rely on charity care such as the Red Cross, the coverage would probably equal that of the coverage received by those on the lowest rungs of our society.
I don’t think that McDonald’s can redeem WIC payments.
I did a short stint in a supermarket and there are requirements for food stamps and government assistance programs.
For example, you can buy cheeze but not velveta.
I would guess that you cannot pay more for the service of the food than for the food itself (fastfood/mcdonalds)
All my comments go into the moderation bucket for some reason.
What did I say?
Your tax dollars at work stimulating the economy;
Subject: First Lady Requires More Than 20 Attendants
It’s good to be the Queen!
Dr. Paul L. Williams
“In my own life, in my own small way, I have tried to give back to
this country that has given me so much,” she said. “See, that’s why
I left a job at a big law firm for a career in public service, ”
Michelle Obama
No, Michele Obama does not get paid to serve as the First Lady and
she doesn’t perform any official duties. But this hasn’t deterred
her from hiring an unprecedented number of staffers to cater to her
every whim and to satisfy her every request in the midst of the
Great Recession. Just think Mary Lincoln was taken to task for
purchasing China for the White House during the Civil War. And
Mamie Eisenhower had to shell out the salary for her personal
secretary.
How things have changed! If you’re one of the tens of millions of
Americans facing certain destitution, earning less than subsistence
wages stocking the shelves at Wal-Mart or serving up McDonald
cheeseburgers, prepare to scream and then come to realize that the
benefit package for these servants of Miz Michelle are the same as
members of the national security and defense departments and the
bill for these assorted lackeys is paid by John Q. Public:
1. $172,2000 - Sher, Susan (Chief Of Staff)
2. $140,000 - Frye, Jocelyn C. (Deputy Assistant to the President
and Director of Policy And Projects For The First Lady)
3. $113,000 - Rogers, Desiree G. (Special Assistant to the
President and White House Social Secretary)
4. $102,000 - Johnston, Camille Y. (Special Assistant to the
President and Director of Communications for the First Lady)
5. Winter, Melissa E. (Special Assistant to the President and
Deputy Chief Of Staff to the First Lady)
6. $90,000 - Medina , David S. (Deputy Chief Of Staff to the First
Lady)
7. $84,000 - Lelyveld, Catherine M. (Director and Press Secretary
to the First Lady)
8. $75,000 - Starkey, Frances M. (Director of Scheduling and
Advance for the First Lady)
9. $70,000 - Sanders, Trooper (Deputy Director of Policy and
Projects for the First Lady)
10. $65,000 - Burnough, Erinn J. (Deputy Director and Deputy Social
Secretary)
11. Reinstein, Joseph B. (Deputy Director and Deputy Social Secretary)
12. $62,000 - Goodman, Jennifer R. (Deputy Director of Scheduling
and Events Coordinator For The First Lady)
13. $60,000 - Fitts, Alan O. (Deputy Director of Advance and Trip
Director for the First Lady)
14. Lewis, Dana M. (Special Assistant and Personal Aide to the
First Lady)
15. $52,500 - Mustaphi, Semonti M. (Associate Director and Deputy
Press Secretary To The First Lady)
16. $50,000 - Jarvis, Kristen E. (Special Assistant for Scheduling
and Traveling Aide To The First Lady)
17. $45,000 - Lechtenberg, Tyler A. (Associate Director of
Correspondence For The First Lady)
18. Tubman, Samantha (Deputy Associate Director, Social Office)
19. $40,000 - Boswell, Joseph J. (Executive Assistant to the Chief
Of Staff to the First Lady)
20. $36,000 - Armbruster, Sally M. (Staff Assistant to the Social
Secretary)
21. Bookey, Natalie (Staff Assistant)
22. Jackson, Deilia A. (Deputy Associate Director of Correspondence
for the First Lady)
There has never been anyone in the White House at any time that has
created such an army of staffers whose sole duties are the
facilitation of the First Lady’s social life. One wonders why she
needs so much help, at taxpayer expense, when even
Hillary had three;
Jackie Kennedy one;
Laura Bush one;
And prior to Mamie Eisenhower social help came from the President’s
own pocket.
Note: This does not include makeup artist Ingrid Grimes-Miles, 49,
and “First Hairstylist” Johnny Wright, 31, both of whom travelled
aboard Air Force One to Europe .
nom and lisoosh:
there are two intereting job openings in DC for chief of staff: one for john roberts and the other for charles rangel. you can fit one of them
I give up posting here. I will just go back to reading.
Grim,
Really, I’m reading my comments carefully for inflamatory words and phrases and I still get sent to the moderation bucket. You should really prune your moderation list to something more realistic.
From the NYT; Per Census Bureau - A decade with no income gains, and now no more home eq for a while. What will people live on?
nom,
i believe this s what you had in mind….
after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs
-Critique of the Gotha Program
#65 Nom
“First, I posit that you are still reading and seeing a philosopby when I suggest the absence of one (or at least the attempt to avoid one).”
You’ll have to explain that to me, I don’t understand what you are saying.
I think I see a vacuum when it comes to addressing the needs of the underprivileged.
I would agree that the rules change. The tax code changes as the gvmt tries to close loopholes that you (as part of your job) will try to exploit. New taxes come in while old parts of the code lie dormant.
Telecoms is a good example of where Insurance and Healthcare has to go. Before the FCC brings in a VoIP tax they should revisit the Universal service charge and other parts of the tax code that they assess to meet service costs. While the Bells and Hard wire companies have moved aside to new technologies and competition, so must the big insurance companies change. How and what is taxed needs to change to meet the current needs.
“What will people live on?”
Hope.
That or handouts the govrnment gives them from taxing the “rich.”
SL,
Did you ever look into the issue of non-NY partners geting taxed by NY for mass transit support?
#68 Nom.
I have a question in that what is in that $21,000 policy that is not in my average $12,000 policy. Is it better care? Is it a higher premium for a pre existing condition. Is is higher as the employer is not self managed.
The bigger point on this $21,000 figure is that, the average family’s $12K premium is expected to break the $20K mark by 2020. So you can call it a stealth tax on the middle class, I’ll call it a system in free fall.
question.
We already spend more on healthcare then ny other nation, yet have worse oucomes and fewer services?
hypothetically, would we not save money and improve health care for the majority of Americans simply by duplicating Sweden or Norway’s healthcare system here?
I’m not saying that their systems are perfect, but its a better bang for the buck then what we have ( unless your a US insurance company)
Nico,
Very rarely is profanity filtered. Most likely a banned phrase us embedded within a longer word. Socia!ism is a regular offender, buried within is the name of a very popular ED drug.
I’m sure there is a joke in that.
It’s interesting that the Government Officials pushing for Mandatory Health Insurance and Tax Penalties for those who refuse, liken it to Mandatory Auto Insurance. They ignore that fact that people who don’t drive do not pay a penalty for not having Auto Insurance. To level the playing field they need to require all Americans to pay for Auto Insurnce, whether they use it or not. Then their analogy would be correct. God Bless The Communist State of America.
Comrade Nom Deplume says:
September 10, 2009 at 12:57 pm
“If it means that, at the end of the day, I am no better off than if I cleaned houses, then I don’t think I would be taking on that kind of risk.”
That is a silly logic. Given two paths that have similar outcomes, one would most likely pick the interesting/good/challenging/prestigious/chick-magnet option.
Also, in the scenario where the salaries of a cleaning lady and a doctor are the same (for same number of working hours, blah), the costs of education would not be very high for something like a Med School — supply/demand, or there will be scholarships, or whatever.
You cannot look at hypothetical scenarios in isolation — especially,w when you are focusing heavily along a single dimension of financial risk/reward.
S
Kettle,
There is the issue of malpractice insurance to be sure but I think an even bigger issue is how we finance graduate medical education. In this country, to earn an MD, one both gives up years of earnings and shells out huge amounts of tuition. When all is said and done, the graduates (physicins) demand a big retuen on their investment. The place to get that return is not in an ED, it is not in family prsctice, and it is not in peds, it is in specialties, and specialties are big drivers in the use of technology.
Grim,
Just curious… Do you have a rough number on how much spam you get on ED drugs, etc — especially the ones where they spell the word correctly?
S
Sastry,
Are you a Republican yet?
shore 92
more bubble economics. Med school costs are just as bubblicious as any other branch of higher ed.
They ignore that fact that people who don’t drive do not pay a penalty for not having Auto Insurance
You have a choice to *not* drive. You do not have a choice to *not* get sick. Looks like today is “suspend thinking” day.
I wish government would take away Medicare. Why should I pay for the old fogies?
“Looks like today is “suspend thinking” day.”
Welcomr to liberal control of government.
Shore… not yet! May be if the tax assessment falls.
On the health care reform, I’ll say I will use the conservative approach: Too much taxes due to health care — *because of the middlemen insurance companies*. If the government runs it, there will be lesser *taxes* overall!
S
.. .May be if the tax assessment falls *through*.
