A recovery still is looking unlikely. I’m sure glad we spent $800 billion on TARP, you know bailing out Wall Street to bail out Main Street.

By DAMIAN PALETTA

U.S. lenders saw loans fall by the largest amount since the government began tracking such data, suggesting that nervousness among banks continues to hamper economic recovery.

Total loan balances fell by $210.4 billion, or 3%, in the third quarter, the biggest decline since data collection began in 1984, according to a report released Tuesday by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

via Lending Declines as Bank Jitters Persist – WSJ.com.

There has been a lot of buzz about Obama’s Race to the Top program to improve public education. Currently, the Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Newt Gingrich and Rev. Al Sharpton are traveling the country together to promote the program.In this morning’s Wall Street Journal, former congressman Harold E. Ford Jr, a former IBM Chairman and a founder of The Broad Foundations wrote an article calling for accountability for President Obama.

By HAROLD E. FORD JR., LOUIS V. GERSTNER JR. AND ELI BROAD

For decades, policy makers have talked about significantly improving public education. The problem has been clear: one-third of public school children fail to graduate, there are embarrassing achievement gaps between middle-class children and poor and minority children, and the gap between our students and those in other countries threatens to undermine our economic competitiveness. Yet for the better part of a quarter century, urgent calls for change have seldom translated into improved public schools.

Now, however, President Barack Obama has launched “Race to the Top,” a competition that is parceling out $4.35 billion in new education funding to states that are committed to real reform. This program offers us an opportunity to finally move the ball forward.

To that end Mr. Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are pushing states toward meaningful change. Mr. Duncan has even stumped for reform alongside former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Yet the administration must continue to hang tough on two critical issues: performance standards and competition.

First, I must say Newt Gingrich in pursuit of trying to be bipartisan has become a stooge of the left. If he thinks giving his support is going to get any real reforms, he’s become Charlie Brown hoping Lucy won’t move the ball this time. What’s worse is no one will no if he doesn’t agree with the ultimate outcome, but his name will be used for what will be called a “bipartisan effort”.

Already the administration is being pressured to dilute the program’s requirement that states adopt performance pay for teachers and to weaken its support for charter schools. If the president does not remain firm on standards, the whole endeavor will be just another example of great rhetoric and poor reform.

Competition among the states is also vital to reform. The administration is resisting the temptation to award funds to as many states as possible. And that’s good. To be effective, Race to the Top funds cannot become a democratic handout. Competition brings out the best performance. That’s true in athletics and in business, and it’s true in education.

Wow, all the sudden liberals realize competition among states is vital to reform, and competition is what brings out the best results? Who said progress isn’t being made. If they now realize this, can we make more moves back towards federalism, in which we had states competiting? Better yet, how about we get the federal government out of education altogether? How can you have competition when the government always promotes one size fits all policy on all states? Can we remove much of the federal laws and allow states to compete for the best standards of living? Citizens can then again vote with their feet. When the federal government creates national laws, citizens cannot hold states accountable. It doesn’t matter where you go, you still have to deal with the federal law. Your only choice is to leave the country, which ultimately harms our country.

The old way of doing business would be to spread around the money so no one could be held accountable. The new approach is to give governors authority and responsibility, and then hold them accountable for results.

For decades, adult interests have been at the forefront of public education. Reform has been derailed by adults who wanted to protect the status quo and enjoy lifelong benefits. This time the focus will be on learning in the classroom. What’s important is that the administration is demanding that every child receive an education that prepares him or her for college or for work. Without that we will continue to be sidetracked by insignificant issues.

Again wow, some truth from these guys. Ok, so now I must ask if we know this, then why aren’t we redoing all the federal dollars? Why are we continuing to spread money around?  According to the Department of Education’s website here is how much money they are spreading around with no accountability.

ED currently administers a budget of $62.6 billion in regular FY 2009 discretionary appropriations and $96.8 billion in discretionary funding provided under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

via U.S. Department of Education Budget Office.

Wow, imagine what we could do if we actually focused over $150 billion on the classroom? Instead you have teacher’s unions setting up life long cushy jobs and retirement plans that private sector workers could only dream about.

States that have the track record and leadership in place to implement Mr. Obama’s aggressive reform menu—of enforcing rigorous academic standards, creating data systems that track individual student performance, ensuring teacher quality and effectiveness, and turning around failing schools—deserve the funds to show that our public schools can again lead the world.

