On Oct 19, 11:23*pm, BobR wrote:
On Oct 18, 10:01*pm, wrote:





On Tue, 18 Oct 2011 16:23:21 -0400, "Robert Green"

wrote:
wrote in message
.. .
stuff snipped

The economy was not as much "looted" as it was artificially inflated
with easy money and subsequently that bubble popped.
The "trillions" that disappeared from the economy never really existed
in the first place. There were 20 years of bad political decisions
that led up to that. There is plenty of blame to spread around. Wall
Street was just doing what the government told them to do.

I respectfully submit that may be backwards. *I think it was the government
that was doing what Wall St. told it to do. *The system was set up so that
Wall St. made money even when a house was sold to someone who probably
couldn't make the payments. *They got fees, commissions and more fees.
Sadly, the states made loads of money in real estate transfer fees, real
estate taxes, etc.

They were trying to stimulate the economy and what is forgotten here
is the guy who sold the land made money, the builder made money, all
of the contractors made money, everyone in the building supply chain
made money, the real estate broker made money and the mortgage broker
made money. That is a lot of money moving around. It wasn't just Wall
Street. All Wall Street did was create the money in the first place.

Wall Street didn't create any money, they simply provided a vehicle
for exchange.

The losers were the last person to own the house and the people who
held the loans when the music stopped. The derivative holders were
made whole by TARP and everyone involved in the house before the crash
took their money and ran.

For the most part there were no innocent bystanders. *Many many years
ago I learned a very valuable lesson about gambling. *Got into a
blackjack game on base while in the Air Force. *It was a weekend game
with a set time to start and end. *When it ended, you settled up and
took your winnings or your loss and went home. *I knew what the rules
were when I started playing but like so many others I believed I could
beat the odds and so I started writing IOU's. *The game was scheduled
to end at 6AM on Sunday morning. *At 4am Sunday morning I was down
several hundred dollars that I didn't have and based on my pay l would
never be able to get. *My gut felt like it was being ripped out but I
continued to play knowing that if I tried to leave I would have to
settle before I could leave. *The stars were out for me that morning
or my prayers were answered because by 6am I had recovered my debts
and walked away with about $5.

I learned more from that experience than to not play blackjack. *I
learned that everything is a calculated gamble and that if you put up
more than you can afford to lose the odds are going to be against you
in the long run. *People bought houses that were well beyond their
needs and their means. *The lure was that if anything went wrong, they
could simply sell the house in an ever expanding market, take the
money and continue on. *I didn't buy into that line back in the 70's
and I sure didn't buy into it in the 00's. *This bust was driven by
every segment of our population from the young couple trying to fill a
house they didn't need with funiture bought on the credit card to the
CEO's of the largest companies who shuffled money like it was never
going to end.

I don't place the total blame on the Government, Wall Street,
Corporations, or Joe the Plumber but all of them in total. *The
problem for all of them was the same as it was for me in that poker
game, I essentially printed money I didn't have in the form of IOU's
which had they come due would have ended up breaking me (arm, leg,
etc.) *Who knew that a lesson learned over 40 years ago would still be
protecting me today?- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Exactly so.

On Oct 19, 11:34*pm, BobR wrote:
On Oct 19, 3:02*am, harry wrote:





On Oct 19, 12:03*am, BobR wrote:

On Oct 18, 12:00*pm, harry wrote:

On Oct 18, 5:02*pm, BobR wrote:

On Oct 17, 10:13*pm, RicodJour wrote:

On Oct 17, 10:34*pm, BobR wrote:

On Oct 17, 10:39*am, RicodJour wrote:

One more question - when you're wandering around lost do you slow
down, maybe ask for directions, look for landmarks, and generally take
your time to decide on the best direction?

Or do you just keep wandering around lost and hope for the best?

One question for you...why were you wandering around in the first
place. *Maybe it's the pilot training but even before I became a pilot
I always had a plan and charted my course in advance. * Could it be
that the main problem is that too many have just set off without a
plan, with no set destination, and ended up going in circles.

And if your plan sucked, you got lost. *What happens if it wasn't your
plan, and you were just along for the ride?

If you make a plan with a definate goal and stay the course then you
have little to complain about. *If it wasn't your plan then get your
own, just being along for the ride is your choice.

Do you feel the current economic plan is working? *Social plan? *How's
the war going (pick one)?

My current economic plan is working and so is my social plan. *The
plan and the goal were set a long time ago and while there have been
some detours along the way, the plan and goal are still on track.

How many people around you are voicing their opinion that things are
just dandy? *I'm guessing not one.

You would be guessing wrong which is the real issue when people start
claiming they represent the 99%. *They DON"T.

Things have to change. *That much is clear. *So we can all start
pulling our oars any damn old way, or we can pick a plan and pull in
unison.

Working in unison almost always starts with stopping calling people
names and listening.

I can agree with that but must also include taking responsibility for
yourself first before attempting to direct others. *The one thing that
has been obvious from all the news coverage and interviews is that
everyone is demanding that they get this and they get that but not one
seems to be willing to give anything in return.

R- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

But their future have been stolen. *That's their complaint.
Theeconomy has been looted with the connivance of politicians and the
"investment banks.

What they are really complaining about is that they have suddenly
discovered that it ain't as easy as they want and that ****es them
off. *Their future hasn't been stolen at all but it might just mean
that they actually have to work for it instead of having it handed to
them on a silver and glod platter. *The damn economy is now and has
always been an up and down moving target. *Everybody thinks it will
always go up with out end and without the occasional correction. *They
get greedy and start betting on making a killing in the market or land
or some other wild bet. *You gamble, you may win or you may loose.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

That is not how normal people live.
We now have a rich elite and thay gamble and if they win they keep. If
they lose they coming running to the taxpayer.-

Sorry, but that is a bunch of crap. *It was far from just the rich
elite that went running to the big daddy government for handouts. *It
was all up and down the ladder and everyone with something to lose was
in line, just some got more than others and some got nothing at all.
Take the unions at GM, they got a huge share in the company while all
the stockholders who may have depended on the income from their stock
for a living got NOTHING. *All the 401k and retirement funds who had
stakes in GM got nothing. *The pain was not evenly distributed and
neither was the payoff.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

The one that got the handouts were the ones that paid/were likely to
pay for political campaigns. In the UK pension funds are ring fenced.
Since this business.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maxwell

On Oct 20, 1:55*am, RicodJour wrote:
On Oct 19, 6:41 pm, "
wrote:





On Oct 19, 4:25 pm, RicodJour wrote:
On Oct 19, " wrote:

Well said and excellent points. *I've said for a long time that
what we need to do is get free market principles applied to
healthcare. *We should be asking the question if free markets
can supply corn flakes, cars, and even life or auto insurance
at reasonable prices, what's wrong with healthcare?

I'd say that it's people's view of healthcare. *That and lawyers.
Both the ones chasing ambulances and the ones chasing campaign
contributions.

I'd like to see a committee put together with some top business
CEOs, like Andy Grove, Jack Welch, etc to research it and
figure out what exactly is wrong and how we can fix it.

Instead, we just created another big govt progrm that is
going to do nothing to stop spiraling costs. *Those costs
are ultimately still going to be paid by most of us, either
directly or through taxes.

If Grove and Welch's investigation turned up a report that said that
insurance is a basic need for all people, and as such a nationwide
program was required (broken up into smaller administration groups/
regions/whatever), and that a national/state per capita tax was
required to pay for it, would you be okay with that?

Unlike many conservatives, I don't have a problem with the
govt requiring mandatory healthcare coverage for everyone.
I do have a problem with the way it's being done under
Obamacare.

Fair enough. *How do you think the Supreme Court will divide on the
issue?

My reasoning goes like this. *The only free market solution to
not having universal healthcare coverage and the burden
not being placed unfairly on taxpayers is to refuse to
treat people who can't pay.

That smacks of NIMBY and I've-Got-Mine-Tough-On-You. *To make it fair
all the way around, I'd extend that to include refusing healthcare
coverage to people that can pay, but who are so old and/or ill that it
is simply a useless extension of life. *Check out the statistics on
end of life surgery and procedures. *The amount spent is absurd.
Nobody is supposed to live forever.


I think you'll change your tune when you get a bit older and someone
wants to chuck YOU on the scrap heap.