The ROI for one to become an internist or other non-specialist physician is just not worth it for any bright person with good socil skills. Grnted, there are some socially-inept people who are very smart for whom medicine makes sense, as society seems to forgive bad social graces amongst physicians, but for the rest of those smart enough to go to school there are plenty of other places one csn make $150,000 plus a year with out the long deferral of income and tking on the staggering amount of debt necessary to earn an MD.
The ROI for one to become an internist or other non-speci@list physician is just not worth it for any bright person with good socil skills. Granted, there are some socially-inept people who are very smart for whom medicine makes sense, as society seems to forgive bad social graces amongst physicians, but for the rest of those smart enough to go to school there are plenty of other places one can make $150,000 plus a year with out the long deferral of income and tking on the staggering amount of debt necessary to earn an MD.
I have yet to meet any physician (non specialist) who said they would do it over again or urge anyone to do it.
in mod it seems
Lisoosh (59)-
Right on. I find it very curious that people do not appreciate the functioning (mostly) government that we have over here in the U.S.
I have lived in a third world country where government is a joke and to get anything done requires contacts and bribes. This is partly because government workers and the police are lowly paid and supplement their income via favors and bribes. Life is good when you have money and contacts but otherwise it is hell on earth.
Even in the worst of times, I would prefer living over here than over there. A functioning government is a rare and precious commodity and it is up to the voters to keep it that way. Educate yourselves and don’t fall for the spin.
For no government, take a look at Africa.
100 meters in just 6.16 seconds
And Sarah did not even do any weight training.
http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=3906861&cl=15483542&ch=4226726&src=news
“I have lived… where government is a joke and to get anything done requires contacts and bribes. ”
And this differs from NJ how?
#82 X-NJ
http://m.factcheck.org/2009/08/michelle-obamas-staff/
NY Mag article on foreclosures in Queens. It’s pretty standard stuff until you get to page 2.
You can guess where things went from there.
And this differs from NJ how?
LOL! NJ is probably not the best example to hold up considering the recent events.
However, we still do not have corruption in the lowest rungs of government (as far as I have experienced).
For example, I received a driver’s license in my home country by not taking a test or even knowing how to drive a car.
Anytime a cop stopped us for driving fast or breaking a rule, a token bribe would get us off scot free.
Ever wonder why you hear about breakouts of diseases like the plague, malaria etc. in such countries - zero maintenance and sanitation by the government.
These are just a few examples, but corruption is all pervasive.
#93
Shame on you for thinking someone in this country shouldn’t be paying for auto insurance whether they have a car or not!!!!!!!
PGC (108)
Thanks. More propaganda as usual, not that I’m condoning all these people working there
Anytime a cop stopped us for driving fast or breaking a rule, a token bribe would get us off scot free.
You do know the purpose of those PBA stickers people have on their cars, right?
Victorian (101); Lisoosh (59):
I’m with you. Most libertarians I know are especially prone to the attributional error known as the “self-serving bias” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-serving_bias), which means basically that they give themselves most of the credit for their good fortune, and don’t pause to think about the role that other factors have played in their success. Among those other factors are luck, ‘connections’, and yes, strong cultural institutions, such as a functioning government.
#113 - The above may sound jerkier than I intend it.
For WH data geeks:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/July1Report-Draft12.pdf
Shore, 89
Do you have the formal name/title for the law?
I am emailing our comptroller now.
sl
Not on the tip of my tongue. I posted the full name and some NY State guidance on the law a few days ago.
ok, will look, thanks!
sl
Metropolitan Commuter Transportation Mobility Tax (the “Mobility Tax”)
God bless America, and Google.
Another day, markets up and the dollar down.
Rally on!!!
Grim,
What are you using for your pattern matching algorithm? I could write you a script that matches c i a l i s but not S o c i a l i s m.
I got moderated again…
113.
armchair anarchists are an internet staple. I wonder who they will call when a fire breaks out near their kid’s bedroom? Or if they will stand in the long line for the vaccine that will save their kids lives when the pandemic comes (no, not the pig flu).
They remind me of Creationists. Bitching about Darwin, but running to the doctor for antibiotics everytime Noah gets an ear infection, never making the connection, recognizing the hypocrisy.
Ticket meiser just released a load of Bruce tickets. Fri 10 sold out but Thur 9 still available.
I’m going to pass on this one (Big surprise)
kettle1 says:
September 10, 2009 at 1:47 pm
“hypothetically, would we not save money and improve health care for the majority of Americans simply by duplicating Sweden or Norway’s healthcare system here? ”
Yes. But that would be Soc!al!st now wouldn’t it.
Shore #95-
Solution to the high cost of a Medical degree would be the UK way, free medical education, have to work for the NHS for a term in return.
But again. That would be “Soc!ial!sm”.
Barbara/Vic.
Completely forgot sanitation and health services in my previous rant.
Quite grateful that previous generations forked out so that I could grow up with potable water piped into my home, streets clear of feces and dead bodies, lack of cholera, myself and my friends immunized against disease.
I’d imagine that it’s quite hard to get ahead when you have to walk 4 miles a day for dirty water and forage for firewood all the while fighting dysentery and a nasty virus.
I’d imagine getting a good days work in isn’t easy either if you’ve stayed up all night to protect your 14 year old son from being kidnapped into a druglords army or your 5 year old daughter being raped as a cure for AIDS.
[94] sastry
“That is a silly logic. Given two paths that have similar outcomes, one would most likely pick the interesting/good/challenging/prestigious/chick-magnet option.”
I can’t argue with that, especially the chick magnet stuff. But, it assumes that all inputs are equal as well, and as we know, they aren’t. Besides, chick magnet jobs attract golddiggers as well.
“Also, in the scenario where the salaries of a cleaning lady and a doctor are the same (for same number of working hours, blah), the costs of education would not be very high for something like a Med School — supply/demand, or there will be scholarships, or whatever.”
That is true in theory, but in practice, it isn’t. Med school is riduculously expensive, so the collorary is that you earn big bucks when you get out. In reality, residents earn squat, and I see Obamacare as putting downward pressure on margins across the entire healthcare industry, not just insurers. I just spoke to another practitioner in this space and he agreed with me that hospitals are in for a bad time under Obamacare.
soosh (72)-
The public can no longer reasonably undertake any expense. That’s why the gubmint is printing worthless fiat scrip, in the hopes that it will paper over the inconvenient fact that our nation is insolvent.
lisoosh,
I like it when when given the France example, all the “overtaxed! socialist!” hysteria erupts in the typical internet debate because when you calculate fed tax, state, property, consumer, sin tax etc THEN add your insurance premiums, copays, RX and deductibles on top, the French are making out like fat cats. They actually get something great for all that cashola, maybe even less.
grim, Im in mod but I didn’t put in any nasty words.
shore (100)-
Bingo. Our society is so lost, and we as a people are so stupid, TPTB understand that all they have to do to control us is trigger our “feelings” the same way that a Very Special Episode of Punky Brewster did.
TPTB on both sides know that we cannot think through an issue logically, so they appeal to emotion to build consensus and support.
lisoosh & barb-
Comparing our lot to Third World jerkwaters in order to demonstrate our superiority as a society is specious, at best. I do admit, however, that it produces a nice, cuddly, safe feeling knowing that little Schuyler will not be conscripted into child warfare by some khat-chomping maniac.
It is also interesting to note that we are devolving faster to a Third World status than any Third World nation is gaining on modernization.
We used to be a modern nation. With that comes the obligation to think and act like the citizens of one. Instead, we have abdicated our responsibilities and pissed away our birthright on lottery tickets, pay-per-view mayhem and sugar-coated dung.
what are the betting sites showing about who’s projected to win the NJ governor’s race?
mayoral race in NYC?
#134 - mayoral race in NYC?
You mean this isn’t a complete ‘given’ at this point?
fence (113)-
Lots of people have helped me to whatever success I may be enjoying.
However, after several minutes of thought, I can’t think of anything the gubmint has done…other than stand in the way at every turn.
[124-25] lisoosh
Exactly, but on a small scale (industry-specific)
In fact, the DSA believes that certain industries, but not all, should be taken over and run by the government, specifically mass transit, healthcare, and energy. Incrementally, the DNC is moving in that direction, and there is less and less difference between the DSA and DNC each day. In fact, I once reprinted a DSA policy statement and everyone believed it came from the DNC.
The only difference between the DSA platform and the DNC platform is that DSA would abolish passive equity ownership, and would instead vest ownership of corporations in the unions or employees of the corporation, and/or the government. Essentially, in a DSA future, all corporations would be nonprofits.
[113] fence
I attribute nearly all of my success to luck and marrying well.
The real issue is that Healthcare is becoming more and more unaffordable for a larger and larger portion of our population. One would think that private insurers would have figured out a way to be more efficient so less time is spent on the non-care side of the health care process (billing). When comparing our health care to many others around the world, we are not near the top. So where is the waste going? My guess would be the middleman profit that is inherent in the insurance industry. Buffet wasn’t stupid. He made all of his money pretty much from investing in insurance companies over the past 40 years or so.
The next problem is that the government has proven time and time again that they can not be trusted to run a program better than private industry.
So where does the solution lay?
