I'll agree that GDP isn't really a gauge for how well the economy is or how well individuals are doing .... it's not really related. I think you are right here that its a consumer debt fueled economy , Just that it's not Trump's economy , Consumer debt has fueled the economy since at least Reagan and his trickle down economics - American Express was the first credit card - 1958 I believe. Real wages have been stagnant for 25 years really - Last 120 months inflation rate (10 years): 19.51% Wage Growth in the United States averaged 6.20 percent from 1960 until 2019. I think this is something that all of these candidates are overlooking .... wages aren't keeping up with inflation. An interesting statistic - This one is 1958-2019 Starting in 1958 Less than 40% of household income as debt to of over 90% in 2007-09 dropping to 74.9% today. As you can see on this charts below , household debt started climbing steadily after Reaganomics.. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/households-debt-to-gdp Then he's going at it like a monkey playing with a football. The way to that end is to demand companies spread the wealth by legislating a greater percentage of profits be distributed among workers rather than going to investors / CEO's. Employing 70M-80M Americans in government jobs that they cant be fired from and are not productive is .... counter productive. Productivity and efficiency are the keys to a successful economy. Profits are the incentive that makes our entire economy work , without the lure of profits there is no risk taking.
We have different views on what the American dream is - I've always reached for the highest rung on the ladder .... its just my nature. Pisses my wife off because I'm never satisfied with anything ... not with what I have or what I do or make - I can always do better or make it better. Now that I'm retired I put all this energy towards my art .... but no matter how spectacular a piece may be , I'm never satisfied. I'm not saying Bernie is going to strip us of our freedom but he is changing the values we hold. Exceptionalism matters. Personal responsibility matters. Pride in your work matters. Having a gubmint job that isn't productive , that you can't be fired from .... is none of the above. To me the American dream is not a little pink house with a white picket fence that looks like everyone else's .... My dream has always been bigger. My dream has always been exceptional .... and in America , if you chase it far enough you can catch it. You might have to take some risks along the way .... and you may fail often but the opportunities are there for the taking. Capitalism offers those risks and rewards. We just have to be willing to go out of our comfort zone to reach those rewards. Most of us aren't willing to do that , most appear content with working a 9-5 and the feeling of job security. Capitalism isn't the problem here , the problem is politicians being bought and sold to the highest bidder , giving these corporations unfair advantages , tax loopholes and both parties are guilty of it. The problem is corruption among our leaders plain and simple. I really don't see us as being far right of center at all. We're closer to the center today than at any time before in my opinion. The political rhetoric may be on the fringes but in terms of rights, liberties and social justice - we're not far from the center at all. You want far right - go back to the 70's .... that was a bad time to be a minority. Even the early 90's were worse than today , part of why I couldn't find a job in my field of study was being a "Breed" no matter my credentials. No one wanted to hire a stinkin injun in a business environment - You don't belong here go back to the reservation prairie n(gong)er. Political rhetoric .... yeah , its on the fringes , the media sensationalizes everything they can for clicks and views. The more dramatic they can make it , the more divisive the better. Our politicians are learning to do the same thing and being in an age of instant information makes it worse. Really most of us are fairly close politically with a few issues separating us (guns , abortion , immigration) but when you get right down to it , we're close on everything else , we generally want common sense laws that are fair - its the politicians and media who push to widen the gap. It benefits them. The same alarm gets raised when people bring right wing policies to the table - Just look at the pushback Trump faces now on policy , literally everything gets blown out of proportion , sensationalized. Problem is , they like it this way and they want the divide. Neither side wants to apply common sense idea's to fix a damn thing because fixing it neuters them. They need that divide to sway power. (Don't take that as me supporting Trump - the dude is a class AAA jackass and a childish one to boot) America aint perfect .... but its the closest country in the world to it. I don't want to change it a whole hell of a lot. I'd be content with undoing Citizens United and putting a watchdog group looking over the shoulders of our lawmakers so that they aren't selling legislation to the highest bidder or starting conflicts across the globe so Halliburton , Schlumberger , Exxon Mobile & Lockheed Martin and can make billions from the blood of our military. I don't want to do away with capitalism.