On Thu, 20 Oct 2011 01:46:41 -0700 (PDT), harry wrote:

On Oct 19, 10:18*pm, "Stormin Mormon"
wrote:
That's my observation, also. Libs tend to be free floating
bundle of outrage, with few specifics and no clues.

--
Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
*www.lds.org
.

wrote in message

...

Ive seen libs asked a simple question and have yet to see
one give an answer. *A rich guy makes $100. *How much
of that should govt take?

Gee, I thought Robert would know how the rich are taxed.
He's the one always bitching about it. *But, apparently he's
as clueless about that as everything else. *Typical lib, all
emotion, no facts.

So the Palin cow is an intellectual?

Next to you? What a silly question.

On Oct 20, 5:21 am, harry wrote:
On Oct 20, 1:55 am, RicodJour wrote:

That smacks of NIMBY and I've-Got-Mine-Tough-On-You. To make it fair
all the way around, I'd extend that to include refusing healthcare
coverage to people that can pay, but who are so old and/or ill that it
is simply a useless extension of life. Check out the statistics on
end of life surgery and procedures. The amount spent is absurd.
Nobody is supposed to live forever.

I think you'll change your tune when you get a bit older and someone
wants to chuck YOU on the scrap heap.

Allow me to properly parse what you wrote so I may address each psuedo-
concept you raise.

"I think"
That's an automatic non-starter as you don't think - you only react
based on your limited knowledge and pre-conceived notions. You define
the knee-jerk armchair quarterback curmudgeon.

"you'll change your tune"
For better or worse, as many on this newsgroup can attest, I am
remarkably consistent. If someone presents better information, I will
incorporate that into my viewpoint. I will not ignore valid
information. You have yet to provide any information that isn't
colored with the blackest bile. I am only human and tune such things
out as invalid. Negativity begets negativity. You many notice this
when people in your own family are humming while you are talking.

"when you get a bit older"
Most likely my life is between 50% (very optimistic) and 99.9% (watch
out for that bus!) over. Frankly I'm okay with either one. I'm
really curious to see "what's on the other side", but I am also really
curious to see what the future has in store.

"and someone wants to chuck YOU on the scrap heap."
I'll be diving onto the scrap heap if it comes to that. I don't want
to live forever. My sister is a geriatric counselor, and most of my
family has been involved in the medical industry - I know what
prolonging life is about, and that's not for me. When the quality of
life gets bad enough, I'll take myself out of the equation. I don't
view that as such a big deal and not something to be horrified about.
When it's time, I'll mosey along.

R

On Oct 20, 6:10 am, harry wrote:

A dollar bill is just a piece of paper. It has no intrinsic worth.
The only things with worth are objects, ideas and commodities.

If I think your ideas are worth **** - sorry, I shouldn't have said if
- then they have no worth. If some poor deluded soul thinks your
brand of hate-mongering has value, well then, to them it does have
value.

A dollar bill is no different than a check or wampum for that matter.
If people agree to its value, than that's the value it has.

The issue you should be raising, but can't see for the bile building
up behind your eyeballs, is that an artificially-rigged value is not
agreed upon. This is done all the time in currency and also on the
worth of an idea.

R

On Oct 19, 3:06*am, harry wrote:
On Oct 19, 12:15*am, BobR wrote:





On Oct 18, 12:58*pm, wrote:

On Tue, 18 Oct 2011 10:00:10 -0700 (PDT), harry
wrote:

On Oct 18, 5:02*pm, BobR wrote:

But their future have been stolen. *That's their complaint.
Theeconomy has been looted with the connivance of politicians and the
"investment banks".

The economy was not as much "looted" as it was artificially inflated
with easy money and subsequently that bubble popped.

As it has many times before and due to ignorance and greed it will
again.

The "trillions" that disappeared from the economy never really existed
in the first place. There were 20 years of bad political decisions
that led up to that. There is plenty of blame to spread around. Wall
Street was just doing what the government told them to do. Create a
booming housing market among buyers who were too broke to actually
afford houses.. It was the government that operated Fannie, Freddie,
The Federal Reserve and who repealed virtually all of the New Deal
regulation. You could not have had the derivatives without the CFMA of
2000.

It's like saying that Bill Gates is worth n-billion dollars based on
the paper value of his stock. *Sounds good but if Gates decided to try
and cash in all of that stock his billions would evaporate pretty
quickly. *The same is true in the housing market and any other market
that you can name. *The value is totally dependent on what people are
willing to pay and if they suddenly decide they can't pay as much, the
market is going to go down. *It can almost be guaranteed that any
market that goes up to fast, or goes up continously for too long is
headed for a crash unless there is some true growth to drive that
market. *There was no real growth driving the housing market and like
it did in the 70's, the speculation reached a saturation point and
down it came. *The banks might have made it easier than it should have
been but they were obviously just as stupid as were the public that
was buying more than they knew they could afford in the belief it was
easy money.

It was when they could sell their worthless loans to someone else.
(Including the EU/UK banks.)
It was all part of a plan. They knew what they were about.
But what goes around comes around.-

So which banks were part of the plan and which were dups? If the
banks were part of the plan as you call it, then they were also the
dups. Your view is way too narrow and the blame is much wider than
your vision.

On Oct 20, 3:56*am, harry wrote:
On Oct 19, 11:03*pm, BobR wrote:





On Oct 19, 3:06*am, harry wrote:

On Oct 19, 12:15*am, BobR wrote:

On Oct 18, 12:58*pm, wrote:

On Tue, 18 Oct 2011 10:00:10 -0700 (PDT), harry
wrote:

On Oct 18, 5:02*pm, BobR wrote:

But their future have been stolen. *That's their complaint.
Theeconomy has been looted with the connivance of politicians and the
"investment banks".

The economy was not as much "looted" as it was artificially inflated
with easy money and subsequently that bubble popped.

As it has many times before and due to ignorance and greed it will
again.

The "trillions" that disappeared from the economy never really existed
in the first place. There were 20 years of bad political decisions
that led up to that. There is plenty of blame to spread around. Wall
Street was just doing what the government told them to do. Create a
booming housing market among buyers who were too broke to actually
afford houses.. It was the government that operated Fannie, Freddie,
The Federal Reserve and who repealed virtually all of the New Deal
regulation. You could not have had the derivatives without the CFMA of
2000.

It's like saying that Bill Gates is worth n-billion dollars based on
the paper value of his stock. *Sounds good but if Gates decided to try
and cash in all of that stock his billions would evaporate pretty
quickly. *The same is true in the housing market and any other market
that you can name. *The value is totally dependent on what people are
willing to pay and if they suddenly decide they can't pay as much, the
market is going to go down. *It can almost be guaranteed that any
market that goes up to fast, or goes up continously for too long is
headed for a crash unless there is some true growth to drive that
market. *There was no real growth driving the housing market and like
it did in the 70's, the speculation reached a saturation point and
down it came. *The banks might have made it easier than it should have
been but they were obviously just as stupid as were the public that
was buying more than they knew they could afford in the belief it was
easy money.

It was when they could sell their worthless loans to someone else.
(Including the EU/UK banks.)
It was all part of a plan. They knew what they were about.
But what goes around comes around

Its rather difficult to sell something when there are no buyers.
Someone was buying because they thought they could make something from
it. *Someone was investing because they thought they could make
something from it. *The real problem came from the fact that too many
wanted to believe what they wanted to believe without analysis and
they paid the price. *I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who
lost their shirt while trying to screw someone else.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

All the **** was/is being *unloaded onto the taxpayer. (eg "bad loan
banks")

Bull Crap. The taxpayers were the investors and the investors were
the taxpayers. The real issue is that the ultimate load will be on
our children.

The credit/rating agencies were all part of the crooked deal. *They
were incentivised to give good ratings what turned out to be crap. *It
was all planned and organised by crooks in the financial system.
These are the heads that need to be on poles.


And so were the people who put money in the banks, the homebuyers who
over extended themselves, the real estate agents who pushed to sell
you a more expensive home, the list is endless.

On Thu, 20 Oct 2011 12:03:10 -0400, wrote:

On Thu, 20 Oct 2011 01:41:19 -0700 (PDT), harry
wrote:

It was on RTTV that it is perfectly legal for congressmen in the USA
to do insider trading.
Is this correct?

The accepted policy is that elected officials put their investments
into a blind trust but I am not sure it is the law.

I believe it's only the President and Vice President who (are required to?) do
this. Senators and Representatives certainly don't.