I think there needs to be multiple plans available, both private and public with varying levels of coverage. If you are rich, you pay more for your plan, but your plan provides for heart transplants even if you are over 100 when you need it. The poor SOB that can’t afford the rich man plan gets in on the government plan, but he does not qualify for a heart transplant. The person in the middle can opt for the government plan or the private plan based on his/her ability to afford it. All three plans must have a large component based on preventive maintenance (excuse my auto language).
The other big issue is that as the crop of baby boomers expands on their fixed incomes (now depleted due to Wall Street shenanigans) we will simply not be able to afford Medicare/Medicaid in the way it is currently being run. Healthcare ain’t free and someone’s got to pay for it. Like so many stupid pet owners, the government is pretty much providing cancer treatments to ‘Spot’ in his 15th year. This can’t continue without taxing everyone up the wazoo or there being serious changes to the efficiency of the health care business.
I personally wish the insurance companies were not involved at all, but people are generally too stupid to minimize risks themselves.
It truly IS a tough nut to crack. Problem is, without some kind of intervention, fewer and fewer people will be able to afford any level of health care in this country.
[138] stu
and I don’t think it helped his case when O painted himself into a rhetorical corner. He took a lot of options off the table, even while putting others on it. But that merely muddles the message and doesn’t answer the essential question of who gains and who loses, and what do they gain/lose?
I wanted specifics. I didn’t get them.
I think it can be reasonably argued that we became a soci@list state during the New Deal. The collectivist trend was intensified within two generations by the policies of the Great Society, and the current regime is just making sure that within our lifetimes, there will be no one living who remembers any other way of living.
What blog software is this site programmed from?
#142 - I believe Grim is using WordPress 2.7, at least that is what the metadata is saying.
Me thinks that nothing is going to change anyway and that we are all just wasting our time. Gubmint is representative of the corporations. Nothing Obama is saying seems to jibe with this. Let me know when the troops have been withdrawn from Iraq. OK?
Nom, can I paraphrase your statement for a new Scooter Store motto.
“Medicare, we can’t change it, but we can make a buck off of it.”
I love this rant about my favorite Medicare practitioner.
http://www.brokencountry.com/index.php/2008/02/01/the-scooter-store-scam/
This was in mod still so I’ll try again:
lisoosh,
I like it when when given the France example, all the “over taxed! s*ciali st!” hysteria erupts in the typical internet debate because when you calculate fed tax, state, property, consumer, s*n tax etc THEN add your insurance premiums, copays, RX and deductibles on top, the French are making out like fat cats. They actually get something great for all that cashola, maybe even less.
Hey thanks tosh,
Should have checked the metadata myself. Your right it was there when I looked for it.
content=”WordPress 2.7″
I will have to bring up a site and check to see about filtering policies and see if I can get one that would be better than the one in place.
I hate being moderated for asking if someone needs a$$istance.
[94] “Given two paths that have similar outcomes, one would most likely pick the interesting/good/challenging/prestigious/chick-magnet option.”
Sastry - being a doctor is considered a “chick-magnet” job precisely because doctors make more money than most. If doctors get paid the same as union bus drivers and house cleaners, well, you can cross that benefit off the list of being a doctor …
“Comparing our lot to Third World jerkwaters in order to demonstrate our superiority as a society is specious, at best.”
They are examples of what we would be were it not for the services that we all take advantage of and have profited from on a daily basis and a nod to the government effort that it took to put these, for lack of a better, modern conveniences at our disposal.
PCG #144, similar stuff has been happening with government contractors — even the armed forces are affected. Sneakily make a buck off the collective masses and call it capitalism, when in fact, it is perversion of soc!alism.
S
Barb (145)-
You call a xenophobic country full of whimpering layabouts “making out like fat cats”? They bleed their productive classes dry in the support of a massive army of zombies.
They have some good food (rapidly getting worse), great wine and decent soccer. They also know how to throw a great riot.
BTW, I actually like France and have family there. One of my relatives is a 54 y/o osteopathic surgeon who lives in- and raised three kids in- an apartment not dissimilar from your typical HOV 2/2 Society Hill condoshack.
Not surprisingly, all three of his kids have become useless, lazy droids on the gubmint dole.
[144] PGC
Good one. And one way to fix health care is to stop letting medicare pay $10,0000 fcuking dollars for a fcuking scooter that probably ships from Shanghai for $49.95.
I can’t blame the scooter store. If they find a pidgeon willing to pay $10,000, I say send them the bill. It just pisses me off that the pidgeon is Uncle Sucker.
Sastry,
Ironically, many of the costs are legitimized by the FAR, and they, ironically, were imposed to keep agencies from rewarding crony companies. Yet, it is not unusual for Congress to write an earmark or require in legislation that money goes only to a qualified contractor, and, gee, the only contractor that meets the qualifications happens to be in my district.
@Schumpeter:
Well, I don’t know how you define ‘gubmint,’ but in my mind it includes the entire edifice of civil law (which enables peaceful and smooth social relations, including contractual and transactual ones), the physical infrastructure, the various systems of publicly-funded education and cultural enrichment (including museums, libraries, and of course schools), the services that protect your person and property, including regulatory agencies that protect you from being slowly poisoned to death by defective food & drugs or injured by defective manufactured goods or malpracticed services, etc., etc. All of these things and many more provide an overall environment in which your chances of thriving are much greater than, as someone pointed out previously, the person whose only crime was to have been born in Sierra Leone or Sudan.
#150
“BTW, I actually like France and have family there. One of my relatives is a 54 y/o osteopathic surgeon who lives in- and raised three kids in- an apartment not dissimilar from your typical HOV 2/2 Society Hill condoshack.
Not surprisingly, all three of his kids have become useless, lazy droids on the gubmint dole.”
“Not surprisingly”? What is the correlation? Doc didn’t make much so all his kids gave up? 2/2 condoshack is bad for kids?
S
[147] here
I actually was a bus driver in college, and believe it or not, it was a chick magnet job.
Especially at Mount Holyoke.
barb (148)-
Silly me. All this time, I thought it was because we produced goods, services and ideas to which our own society and the rest of the world affixed the highest possible value.
I stand corrected. This was all brought forth due to “government effort” (somebody please visit an agency in Trenton, stand in line a while and explain to me what the hell “government effort” means).
All hail gubmint.
government effort = jumbo shrimp
What blog software is this site programmed from?
I’d guess it’s a WordPress blog.
[155] schump,
“All hail gubmint.”
Like we have a choice now????
fence (152)-
My point is, we’re on the way to becomng Sudan or Sierra Leone with WiFi, lattes and cage fighting.
plume (158)-
Gotta run. There’s black helicopters overhead.
Shumpeter #155, I’ll bite. Government operates at many levels — from a bored clerk at a local DMV to a revolutionary scientist at NASA or CDC.
I challenge you to apply your logic of inefficiencies in government administration (e.g. Trenton) to similar situations in armed forces, and make bad generalizations about US armed forces.
S
Without a strong Government, many unfortunate things can happen:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(PPP)
sastry (153)-
My nephews have, at times, pretty much admitted that they saw their dad working crazy hours (not to mention the schooling and residency required to become a bone surgeon); how little he was paid; how well your average welfare drone makes out in France…and figured, what the hell? Why bust your butt for so little?
Green Day said it best: where is my motivation?
151.
maybe his kids just suck.
sastry (161)-
Well-organized and well-funded humans who are motivated to fight are one of the most efficient expressions of humanity, regardless of national origin.
The desire to organize and fight is not specific to any one nation, race or gubmint.
No knock on the military; just saying it’s not a reflection of our gubmint.
[160] schump
Ha. I laughed, but then remembered that I used to see the black helicopter every morning from my window.
Not being paranoid either. I lived near Langley, VA. Window faced in the direction of the CIA campus.
(though I remember what my friend Dave used to say “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that they aren’t out to get you”).
barb (164)-
Spoken just like a soci@list.
An unpleasant end result, with no desire to acknowledge the chain of events that led to it.
As if kids like that end up that way by accident.
BTW, the US’ military is in the process of impoverishing us.
Not their fault. Just saying.
“Silly me. All this time, I thought it was because we produced goods, services and ideas to which our own society and the rest of the world affixed the highest possible value.”
All hard to do without running water, good fire and police, roads and bridges, literacy etc.
Is it all going to hell in a handbasket? Maybe, but its a self fulfilling prophecy. Reject government, government goes unmanaged, Unmanaged govt becomes indifferent to populace and in the business of its own survival. A government interested in its own survival shows indifference towards to populace, as a result populace hates in government.
Schump
“barb (164)-
Spoken just like a soci@list.
An unpleasant end result, with no desire to acknowledge the chain of events that led to it.
As if kids like that end up that way by accident.”
Funny, you’re taking the liberal parenting argument (I’m a product of society).
It takes a village?
*gasp*
Totally OT.
ACORN at its best, helping a “prostitute” evade taxes and helping to bring underage children illegally into this country to “work”.
Don’t know how factual this is, but if it is true, screw Healthcare debate, and bring this one into focus.
Glen Beck and Rush L. were all over this today.
http://biggovernment.breitbart.com/2009/09/10/chaos-for-glory/
barb (171)-
I employ that argument because in soci@list states, the gubmint is practically a third parent.