Yet those socialists countries have universal healthcare why can’t the US. I am sick of people telling us it is too expensive to have universal health. How come the greatest economy in the world can’t afford universal healthcare
I don't know if you've paid attention to my posts in the past but I'm for universal care - I just realize that isn't the only thing Bernie's talking about spending money on - In fact its only about 35T not the 90T that's in his plans. And that universal care could probably be covered in full with what we currently spend as a nation on health insurance. You guys aren't looking at the big picture - just a single issue.
Huh.... thats weird. It was a Seinfeld current day twitter account I follow. They did the curb your enthusiasm outro for the moment when Warren waxed the floor with Bloomberg, and the zoom in look on his face was priceless.
On innovation, let’s said innovation is highly sensitive to future market size and future revenue (there are economic studies that said this). The market size will increase with M4A. The revenue is a question and estimate ranges widely - fair to said that it could be the same between M4A vs current system. Based on this, innovation should stay about the same or potentially even increase based on increased future market size and revenue. Let said innovation is also highly sensitive to profit margin (pretty common sense that it does). The consume electronic (pc, phone, tv, ...) is highly innovative but with a much lower margin than the health industry. Eg. PC margin has decreased drastically over the year and is now in the single digit - 3 to 5%. Yet over that time, innovation has increase. This suggest that companies will go after any profit as long as there is a profit. There are other reasons for this but I’m just touching on the overall high level number. We can look here at home for examples. All senior are eligible for Medicare. The lower payment for Medicare yet large market share means what to innovation? Just look at drugs, medical procedures and devices for senior. This is indication of strong innovation for a nearly all Medicare population. Yes, innovation is a concern but I think it absolutely can continue to be strong within a M4A system. In fact there is a chance that it can be stronger and more meaningful. Instead of just innovating for the pocket, a M4A that incentive meaningful and better health outcome would focus innovation toward that. As we see improvement in health outcome, we would all be willing to pay more (more taxes) to continue to fuel that innovation engine that is laser focus on our health. To me, that’s a knob that could be tuned regularly to maximize innovation vs cost vs health outcome. I will respond to your other big question separately.
I just want to point out that the American Express card wasn’t a credit card in the sense you are making it out to be. Yes, you could charge a variety of things on it, with a huge caveat. You got a bill and had to pay for the charges at the end of the month. All of it. It was a convenience card, so that you didn’t have to carry around a lot of cash. More like an ATM card, which wasn’t available then, to my knowledge. I’m very familiar with this subject because I had an American Express card starting back in the 1960’s. They didn’t offer an actual credit card until fairly recently.
I agree with most of this so I won't have a really long response. A lot of us (Sanders supporters) don't want to get rid of capitalism, we just don't want it dictating certain areas of our lives because we've seen how that works out for us and we believe Sanders is sincere about doing so. You get for-profit prisons that get a little too eager to put people in jail for cheap labor. You get for-profit schools that get a little too eager to charge students for degrees they can't use. You get for-profit healthcare that get a little too eager to deny patients the care they need. You get for-profit outlook on the environment that doesn't care what goes into your drinking water or whats happening to the planet. I think a lot of us are just pointing out that some areas, it doesn't work, and in some areas socialist policies DO work because maybe some things shouldn't be left to the greed of people who at the end of the day are looking at stats and numbers and cents, and not people. Also, you are 100% right on citizens united, 100%...and you know something? Only one side wants to get rid of it or do anything about it. The other side is completely fine with it. Bernie and Warren have made it clear, hell, really every DNC candidate stance on it is that it needs to be overturned. Someone can correct me there, we did have like 50 people run this past year. I'm sure Tulsi or something took some odd 'for and against' centrist stance with it or something...but my point is only one side is trying to change it and it really is at the heart of everything...and I know you said you'd never vote for Bernie, but if Bernie wins and it is Bernie v Trump only one guy is going to do anything about Citizens united. Trump will just appoint another right wing judge and we will never get rid of it until 50 years from now. For-profit politicians is a good way to ruin a country. We have way too many corporate interests whispering into the ear of our politicians that a lot of them just don't work for the people anymore I will say Sanders policies are radical but I do really believe that the Democratic party isn't as far gone as the GOP. The GOP is lockstep behind Trump, all Trump opposers are not in office any more, just don't hold power anymore. There is Amash I guess, he's still a conservative, maybe there's another member of congress I'm not aware of... On the blue side? We have several senators that would openly break with Sanders, Manchin and Sinema are about as moderate as you can get without just being conservatives. Then you have 'neo-liberals' that will try to slow him down every step of the way in the house and in the senate. Democrats will not be lock-step behind whoever they elect if they win the white house, so Sanders isn't going to get anything so radical done, neither do I think he wants to. I think Sanders just wants to improve the living conditions of people and he sees how these policies work around the world and wonders why can't America have a piece of that? I wonder the same thing.