That does not keep them from having their cousin or friends doing the
trading tho.
More troubling is the un elected officials who shuttle back and forth
from regulating an industry to working in it. Guys like Geithner and
Paulson spring to mind.
Why was anyone shocked that the former CEO of Goldman Sachs made sure
Goldman got bailed out and Lehman was allowed to fail.

Was anyone?

On Oct 20, 10:37*am, RicodJour wrote:
On Oct 20, 5:21 am, harry wrote:

On Oct 20, 1:55 am, RicodJour wrote:

That smacks of NIMBY and I've-Got-Mine-Tough-On-You. *To make it fair
all the way around, I'd extend that to include refusing healthcare
coverage to people that can pay, but who are so old and/or ill that it
is simply a useless extension of life. *Check out the statistics on
end of life surgery and procedures. *The amount spent is absurd.
Nobody is supposed to live forever.

I think you'll change your tune when you get a bit older and someone
wants to chuck YOU on the scrap heap.

Allow me to properly parse what you wrote so I may address each psuedo-
concept you raise.

"I think"
That's an automatic non-starter as you don't think - you only react
based on your limited knowledge and pre-conceived notions. *You define
the knee-jerk armchair quarterback curmudgeon.

"you'll change your tune"
For better or worse, as many on this newsgroup can attest, I am
remarkably consistent. *If someone presents better information, I will
incorporate that into my viewpoint. *I will not ignore valid
information. *You have yet to provide any information that isn't
colored with the blackest bile. *I am only human and tune such things
out as invalid. *Negativity begets negativity. *You many notice this
when people in your own family are humming while you are talking.

"when you get a bit older"
Most likely my life is between 50% (very optimistic) and 99.9% (watch
out for that bus!) over. *Frankly I'm okay with either one. *I'm
really curious to see "what's on the other side", but I am also really
curious to see what the future has in store.

"and someone wants to chuck YOU on the scrap heap."
I'll be diving onto the scrap heap if it comes to that. *I don't want
to live forever. *My sister is a geriatric counselor, and most of my
family has been involved in the medical industry - I know what
prolonging life is about, and that's not for me. *When the quality of
life gets bad enough, I'll take myself out of the equation. *I don't
view that as such a big deal and not something to be horrified about.
When it's time, I'll mosey along.

R

BUT...You THINK you know what is best for everyone else now and in the
future. If you want to dive into the scrap heap that is just fine but
don't push your views on the rest of society, especially not me.

On Oct 20, 10:54*am, wrote:
On Thu, 20 Oct 2011 01:36:41 -0700 (PDT), harry
wrote:

Freemarket has failed. Haven't you noticed?

No I haven't.
The airports are still packed, I still see plenty of new cars on the
road, the snow birds are coming back and there are starting to be hour
waits to get into a restaurant. It sure looks like more than 1% of the
population to me.
We have the fattest "poor" people in the history of mankind.

Have you noticed that all those poor OWS people are walking around
with cell phones, $100 sneakers and designer jeans all made in foreign
countries while whining about why there aren't more jobs here? I
might be a bit more impressed if they showed their anger by smashing
those smart phones and ditching the designer jeans for some American
made products. What? No American made products, then just ditch them
until there are OR SHUT THE F UP.

wrote in message
...
On Wed, 19 Oct 2011 15:47:20 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

wrote in message
.. .

They were trying to stimulate the economy and what is forgotten here
is the guy who sold the land made money, the builder made money, all
of the contractors made money, everyone in the building supply chain
made money, the real estate broker made money and the mortgage broker
made money. That is a lot of money moving around. It wasn't just Wall
Street. All Wall Street did was create the money in the first place.

Again, respectfully disagree. They were the ones that were rolling up
good
mortgages with bad ones and then selling them off to investors,
collecting
fat fees and passing the seriously underrated risk onto the purchasers of
those collateralized debt obligations who couldn't even tell what they
had
bought and were unable to remove the bad debts from the ones likely to be
repaid. We've had real estate bubbles before but they never got anywhere
near as bad because in the past, there were no CDO's made up out of
rolled
up mortgages in the picture.

The flaw was that most people actually believed real estate would
always go up.

Agreed. Sort of like the premise that a college degree will always lead to
a better job with more pay and why so many kids are going so deep in debt
with loans that don't even have a house to foreclose on. This bubble could
be even worse than the housing bubble if it ends up that we're shedding so
many jobs to overseas and to robots that the job market will continue to
shrink and shrink.

The bad loans go all the way back to the point when they would allow
people to borrow 125% of the value of their house in an equity loan
(the Carter administration)

When mortgage lenders ran out of safe loans to make, they wandered off into
the dark forest of subprime loans where some very nasty Orcs with long,
shiny knives were waiting for them.

The derivative holders were
made whole by TARP and everyone involved in the house before the crash
took their money and ran.

I can't speak to how "whole" the derivative holders were made, but I will
agree that they probably made out a lot better as a class than the poor
shmoes who bought at the height of the market. My belief that they
weren't
made completely whole stems from the multi-billion dollar lawsuits still
in
progress against the sellers of the CDO's.

FWIW, the homeowner across the street that rented out to crack dealers
spent
his entire inheritance buying a house for $450K at the market peak that's
now worth about $300K and became so desperate for renters that he took
Section 8 clients. They destroyed his house and it's vacant again and
when
people come by and ask who lived there before they run. It's
unfortunately
not unusual for previous drug sellers and buyers to come back looking for
the previous tenants, sometimes with a grudge to settle.


That is really not bad. The house around the corner from me sold for
$455k in 2004, was immediately refinanced for $505k and just sold at
auction for $152.6k

It makes me sorta sick to think about. But I saw some of my pension holds
dip as deep. Fortunately they came back up, indicating the relative
soundness of the companies those holdings were in. Homes that rose in value
from $150 to 450K aren't showing anywhere near the rebound. My take on the
current market is that the only people selling are those forced to sell by
death, divorce or some other equally traumatic reason. The homes in the DC
didn't have nearly the big swings that other cities did. We've always been
a pretty expensive place to live.

--
Bobby G.

wrote in message
...

stuff snipped

More troubling is the un elected officials who shuttle back and forth
from regulating an industry to working in it. Guys like Geithner and
Paulson spring to mind.
Why was anyone shocked that the former CEO of Goldman Sachs made sure
Goldman got bailed out and Lehman was allowed to fail.

I have friends who work(ed) at the World Bank. They make you sign so many
forms that tell you the tax liabilities of working for them that it's
*inconceivable* that Tax Cheatin' Tim had no idea he had to pay taxes on
that income. Illegal domestics pale in comparison to letting a tax cheat
run the Treasury. I was stunned that Obama appointed him and even more
stunned the Republicans let it slide. The only thing I can think of is that
they ALL have loads of unreported income like Charles "foreign income
counts?" Rangel.

The "Goldman lives, Lehman dies" bullshi+ was outrageous and proof that the
main stream media is totally asleep. If there's no sex angle or American
Idol/DWTS connection they're not interested. It kills me to see Google news
report AI and DWTS stories ranking higher than a great deal of *important*
national news.

--
Bobby G.

"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message news:VoGdnc6Ne-
In article ,
"Robert Green" wrote:

Having the goverment operate as one of the insurers in a pool of many
has
the potential to keep costs in line far better than anything short of
going
back to having no insurance at all. It would provide a baseline for
comparison and I believe would keep costs better in line. I think
that's
true primarily because of how the insurers squawked at the "public
option."
On one hand, they say the Federal government is incompetent in
everything it
does, then, on the other hand they claim they would be seriously
undercut by
the government's massive negotiating power. Which is it, health
insurers?

That isn't how it worked here. Indeed, with MCare paying about 60
cents for every dollar the Mean Old Insurance companies pay for similar
diagnosis (and MCaid less 50 cents) I would submit that government is
actually ADDING to costs by cost shifting.

So then why were insurers raising holy hell about the public option?
Something doesn't add up unless the premiums are wildly different, which I
suspect they are. Not allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices the way
TriCare does might have something to do with their bad overall performance.
If MCare pays more, why do so many doctors balk at accepting MCare patients?

Perhaps insurance should be limited to true, bankrupting disasters and
not
for routine office visits.


I would submit (I've doing that a lot lately) that is exactly why
what we have now can't be called insurance. Insurance is generally
defined as taking a rare but costly risk and spreading it out among a
bunch of people. Health insurance as currently structured takes a minor
risk (going to a doctor, etc). Can you imagine the cost of your
homeowners if it included routine maintenance as payout?