We have yet to prove, on a systemic basis, that we can dramatically improve America’s public schools. Race to the Top is a chance to start small, hold states accountable, and expand proven reforms to the rest of the country.

via Harold E. Ford Jr., Louis V. Gerstner Jr.,And Eli Broad: Race to the Top in Education – WSJ.com.

Ok, here is the root of the problem. You are rewarded based on your record of implementing “Mr. Obama’s agressive reform menu”. The problem is the whole damn thing is captive to politics. Assume this policy improves results. After Obama is replaced, you then have to worry about who’s menu is next? I’m not saying Obama’s menu is good, because I don’t know what it is. The problem is you hold the carrots way above where the work actually takes place. The further you get away from the end participants, the harder it is for you to dictate good policy and the harder it is to know what’s working.

If you want real reform, the federal government should get out of education. Governors should then open education to all providers public and private. Parents should be able to take either their own taxes or their allocation of taxes per student to any school they want. This would generate massive competition and a massive improvement in the education of children in this country. Even the writers of this article admit that competition is what generates results. Are they advocating only a little competition? Don’t they want spectacular results, or are they too afraid they’d loss their political power?

Think we have a moral government? What kind of government tries to pillage families when a loved one passes? That is what the government does with the death tax.

Kevin Hancock simply wants to harvest trees — sustainably — and create jobs in the process. The federal government may put a stop to all that.

His business, Hancock Lumber, has been in the family for six generations. It owns 30,000 acres of Maine timberland and employs 550 people. But Kevin already knows that when his elderly mother dies, he’ll have to sell off huge swaths of his land to pay the ensuing tax bill.

He recently warned a Senate committee that “once it has been sold to a developer, it will be parceled off and will no longer be maintained as publicly open forests. This is particularly a shame in southern Maine, where green space and curtailment of sprawl is a major political issue.”

It’s an example of the long reach of the death tax — the penalty families have to pay when a loved one dies and leaves them significant assets. Yet, for Hancock and many others, some relief may be in sight.

In 2001, lawmakers passed a law that gradually phased out the levy. The death tax has been stepped down from 55 percent (for those in the top tax bracket) eight years ago to 45 percent. But that gradual decline was just a prelude for 2010, when the tax will — finally — disappear altogether.

Unfortunately, like the killer in so many slasher movies, the death tax could return to menace family businesses again in 2011. Unless Congress acts, it’s scheduled to return to the obscene 55 percent rate after next year.

via Time to bury the ‘death tax’ – Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Wonder how many of the 550 people Hancock Lumber will have to layoff when they have to sell off their land to pay Uncle Sam? I wonder how many employees are hoping that Kevin Hancock’s mother dies next year, so they don’t lose their jobs? The death tax is completely immoral. Taxes have already been paid as the wealth was earned, and yet they try to take huge chunks of it from the very people the deceased person worked to hard to save for.

For anyone who thinks we’ll be pulling out of this recession anytime soon, you may want to think again. Even if we do pull out, it will more than likely be temporary. Unfortunately, the government is crowding out private investment by killing financing to the privates sector. George Melloan, author of “The Great Money Binge: Spending Our Way to Socialism” writes in the Wall Street Journal.

For anyone who wondered if last winter’s federal seizure of the financial services industry would have adverse economic consequences, an answer is now available. The credit market has been tilted to favor a single borrower with a huge appetite for money, Washington. Private borrowers, particularly small businesses, have been sent to the end of the queue.

The Federal Reserve, which supervises some 7,000 banks, has been telling bankers that they must cut risk. The most spectacular step in that effort was the Fed announcement last month that it will evaluate the salaries of bank officers on how carefully they manage risk.

By official definition, Treasury securities are risk-free, so how better to manage risk than to pad your bank’s portfolio with Treasury securities, which is what bankers are doing. Under the new management from Washington, bankers who take a flyer on a venture that might some day become an Apple, Microsoft or Google will risk not only their depositors’ money but a possible pay cut. Banking has been captured by the nanny state, which means that its potential for contributing to economic growth and job creation has been sharply curtailed, even as its potential contribution to government growth has been expanded.

The federally dictated risk-aversion was underway even before the Fed began monitoring banker paychecks. According to the Fed’s September flow of funds report, commercial banks were net buyers of Treasury securities to the tune of $25 billion on an annualized basis in the second quarter. They were net buyers of federal agency paper—think Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—at an annualized rate of a whopping $185 billion, contributing mightily to federal efforts to keep these miscreants afloat. Meanwhile, private lending, which once was the mainstay of banking, was shrinking at a $392 billion annual rate.

