Re: [OT] USA Elections
- Posted by jimcbrown (admin) May 28, 2016
- 2033 views
Sorry for the very late reply, but it took me a lot longer to get up to speed on several of these topics.
If you think reduced choice in health care, increased cost, lowered supply are going to help all of that, then yes, those arguments work against the GOP (at least to the extent that the Progressive tendencies of the GOP are suppressed).
Hmm. Perhaps you are right. See from wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance_mandate#Affordable_Care_Act
Romney himself said of the individual mandate: "I'm proud of what we've done. If Massachusetts succeeds in implementing it, then that will be the model for the nation."
Even the current Republican candidate for the 2016 US Presidental election supports this: http://www.weeklystandard.com/trump-i-like-obamacares-individual-mandate/article/2001172
But Trump went further even than that. He implied that those who oppose Obamacare's liberty-sapping mandate do "want people dying in the streets."
Of course, the original hopeful idea was that costs would not go up. Again, from wikipedia:
Insurance lobbyists (AHIP) in the United States advocate that the mandate is necessary to support guaranteed issue and community rating, which limit underwriting by insurers; insurers propose that the mandate is intended to prevent adverse selection by ensuring healthy individuals purchase insurance and thus broaden the risk pool.
As I understood this, the idea was that if only sickly individuals needing healthcare signed up for insurance, then to pay for all of them the premiums would become prohibitedly expensive. Meanwhile, healthy individuals would have no reason to sign up for health insurance and would not contribute payments.
However, if everyone had to sign up, then the extra costs born for insurance for the very ill would be covered from premiums by the very healthy.
Alas, this did not pan out: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/07/obamacare-rates-may-be-going-significantly-2016-or-maybe-not
I'm still not exactly sure of the reasons for this, but part of the problem may be that many people still would rather pay the fine (or tax penalty) instead of getting insurance: http://www.cnbc.com/2015/07/20/irs-more-paid-obamacare-fine-than-expected.html
Still, a major play point is that the old, pre-ACA system was widely acknowledged as being broken. Some individuals with serious pre-existing conditions simply could not get health coverage. After ACA, they could. Thus any system to replace ACA would have to keep this component.
But replace it with what?
With the exception of Jeb Bush, no current Republican presidential candidate has yet advanced an Obamacare alternative. As a result, the GOP candidates have failed to elevate the most important domestic issue of the Obama presidency or demonstrate that they know how to lead the way to full repeal.
Yes, I really do think that these arguments work against the GOP.
For example, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ted-cruz-obamacare-iowa_us_56ad66a1e4b077d4fe8e6396
Republicans have spent nearly six years promising to repeal Obamacare and, for most of that time, they have refused to acknowledge what that would mean for the millions who would lose their health insurance.
Valde, apparently less amused, kept at it. My question is, what are you going to replace it with? he said.
Eventually Cruz suggested that if Valdes brother-in-law couldnt afford health insurance premiums previously, it was probably because government regulation had driven up the price and that the best solution, at this point, was to wipe the slate clean and build a new health care system, one in which people could purchase coverage across state lines.
While Cruz never responded to Valde, ... [Clinton] noted that millions would lose their insurance if Cruz and the other Republicans have their way.
Of course, no system is perfect. If nothing else, the system has been scammed before: http://www.cnbc.com/2015/07/17/the-odd-way-hundreds-of-homeless-signed-up-for-obamacare-.html
its investigators had submitted Obamacare applications for 12 fictitious people, 11 of whom were approved for subsidized covered by HealthCare.gov
Yes, the Senate was also a check on the excess of direct democracy.
As someone who generally supports direct democracy, I'd be against this as a matter of principle.
It was also seen as a way that smaller states could prevent larger states from dominating the federal government. Again, of course, today Representatives are more aligned with their parties than their states in most things, in contrast to the 18th century.
So much for having the States' government being closer to the people....
But part of the genius of this is that the state governments view things differently than private citizens. Consider the source of "unfunded mandates." A Representative beholden directly to voters may look at this sort of law differently than a Senator who answers back to the state legislature that will be responsible for funding the mandates from the Federal government.
The original arrangement pits the natural and healthy interests of the various parties against each other, with the hope of coming to better solutions.