Good point. That's the ghost of WWII and wage controls. We got into a
crazy system (as we do with a lot of things) and then it grew like kudzu
vines until we were completely trapped in it.

--
Bobby G.

On Oct 20, 4:54*pm, wrote:
On Thu, 20 Oct 2011 01:36:41 -0700 (PDT), harry
wrote:

Freemarket has failed. Haven't you noticed?

No I haven't.
The airports are still packed, I still see plenty of new cars on the
road, the snow birds are coming back and there are starting to be hour
waits to get into a restaurant. It sure looks like more than 1% of the
population to me.
We have the fattest "poor" people in the history of mankind.

You know it's failed when the capitalists come runnning to the
taxpayer with their begging bowls.

The fat are fat because they eat ****. (Cheap and nasty food) eg
hamburgers.

On Oct 21, 6:23*am, "Robert Green" wrote:
"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message

...





In article ,
*"Robert Green" wrote:

* *You said much more of the wealthy's incomes derive not from
paychecks
and them went on to suggest this was a bad comparison (how much of
income taxes the top 1% pay. I merely stated that this was a
nonsensical
argument since the figures were based on total income reported which
has
very little do with paychecks. It takes into account the different
rates
for cap gains as an example.

Much better, although not totally correct. *There's a physical limit to
the
amount of money you can make by the sweat of your brow. *Investment
income
has no such limitation. *That's an important distinction between the
upper
and lower classes.
Not only is it NOT an important distinction, in this context it is
totally.

Totally what? *I can't keep debating you if "you no speaka de english." *I
assume these discussions get you pretty riled up by the number of errors
that keep creeping in.

You are looking at total income from all sources and the taxes
thereon when you look at effective rates. The discussion is how much
income and what part of that goes to taxes.

Well, that's how *you* want to frame the discussion but I'm not going along
for the ride.

Of course that's how a reasonable person would frame the discussion.
Figure out how much people in the various income brackets are paying
in taxes of all kinds. Exactly what is your problem with doing that?
And why is it that many of us give you facts and figures, such as
those
that show the top 1% are paying 40% of the income burden, but all
you ever have is emotion, with no facts?



*Here's why the distinction is important, again borrowed from
Nobel laureate Paul Krugman:

The budget office's numbers show that the federal tax burden has fallen
for all income classes, which itself runs counter to the rhetoric you hear
from the usual suspects. But that burden has fallen much more, as a
percentage of income, for the wealthy. Partly this reflects big cuts in top
income tax rates, but, beyond that, there has been a major shift of taxation
away from wealth and toward work: tax rates on corporate profits, capital
gains and dividends have all fallen, while the payroll tax - the main tax
paid by most workers - has gone up.

Which as usual doens't support your claim.



So at least one world class economist (and I) believe that there is a VERY
important distinction about how that income is earned. *Workers are getting
hit harder than people who earn passive income. *The burden shifts from the
wealthiest, who make much of their income just from having money, to the
middle and lower class who typically have a very small percent of their
income derived from investments.

Krugman goes on to say:

According to new estimates by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center,
one-fourth of those with incomes of more than $1 million a year pay income
and payroll tax of 12.6 percent of their income or less, putting their tax
burden below that of many in the middle class.

Instead of listening to a guy that's one nut short of being a
communist,
why not look at the actual data, for the Tax Polic Center,
which clearly shows that the higner
the income level, the higher the taxes paid:

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfa...66&Topic2id=48



This is another case of the illusion of our nation having the highest
corporate tax rate in the world on paper but the truth is that GE and lots
of other companies pay little or no taxes and actually get taxes back. *It
just boggles my mind that people who despise welfare for citizens just look
the other way when huge corporation get checks from the treasury, and for a
lot more than any single welfare recipient. *Or 10,000 of them.

Govt checks? Are we back to the TARP LOANS again? The loans
where the govt has already been paid back most of the money and
will likely recover almost all of it?

As for some companies not paying their fare share of taxes, I agree
that should be looked into. But before you go off the rails, it might
be worthwhile to look at how GE paid no taxes. I have not looked at
it in detail, but from what I understand it's a whole combination of
things. Everything from carrovers of losses from prior years, to
losses in businesses in the current year, to tax credits for renewable
energy. You give credits, they get used, isn't that what the govt
wants? As for getting rid of those credits and closing the loopholes,
that's a postion many of the Republican candidates propose.
Make the tax rate lower and close the loopholes.




The top 1% has a higher effective rate of taxes than any other group.

That's the "oh the rate is so high for the uber rich" but as Warren Buffet
has shown, that's just on paper too.

No, it;s not just on paper, go look at the link I provided above.
The rich are paying higher rates. Yes, there are some like
Buffet, but he's the exception.




*With all the tax shelters and other
games the super wealthy can play, that "higher effect rate" is just a
political theater to make the middle class citizen feel better about paying
more in taxes than some of the uber rich.

If itls a higher effective rate then it's real, not some illusion.






* *The problem is they are already paying their share, and part of
mine,
and a bit of yours. If they were really ripping off the poor, their
shares of taxes paid and income would be a lot closer. If the
hyperventilation crowd was correct, they would paying LESS than their
part of the income stream, not double.

But that's what progressive taxation all about. *(-:
* * And according to the OECD figures I spouted numerous times, we not
only have the most progressive system among the developed world but take
a higher %age of total taxes from the top (in this case) 10% than any
other developed country except one.

We are the world's most powerful country. *We maintain a military so large
that no other country comes remotely near us in military strength. *We are
the leader of the free world. *That kind of stuff costs money.

So does all the social programs and they consume twice the budget
of the Dept of Defense.


*Back off on
those expenditures and we could ease up the burden on the rich.

LOL. Sure, you libs would then just spend it on other stuff,
like Obama's new "stimulus".




*Remember
it's always the rich that have the most to lose in case of war or
insurrection. *Ask the wealthy Jews of Germany where their money went after
Hitler took power. *The uber-rich push a big agenda on America. *They should
be privileged to pay for it. *Instead, the middle class is asked to bail out
their banks,

The lie repeated. The loans to the banks have ALL been paid back
and the govt earned 10% interest.





fight the wars that usually serve business and the rich quite
well. *Ask the relatives of a certain coffee maker/cremetorium maker that
starts with a K about how well they made out selling arms in WWII.

* *And they pay taxes on it.

Not enough for my taste.
The rich use government services that the middle
class never, ever need. *Like military excursions to protect overseas
investments. *Most Americans pay more payroll than income taxes, but
that
reverses when incomes cross a certain threshold.
* * Yeah. the bottom two quintiles since tax credits like earned income
and others were put in place (and expanded under Bush) to address the
payroll tax concerns.
* * *At the other end, SS taxes stop at the exact same place that
benefits stop. So, even if a person makes $60 kajillion a year, their SS
is based only on whatever the cut off is (something like $130,000 IIRC)..

What a great deal for super-earners. *So the CEO pulling 10 million deprives
the fund of the considerable income it would have gotten if 9 million of
that went to lower wage earners in the company in the form of raises, better
health bennies and more hires to share the workload.

If the workers don't like what the CEO makes, then can get a
job at another company. If you don't like what the CEO makes,
you don't have to buy their products. If the shareholders don't
like what the CEO makes, they can reduce it.



Wealth begins to attract more wealth and if the upper level tax rate isn't
nearly confiscatory,

And there you have it folks. The truth comes out.





the country's wealth will migrate to a very few people,
just like it's doing now. *The plain facts are that the Bush era tax cuts
resulted in a drop in government revenue that's just one of the many reasons
we're so damn deep in the hole. *We bought the idea that tax cuts for the
rich create US jobs. *Obviously they do not given our current circumstances

They were creating jobs and the economy was fine for years.
The tax cuts didn't cause the recession. Bush had a deficit of
only $160bil with those rates in effect.

In article ,
"Robert Green" wrote:

m
That isn't how it worked here. Indeed, with MCare paying about 60
cents for every dollar the Mean Old Insurance companies pay for similar
diagnosis (and MCaid less 50 cents) I would submit that government is
actually ADDING to costs by cost shifting.

So then why were insurers raising holy hell about the public option?
Something doesn't add up unless the premiums are wildly different, which I
suspect they are. Not allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices the way
TriCare does might have something to do with their bad overall performance.
If MCare pays more, why do so many doctors balk at accepting MCare patients?