Washington hasn’t been able to milk the taxpayers sufficiently to finance its massive deficit. The Chinese are getting skittish as well. So tapping bank deposits is yet another avenue to a big pot of cash. As for the bankers, they’ve been awarded an easy life. Thanks to the Fed’s zero interest-rate policy, they can make a decent profit on “safe” Treasury and agency securities yielding 3% or more. The too-big-to-fail banks like Citi and Bank of America can draw on their big shareholder, the U.S. Treasury, if their capital needs further supplements. Bankers don’t have to worry about making risk judgments because they’ve been ordered to not take risks. So maybe the Fed is justified in cutting their salaries, since whatever banking skills they had—meaning the ability to assess risk—are no longer needed or wanted. An office boy could buy government bonds.

via George Melloan: Government Deficits and Private Growth – WSJ.com.

Anyone who takes the time to analyze how the mortgage crisis started quickly realizes it was the result of the Fed printing money (the flood) and the congress passing affordable housing regulation to promote home ownership (steering the flood into real estate). What we ended up getting was an overvalued real estate market and a bubble that eventually popped and caused supposedly the worst crisis since the Great Depression. I would argue Obama is making this the worst crisis since the Great Depression, but none the less. So what does the government do? More of the same with their home buyer tax credits and cheap printed money from the Fed.

The problem is that the FHA insures mortgages of homes below certain price levels with such a low down payment that it can be funded solely by the refundable tax credit. And, as we’ve seen in the recent housing crisis, buyers with no skin in the game are more likely than others to default on their mortgages when the value of their home falls below their mortgage balance.

Here’s how the credit allows buyers to avoid putting their own money at risk. Suppose a couple making $60,000 annually buys a home worth $200,000. They can get an FHA-insured loan if they put down 3.5% of the purchase price, about $7,000. The couple will also need to come up with another $1,000 in closing costs, for a total of $8,000. The couple can either dip into savings or borrow that money from relatives or somewhere else on a temporary basis.

After closing, the couple can quickly obtain the $8,000 refundable tax credit to pay off their temporary loan (or replenish their savings). In effect, they will have bought a home without putting any of their own money at risk. Owners who don’t sink their own money into a house are much more likely to default on the mortgage.

The FHA already is facing a rising number of serious problems on its insured mortgages. Last week the agency reported that its cash reserves dropped to 0.53% of the $685 billion of total loans it insurers. This is well below the 2% federal law requires the FHA to have in reserves.

via Homebuyer Tax Credits Threaten the FHA – WSJ.com.

I won’t even get into the moral issue of what the government is doing by tricking people into buying homes they otherwise would not and forcing others to give up their earnings at a point of a gun so they can give it to home buyers. If the government would stay out of real estate, it would stabilize itself, and people would know the real value of their properties. Instead they are doing more of the same and inflating the value of real estate, creating more demand than there otherwise would be, and ultimately setting up another bubble in real estate. More than likely it won’t be as big of a bubble compared to the one we are recovering from, but none the less, it’s a bubble. Those who are buying under these programs are going to be in for a shock when the programs go away and values eventually move towards their market value. Then again, the Fed printed so much money that inflation may just increase the value of the homes. The problem is the rest of the economy will suffer.

In a seperate article the Journal talks about the disaster the rest of the housing market is in, so I’m sure they’ll keep tinkering.

The proportion of U.S. homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than the properties are worth has swelled to about 23%, threatening prospects for a sustained housing recovery.

Nearly 10.7 million households had negative equity in their homes in the third quarter, according to First American CoreLogic, a real-estate information company based in Santa Ana, Calif.

These so-called underwater mortgages pose a roadblock to a housing recovery because the properties are more likely to fall into bank foreclosure and get dumped into an already saturated market.

via 1 in 4 Borrowers Under Water – WSJ.com.

Ralph Reiland had a great piece in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review about Obama’s hypocrisy.

“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” he proclaimed. “That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen.”

By Obama’s definition of U.S. “leadership,” we get a seat at the table with the world planners if we bow to their demands in terms of what we buy and how we live, if we downsize in accordance with their centralized planning, if we admit our gluttonous faults and send reparations for all the effluents and global warming that our materialistic successes have caused over the past century.