Hmm. I can see the merits of this line of thinking. Of course, I can see drawbacks as well (higher risk of corruption, deadlocked elections: http://web.mit.edu/cstewart/www/papers/ ).
This was rather humoruously demonstrated in the movie Abraham Lincoln ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443272/ ), in a scene where the senator Thaddeus Stevens is bribed into supporting the 13th Amendment (as the Republicans had recently won the state government there and were now in a position to replace him with one of their own - but they'll let him stay on as senator if he votes for the amendment).
Alas, not a perfect example, since that scene was fictional and never actually happened: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/11/fact-checking-lincoln-lincolns-mostly-realistic-his-advisers-arent/265073/
That's a feature, not a bug! Ask the millions of Chinese
I've heard Red China's demographics described as a US worth of middle / upper class plus a billion peasants.
I think your numbers are off a bit.
Looking at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-09/here-s-what-china-s-middle-class-really-earn-and-spend we have just under 16 million mainland Chinese workers who actually make enough to pay income tax (2% of 770.6 million total workers). I don't know if it makes sense to count those too poor to pay income taxes as members of the upper middle class.
China does have a lot more workers than the US, but keep in mind the average annual wage there is only $8,655 USD.
In any case, China's economic system has a lot more government interference than the US's. In fact, it's become a common refrain now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guo_jin_min_tui
http://www.forbes.com/sites/china/2010/08/31/guo-jin-min-tui/
In any case, it can be hard to find meaningful numbers from China's economy:
http://web.archive.org/web/20110503012941/httphttp://seeingredinchina.com/2011/02/22/chinas-gdp-doesnt-mean-what-you-think-it-does/
http://web.archive.org/web/20110503013305/httphttp://seeingredinchina.com/2011/02/23/does-chinas-growth-mean-communism-works/
Communism still leads to wasteful production
One of the major problems now facing China is that govt positions are based on growing GDP, which has led to some incredibly wasteful practices.
A common trick for creating GDP is (note: each step is GDP): 1. Buy land from farmers 2. Sell land to developers 3.Tear down old houses 4. Build new condos 5. Sell condos to investors.
The issue here is nobody even has to need a condo for it to create impressive statistics for the local bureaucrats.
For these reasons, I don't think it makes sense to point to China and say, "hey, this means that America's capitalism works!"
That link does not argue that the New Deal ended the Depression. It does argue the questionable conclusion that WWII ended it. He also says that Hoover decreased spending, which is wrong, so I'm not sure this is such a good page to link.
So I've read up a little bit on this.
I would agree that President Hoover was not a supporter of austerity. He was totally fine with increasing government spending on other things. However, it appears that for most of his presidency, he supported a largely hands off policy regarding the general economy.
http://www.dhahranbritish.com/history/A9_Hoover.htm
http://www.storyboardthat.com/storyboards/richard-cleggett/hoover-vs--fdr--the-election-of-1932
Hoover believed the economy would right itself, and that government influence contradicted the capitalist economic policies in place.
He did reverse course and raised taxes and approved spending to help the poor (after realizing that such policies is what made FDR so popular), but the poltically motivated about-face was too late to save his presidency.
Tax breaks for high earners does not translate to more money for the poor.
Well, the rich people eat at restaurants, and hire people to clean their houses and offices.
So tax breaks increases the amount of money that is spent on maid services?
I think it's self evident that every dollar one pays in taxes is a dollar can't be spent on anything else. You seem to be implying otherwise.
No, I agree.
I think my point was not made very clearly here. A few years later, however, the IMF would make it much better:
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=42986.0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics
A 2015 report by the International Monetary Fund argues that there is no trickle-down effect as the rich get richer:
If the income share of the top 20 percent (the rich) increases, then GDP growth actually declines over the medium term, suggesting that the benefits do not trickle down. In contrast, an increase in the income share of the bottom 20 percent (the poor) is associated with higher GDP growth.
Basically, you are advocating for trickle down economics, when the statistics we have strongly show that tricke down economics simply does not work: http://www.faireconomy.org/trickle_down_economics_four_reasons
(Yes, I know, lies, damn lies, and statistics.)
Of course, if you want to slow down or stop growth, then it seems like trickle down economics is just the way to go!