I said cost shifting, never said anything about where it was shifted
to. It came on through to policy holders, the insurance companies got
that back so they still made money. Heck maybe even a little more on the
"vig" so to speak when they passed it along.
It has nothing to do with MCare's bad performance since that
particular stat was for the hospital and docs sides only. And Part D
(1). Cut the prices for seniors substantially because the individual
insurance companies were able to negotiate better prices than Grandma
and Grandpa could on their own. In the first 3 years, it actually came
in UNDER projections.
I never said MCare pays more. I said specifically that MCare pays
60 cents for every $1 the insurance companies pay.

Good point. That's the ghost of WWII and wage controls. We got into a
crazy system (as we do with a lot of things) and then it grew like kudzu
vines until we were completely trapped in it.

Rather interesting history. This is actually only part of it since
even up to the mid-60s the bulk of healthcare expenditures (50% or so)
still came directly out of people's pockets. MCare came along and
effectively set a base under medical outlays and expectations (after all
unions weren't gonna let their workers get less than the retirees and
then the rest more or less followed). The part we reached into our
wallet to pay started going down about then. In the 70s and early 80s
the big companies thought it was cheaper to give health benefits than
actual wages (not like that did not come back to bite them on the ass
later). So they started doing things like low or no premiums, little in
the way of co-pays, etc. This, like MCare earlier, trickled down to
others.
The upstart is that over 80% of the costs of medical services in
the US is paid by others with the resultant increase in demand. Unlike
other countries that did the same on subsidization but managed to put
clamp of what was available.
I saw a really interesting slide in Health Affairs in the mid-90s
that showed as the %age out-of-pocket expenditures went down in the US,
the % of GDP taken up by healthcare went up.

--
People thought cybersex was a safe alternative,
until patients started presenting with sexually
acquired carpal tunnel syndrome.-Howard Berkowitz

On Oct 21, 12:49*pm, "Robert Green"
wrote:
wrote in message

...

stuff snipped

More troubling is the un elected officials who shuttle back and forth
from regulating an industry to working in it. Guys like Geithner and
Paulson spring to mind.
Why was anyone shocked that the former CEO of Goldman Sachs made sure
Goldman got bailed out and Lehman was allowed to fail.

I have friends who work(ed) at the World Bank. *They make you sign so many
forms that tell you the tax liabilities of working for them that it's
*inconceivable* that Tax Cheatin' Tim had no idea he had to pay taxes on
that income. *Illegal domestics pale in comparison to letting a tax cheat
run the Treasury. *I was stunned that Obama appointed him and even more
stunned the Republicans let it slide. *The only thing I can think of is that
they ALL have loads of unreported income like Charles "foreign income
counts?" Rangel.

The "Goldman lives, Lehman dies" bullshi+ was outrageous and proof that the
main stream media is totally asleep. *If there's no sex angle or American
Idol/DWTS connection they're not interested. *It kills me to see Google news
report AI and DWTS stories ranking higher than a great deal of *important*
national news.

--
Bobby G.

Oh my God! The one in a million posts you've ever written that I
agree
with. Now I'm getting worried....

On Oct 21, 1:30*pm, harry wrote:

The fat are fat because they eat ****. *(Cheap and nasty food) eg
hamburgers.

You are truly a master at solving the one variable equation.

The only two problems are that there are no one variable equations in
life and you are an idiot. The first is beyond your control.

R

posted for all of us...




The economy was not as much "looted" as it was artificially inflated
with easy money and subsequently that bubble popped.
The "trillions" that disappeared from the economy never really existed
in the first place. There were 20 years of bad political decisions
that led up to that. There is plenty of blame to spread around. Wall
Street was just doing what the government told them to do. Create a
booming housing market among buyers who were too broke to actually
afford houses.. It was the government that operated Fannie, Freddie,
The Federal Reserve and who repealed virtually all of the New Deal
regulation. You could not have had the derivatives without the CFMA of
2000.

Hey! Greg my friend why do you post the truth? It seems to be wasted on the
masses...

--
Tekkie

Anyone who thinks selecting a Medicare provider is easy hasn't
waded through the miasma that they send my neighbor. This year we're
weighing it because I'm going to write an article on how virtually
impossible it is for anyone but a subject matter expert to wade through
it.

I was "awarded" Social Security full permanent disability at age 57. I got
no check, but a 1099 at the end of year for monies I was deemed deserving.
It took three years to get it straight, and at times, I would receive pages
of absolute gobbledigook of acronyms explaining this and explaining that.

A blind friend of mine called a lady she knew who worked in SS. We went to
her. It took eight months, and at the end, I got a check for $44,000. Now
I get a check every month.

How many people give up, or die, or blow their brains out before they get
their case solved?

Which is what I think they want. And then what happens to the money?

Steve

wrote in message
...
On Wed, 19 Oct 2011 18:43:43 -0500, Vic Smith
wrote:

The real problem is the whole idea of health insurance. It makes
medical care "free" and nothing is as expensive as something that
people think is free.


I hear this - or a version of it - all the time.
Most people know very well what they are paying in insurance premiums.
Even those on Medicare know what's coming out of their SS and what
they are paying for supplementals.
So do you know anybody who thinks medical care is "free?"
It's only "free" for those who have nothing with which to pay.

There is still a significant disconnect between premiums and what the
treatment costs. In the case of Medicare, that part B payment and the
supplement policy is a small fraction of the cost of treating the
average senior.
I don't go to the doctor much either and insurance has been a huge
loser for me but most of the people I know on medicare are at the
doctor all the time and most have had expensive procedures (new hips,
knees, cataracts etc). The other thing about medicare is that you have
everyone who works, paying premiums that only cover about 15% of the
population and the program is still upside down. The premiums people
pay, plus the payroll tay is only about half of what Medicare pays
out. The rest is taken from the general fund (40% of that being
borrowed)

The idea that we could let the age slide down to include younger
people without massive increases in the payroll tax is ludicrous.

I've read that all we have to do is stop the exemption from the payroll tax
that begins at a little over 100K. Doing that is no more ludicrous than
Obamacare's various provisions. One merely extends the existing system that
everyone understands and knows how to deal with, the other is Pure Unbridled
Uncertain Insanity.

We also might be able to better afford it if we weren't spending 1 to 4
trillion fighting Other People's Wars for them and creating severely wounded
vets by the thousands that we're going to have to pay to treat for decades
to come. We went in exactly the wrong direction. I like TR's motto: "Walk
softly but carry a big stick." These "brush wars" will leave us cutting
back the DoD at precisely the wrong time and all they're those brush wars
seem to be doing is spreading into countries we consider allies.

Sadly, I think Obama's stalled on returning the troops primarily to make job
figures look better. A lot of Reservists don't have a job to come back to -
their employers folded up. Others will have to sue to get their old jobs
back, which employers know they can eliminate by performing certain
bureaucratic actions to make it "nice and legal" and VERY hard for a
Reservist to prevail in court. I confess I don't know how Reservists figure
into the monthly government figures - I just know that a lot of Reservists
are unemployed and many have very employable skill sets.

This older article sums up the problem which my wife tells me has only got
worse in this sour economy.

http://www.recordpub.com/news/article/1691542

36 members of the Florida National Guard got letters, while serving in
combat in Iraq, informing them that their jobs in a federal
drug-interdiction program were abolished. The Denver magazine report told of
a 53-year-old Marine, in the service for 29 years, who deployed for nine
months in Kuwait and Iraq in 2002 and 2003. When he got home, he was fired
from his $88,000-a-year job in a firm where he'd worked for 19 years. He was
allegedly told by the Department of Labor, where his commanding officer
referred him, that he didn't have a legal case unless he heard somebody say
he was fired because of his military service.

The officer, a lawyer, was so outraged, that he fought for the Marine, who
won $324,082 in U.S. District Court in Colorado. As of late last year,
reporter Potter said the Marine was still looking for a job with health
insurance for his family.

Mostly Reservists end up being "good soldiers" and just move on without
raising a ruckus.

--
Bobby G.

Money doesn't buy happiness, it IS happiness!