At the White House, however, it’s a different picture. Instead of guilt, global consciousness and keeping the thermostat at an Earth-friendly 60 degrees, it seems that Obama likes it hot at the executive mansion.

“The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket,” reported The New York Times on Jan. 29. “There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat.”

“He’s from Hawaii, OK?” explained Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”

Al Gore should calculate how many extra polar bears are likely to drown if Obama keeps it hot enough for four years to grow orchids in all 132 rooms of the White House, plus the 35 bathrooms.

It’s the same with food. We’re supposed to cut back while Obama is jetting in Wagyu steaks from Japan. The good stuff, the result of cattle bred for generations to be genetically predisposed to intense marbling, goes for $300 a pound.

via Doing & saying – Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

And NO, I didn’t spell hypocrisy wrong in the title. Hypocracy is what we are living under. It’s a government full of hypocrites.

While the Democrats fight to take over our lives, at least we can count on the Republicans to fight for us?

On the Republican side, Mr. Reid must be relieved the GOP has apparently decided not to force a reading of the entire 2,074-page bill over the weekend. Instead, Republicans will settle for a full day of debate before the Saturday night vote.

Republicans had the option of staying on the floor and having Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and others read the bill, a process that would take at least two days. They opted for a less strenuous path that will allow them to spend plenty of time at home during the Thanksgiving holiday. “Republican members oppose the bill, but they don’t appear willing to stay up nights arguing against it,” one former Hill staffer told me.

via Health Care Payola – WSJ.com.

Oops! Maybe not. Republicans are looking at this health care bill to gain political points only. Apparently, they don’t believe in fighting it enough to take the two days to read the bill. If they would have, the national media would have reported it, and it would have dragged the vote into the week, when people might actually be paying attention. Instead, they voted on Saturday just before 8PM, when most people are too busy trying to live and enjoy their time off work to pay attention to the jackasses in Washington. THANK A LOT REPUBLICANS. I guess there are no Mr. Smiths in the Republican party.

Would someone please ask the government to stop creating jobs before we are all unemployed? Most of these idiots never even held a real private sector job, and yet they are trying to create jobs. Government can only do one thing. It can take money from private citizens at the point of a gun and give it to other private citizens. That will not create jobs.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said in an interview that “there are two engines to our economic message, two ways to generate jobs. One is small business, the second is energy.” The government could promote hiring in those sectors through expanded tax credits or lending. “It’s not about legislation — it’s about the economy,” he said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last week said ideas under discussion in the House included a tax on a variety of financial transactions. Democrats estimate such a tax could raise as much as $150 billion a year, a pool of money that could help offset the cost of a job-growth package.

via Weighing Jobs and Deficit – WSJ.com.

I love these idiots in the White House and Congress. How is small business and energy going to create jobs when you are pillaging both of them, Rahm. Small business  is going to get hammered with all these health care bills. Energy is not allowed to flourish in our country because of special interest groups. The government is pushing cap n trade, while  the sham of global warming has finally come to light with the hacked emails of global warming scientists. Cap n Trade will drive up costs on businesses and families. Congress is also raising taxes for the health care bill, and they are going to let Bush’s tax cuts expire. All of this leads to increased burdens on the private sector, but some how these morons see this as job creating stimulus.

Nancy Pelosi’s solution to job creation is to tax a variety of financial transactions? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. For some reason, she believes you can tax your way to prosperity. Why do we tax cigarettes again? Oh yeah, because we want people to smoke less. You tax something in order to punish it and get less of it. So Nancy Pelosi wants to tax financial transactions. What do you think is going to happen? You are going to get less financial transactions. That sounds like another great job creating idea.

Would someone pull the plug on Washington already. They have no clue how jobs are created. Please make them stop before everyone is out of work, and we’re relying on these morons for the bread lines.

This sure doesn’t sound good, and I’m sure the heath care bill only makes the chances of collapse more likely.

In a report entitled “Worst-case debt scenario”, the bank’s asset team said state rescue packages over the last year have merely transferred private liabilities onto sagging sovereign shoulders, creating a fresh set of problems.

Overall debt is still far too high in almost all rich economies as a share of GDP (350pc in the US), whether public or private. It must be reduced by the hard slog of “deleveraging”, for years.

via Société Générale tells clients how to prepare for ‘global collapse’ – Telegraph.

