The two factions
in last night’s debate each stand on their own mountains of bullshit. Obama has not had the balls to demand
single-payer health care, because he knows people would call him a
socialist. He’d be screwed despite the
fact that health is not a free market good and the macro-level technologies of
a digital-based federally-funded health care system through dedicated separate
federal taxes with current adjusted gross income fluctuating deductible and
co-pays for those under fifty-five and historical adjusted gross income for
those over fifty-five would make infinite more sense than our current stabs at
solutions.
However, the
affordable health care act is a start and maybe the best the Democrats could do
with an intransigent Republican congress betrothed in pledge to Grover Norquist
and an all-out embargo on anything that might lead to Obama reaching a second
term. Republicans seem vehemently
opposed to gay marriage, but none of the Republican men in congress seem to
have a problem marrying Mr. Norquist to get out their primaries. Cheat on your wife you can be a Louisiana
Senator; cheat on Grover and your career is done.
The idea that
Obama Care raids Medicare to fund itself is bullshit; the two are
interdependent. Medicare and Medicaid
are broken. Current national discussions
are more about each party not startling old people, because they tend to be
single-issue voters when it comes to their health care. So anything too complicated is off limits,
which runs away from math and towards bullshit by both sides.
The only way
Medicare is salvageable is to reduce macro-level systematic health care
costs. The only way Medicaid is salvageable
is to create a plan for more lower-income individuals and their employers to
contribute to their healthcare costs, while more importantly funneling those
individuals into lower-cost sensible healthcare rather than defaulting to the
taxpayers and emergency rooms. What we
have now is a nation of minimum-wage part-timers defaulting to the
taxpayers.
The affordable
health care acts seeks to emulate reforms from systems in Utah like Iron
Mountain Health Care that Mr. Romney quoted to consolidate doctor consolations
for better preventative sensible care, rather than racking up tests. The panel to design systems of cost-reducing
care-centered planning that mirrors this ideology to reduce excessive
procedures to rack up billing to the federal government was repeatedly implied
to be a death-panel or a care-rationing deciding arbiter by Romney. This was done despite the fact there is
explicit language in the affordable health care act to prohibit such actions. I call bullshit for Romney trying to scare sick
people, especially when the law does the exact opposite by making it harder for
private health insurers to cut people off with life-time caps and exclude
people with pre-existing conditions. The
panel is a start to analyze data, use math and for taxpayers to reign in the
system that is exploiting us.
Private insurers
have extracted lower income, older, and long-term medical issue people from
their business models, because they have been able to for years. It is the ultimate bullshit that Romney, of all
public figureheads in America, would denounce the core of this model based on
Romney’s state plan that the affordable health care act emulates. To act as if the economics of health care are
so unique to one state versus another, ignores human reality and creates chasms
of dysfunction as humans cross state lines to exploit state-based systems.
Obama has put on
a strong-front with the military perpetuating Guantanamo, the war in
Afghanistan, and most glaring to me, the drug war. The biggest hunk of bullshit to me is, Obama
is always playing defense from weak areas on public safety spending that the
Republicans would rail him over so he doesn’t come across as soft. He openly used to smoke pot and with that
hypocrisy he cannot even talk about decreasing his escalated crack-downs let
alone the economics of ending marijuana prohibition.
Trickle-down
economics has never worked and it never will.
One test is if a higher tax bracket qualifying person would not start a
business, that they believe they can make a profit at in America, because of a
mutually-assured federal tax rate across all fifty-states. In most cases state-by-state tax rates play a
roll, because some businesses retain discretion between locating in places such
as Texas of Louisiana. The dichotomy is
obvious when it comes to state income taxes.
However, this federal argument is moot given the blanket coverage of the
federal government, absent an international component.
The second test
is once the high income individual achieves the tax savings, does he or she
retain it to an investment account, or does that money filter back into the
economy to hire more people or purchase a good.
Most often that money has been stagnant in an investment account, which
is the primary strangle-hold on our economy and a blockade perpetuating the
unprecedented consolidation of wealth into the upper-two percent of Americans.
High end tax
rates are around the lowest they have ever been and the suggested change is
less than five points. Each candidate
wants to continue the Bush-ear tax rates for middle and lower income
individuals. Most of the sound economic
science agrees with this logic, as lower income individuals spend what they
have to live; higher earners do not.