On 10/21/11 07:31 pm, Robert Green wrote:

Cain's flat tax could actually work with the right formula - food would be
tax free and other necessities could be exempted to make it somewhat less
burdensome on the poor. The Tax Code has passed the point of what my CMSC
610 prof (who was the retired head of the FBI data operations in DC) said
was ""intellectual control." It has become so vast, arcane and specialized
that only accountants with detailed specializations can understand it or
when it's been violated. I watched my dad struggle for ten years with an
oil and gas partnership that the IRS took a dislike to. That required
energy tax lawyers, CPAs and years of mail tag and finally tax court by
which time the partnership one, but the profits had largely been paid to
lawyers defending the profits.

Two or three years ago I heard an economics professor with a PhD say on
radio that he lets his wife do their tax returns because he can't
understand it.

Perce

"Steve B" wrote in message
...

Anyone who thinks selecting a Medicare provider is easy hasn't
waded through the miasma that they send my neighbor. This year we're
weighing it because I'm going to write an article on how virtually
impossible it is for anyone but a subject matter expert to wade through
it.

I was "awarded" Social Security full permanent disability at age 57. I
got
no check, but a 1099 at the end of year for monies I was deemed deserving.
It took three years to get it straight, and at times, I would receive
pages
of absolute gobbledigook of acronyms explaining this and explaining that.

My neighbor gets SSDI, was denied the first time and when she asked for a
copy of her file, at least 40 pages belonged to another applicant. An
admin. law judge took one look at her and the file and granted her
disability right on the spot although it has to be approved by someone else
to actually be awarded - the name of the unit escapes me at the moment -
they check to see the applicant meets all the requirements like citizenship,
quarters worked, etc. .

A blind friend of mine called a lady she knew who worked in SS. We went
to
her. It took eight months, and at the end, I got a check for $44,000.
Now
I get a check every month.

The amount of the backpay indicates how long it took to get your award.
Sounds like at least three or four years from the "date of onset." That's
typical now. Got a fast-moving cancer? Fugghedaboutit!

How many people give up, or die, or blow their brains out before they get
their case solved?

Plenty. It's the same process that private insurers use. Baffle them with
BS paperwork and hope they go away. A awful lot of people do. Disability
awards vary tremendous by state, too, because the determination of
disability is usually done by the state governments. When I asked my doctor
about my neighbor's first denial, he told me of a patient who had lupus who
sent him a letter when she got her first denial. It read "by the time you
read this I will be dead." And she was, from a self-inflicted gunshot
wound. He now guides disabled patients through the process and explains
that more than half of those who apply are turned down during the first
"round."

Which is what I think they want. And then what happens to the money?

It's definitely what they want. Lawyers calling it "taking them over the
hurdles." The money stays with the Feds, I believe. There's plenty of
fraud in SSDI awards, I'm afraid. You can't watch ten minutes of daytime TV
without some law firm offering to help file your claim. It used to be
lawyer would only take people on as clients who had been rejected. Now they
offer help with the application, which is where so many people get bounced
for not having the right medical proof. Poor people who rarely see doctors
have a hell of a time filing a claim because they often have not established
a clear medical history of disability. If their claim involves having MRI's
or other lab tests done, they are consigned to a special sort of hell.

It's not good enough to prove you're disabled, you have to prove that your
disability prevents you from working at a normal job and that accommodations
are not available or practical. I also believe in the Federal system
there's no such thing as partial disability although the Armed Services have
long recognized that you can be partially disabled as does common freaking
sense.

The biggest insult is that most people can't live on SSDI alone. IIRC, it
maxes out at slightly over $1100 a month - $500 more if you're blind. But
it does offer Medicare before retirement, and that helps folks like my next
door neighbor (bad hip replacement and numerous "revision" surgeries, severe
osteoarthritis, congestive heart failure and diabetes).

--
Bobby G.

On Oct 21, 7:17*pm, Tekkie® wrote:
posted for all of us...



The economy was not as much "looted" as it was artificially inflated
with easy money and subsequently that bubble popped.
The "trillions" that disappeared from the economy never really existed
in the first place. There were 20 years of bad political decisions
that led up to that. There is plenty of blame to spread around. Wall
Street was just doing what the government told them to do. Create a
booming housing market among buyers who were too broke to actually
afford houses.. It was the government that operated Fannie, Freddie,
The Federal Reserve and who repealed virtually all of the New Deal
regulation. You could not have had the derivatives without the CFMA of
2000.

Hey! Greg my friend why do you post the truth? *It seems to be wasted on the
masses...

--
Tekkie

I thought the gov. did what Wall Street told them?

On Oct 22, 1:25*am, "Robert Green" wrote:
wrote in message

...





On Wed, 19 Oct 2011 18:43:43 -0500, Vic Smith
wrote:

The real problem is the whole idea of health insurance. It makes
medical care "free" and nothing is as expensive as something that
people think is free.

I hear this - or a version of it - all the time.
Most people know very well what they are paying in insurance premiums.
Even those on Medicare know what's coming out of their SS and what
they are paying for supplementals.
So do you know anybody who thinks medical care is "free?"
It's only "free" for those who have nothing with which to pay.

There is still a significant disconnect between premiums and what the
treatment costs. In the case of Medicare, that part B payment and the
supplement policy is a small fraction of the cost of treating the
average senior.
I don't go to the doctor much either and insurance has been a huge
loser for me but most of the people I know on medicare are at the
doctor all the time and most have had expensive procedures (new hips,
knees, cataracts etc). The other thing about medicare is that you have
everyone who works, paying premiums that only cover about 15% of the
population and the program is still upside down. The premiums people
pay, plus the payroll tay is only about half of what Medicare pays
out. The rest is taken from the general fund (40% of that being
borrowed)
The idea that we could let the age slide down to include younger
people without massive increases in the payroll tax is ludicrous.

I've read that all we have to do is stop the exemption from the payroll tax
that begins at a little over 100K. *Doing that is no more ludicrous than
Obamacare's various provisions. *One merely extends the existing system that
everyone understands and knows how to deal with, the other is Pure Unbridled
Uncertain Insanity.

We also might be able to better afford it if we weren't spending 1 to 4
trillion fighting Other People's Wars for them and creating severely wounded
vets by the thousands that we're going to have to pay to treat for decades
to come. *We went in exactly the wrong direction. *I like TR's motto: *"Walk
softly but carry a big stick." *These "brush wars" will leave us cutting
back the DoD at precisely the wrong time and all they're those brush wars
seem to be doing is spreading into countries we consider allies.

Sadly, I think Obama's stalled on returning the troops primarily to make job
figures look better. *A lot of Reservists don't have a job to come back to -
their employers folded up. *Others will have to sue to get their old jobs
back, which employers know they can eliminate by performing certain
bureaucratic actions to make it "nice and legal" and VERY hard for a
Reservist to prevail in court. *I confess I don't know how Reservists figure
into the monthly government figures - I just know that a lot of Reservists
are unemployed and many have very employable skill sets.

This older article sums up the problem which my wife tells me has only got
worse in this sour economy.

http://www.recordpub.com/news/article/1691542

36 members of the Florida National Guard got letters, while serving in
combat in Iraq, informing them that their jobs in a federal
drug-interdiction program were abolished. The Denver magazine report told of
a 53-year-old Marine, in the service for 29 years, who deployed for nine
months in Kuwait and Iraq in 2002 and 2003. When he got home, he was fired
from his $88,000-a-year job in a firm where he'd worked for 19 years. He was
allegedly told by the Department of Labor, where his commanding officer
referred him, that he didn't have a legal case unless he heard somebody say
he was fired because of his military service.

The officer, a lawyer, was so outraged, that he fought for the Marine, who
won $324,082 in U.S. District Court in Colorado. As of late last year,
reporter Potter said the Marine was still looking for a job with health
insurance for his family.

Mostly Reservists end up being "good soldiers" and just move on without
raising a ruckus.

--
Bobby G.

Money doesn't buy happiness, it IS happiness!- Hide quoted text -

********.
Now I know you are full of ****.
So was Steve Jobs happy?
He would have traded all his wealth for the life of the poorest
healthy person.
Or for another year on earth.
As would any permanently disabled soldier for any amount of money.

On Oct 22, 5:23*am, "Robert Green" wrote:
"Steve B" wrote in message

...





*Anyone who thinks selecting a Medicare provider is easy hasn't
waded through the miasma that they send my neighbor. *This year we're
weighing it because I'm going to write an article on how virtually
impossible it is for anyone but a subject matter expert to wade through
it.
I was "awarded" Social Security full permanent disability at age 57. *I
got
no check, but a 1099 at the end of year for monies I was deemed deserving.
It took three years to get it straight, and at times, I would receive
pages
of absolute gobbledigook of acronyms explaining this and explaining that.