On Facebook, I got into a debate with Evan Guay. The debate was fun, but I’m afraid the person who started the debate by posting an image may defriend us before it’s over, so I decided to bring it to ProudProfiteer.com.

Evan GuayI’m not sure if you intended to put the question mark at the end of your opening sentence–because you would be arguing with yourself–so I’ll assume a period was intended. Once again, it takes very little effort to find lucid examples supporting my statement that big business and the government are most often one in the same, and that this is nearly always a bad thing for the worker (defined as anyone not in ownership of production). I’m glad that you used the health care debate, as it plays perfectly into explaining how big business interests are what steer the decisions of the government.

The question mark was to highlight that the environment that you advocate, socialism, is what causes companies to lobby congress. If you were for the free market and the constitution, most of the policies the corporations and politicians are pushing today, wouldn’t happen. They would be unconstitutional. Advocating government redistribution does not fix the problem you and I are both complaining about. It increases it.

Also in your previous replies you kept talking about libertarian socialism. That is basically the same thing as anarco-capitalism, but the people are voluntarily socializing. This is fine in my opinion as long as you don’t force others into socialism. I think the problem is, as history has shown, socialism does not work and ultimately leads to force. It is unsustainable and eventually those living under it will decide they need to expand the people under it in order to expand resources available within it. With motivation dissipating, because people aren’t rewarded for merit, it will quickly devolve into economic disaster. Those in charge, will then look to expand.

Also, if you truly are a libertarian socialist, you sure aren’t doing a good job arguing for it. From what I gather, you don’t believe in a state. Yippee! Let’s get started on that, so you can go with your socialist buddies and share your wealth, and I can go with my capitalist buddies and create wealth.

It has been documented that there are 6 health insurance lobbyists for every member of congress, at least 350 of these lobbyists were former staffers, and that the health insurance industry is spending 1.4 million dollars per day on lobbying.

This only highlights my point that if the government is going to pick winners and losers, you are going to send lobbyist to advocate for you to be a winner. The way to fix it is for government to not intervene in the economy at all. This is just one of the unintended consequences you get when you look to the government for everything.

The fact that single payer wasn’t even invited to the debate should tell you something. Also, the fact that only the shareholders, not the stakeholders (providers, patients) were invited to the discussion should shed further light on the validity of the debate.

Again, the result of handing over your freedom. If the debate revolves around insurance, which it does, who do you think is going to be involved? As soon as you hand over your freedom by asking someone else, whether insurance companies or the government, to pay for your care, you then are out of the decision. Ready my blog on root causes of the health care crisis, and you will see what I mean. If you paid for your care yourself, you wouldn’t have these issues. Instead you advocate setting up this third party payer system, and then complain about the fact that the payer has control over your spending.

The fact that medicine has been transformed from a healing art to a business should tell you something about the nature of the beast.

When wasn’t it a business? It’s always been a business. The only thing that change is the introduction of ever expanding insurance and government intervention. Believe it or not, doctors used to voluntarily take care of the poor.

If you follow the belief of Rudolf Virchow that medicine is a social science, there is really no question which is the correct route to take. The fact that the US is the only industrialized country not to have a single-payer or highly regulated system, and the US offers the most expensive care, while providing the 37th best outcomes, makes it impossible to argue against a single-payer plan—unless your goal, along with insurance and pharmaceutical companies, is profit.

More of the we must be like everyone else. For you it seems that if other countries give up their freedoms, we must as well. I don’t care what other countries do. I care about what our country does and preserving the little freedom we have left. If our care is so bad, why do foreign government officials come here. It’s easy to twist facts to make things appear the way you want. Saying that our health care isn’t good because we aren’t socialized is crazy. I could sit here and dig up tons of disaster stories and statistics about these other countries, but I’m not going to waste my time. They will never change your mind. Also, you still have the sustainability question. Our country is going bankrupt, and yet you guys want to spend more and more money. Our resources are not endless, and unfortunately, I think we will soon witness the consequences.

The US is also the only country where pharmaceutical companies advertise directly to the patient, creating greater than normal demand for drugs that people don’t always need. The argument that these high prices for drugs are warranted is without merit, as pharm companies spend much more each year on advertisements than they do on R&D. Also, drug prices are the highest in the world in the US because price negotiating is illegal.