The social stratification and mind-numbing ennui endemic to a society in which the gubmint has its hands in everything cannot be ignored.
BTW, have we figured out whether universal healthcare is a right…or a fungible commodity?
Somebody send me a memo when that thingy gets worked out.
@ Schumpeter:
Dude, I’m certainly not saying “all hail gubmint”. Give me a break. You’re staking out a position at the rhetorical extreme (i.e., that ‘government’ is wholly antithetical to innovation and entrepreneurial endeavor), and then trying to corner people who attempt to argue for a more balanced view into an extreme position that they never took, nor would take.
clot
point is, we all have our little anecdotes, and we are all guilty of giving them too much credence. Its thought stopping. I also know some French, visited the country, keep in touch. They are all employed, 2 are moderately successful, 1 very. Blah blah
99.Victorian says:
September 10, 2009 at 1:58 pm
They ignore that fact that people who don’t drive do not pay a penalty for not having Auto Insurance
You have a choice to *not* drive. You do not have a choice to *not* get sick. Looks like today is “suspend thinking” day.
I wish government would take away Medicare. Why should I pay for the old fogies?
Medicare is a Mandatory Program from the Government, not optional. You should like that. ObamaCare is Medicare on steroids with additional penalties. Eventually they will have all your Free Will and you can be Happy. Getting Sick has nothing to do with Paying for ObamaCare.
Schumpeter:
Explaining how three specific kids grew up using one “on/off” variable is tough. Also, correlation does not necessarily imply causation.
S
Clot
Thank god. At least you “get it”
“(not to mention the schooling and residency required to become a bone surgeon); how little he was paid;”
A failed attempt at long-story-short.
I wanted to be a surgeon. My internship year consisted of (and yes, I calculated it) making less than $4.00 an hour altogether.
That year I worked one month in the ER. It was 20 shifts, 12 hrs each over a month.
It was like a vacation given my other months of every other night call and starting 0430 (no I am not joking) in the ICU until 2300 after rounding with our chief or the mid-level (2nd or 3rd yr.)
I started a 130 pounds. By November I was 88 pounds. You recall Jacobi would not allow residents use of the elevator — we had to take the stairs. All 6 floors or more on foot…even when a “code blue - cardiac arrest” was called.
Given the choice of eating or sleep… sleep always won out.
I could tell you stories to curl your hair. You can’t believe what I went through and I bailed after that year.
Everyone who dares talk about what “those doctors are making” and we should be happy about the so-called “prestige, challenge, chick/d1ck magnet factor” can go F*ck off.
You have no idea what I’ve lost in my years of doing this. Things that I will never get back.
I freely admit I resent people who don’t talk to groups of doctors personally and know what we’ve been through, yet feel free to generalize about us.
/rant off.
sl
italics off
Victorian: “I wish government would take away Medicare. Why should I pay for the old fogies?”
Confused: “Medicare is a Mandatory Program from the Government, not optional. You should like that. ObamaCare is Medicare on steroids with additional penalties.”
I think you *totally* missed the point…
The ‘You lie!’ aftermath
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_pl897
I don’t know what is funnier a liar telling another liar he is lying, the fact that one liar accepted the other liar’s apology, or the circling of the wagons of the D.C. pols around the “sanctity” of the presidential office. One liar tells better lies than another liar and consequently wins a popularity contest and we should all worship the ground he/she walks on.
Actually when the dud yelled out you lie and everyone turned their heads I think they thought he was talking to them.
still looking,
medical school is part of the education bubble, and I would include the residency in that because they are profiting from your labor as much as they were profiting from your tuition. It needs to change.
Nom, 151
Yet another failed LSS attempt.
Got my brand new license. Got recruited by a guy who wanted new docs to do “house calls” He would supply equipment for EKGs, etc and we were supposed to go house to house “seeing patients”
He had no office. Interviewed me in some hotel lobby. His prime concern was that I get a Medicare number.
I have no doubt this was probably a Medicare fraud scheme.
I never worked for him. Refused, told him I had another job (I did) and was sure this guy was just bogusing names/data etc to bill Medicare.
I am sure I am on a limb here but: I doubt a real true functioning business would pay for services that it wasn’t certain were being rendered. Medicare fraud? Rampant. Doesn’t matter. Our government will just tax the shit out of everyone to pay for it.
Meanwhile cronies will be lining up like crazy to get the administrative jobs for the “New Public Health Plan!”
More gov’t jobs to hand out = more foul play.
Then again, what do I know? I’m just a stupid taxpayer.
sl
[182] hehehe
I found it amusing that the left was all over this wilson guy for his outburst, yet wholly supportive of the iraqi that threw his shoes at Bush.
Political violence is not unprecedented in our history, and recent history has actually been an idyll of calm in comparison.
Personally, I harken back to the line from Young Frankenstein: “A riot is an ugly thing. And its about time we had one.” That’ll wake folks up.
@ plume
A riot, eh? Be careful what you wish for.
Nom,
If I’d been there I’d have brought Imelda Marcos’ shoe collection to bean everyone of those clowns.
still_looking…
Similar things (may be 75% of hours as residency) happen to some low paid postdocs in health sciences. Heck, a couple of guys I know worked for Schlumberger in Congo and he was putting the hours you mentioned after engineering undergrad.
And, the prestige/good/challenge/etc are just saying that there are other factors beyond money that motivate people. I know many people in India that are doctors — and there doctors get paid much less than, say, software engineers. But, they do the work.
S
From the Record:
Prominent Wyckoff realtor arrested on child porn charges
#186
“I found it amusing that the left was all over this wilson guy for his outburst, yet wholly supportive of the iraqi that threw his shoes at Bush.”?
False equivalence. If the feds do a Haditha in Charleston, SC *and* then if this southern gentleman throws a shoe and *and* if he is put in prison… then the comparison will be in the same ball park.
Also, this guy is being hailed as an American Hero by major players in the GOP. Now, if DNC did the same with that shoe thrower…
S
I travel for work almost every week and I see people in many places in the US living in “nice, safe” towns in newer, beautiful homes and the homes cost 250-300k…and here in NJ I am looking at 475k+ (barely affordable, esp w/the taxes) for homes built in the 60’s in towns like Bridgewater, Clinton, Raritan Twp, etc. that need some work. Why am I still here? Because the wife wants to be near family and both of our families are in NJ…I am thinking that family (and wives) must be a reason why home prices in NJ are not dropping as fast as I hoped ;-)
Here are three ideas to reduce healthcare costs.
1) 40% of the Medicare budget goes to diabetes treatment. It goes on the like of Insulin, Scooters and hospital care for things like amputations. If you can’t ban it, then heavily tax the use of HFCS and subsidise the grown and processing of Cane Sugar. Let the HFCS use go to Ethanol production. That should see a large drop in the Obesity numbers and drop and have a knock on effect with heart disease and diabetes.
2) V1a gR@ should be $10 a pill. IF you need it you pay. ED is not life threatening.
3) Ban all drg advertising outside of trade media. The public should not “need to talk to their doctor about Restless Leg Syndrome”.
…a right or a commodity…
It depends on whether or not the greater community is hurt more by the [lack of] or [cost of].
Unless, of course, we elevate health care right up there with bearing arms.
Sastry, 189
I know many people in India that are doctors — and there doctors get paid much less than, say, software engineers. But, they do the work.
So, what are they paying in malpractice premiums?
How are they paid?
Does Indian law require they treat every patient that shows up like in my ER?
Can they be fired if a “dissatisfied customer” writes a letter to their hospital administration?
I have never been to India. But, I have some Indian colleagues who might be able to answer these questions for me. I will try asking them at my next day/evening/night/overnight at work.
sl
jms77, 192
I know the feeling.
sl (wishes to get out of Jersey and desperately fears the NJ taxation yoke.)
http://www.northjersey.com/news/crime_courts/Prominent_Wyckoff_realtor_arrested_on_child_porn_charges.html
Grim! New gap in the Bergen County Real Estate Market!
With my luck, he probably handles REO properties…
sl
still_looking…
Re Indian doctors, I will present one viewpoint — while mentioning some aspects and of course leaving out many others.
There aren’t major malpractice premiums (doctors get roughed up by patients’ kith and kin if something goes very wrong — and docs can get away with many thing).
There are government hospitals that take in whoever comes, private hospitals that would ask for money before handing a bandage to stop bleeding, and all forms in between. The private hospitals are usually afraid of taking in accident victims (fear that they may get dragged into testifying for an investigation mostly).
Of course, ER is ER… What would you suggest if someone comes to ER?
Some docs are paid a regular salary, some have small clinics and mostly no insurance. They too have a longer training period than, say, engineering (though they can go to med school right after high school).
You are probably exaggerating about the “letter from a dissatisfied customer” getting a doc fired.
S
jms #192…
Couple of reasons for the taxes and high property values: Schools in NJ are supposed to be pretty good, Commutes to Philly or NYC, great colleges…
S
still_looking
Don’t worry, the right are stirring up patient dumping. So your ER can have a Taxi service on Speed Dial!
http://www.hyscience.com/archives/2009/08/obamacare_to_ha.php
A kith and kin option to full tort has potential.