In article ,
"Robert Green" wrote:




Dude, it's clear that you're much more up to speed on this stuff than I am.
I've got to read some of your statements 5 times before I follow what you're
saying. Anyone who thinks selecting a Medicare provider is easy hasn't
waded through the miasma that they send my neighbor. This year we're
weighing it because I'm going to write an article on how virtually
impossible it is for anyone but a subject matter expert to wade through it.
But I digress.

And the Part D hooha is even worse, unfortunately, because of the
various formularies. You have to match the provider's plans with your
constellation of medicine.

There certainly IS a distinction to be made between working for your money
and having enough money to have it work for you in addition to your own
labor. The distinction is what the progressive tax code was *meant* to be
all about but moneyed interests have bought changes that continue to favor
them in ways that mean the divide between the richest and the poorest keeps
expanding. I will admit there have been attempts at corrections, but the
bottom line is that the net worth of the wealthiest people has skyrocketed.
But we don't tax on wealth (at least yet, although I suppose the case
could be made that the estate tax comes close). The facts are and always
will be, that on INCOME taxes, the rich payer a higher percentage of
their income on taxes than the poor do. (Okay maybe not always, but
always under the current system). The rate of taxation takes total
income and total taxes which smooths out all of the differing stuff
inside the box.



Krugman claims the inflation-adjusted income of families in the middle of
the income distribution rose 21 percent and that over the same period, the
income of the very rich, the top 100th of 1 percent of the income
distribution, rose by 480 percent. In other words at the very top the
average annual income of that group rose from $4.2 million to $24.3 million.
That's staggering and it's an indication that progressive taxation is
failing from both ends and depleting the middle class.
I don't get how. We, again, are talking wealth and that has nothing
to do with the relative progressiveness of taxes. If you want to
regulate wealth by taxation you have to make it VERY regressive at the
top end. Which is a whole ball of policy wax.




Krugman likes to ignore those stats that disagree with what he wants
to say.

Is it my turn to say "you say you've been watching Washington, DC operate
for how long?" (-:
Never said otherwise, did I? Just making a comment (okay, stating
the obvious).


But none of that is shown by the stats instead of the estimates.

If you're saying he's a liar, you'll have to take it up with him.
Actually I thought it was rather clever that all of a sudden he
brings in AND PAYROLL taxes, including the SS taxes. This, of course, is
going to skew the results to where he wants them because of the cap on
SS taxes. But again, the cap on taxes coincides with the cap on
benefits. If you want to change one of the bedrock principles of the
system from the getgo and not base paying in on what one is getting in
return, debate it out front and don't even begin to pretend it is some
sort of unfairness in the system.
(-: If
it's true, it's more evidence that the middle class takes the lumps, the
upper class gets the lion's share and they give the lower class a break to
keep the bread and circuses flowing. I will agree, however, that estimate
are like opinions are like "hassles" - everyone's got one and no one think's
theirs stinks.

Not really, especially with the SS taxes artificially tossed in.

em.

That is another debate, one we probably would be closer in thoughts on.
Although I would also remind one and all that you have to wade through
the first 15 "tax expenditures" (what the government euphamistically
calls tax breaks) before you get to one that is business related.

I did look that up and spend considerable time trying to shoot holes in it.
You're right. The hoi polloi get most of the joy, tax wise. It's coming
more and more clear that *no one* is paying their fair share, at least when
you consider how much everyone is spending on present and (mostly) future
tax dollars on.

That is one of the most interesting (and annoying) things to look at
each year. It is probably the biggest indictment of the (alleged) system
of taxes that you can find.


They
get theirs, but we get ours too and these end up to be a MUCH greater
burden to revenue. So, we need to keep both in the discussion.

Cain's flat tax could actually work with the right formula - food would be
tax free and other necessities could be exempted to make it somewhat less
burdensome on the poor.

And everybody against it tries to pretend it is rocket science to do
that, conveniently forgetting that pretty much every state sales tax
does exactly the same thing.

The Tax Code has passed the point of what my CMSC
610 prof (who was the retired head of the FBI data operations in DC) said
was ""intellectual control." It has become so vast, arcane and specialized
that only accountants with detailed specializations can understand it or
when it's been violated. I watched my dad struggle for ten years with an
oil and gas partnership that the IRS took a dislike to. That required
energy tax lawyers, CPAs and years of mail tag and finally tax court by
which time the partnership one, but the profits had largely been paid to
lawyers defending the profits.

WHen even the IRS won't stand behind what its own employees tells
you over the phone...



Never said that now did I? I find that especially entertaining
since you exclaim your rights to have an opinion while taking away mine.

It's the new order my friend. Sorry for being so harsh. I should have said
"Do I look like Tax Cheatin' Timmy G? I don't formulate no stinkin' tax
policy." (-"

Happens a lot in political debate any more.

Is that really the right use of any more? (-:
Trying to give the benefit of the doubt (g).



I'm not trying to be a needle-dicked bug raper, but what "IT" do you mean?
I am going to beat proper pronoun reference into you if it's the last thing
I do, and it could easily be. (-:
It was the entire section above it about how revenue plummeted. I
figured that since it was your discussion, you would realize that. I
guess I am underthinking at the same you are overthinking (g).


The dirty little secret that both sides like to ignore is that the
state of the economy is the biggest part of the revenue puzzle.

Agreed. While reducing expenditures is in theory a good idea, in practice
it's an awfully painful one. I don't expect a recovery any time soon and in
fact believe we're seeing 1929 play out in slow motion.

We had one of the longer expansions with (relatively) light
recessions until this one. EVERYBODY (government, consumer, industry)
got caught up in the Euphoria deciding that this time was different
(about the time I automatically start raising cash-g) and that this
particular tree would, indeed, grow to the sky.
Heck, if you bought into the Prevailing Wisdom, even the bad loans
were a great idea since (both sides of the equation thought) the house
HAS to be worth a lot more in a couple of years than it was now. So, the
homeowner KNEW that they would be able to sell the house for more than
the balloon payment or that their salary HAD to keep going up. The worst
case scenario for the lenders was they foreclosed and got a house to
resell on the cheap. (There were similar idiocies on the general
business side)
When that (surprise, surprise) did not happen, the house of cards
collapsed. So, with Everbody leveraged to the eye balls, there was
nobody to lead us out of the recession. Deleveraging is a bear (so to
speak). I also would like to note from a purely statistical aspect,
quite a bit of this is returning to the norm. You have an extended time
of above average growth, you have to have a time of below average.


An explosion like the 2008 debacle every once in a while serves to make
people stop and really examine what's going on. I think the unfunded
pensions and health benefits hand grenade might have really grown in
explosive power if the crash hadn't occurred and sent all the states
scurrying to look more closely at expenditures.

Yet we are ignoring the single biggest unfunded liability, the SS
"surplus"


Obama's job plan would have at least tried to get some segments of the
economy back on track so that growth can resume. I suspect no matter which
side wins in 2012, we're going to continue in our lost decade just the way
the Japanese did.
Largely the union segments. Found it interesting, at least from an
Indiana perspective, that the places in the state getting all of the
green seed money are places like GM, Delphi, etc., that are UAW while a
maker of green police cars and a couple other real start-ups are still
waiting.


There are no accounting tricks that make it look smaller. It is what it
is. Although there is a certain amount of self-fulfilling prophesy about
how the total package is put together. Sorta like Canada does with their
brand name medications. They use a market basket of the countries that
pay the least.

Ah yes, one of the very tricks I was talking about. The statistics about
labor and income from now and 30 years ago require so many adjustments to
draw valid comparisons that I'll bet a good economist could make a case for
the equivalent of economic anti-gravity. When I grew up, most fathers
worked, most women stayed at home and we enjoyed a comfortable standard of
living. Now, to enjoy that same standard, both parents have to work.

Houses are now almost 1/4 bigger than they were in the 50s (although
that might be heading back down). We have internet, A/C, regulations
adding something like $1500 to the cost of a car and around $7500 to the
cost of a house, etc. etc. We are enjoying a better standard and for
that both have to work.


The first $100 million is a struggle, the second $100 million is
inevitable (g).

I know enough millionaires to know that being a millionaire sure doesn't
mean what it used to mean.