Who cares if they advertise. You think business is inherently evil, so you think everything they do is evil. Why shouldn’t they be able to advertise in order to inform the public about their product. This is just a silly argument. Why should I think a drug company is evil, and you are not? Drug companies are made up of people too, and many of them are more compassionate about saving lives than you are. Quit besmirching your fellow man because it makes you feel more righteous than they are. You may be able to make other believe you are compassionate, but the end result if we implement all your ideas is people die. You will not have the innovation in the drugs and the medical technology that we now have. If your ideas are so great, the Soviet economy would have been the envy of the world. As we know, it is not. We also know from history that socialism does not work. It didn’t work for the pilgrims, and it has not worked all the way up to current times.

It would be to everyone’s benefit (except the profit of the companies) to be able to order drugs from Canada, Africa, Europe, etc, but big business (read as government) doesn’t allow it.

Hear, Hear! I’m all for it, but this is a free market idea, not a socialist idea. Again, if government couldn’t use force against us at the behest of their corporate cronies, this would happen in a free market.

Other issues that have arisen because of a lust for money in the health care system are doctors having to close their practice because of outrageous malpractice insurance payments, and people being locked in their jobs because insurance comes from their employer, which, strangely enough, are now closing US plants and outsourcing jobs because they don’t have to pay those workers as much, aka higher profit.

Hey, did you read my blog on free market solutions to health care? I made the same argument about people being stuck in their jobs. The solution though isn’t the government. The solution is to allow the consumer to buy their own health care insurance. If they did, they would make wise decisions. Most would buy catastrophic care, and pay for doctors visits out of their pocket. This would prevent them from being attached to a crappy job because of health insurance. It would also free up expenses at companies, resulting in more jobs and higher wages.

As far as malpractice, you are right there as well, but you look at it the wrong way. Because of insurance in general, people no longer have a personal relationship. People assume it’s not big deal, the insurance company will be paying the settlement. This problem has grown as insurance has grown. The solution isn’t a one size fits all tort reform, as Republicans pose. This isn’t fair to patients, who may rightfully have a claim. It should be taken out of the federal government’s hands. States should enact these limits if they want. This would allow competition between states. Also, if insurance was out of the picture, you could have agreements made before hand between doctors and patients. Maybe there is a predetermined payout in the event of something bad happening. I don’t know all the solutions to solve this, because I can’t be expected to be an expert on all areas of the economy. The point is the free market would develop solutions to this if their wasn’t so much government involvement. You didn’t have these issues when the government was less involved.

It is simply logical that if a company is looking for profit, they will do what it takes to increase that profit. This means denying coverage for sick people and certain procedures and charging high premiums.

Again, this didn’t happen at the rate it did back before all the insurance and government intervention. Again, the systems you are advocating are the very systems that create the symptoms you are complaining about. You are also prejudging people motivations without proof. People in general are charitable, and the sick and poor would be taken care of. They were prior to all this government intervention, and they would again. I’m not sure if your a religious man, but you sure do worship the state. The state solves all human ailments based on your logic, and we have never done these things on our own. As I said previously, you create a tragedy of commons on the human level.

The fact that insurance companies have a 31% overhead, while medicare has a 3% overhead should tell you something about the affordability of care.

This is taking fuzzy math to the next level. The overhead would skyrocket if all people were on the government plan. You aren’t looking at who is in both systems. The fact that you have senior citizen as the customer in the medicare system, makes the overhead seem lower.

Example. If you have two patients, one a 30 year old male under private insurance and two a 70 year old male under medicare. Both of them cost $50/year in overhead. The problem is the 70 year old will spend much more money. So if say the 30 year old spends $100 for the year on insurance, his overhead if 50%. On the other hand, if the medicare patient, spends $1,000 for the year, his overhead is only 5%. As we all know, senior citizens spend way more money on health care services, so there is a reason medicare’s overhead appears less. If you add the remaining population into it, you will see that number go up, and it will go up higher than the private sector, who is constantly rooting out waste.

This process has everything to do with capitalism because just as Adam Smith made clear, the economy is the controlling factor in government and society. It seems clear to me that your view is no fault of your own, instead the idea has been inculcated so solidly in your head by the media that you actually believe it is what’s best of you and all other US citizens.
“Trying to prevent the polarization of wealth does the exact opposite of what you want to do.” This also couldn’t be further form the truth. If you look at the economic breakdown of the US, it is clear that we are moving nearer and nearer to what is essentially a 3rd world model. The top 5% of the population are proceeding to accumulate a greater piece of the pie, while the rest are left to split the remaining sliver. It’s clear to anyone that looks at it, that this isn’t beneficial to the middle class. In fact, the middle class is slowly disappearing. The middle class is what pays for programs when there are regressive taxes, such as those that currently exist.