Just how rough would they be allowed to get?
A kith and kin option to full tort has potential.
Just how rough would they be allowed to get?
Sastry 198 You are probably exaggerating about the “letter from a dissatisfied customer” getting a doc fired.
I’m not. I personally know docs that were canned at the hospitals they were at because the director felt s/he couldn’t take the “Press-Ganey” hit (low PG scores.)
PG scores, a statistically INsignificant scoring system for patient’s to rate how their ER experience went.
Again, I could tell you stories that would curl your hair. And I wish I was exaggerating. I assure you, I am not.
sl
Think about it, sl.
You mess up my kid’s arm in the ER, I mess up a u face.
An you have no bleeping malpractice premiums.
Fair trade?
From the Star Ledger:
NJ Transit village opens in Morristown with 217 units near train station
The first transit village built by NJ Transit officially opened today in Morristown.
…
Built for commuter convenience, the 217-unit development sits directly across from Morristown’s train station and is walking distance to the downtown.
The $75 million residential-retail development was built under New Jersey’s largest transit village program.
The 3.5-acre project is one of 20 transit villages across New Jersey. The state has poured millions of dollars into these developments in the hopes they will encourage the use of public transportation and spur economic growth in municipal centers. Similar projects have been planned for Rahway, South Orange, New Brunswick and Netcong.
“It creates a livable, walkable community that makes cars less important,” said NJ transit spokesman Dan Stessel. “It’s a mix of residential and retail built around a vibrant train station.”
The developers of the village - Roseland Property Company and Woodmont Properties - say that despite the economy the project is drawing interest from people, notably young professionals, who want to be near the train station and Morristown’s downtown area.
PGC 200
Again, the elderly are bound to get the short end of this stick.
I took care of a 94! year old lady who came in for elevated blood pressure and dizziness. She still drives, carries on a razor sharp conversation and lives alone.
Then again, I see bedridden 60 yr olds who can’t wipe their own asses.
And good luck talking to family members about Living Wills etc…. most all of them “want everything done medically possible” for their loved ones.
Some of those “loved ones” are with trach’s, feeding tubes, foley catheters or suprapu.bic catheters, near senseless and living as food for bacteria — shuttled from nursing home to hospital and back.
Over and over and over and over.
Um, Hey! Guess who’s paying for that???
sl
sl
Pat,
I support revoking medical license for malpractice — of course, the jury thing makes it easy for some slimy lawyer to convince a mistake is malpractice. I can relate to what happens in technology lawsuits where clueless judges and pit bull prosecutors rule, and I suspect same is the case with physicians and clueless doctors.
However, there are cases like the LI doctor that used infected needles… He seems to be doing fine!
S
Pat, 204
You’ll have to talk to my bodyguards, Mr. Benelli Montefeltro or Mr. Sig Sauer first.
Mr. Smith-Wesson is on holiday but Mr. Browning Light is filling in….
:)
sl
Something to look forward to? Maybe this is the next growth industry as the Brazilification of America continues?
From the WSJ:
On São Paulo’s Mean Streets, the Rich Roll in Armored Splendor
Everywhere 19-year-old Kareen Passos drives in her pink VW New Beetle, men approach her and onlookers shout “Barbie!”
They can look, but they dare not touch: Ms. Passos’s car is bulletproof.
This metropolis of 10 million is the auto-armoring capital of the world, by some estimates. Last year alone, more than 3,000 automobiles were taken apart, and then put back together complete with steel door plates, windows five layers thick, and tires that keep rolling even after taking a bullet.
Over the last three years, the number of armored cars in Brazil has doubled as an explosion of wealth has sent the newly rich in search of ways to live safely in a class-driven society where the murder rate is nearly five times that of the U.S.
sl,
“Some of those “loved ones” are with trach’s, feeding tubes, foley catheters or suprapu.bic catheters, near senseless and living as food for bacteria — shuttled from nursing home to hospital and back.”
The GOP will want them to be hooked on to the tubes even after they are clinically dead — think Terry Schiavo. They do not mind medicare paying for that, but if there is a thought of helping a single mother with a couple of kids and a minimum wage job, oh, soc!alism!
The deathers poisoned that debate already, so it is a lost cause… Many sensible people, when they have the option of end of life consultations, will choose early death that vegetative state, especially when they see the costs associated with it. The GOP poisoned it.
S
sl…being as I’m from the South now, I just liked Pastry’s whole “kith and kin” thing and needed to retype it and roll it around in my brain.
/backing down in the face of more firepower until I can remember the code to the safe.
Hope some unknown legislator does something useful like slip in an opt-out provision for organ donation. Everyone is now an organ donor, unless they opt out.
You can get the required opt-out form at your post office, fill it out in triplicate and stand in line for 3 hours at DMV to submit it.
Not a bad idea.
A deceased relative was a signed organ donor on his license.
Relatives “chose” to ignore his wishes upon his death.
He was buried, whole.
At a miniumum, we need penalties for funeral directors who comply with relatives against the expressed wishes on a driver’s license.
#216 - Thaler/Nudge, not mine.
Pat, 214
I liked the term too…. has a nice ring to it.
sl
still looking
“Some of those “loved ones” are with trach’s, feeding tubes, foley catheters or suprapu.bic catheters, near senseless and living as food for bacteria — shuttled from nursing home to hospital and back.”
There’s only one solution: Death Panels.
#217 Grim
Thaler/Nudge came up last night in that Speech. The great “95% won’t be affectd” was used. Its a lot better than saying 5% will.
“There will be a hardship waiver for those individuals who still can’t afford coverage, and 95 percent of all small businesses, because of their size and narrow profit margin, would be exempt from these requirements.”
Speaking of the Health care debate, I saw a very pregnant woman strolling down the street today who was most likely and illegal from the Oaxaca region of Mexico.
So she has her anchor baby in a few weeks and cannot be kicked out of the USA. Who is to say she won’t get medical care from the Obama plan besides the indigent care the NJ taxpayer already provides?
The 75 Hospitals in New Jersery submit to the State for Charity Care reimbursent to the tune million about 1.3 Billion a year for which the receive somewhere around half from the state. This years budget is $600 million.
The overall Charity Care reimbursement level allocated in the 2009 budget is $605 million compared with $716 million in fiscal 2008, representing a cut of $111 million or 15.5 percent.
We have problems folks and the Feds have to at least provide money if not some program to deal with this Medical Care issue.
fence (178)-
I’d say these are pretty extreme times. And the extreme behavior was instigated by your gubmint…which is now trying to pull off the neat trick of restoring prosperity by printing money like there’s no tomorrow while simultaneously facilitating an all-out robbery of the public treasury.
I’m not an immoderate person by nature, but when there’s robbers busting into my house, I’m damned well gonna grab my gun and start shooting.
barb (179)-
If we cannot think anecdotally and deduce generalities from the stories of individuals affected by larger forces, what the hell else is there to talk about?
There are anecdotes which signify nothing. There are also anecdotes which illuminate and confirm the larger picture. I think we can give most of ourselves credit here for being able to distinguish one from the other.
he (185)-
I just wish at one of these circle jerks, somebody would bar the doors and let these hyenas just skin each other alive.
sl (188)-
I have a feeling I will see you at the ramparts one of these days.
he (191)-
A waste of perfectly good shoes, if you ask me.
Me? I’d give ‘em a little reprise of the Ceaucescu Family Christmas Show treatment.
Romanians know how to get things done.
grim (193)-
And the guys at Re/Max of NJ have said for years that they’re concerned about ME…
I once said to one of them that they’d sell a franchise to Meyer Lansky, as long as his check cleared.
Bagless, rest assured, nobody clicked on the link to be sure it wasn’t you.
You make people trust Rad Max and click in disbelief that this company can have somebody like you stick with them.
Sastry (202)-
1. Philly- dead city, soon to be overrun by warring gangs.
2. NYC- dying city, soon to be returned to 1970s levels of public safety and quality of life.
3. great colleges- soon to be emptied by bursting of unsustainable education bubble.
Seems to me we should be taxed more like Mississippi.
Grim (208)
NJ Transit village opens in Morristown with 217 units near train station
What a great place, you can walk right to the ‘hollow’ and buy crack from the homies and then go up the street to smoke it with the illegals on Speedwell ave.
223.
Clot
“There are anecdotes which signify nothing. There are also anecdotes which illuminate and confirm the larger picture. I think we can give most of ourselves credit here for being able to distinguish one from the other.”
And my anecdote/experience is the polar opposite of yours, so at the end of the day, each of us have nothing but a narrowly informed opinion.
France, as one example, isn’t a perfect example anymore than it is a perfect country. This isn’t a perfect country. Maybe I could understand you better if you gave me the exact year or decade that America was great and the year and/or decade that it started its demise. I’d like to get beyond the hyperbole. When was America not on the brink?
Can we convene a death panel for Frank and bi?