A lot of truth to that, but Bernie felt burned. There was talk of how the super delegates would sway the election to Hillary prior to the convention. He probably feels that swayed votes. Regardless of last election, those same delegates can certainly work against him this election. He may well go into the convention with a significant lead over everyone else, yet have the nomination given to someone else. Would you disagree with that?
Classic example of the free lunch fallacy. Do you think M4All is really free? Or do you think people have to pay for it? How would I (and many others like me) not benefit from M4All? By paying more in taxes for less freedom of choice. Paying more for less is generally not a benefit.
It isn't less freedom of choice. Are you free to choose your plan now or do you get it from your employer? Does your plan allow you to choose a doctor or are you penalized for going out of network? On top of those limited choices, you have to pay deductibles and premiums. With M4A all of the doctors and hospitals would be in Network. So you would have a greater choice of which doctors to visit.
Most innovation especially innovation that is seen as 10-15 years away from a sufficient way for monetization occurs through public funding. High risk innovation doesn't really happen much in the private sector. Shareholders care about quarterly profits and therefore won't approve of research that might be 10 years away from monotization. The United States merely being the most wealthy nation and having the largest sum of money going into public research is probably why you see the most innovation in the US. https://other98.com/taxpayers-fund-pharma-research-development/ Obviously private corporations are involved in R&D. Usually the R&D is over research that started in the public sector and the company decided the underlying research is close enough where they can see it being monotized in a couple of years so they will spend the couple of years finding ways to monotized the underlying research. Pharmaceutical companies just siphon off of the work of public researchers.
Yes, I would disagree with that. Major reforms were enacted in June of 2018 by the Democratic Party. In a near unanimous vote, it was agreed that the super-delegates would not be allowed to vote for who would be the presidential nominee on the first ballot. After the first ballot, they are free to vote for whoever they care to. This is huge. Why? There hasn’t been a nominee of the Democratic Party as their candidate for president that didn’t win on the 1st ballot since 1952. Superdelegates can vote for the VP on the 1st ballot, but that’s a formality, since the presidential nominee has always had his or her pick for VP approved after he/she wins the nomination. I’ll add one other thing that the 2018 reforms added. The candidate for president, whoever that may be, has to declare his or herself a member of the Democratic Party. In writing. This is something I strongly support. I don’t buy Bernie’s excuses for waiting a month to endorse Hillary in 2016. It was a colossal mistake, in my opinion, but my concern is 2020. I’m supporting whoever wins the nomination. I hope it isn’t Bernie, but we’ll see. The voters will decide.
It’s pretty simple... all those countries spent decades or generations developing or tinkering with their systems. It’s just naive and unrealistic to expect rapid change as there are a lot of details that need to be worked.
None of this has anything to do with what Major posted. If you think quality of care and wait times are not gonna change and everything will just be better under M4A you are really naive. The idea of losing your plan is real and will affect millions of people and not all for the better.
Why should we believe other 98 or this Alexander guy? He is definitely biased which you have such issues with.
We agree on most of this but shouldn't Bernie do things to sway the people who disagree with him and not demonize everybody who disagrees with him? Maybe not personally but reign in his supporters?
He definitely should. In the end he'll have to compromise if he's elected. One thing I'll add is we have to be careful too. It's fair to criticize progressive media Bernie Supporters as we know them. Like Cenk and Sam Seder and people like that...but when it comes to people on twitter and stuff we have to be aware that they could be Russian trying to play on the divide.