Thanks for saying it’s not my fault that I’m so stupid, and you’re so smart. You are arguing that the wealth gap is the result of the free market, when it has been getting worse under government intervention. This is silly. I think we agree on the middle class, but you are wrongly identifying the cause. The biggest cause is the Fed. Devaluing our currency is robbery of the middle class. It also, is central planning. We have one guy at the head of a little over a dozen bozos deciding what the cost of money should be. What you get is the bubble we just had and the bust we are currently in. With all the bailouts, the money has been transferred from the middle class to the rich, who have now recovered. The middle class will not recover what has been taken. The poor never had it in the first place, so they lost nothing. You idea that we need more government is crazy in light of they are the ones causing this gap to get larger.

These regressive taxes were amped up by the conservative icon, Raegen, by implementing outrageous tax-cuts on the wealthy. The trickle down theory doesn’t work. As we know, it takes money to make money.

What in the world are you talking about here? Reagan and Bush cut taxes on all income tax brackets. You are so blinded by your hate of people who have more than  you. It’s nuts. Trickle down does work better than Obama’s “Trickle Up Economics”. The very name describe what is does, and his policies and actions shows how it works. He has taken from the middle class, and given it to his cronies, thus trickling it up to them. Under Reagan, Clinton, and Bush, they cut taxes on the so called rich, and you had jobs created and people growing financially. The problem in the long run was the Fed was punishing us with the inflation tax and the bubbles they were creating. As I said, jobs were created which is what creates wealth for people. The Fed tricked people into going into debt and devalued the money they earned through inflation. If you want to fix the wealth gap, you will end the Fed.

When you keep pumping money into the people that already have it, they keep making more. I agree with you that the Fed devaluing money is a negative. I think you have my stance confused. I’m not arguing that everything that the government does is good. I’m saying that large corporations controlling the government, as they do now, is bad.
I’m very glad you brought up the old safety nets of family, friends, neighbors, etc. The explanation for this disappearance is a little more complex, but generally explainable, nonetheless. I think we can agree that there has been a steady atomization of society since WWII. We see this in nearly any resource we look. People are generally less interested in helping their neighbor and more interested in material goods, reality TV, and whatever other distraction you can think of. This is a direct result of constant competition and capitalism. Capitalism breeds competition, not cooperation. People currently work longer hours and receive less valuable remuneration. The steady barrage of consumerist propaganda has made people care less and less about family, friends, and neighbors, and more and more about cars, TV, sports, etc. Speaking of TV—a key tool in this atomization—it can be separated into two categories, content and filler. Contrary to what you would think, the content is the commercials. This makes sense because it is how the station makes its money (excluding cable and HBO, although most cable shows suck, too). The filler is whatever garbage show is on.

I’m pointing in the wrong direction? Our country was more capitalist and entrepreneurial before WWII than after, but for some reason capitalism gets blamed? People are less interested in helping because they assume they don’t need to. Remember, we have safety nets! As I said, we have a tragedy of commons on the human level. Basically, those people become public property, and everyone assumes someone else will take care of it. Families also used to bring us more happiness, and I would argue that government interference as pushed us apart making us less happy. In order to replace that happiness, we have looked other places, such as TV shows, material items, etc. Believe it or not, there are people who refuse to take government help because of their dignity. I was raised by one of these people, and guess what, they didn’t end up in the streets. Churches, families, friends, etc do step up and help.

I’m not sure how you think private roads would improve traffic in major cities. There are so many people travelling that there is no way to get around quickly, safe public transportation (trains). Are you saying a $200 million air port with 3 flights a day is an efficient use of resources? … Read More

I am not saying for sure it would improve congestion, but I do know the free market is more efficient, so I believe there is a chance. I am not going to write it off as you have, just because I’m not imaginative enough to develop the system myself. I do know, if it was ran privately, that roads could be paid for by businesses, developers, etc. After all, you would need to get to your house, fi a developer wanted you to buy it. You would need to get to a business if the business wanted you to work there and wanted customers to come there. Also, I can guarantee you it would be better taken care of as is most driveways and business parking lots. You also wouldn’t have unmotivated road crews standing around watching one guy at a time do work.