Pat,
I’m floored by how many rentals are available in Ashburn…kinda scary actually. What a different experience compared to finding housing in NJ. Landlord pays realtor fee. We’ll get chauffeured around in style and have our pick of places.
barb (232)-
I’d say we went to code red at about the same time we went off the gold standard. From that point forward, it seems to me we’ve been running a Ponzi economy, based in an irrational faith in worthless pieces of paper.
August 15, 1971.
barb (232)-
This sound a little scary to you? Like the rest of the world realized our economy was a giant pyramid scheme?:
“A second issue was also now at the fore — the dollar. The price of gold had been fixed at $35 an ounce since the Roosevelt administration. But the growing U.S. balance-of-payments deficit meant that foreign governments were accumulating large amounts of dollars — in aggregate volume far exceeding the U.S. government’s stock of gold. These governments, or their central banks, could show up at any time at the “gold window” of the U.S. Treasury and insist on trading in their dollars for gold, which would precipitate a run. The issue was not theoretical. In the second week of August 1971, the British ambassador turned up at the Treasury Department to request that $3 billion be converted into gold.
With inflation rising, the clamor to do something was mounting in both political circles and the press. At the end of June 1971, Nixon had told his economic advisors, “We will not have a wage-price board. We will have jawboning.” But resistance to an income policy weakened with each passing month. The climax came on August 13-15, 1971, when Nixon and 15 advisors repaired to the presidential mountain retreat at Camp David. Out of this conclave came the New Economic Policy, which would temporarily — for a 90-day period — freeze wages and prices to check inflation. That would, it was thought, solve the inflation-employment dilemma, for such controls would allow the administration to pursue a more expansive fiscal policy — stimulating employment in time for the 1972 presidential election without stoking inflation. The gold window was to be closed.”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitextlo/ess_nixongold.html
X, don’t be floored.
It’s a poster-child for the overbuilding phenomenon.
Pick the low fruit for a year or two, then buy in a place from which you can comfortably commute.
I had an opportunity in Herndon and I just wasn’t willing to try that commute from MD right now. Maybe when the little one is ten.
“You do not have a choice to *not* get sick.”
Not true, nearly every person with lung cancer made the choice to precisely get sick. The same goes for most people who are obese. Every day, millions of Americans make the free choice to eventually get sick and die sooner than they have to. They should have zero claim to someone elses money for their stupid decisions.
235.
Clot I know we had a similar discussion with BC awhile back but I wonder if we stuck with the gold standard, that it wouldn’t be rendered just as irrational as paper after 4 decades of technological giant steps coupled with an energy crisis.
I know, gold has a track record back to the ancients, its a hard argument for me to make, but I would feel better about a standard based on something more useful. When it hits the fan, gold seems as useless as paper money. Give me fuel cells.
Clot - deficit spending ended the gold standard. The total cost of the Vietnam War in current dollars was around $600 billion.
re: #239 Barbara re: “Give me fuel cells”
I’ll take viable fusion power.
Pat (237)
yeah, I hit 495 at 3:00PM 2 months ago to drive back up to NJ from an interview and it was a total parking lot…no way you want to do that commute unless you have to. Long term, they should really consider a second beltway further out.
You’re looking during a good period.
You can go to the back window, glance out and ask for 300 bucks off the rent because you fear you can hear and/or see the greenway now that the trees are losing leaves.
Act really disappointed in their rent request.
My problem was the White’s Ferry versus the bridge at Point of Rocks.
Every time there is snow or rain, some kind of log jams under the boat and I can’t get back home, and have to drive 25 miles out of my way to get to the kid at school.
Yeah, they totally made no plans on if you want to live in MD and work in NoVA…just screwed if you have to do that commute
“When was America not on the brink?”
The colonies of America managed to thrive throughout the 1600s in the absence of a major government, central bank, or common currency. They started to suffer when the King of England decided to reign over them, tax them, and outlaw their currencies. They fought for their independence. America went from 13 agricultural colonies to a massive industrial powerhouse in the span of 100 years, despite a huge civil war, 2 currency collapses, and the failure of 2 central banks. Prosperity continued throughout the early 1900s up until the 30s when two idiots named Hoover and Roosevelt decided they were the economic authoritarians. America returned to prosperity with sound monetary policy and low government intervention into the marketplace. The Great Society and Johnson’s monetization of debt sparked inflation and Nixon unleashed a tidal wave with the abandonment of the gold standard. At that point, government was free to print money and expand. A brief period of sanity was reached in 1980 only to be followed by more insane monetary policy and reduction of tariffs under Reagan and Bush. Somewhere along the line, people thought it would be a good idea to trade with countries where people made $500 a year. Clinton continued the insanity passing NAFTA while “The Maestro”, Alan Greenspan blew up the the dot com and housing bubbles. George W. Bush went crazy with deficit spending and allowed worse monetary policy and the bailout of Wall St. Now, Obama continues to allow the most insane monetary policy ever under Ben Bernanke while he drives up deficits a full order of magnitude higher than the insanity that was the Reagan administration. Oh yeah, and they are still busy outsourcing our jobs.
America transformed itself into the richest nation in the world through low government interference and responsible monetary systems. They hit a few bumps in the road named Herbert and Franklin. The reality is, from Kennedy to the present, every American president has systematically expanded government at the expense of the dollar. From Reagan on outward, they shipped our jobs overseas as well.
NJ Real Estate Report/NJ Vulture Fund;
Where have you gone, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you?
Health care? You’re playing right into their hands, just a distraction from the job implosion/depression.
Got demand?
looks like the NFL is pulling out all the gimicks.
NFL goes bankrupt come 2011.
put that in your pipe.
SAS
“Health care? You’re playing right into their hands, just a distraction from the job implosion/depression.”
bingo.
good post.
SAS
barb (239)-
Rendered irrational…or just inconvenient?
After all, it’s hard to have a standard hanging over your head when you’re spinning rolls of fiat paper as fast as you can in the support of unwinnable wars, speculative bubbles and the expansion of credit to complete deadbeats.
sas (248)-
Please let it be so.
I’d like to see MLB go bust, too.
“I know, gold has a track record back to the ancients, its a hard argument for me to make, but I would feel better about a standard based on something more useful. When it hits the fan, gold seems as useless as paper money. Give me fuel cells.”
Whenever it hits the fan, gold is never more useful. That’s why the colonies of the 1600s and 1700s managed to avoid economic malaise despite the fact that their paper currencies always inflated and Tobacco, which was legal tender in the 1600s, led to prices rising 40 fold. The reason being, the Spanish Gold and Silver coins were circulating around which allowed the middle class to avoid being systematically wiped out by inflation. In fact, the Spanish Dollar was Legal Tender in the United States of America until the mid 1800s for that very reason. The market always chooses gold, and when disaster strikes, the market will continue to choose gold.
ben (252)-
Some things never go out of style.
There’s more to life than moaning about gubmint all day and night.
I have been fishing and boating in the Florida Keys a long time and have had some wonderful wildlife encounters while on the water. However, my most exhilarating experience happened while fishing last week with a friend.
Just behind our anchored boat, in a mix of chum and oatmeal, we spotted a whale shark nosing his way toward the transom. He was enjoying lunch. As we watched him, he watched us. We touched and pet him. He circled the boat and stayed for at least 45 minutes. After that, we caught a cobia and left the fishing spot and the shark behind.
Nine miles away and five hours later, we were again fishing for yellowtail when out of the blue came our friend. He just hung around the back of the boat while we enjoyed his presence. We had a day neither of us will ever forget.
Interacting with such a gentle giant was very special. Seeing it in the wild vs. an aquarium made it even more special. I am hopeful that future generations will have such experiences. Just another day in the fabulous Florida Keys.
250.
Clot
I’m reading your PBS (socialist! ;P) link.
“When it hits the fan, gold seems as useless as paper money”
stockpile food and stockpile of non food items.
will be one hell of a return.
SAS
234.X-NJ says:
September 10, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Pat,
I’m floored by how many rentals are available in Ashburn…kinda scary actually. What a different experience compared to finding housing in NJ. Landlord pays realtor fee. We’ll get chauffeured around in style and have our pick of places.
X: I’ll bet.
“Some things never go out of style”
like a women with smooth skin and large _____.
: P
SAS
njescapee = Walt Whitman ?
SAS
Walt Whitman no, Tom Corcoran maybe :-)
sas (258)-
Tell us a story about the good old days, when we could drain a country of its only valuable resource in trade for subsistence staples and necessities…then whack its leader and install whatever inbred dictator we favored.
“When it hits the fan, gold seems as useless as paper money. Give me fuel cells.”
Barb,
Gold as useless as paper money? You’re kidding, right? Have you calcuated the gold/RE ratio since 2006? Tell me the last time that gold defaulted? On the flip side, every paper currency, in the history of mankind, has defaulted. The dollar is following that same path of destruction.
In 1913 one dollar bought 1/20th of an ounce of gold. Today, one dollar buys approx 1/1000th of an ounce of gold. Did gold get that much more valuable or did the master’s screw your currency?
I do have to admit, don’t know much about fuel cells. That said, gold is money a medium of exchange. If I have 100,000 ounces of fuel cells can I buy drinks at the next GTG?
Disclaimer: I do know what 100,000 ounces of gold is worth?