Romney’s level of
bullshit stating that he will not lower the taxes of high income individuals is
a blatant lie. By simply continuing the
2001 and / or 2003 Bush-era tax cuts in their current form he would do just
that. The expiration or non-expiration
of the reduction in the top end rates is of gargantuan economic importance to
every billionaire that is financing Romney’s campaign.
Corporate taxes
do need to decrease to compete globally to allow more inflow to the United
States, both candidates agree on that.
Individual tax rates are the pertinent issues, especially since the
majority of small business are S corps or partnerships, which are taxed through
the individual’s K-1.
Our military
dwarfs all other militaries on the planet Earth by a wide margin. Anyone arguing that it is not too large
simply is disconnected from any concept of deficits, realistic threats from
other militaries and/or how what we do actually mitigates the threat of global
terror. The idea that on one hand Romney
can claim to be for cutting the deficit and raising military spending rather
than addressing areas of massive sensible reductions since we are trying to end
our wars should be the discussion for both Obama and Romney. The lack of discussion focusing on the cult
of fear in America and the total insecurity to misconstrue such a discussion as
an attack service people, is ignored because it is political suicide.
The elephant in
the room that neither party wants to address is government-employee
defined-benefit pensions. The government
must transition to 403b or 401k style retirement plans for all employees on a
federal and state level as soon as possible.
This is what was done in the private sector over a decade ago. The vulnerability in this gap in the unfunded
pension and health care liabilities of every state in the union is the key cog
in the potential bankruptcies of states like California, Nevada, and
Illinois. You would think Romney would
be all over this, but it is probably a non-issue because it is too difficult
for the American people to grasp because it involves math, pension plan
accounting, the stock market, labor unions and labor laws. Unfortunately between the federal military
and state teachers, policeman, firemen, municipal employees and every government
office the impact on taxpayers is enormous.
The scariest part
is the unfunded liabilities do not even show up on the state or the federal
government’s books. The trillions in
debt we talk about on the federal level, does not include the Social Security
gap or the Medicare/Medicaid gap; it only includes what is currently due within
the upcoming fiscal period.
The other monster
is the Federal Reserve which artificially represses interest rates so our
federal and state deficits do not explode.
The manipulation of interest rates got us into this mess by not allowing
mortgage rates to be tied to lending risks, which is the number one cause of
the 2008 market crash led by the housing market spreading through securitized
mortgages to almost every investment vehicle on Wall Street.
We should be able
to talk about what actually happened, how the bottom line is America just has
to pay for shit we already bought and we are not getting any toys this
Christmas or our birthday for the next x number of years if we want to get out
of debt. Nobody can run on that
platform, because it sucks. It’s a
downer. So we get this bullshit, where
everybody has magical solutions and we avoid the evil words of Austerity
Measures like a foul European plague, when that is exactly what we need and
where we are heading.
Romney last night
transformed as centrist as he could. He
promised programs, benefits and tax cuts for the middle class, a strong
military; he mentioned women to not come across as a misogynist; he mentioned
God to not piss off the evangelicals; he claimed to be able to create jobs like
mushrooms after rainfall and that economic growth is a panacea.
He denied shit he
said to get through the Republican primaries like Saint Peter before the cock
crows three times or before the planet Kobold contacts him. Obama came out passive, knowing he has the
lead and trying not to be confrontational.
Hell, Obama did not bring up the 47 percent comments once. The guy was just taking jabs, playing it like
this was still the early rounds to see what Romney had left in him. This was politics before substance.
So you see when
it comes to economics, each side has its massive level of bullshit. You can decide who is more full of it and
where our best hope springs. The
sobering truth is the down times of 2008 were only the beginning, independent
of who was elected then or who will be elected now.
The aging of the
Baby Boomers and their inability to consider what will come after their time
has left Generation X unprepared to tackle the debt they are required to obtain
to achieve a basic education for a decent job and a decent mortgage. This has left America vulnerable. Jobs for low-skill low-IQ poor workers do not
exist that can make ends meet in today’s America. Those avenues are in India and China or are
left unfilled by the dysfunction of welfare not being a fully-digital system
restricted to prevent famine and homelessness.
This is exacerbated by the failed drug war which serves as a corrupt
jobs program for the poor and a funding-railroad to ever state, local, and
federal public safety budget.
The solutions are
labyrinths that do not fit in sound bites, but can fit in details on websites
of the candidates. So I invite you to
dive into the specificity in which each candidate addresses these real issues. There is a difference, however both are
severely flawed, primarily by the lines crossed and oaths each has taken to
achieve the pulpit of last night’s microphone.
Think.
Happy election
America!
No comments:
Post a Comment