I did not say the $200 million air port was efficient. I might have forgot my contraction, n’t. I do that when typing fast. It is inefficient and an example of government waste that would never happen in the free market it. If it did, it would only harm the person paying for it out of his own pocket. It would not be stolen from the middle class tax payer to pay for it.

I don’t want to get into the military budgeting in this post because I’d also say that it’s superfluous and controlled by big business interests, and this message is already ridiculously long.

Haha. I would agree with you, which is more proof that government control is always wasteful and inefficient. The only hard part about this here, is this is about the only thing the government does at this point that is actually in the constitution, and without a military to defend the country, you pretty much don’t have a country.  If you really are an anarco-socialist, I’m sure you’ve read some arguments by the anarcho-capitalist at how the free market would better at this. They make some great arguments, but I’m not totally sold on it.

Continued ….

Evan GuayAbout Katrina, if everyone has to throw some money in a hat to save someone else’s life, I don’t think it’s even debatable. I think there should be social intervention to ensure that the victims have everything they need. There is an interesting article written by an anthropologist at MSU (don’t know the author or title off-hand) saying that it isn’t competition and war that makes humans unique in the animal kingdom, it’s the extent of humans’ ability to empathize, cooperate, and negotiate that makes them unique. I agree with the author, and I think that empathy, cooperation, and negotiations for peace should be maximized. I’m not talking about forcing anyone to give anything up, I’m talking about changing the economic and educational system so people wouldn’t view it as forcing. It should be viewed as sharing superfluous resources. You’re not going to get argument from me saying that Walmart and churches should have been able to help. And please don’t use GWB’s politics to represent my side of the debate on corporate government, as he’s even further than Obama from what I’m advocating.

This sounds like something straight of an Ayn Rand book or 1984. “I’m talking about changing the economic and educational system so people wouldn’t view it as forcing.” Wow, you are talking about brain washing. We aren’t brain washed for the free market. That is human nature. You want to change our nature. This is what leads to the apalling disasters of the Soviet Union and Mao’s China. If you think it’s so great, why do you feel the need to stick a gun to other people’s heads to force them to do it? Brainwashing them into it is no different. If it’s so great, you are able to do it yourself freely. Of course as with all socialist, marxists, etc. that isn’t enough. You have to force all society to do it, which points out that you truly don’t believe in libertarian socialism as well. That was just a ruse to get someone to start buying into socialism.

I have anything but a dim view of my fellow man. I am optimistic to the Nth degree. I think that if given the opportunity, with coercion removed, people would all jump at the opportunity to help one another. I also think that people would like a say in what goes on around them. If anything, you’re the one that doubts people. I have the utmost confidence in people, as I think society should be democratically run. The only way that democracy is horrible is if you think that people having a say in what happens to them/their taxes is a negative. As I said in each post, majority rules, but individual liberties must be protected. And I’m not saying that the poor are more deserving of the water, I’m saying that their needs must be protected. It’s impossible to establish any kind of hierarchy of value upon people or animals, so every person should be accounted for.

You’re view of your fellow man isn’t low? Really? You do not see that all these evil corporations, etc are made up of your fellow man, but for some reason you believe you are more righteous than they. I’ll take a Bill Gates over someone claiming to be righteous any day.

You are arguing around the issue of democracy. I don’t think the form of democracy we had under the constitution is bad. It was a republic. By saying liberties must be protected, you are arguing the same thing I am. The constitution is what protected those liberties. The problem is, as is with pure democracies in general, you only want your liberties protected. If you think someone else’s liberties interferes with your ideals, they don’t count. That is what pure democracy is. Mob rule, and as I said,  you are only free as long as you are in the majority.

Following the constitution isn’t denying progress. Where you get in trouble is when you start to think that previous generations were inherently more wise/honorable/intelligent

Your whole argument is telling me how horrendous everyone is in the the private sector (oh and they are the same as the public sector). So until I see someone more wise, honorable, and intelligent, I’ll stick with the founders.

than current generations. If you don’t allow laws/systems to evolve with moral philosophy and other advancements, you have unjust/inefficient laws/systems…. Read More

I’m going to avoid the abortion debate in this message for the same reason I avoided the military resources, this message is ridiculously long. But I agree with you that if a state wishes to enact a single-payer plan it should be able to do so. (I had to split this in 2 because it said it was too long to post as 1 message).