I am still waiting for NASCAR to go belly up.
Several days ago you guys said that the day’s thread was trashed by a pair of geeks and their pissing contest. I missed most of today. Glad I did.
That said, I am not a fan of clot’s nihilism, and the definition of self-serving bias of the libertarian was great. However, if the alternative posed is what other suggested, I just don’t agree. Sure there are many that have the luxury of being libertarian, but most liberal/soc!alist solution will surely lead the U.S. to pure irrelevance. We will be lucky to persevere as we are.
Remove our competitiveness and we will become France. Yes, such a system creates hideous examples of inequality, but it is the price you pay. We have many other countries willing to fight with us for economic mastery with being hamstrung by the naive and the easy persuaded with specious arguments.
mastery withOUT being hamstrung
“Interacting with such a gentle giant was very special. Seeing it in the wild vs. an aquarium made it even more special. I am hopeful that future generations will have such experiences.”
Sounds like Hank and his one page, $700 B, ram-rod up taxpayer’s arse. That’s OK, scream about health care. Banks in England, Germany, France, Denmark, Iceland, etc.., thank you for your generosity.
“Tell us a story about the good old days, when we could drain a country of its only valuable resource in trade for subsistence staples and necessities…then whack its leader and install whatever inbred dictator we favored”
u want Nigeria, Haiti?
or how about Robert Mugabe?
back in i think it was 87 or 88, a small crew went down there to make sure he got elected. yeah sure, they had free elections… at the end of a barrel and a piece of paper counted twice.
why? hell, a back door deal was done to keep a stream of Platinum flowing for US companies and investors.
SAS
Not true, nearly every person with lung cancer made the choice to precisely get sick. The same goes for most people who are obese
Lung Cancer - That is why cigarettes are taxed so high in all countries which have national health care.
Obesity - Tax HFCS foods, sodas, trans-fats etc.
Other than diet related diseases, which can be disincetivised, nobody makes a choice to get sick. Do you think people who have a genetic disorder made that choice?
BTW, we are already paying for people who are uninsured and make trips to the ER. These costs are passed on to the rest of us.
“Several days ago you guys said that the day’s thread was trashed by a pair of geeks and their pissing contest. I missed most of today. Glad I did.”
Chi,
Our only redeemer; bring back BOOYAA. If not available, Nurse Ratched?
[about Nurse Ratched]
McMurphy: Well I don’t wanna break up the meeting or nothin’, but she’s somethin’ of a cunt, ain’t she Doc?
Yes, such a system creates hideous examples of inequality, but it is the price you pay.
A system which creates gross inequalities is not sustainable for any significant amount of time. “Those” people have more voting power than the privileged few who will do well under unchecked capitalism.
In fact, the well-off have more incentives not to see societal collapse because they have the most to lose.
The government’s job is effective and strictly enforced regulations to make sure that corporations do not fleece the majority for the benefit of a few.
Germany has national healthcare and unions (25% of the employees are unionized). According to the opinions over here, it should be a third-world backwater. However, it is an export powerhouse.
Not saying these factors led to it, but this at least shows that there is no correlation between the two.
“Obesity - Tax HFCS foods”
why not get rid of corn subsidies?
SAS
SAS,
How about “blowback” and banking fraud?
270.Victorian says:
September 10, 2009 at 10:21 pm
Yes, such a system creates hideous examples of inequality, but it is the price you pay.
A system which creates gross inequalities is not sustainable for any significant amount of time.
vic:
The gross inequalities are not sustainable, but the system is fine.
whoa that movie “surrogates” loos kinda cool, for a fruit cake Bruce Wills movie.
Bruce Willis… what a little cookie. that guy.
SAS
271.Victorian says:
September 10, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Germany has national healthcare and unions (25% of the employees are unionized). According to the opinions over here, it should be a third-world backwater. However, it is an export powerhouse.
Not saying these factors led to it, but this at least shows that there is no correlation between the two.
vic: come on; Germany is in a chronic malaise; they are in serious trouble. They are essentially the French with a work ethic. It is the work ethic that sustains them, but they are fundamentally flawed.
“The government’s job is effective and strictly enforced regulations to make sure that corporations do not fleece the majority for the benefit of a few.”
Vic,
Explain Freddie, Fannie, Citi, BAC, AIG, etc.. How have the hacks ensured that the majority is/was not fleeced?
“How about “blowback” and banking fraud?”
easy.
-consolidate buisness (kill main st, thanks to wallmart & McDs)
-privtatize resources (ex. toll roads, parking meters, water system, electric grids) & pass laws for many regulations, that only the big boys can play
-lower RE value by smuggling in drugs, then buy it for pennies on the dollar and give out easy loans to anyone, which will in turn give you control of that property.
small banks will fail, and larger ones will gobble them up.
SAS
chifi, 276
I would call you on that. Been there? Have friends?
ChiFi,
I don’t know what your definition of a pissing contest is, but it never got personal today, no insults (well, I got called a socialist) and everyone played nice. When I asked for clarity, it was provided. No one changed the other’s mind but when does that ever happen.
Last week was a insult-o-rama pissing contest, no comparison.
BC -
There is no argument that our government has failed us.Right now, the govt is for the banks, by the banks and of the banks.
I was just reiterating what the govt is “supposed” to do. Theory and practice are miles apart. We need a Teddy Roosevelt or an Andrew Jackson.
“Last week was a insult-o-rama pissing contest”
i missed it? shucks…
SAS
The gross inequalities are not sustainable, but the system is fine.
I am usually dense, but this has me even more confused. How is a system fine if it produces gross inequalities?
“Other than diet related diseases, which can be disincetivised, nobody makes a choice to get sick.”
Considering that the 2 major causes of death in this country are Cancer, primarily developed through tobacco use, and heart disease, which is heavily a function of poor diet and often involves tobacco as well, it’s safe to say, that most people who die of the 2 leading causes of death in this country did make a conscious choice to get sick.
As for you talking about taxing cigarettes and fat food, it has yet to work effectively. They don’t tax cigarettes to ensure the population stays healthy. They tax it because politicians like to take advantage of people’s addictions. I think you give European government way too much credit.
As far as “BTW, we are already paying for people who are uninsured and make trips to the ER. These costs are passed on to the rest of us.”.
Yeah, we need to stop that. 2 wrongs don’t make a right.
Singapore funds their national health care through mandated health savings accounts and people pay cash for their health care. Public hospitals do exist and their target audience for welfare recipients in health care is under 5% of the population. They spend less than half of what Canada, Japan, France, the UK, Germany, or any other Socialized Health Care nation does. They don’t have a rationing problem. Oh yeah, all those measures of life expectancy and infant mortality rates that people like to reference, Singapore is sitting pretty in the top 5.
Universal Health Care is nonsensical and the fact that this country thinks it’s necessary to be insured to get your head stitched up is beyond laughable. A horse doctor in 1895 would be looking at us like we are retarded. In fact, he’d be willing to stitch us up for an ounce of Silver (read 20 bucks).
“We need a Teddy Roosevelt or an Andrew Jackson.”
Vic, Andrew Jackson would be challenging you a duel to the death for touting national health care.
Vic,
Only because they are the govt.
The fed is “supposed” to set monetary policy, set parameters for maximum employment and regulate the drunks, {banks}. The bond market is much more efficient than the fed in setting rates. How have the fed heads performed regarding employment/regulation?
Simple question, why does the fed exist? They are not a federal agency and the have no reserves. Who is fleecing whom?
Oh btw, anyone who even thinks about bringing up prescriptions meds in the health care debate might want to ask themselves why I can get a bottle of meds at 10% of the price in Mexico.
If you want affordable health care, cut the FDA’s budget by 97% and reduce patents on medications to 3 years.
Ben,
why not put and end to cheap, shitty food?
should cheap food be a given or a right?
SAS
Hey Ben, See how a horse doctor helps if you injure your spine or are diagnosed testicular cancer. Bet you’ll be at a specialist’s office looking for the best treatment possible.
“why I can get a bottle of meds at 10% of the price in Mexico.”
cause its been diluted.
like one time, we were doing some dealing down by the border town.
come to find out, after we sneak past the US govt bar coded operation. Someone was taken our shipment, and watering it down, and we had to lower prices just to unload it.
SAS
#264 Chi - What competitiveness?
The economy is running on fumes. We make little and buy too much cheap junk, all on credit. Take away bubblicious Madoff style WS schemes where we take in money for doing little and what do we have?
We make sick people and have a great industry in keeping them alive?
Sick people may be the one thing that we still manufacture better than the rest of the world.
For Women: Breast cancer is the leading cancer for women in the US. Lung cancer is the second most common form of cancer and colorectal cancer is third among white women. The number 2 and 3 cancers are reversed among black and Asian/Pacific Island women. For all women, the fourth leading cancer is cancer of the uterus.
For Men: Prostate cancer is the leading cancer for men in the US. It is followed by lung cancer and then colorectal cancer. The fourth most common cancer is race-dependent. It is bladder cancer for white men, cancer of the mouth and throat for black men; and stomach cancer for Asian/Pacific Island men.
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=25264
Ben.
a universal catastrophic benefit with a private system for preventative care, general testing etc while opening up compettition by allowing cross state purchase, and RX from other countries would be a plan I would support. And yes, I would make it mandatory with a fine in the form of a tax for those that do not buy a private plan, otherwise, we will continue to have the ER-as-doctor’s-office situation and the penalty could offset some of those costs and discourage opting out.
292.
truth
As for you talking about taxing cigarettes and fat food, it has yet to work effectively. They don’t tax cigarettes to ensure the population stays healthy. They tax it because politicians like to take advantage of people’s addictions
This reads like it is your opinion. Any facts and figures to prove this?
Victorian- they deserve it. If women don’t want to get breast and uterine cancer, they should just remove them. God forbid anyone’s taxes get raised.
I’m sorry I get slightly bitter when I read the off the wall comments. Having become a “sad tale” due to my husband’s health issues, I just think, walk a minute in someone else shoes. His blood condition requires regular visits to his oncologist, and I can say without a doubt- in three years I’ve yet to meet someone that deserved cancer.
I read my husband some of the comments and he said- tell them I already did my part and removed half my colon for good measure.
Vic/BC
pshaw… stop making sense :)
sl
lis, 291
hear, hear. how much of GDP is consumerism?
No job, No place to live, No income, Gubmint handout extension set to expire soon, then who’s gonna buy all the stuff??
Suspension of mark to market…. Allow banks to fantasize what their portfolio is worth…and report it as real.
I can’t see the upside to this.
sl
Silera, I’m sorry. Having had family members with cancer I understand - I see family members at the brink for every kind of reason when a family member is sick.
sl
You hear me rail on about routine screenings n here. Skin cancer, prostate, breast, cervical, colon, lung, you name it.
Not to channel SAS, but if you think the gov’t wants preventive care, guess again.
Catching these diseases earlier then requires treatment. That becomes costly.
as for the health care stuff… funny. I still have YET to hear a word about Tort Reform. Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?
sl
SL- ty so much but he just has factor V. It’s severe enough that he needs monthly phlebotomies (sp) and we’re there a lot. The colon thing was a rupture that may have been caused by a clot. TMI i guess but we’re so used to it that it’s like talking about a grocery list at this point.
I can’t complain about his care. People think being happy with care equates being happy with insurance. I don’t see that. I see doctors that saved my husband’s life send me bill after bill and I dutifully provide the information and we get denials for the dumbest things.
We never seem to meet the deductible. For three years besides my 6K contribution to employer healthcare, we’ve paid out of pocket for at least an additional 5-6K of copays, prescriptions, non durable medical stuff. It just never ends.
Anyhoo- this conversation wasn’t “townhallish” and it’s great to have people think through their opinions. Barb, vic & loosh, I may end up usurping some of it as my own.
291.lisoosh says:
September 10, 2009 at 11:06 pm
#264 Chi - What competitiveness?
The economy is running on fumes. We make little and buy too much cheap junk, all on credit. Take away bubblicious Madoff style WS schemes where we take in money for doing little and what do we have?
l: it is nice to rail on the U.S., but we actually have a lot of really hard working, creative, and ambitious workers. Too bad if you want to look at the glass half empty.
283.Victorian says:
September 10, 2009 at 10:51 pm
The gross inequalities are not sustainable, but the system is fine.
I am usually dense, but this has me even more confused. How is a system fine if it produces gross inequalities?
Vic: because in a system with personal freedoms and independence from government control, there has to be opportunities for misallocation of resources. Is this a state of equilibrium? No. Can it happen? It must.
Capitalism means that in order to be superior in the long run, everyone can’t have a PB&J with the crusts cut off all the time. You have to grow up.
Still- I wonder with tort reform, if it goes beyond just health care. I know they’re going to try to incorporate it into this bill but civil suits across all industries have gone through the roof.
I think one of my husband’s surgeons thought we would sue him. (He missed a perforation in his colon and my husband eviscerated and had to redo the surgery 4 mos later). We both just figured, he’s not god and when he went in the first time, it seemed reasonable that he could have missed something. Even though, reading through his notes for the surgeries- he recounted conversations with us that he never had.
Anway, I read somewhere that only 4% of patients experience some sort of malpractice and of that only 4% sue. It seems that reasonable people abound, and we as a culture have just adopted overkill prevention to combat the ridiculous awards some juries hand out.
Silera, Does your employer allow you to max out your FSA? That way it is tax-free money you are using for out of pocket stuff.
It’s a small bit but it has helped us some.
I can’t help you with insurance denials. Been there, done that. The insurance companies make it difficult on purpose. They don’t want to pay and are hoping you’ll pay it to make it go away. Also, they know that some docs might refuse continued care if you have a large outstanding balance.
I’m not a “tax specialist” so, ask a person who is, ‘mmmkay? :)
sl
“Anway, I read somewhere that only 4% of patients experience some sort of malpractice and of that only 4% sue. It seems that reasonable people abound, and we as a culture have just adopted overkill prevention to combat the ridiculous awards some juries hand out.”
The biggest remedy to this would be “medical courts” with medically knowledgeable judges and lawyers. Problem is that the giant gravy train for med-mal lawyers would end there. Trust me. They ain’t having that.
How do you think John Edwards made his warchest? Their lobby is quite healthy. As is the health insurance companies’.
sl
chicagofinance says:
September 10, 2009 at 11:52 pm
“l: it is nice to rail on the U.S., but we actually have a lot of really hard working, creative, and ambitious workers. Too bad if you want to look at the glass half empty.”
Tsk tsk, betraying your Ivy League pedigree with the logical fallacy there, no?
Since when is commenting on the quality of the economy a criticism of workers?
And what good are creative, hard working ambitious people without solid endevours to expend that energy on?
And since when was exercising my first amendment rights “railing on the US”?
The economy is broken, has been heading down this road for many many years. Ignoring it won’t make the facts go away.
Ha- no its ok. We do our best with it. I think I just mean to explain why people that have insurance and are happy with care would be completely on board with insurance reform. The system is stacked against the consumer and the provider and I can’t be on board with not questioning or wanting to reform it to protect a third party’s profit margin.
Still- you’d like what they do in the UK, which doesn’t have the same malpractice issues.
If you sue and it is deemed gratuitous or without merit, the plaintiff is responsible for all court costs.
People think long and hard and have all their ducks in a row before suing. Controls the lawyers too.
Still - Couldn’t malpractice lawyers qualify as medically knowledgable or am I being crazy?
How about the judges and juries? Very easy to bullshit people. Then of course, wheel in the “injured party” and use emotion vs logic.
I’ve had jury duty at least 3 times now. My sister, an RN, had a similar experience.
The plaintiffs attorney does NOT want medically knowledgeable folks on juries. It’s too hard to bullshit them.
I have other stories related to this and what happens when medicine and court collide. It ain’t pretty.
sl
Oh ok, I get eliminate jury trials for medical malpractice cases and basically institute an enforced arbitration.
If awards start to dwindle, lawyers may ramp up lawsuits or walk away and find other endeavors.
Lis, 311
In Fla if a doc is sued 3 times they lose their license.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Three-strikes+for+doctors+in+Florida-a0128328277
If a lawyer files a frivolous suit 3 times do they get disbarred?
I dunno. I do know I have to hit the hay… for another day in the pit tomorrow.
sl
My take on healthcare, is a fully national system is a bad idea. I think deflating the ad budget of the drug companies is a start, as is tort reform, we need to address the supply of medical professionals(i.e people not wanting to be doctors). My take is that the government should provide basic preventative and minor procedures to all americans through a network of doctors/PA/Nurses, mostly people trained in medicine through a new program that pays for school in exchange for service. Thus requiring catastrophic coverage from external providers. The government needs to overhaul patient information and should provide a framework for medical billing, a central system for all providers, maybe even a standard process for processing claims. Additionally tort reform should be accompanied by government issued malpractice insurance for doctors with good track records. A huge issue with insurance of all kinds is that the insurance model depends on at least a small safe return on invested premiums. The same motivator for bubbles, housing and otherwise has had a profoundly bad effect on insurance companies, they have not met return targets and moved into riskier investments and have lost. So in my mind fundamentally the economic problem is linked to the healthcare issue, perpetual 0% or shall I say negative interest is incompatible with the insurance model.
I dunno. I feel like the ‘debate’ about health care is continually missing the most fundamental fact. Namely: the current healthcare system in the U.S. is already a bloated and ineffective bureaucracy of monumental proportions. It is already the nightmare that so many on the right claim a “government run” healthcare system would be. This is a fact. Most of the people who either deny the fact or simply don’t feel that it meshes with their experience haven’t themselves been through this bureaucratic nightmare because they haven’t yet had a catastrophic or serious chronic illness.
The difference between the current bureaucracy and a government bureaucracy is that at the very top of the current system is a profit-seeking managerial apparatus that, by its own admission, seeks ’shareholder value’ (and incidentally, its own enrichment) over optimal public-health outcomes. In most ways, it is answerable to shareholders before patients. A governmental system that fails to achieve public-health improvements would be answerable to the people.