I ran a million through an inflation calculator using 1980 as the
base year (rather arbitrarily half way between the start of Standard Oil
and its break up. "RIch as Rockefeller" seems to be about the time
millionaire was brought into the vernacular. You would arond $24 million
to be a millionaire in what I will whimsically call "real money".
Doesn't really add anything to the discussion, but was a mildly amusing
what if game.

--
People thought cybersex was a safe alternative,
until patients started presenting with sexually
acquired carpal tunnel syndrome.-Howard Berkowitz

On Oct 22, 8:46*am, Kurt Ullman wrote:

* * I don't get how. We, again, are talking wealth and that has nothing
to do with the relative progressiveness of taxes. If you want to
regulate wealth by taxation you have to make it VERY regressive at the
top end. Which is a whole ball of policy wax.

Policy wax...is that like a Brazilian?

From your sig, I see that you're a fan of bon mot. How does that
saying go?
Each according to his abilities.
or
With great power comes great responsibility.

I don't expect the old lady to fend for herself if she drops a bag of
groceries. It's far easier for me to bend down and pick them up
quickly.

The major disconnect we have going - and by we I mean we, is that
messages aren't getting through to people due to either their
perceived political or financial immunity.

Take traffic tickets. I was in Westhampton Beach on Main St. a couple
of years ago, and saw a guy in a very expensive convertible get pulled
over for being on the phone. He sat there, on the phone the whole
time, while the cop wrote out the ticket. What's a $100 fine to a guy
like that?

Me? I got a $100 ticket for being on the phone in the car while I was
talking to my brother. What did I do? Stop talking to my brother!
JK But I am more aware.

In Switzerland they have a progressive fine structure for speeding.
http://www.autoblog.com/2010/08/13/s...ing-fine-ever/

Of course that's the record, but the fine is proportionate to income.
Take this guy (excerpt from that article):
"in Finland where the fine is calculated based on the vehicle's speed
and the driver's income. Back in 2002, Nokia executive Anssi Vanjoki
had to pay a fine of $103,600 for going 47 mph in a 31 mph zone."

That's going to get anybody to sit up and take notice.

Years in jail are one thing, as everyone lives life at the same speed,
but not everyone earns (or "earns") money at the same speed.

R

"Percival P. Cassidy" wrote in message
...
On 10/21/11 07:31 pm, Robert Green wrote:

Cain's flat tax could actually work with the right formula - food would
be
tax free and other necessities could be exempted to make it somewhat
less
burdensome on the poor. The Tax Code has passed the point of what my
CMSC
610 prof (who was the retired head of the FBI data operations in DC)
said
was ""intellectual control." It has become so vast, arcane and
specialized
that only accountants with detailed specializations can understand it or
when it's been violated. I watched my dad struggle for ten years with
an
oil and gas partnership that the IRS took a dislike to. That required
energy tax lawyers, CPAs and years of mail tag and finally tax court by
which time the partnership one, but the profits had largely been paid to
lawyers defending the profits.

Two or three years ago I heard an economics professor with a PhD say on
radio that he lets his wife do their tax returns because he can't
understand it.

My wife has an MBA. She does the big tax planning and accounting in the
family. I just keep the computers she does it on running. (-:

--
Bobby G.

On 10/22/11 10:33 am, RicodJour wrote:

I don't get how. We, again, are talking wealth and that has nothing
to do with the relative progressiveness of taxes. If you want to
regulate wealth by taxation you have to make it VERY regressive at the
top end. Which is a whole ball of policy wax.

Policy wax...is that like a Brazilian?

From your sig, I see that you're a fan of bon mot. How does that
saying go?
Each according to his abilities.
or
With great power comes great responsibility.

I don't expect the old lady to fend for herself if she drops a bag of
groceries. It's far easier for me to bend down and pick them up
quickly.

The major disconnect we have going - and by we I mean we, is that
messages aren't getting through to people due to either their
perceived political or financial immunity.

Take traffic tickets. I was in Westhampton Beach on Main St. a couple
of years ago, and saw a guy in a very expensive convertible get pulled
over for being on the phone. He sat there, on the phone the whole
time, while the cop wrote out the ticket. What's a $100 fine to a guy
like that?

Me? I got a $100 ticket for being on the phone in the car while I was
talking to my brother. What did I do? Stop talking to my brother!
JK But I am more aware.

In Switzerland they have a progressive fine structure for speeding.
http://www.autoblog.com/2010/08/13/s...ing-fine-ever/

Of course that's the record, but the fine is proportionate to income.
Take this guy (excerpt from that article):
"in Finland where the fine is calculated based on the vehicle's speed
and the driver's income. Back in 2002, Nokia executive Anssi Vanjoki
had to pay a fine of $103,600 for going 47 mph in a 31 mph zone."

That's going to get anybody to sit up and take notice.

Years in jail are one thing, as everyone lives life at the same speed,
but not everyone earns (or "earns") money at the same speed.

It could be 50 years ago that I first suggested fines proportionate to
income; say, so many weeks' wages, rather than a fixed amount.

Perce

On Oct 22, 2:36 pm, "Percival P. Cassidy" wrote:

It could be 50 years ago that I first suggested fines proportionate to
income; say, so many weeks' wages, rather than a fixed amount.

Income? How about estimated net worth, and let the defendant prove by
submitting documents that he is worth less. Most would do what the
poor people do, and just shut up and pay.

From Wiki:
Traditionally, philosophers of punishment have contrasted
retributivism with utilitarianism. For utilitarians, punishment is
forward-looking, justified by a purported ability to achieve future
social benefits, such as crime reduction. For retributionists,
punishment is backward-looking, and strictly for punishing crimes
according to their severity.

I mean, we're talking about punishing criminals, right? Who's going
to complain that criminals don't deserve punishment? Somebody commits
some financial malfeasance and bankrupts a bunch of people, they
should be permanently bankrupted and given a job working in a soup
kitchen or something. You ruin a life, yours gets ruined. No free
rides, no country club prisons and none of the out in a few years with
most of their ill-gotten gains.

Oh, and counseling is provided free of charge by the Kevorkian
Society.

R

Occupy Wall Street: My One Demand

By Jinger Dixon

October 18, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- I was recently asked what
I thought the “one demand” should be for the OWS protest. That's a tough
question. I've seen many lists of the things people are suggesting. Most
seem well intended. However, no one demand alone even begins to scratch the
surface of what‘s wrong here. In fact, in a way, it points out how far we
really are, from seeing where we really are. To sum it all up in one demand
seemed impossible, so I decided to try. After much thought, I constructed
the following analogy to describe my take on this whole One Demand issue.

Take a map and draw a circle, then say, everyone outside the circle is to
have their labor and resources exploited for the benefit of those inside the
circle. If you live outside the circle you say, “this system is completely
****ed up.” If you live inside the circle you say, “this is capitalism and
it’s the best system on earth you should try it it's awesome. Sure, people
outside are suffering, but who gives a **** about them?” Now as the circle
shrinks, as it is designed to do, concentrating accumulated wealth, people
begin finding themselves suddenly outside of the circle. They jump up and
down and cry foul, but the ones still in the circle say, “tough ****, you
were too slow, should'a run faster to stay inside the circle“. But then,
they soon realize that they too are too slow to keep up with the rapidly
shrinking circle, and quickly they find themselves left out, so they cry
foul. “The system is broken!!!” they decry! But is it? Isn't this the way
the system has always functioned? Why is it now broken just because they,
we, no longer reside within the bounds of its benefits? We stand outside the
ever shrinking circle, yelling fixes, throwing band-aids, making demands
that the ever shrinking circle expand! at least big enough to include us so
that we can go back to not giving a **** about the people outside, but alas,
it will not. The circle does not expand, it does not know how. It only knows
how to contract, concentrate, condense, like a dark star collapsing in on
itself. There is no “demand” that will drag the borders of the circle back
around us. And even if you could, would you? Would you go back to ****ing
the rest of the world to have your cable TV and your steel belted radials? I
hope not. I hope the world is ready to say no more. No more. Therefore,
since it is my sincere belief that the circle is/was and always will be
****ed up, I say, surround them and demand that they collapse in on
themselves and disappear into their own black hole.

That is my One Demand.

On Oct 22, 7:55*pm, RicodJour wrote:
On Oct 22, 2:36 pm, "Percival P. Cassidy" wrote:



It could be 50 years ago that I first suggested fines proportionate to
income; say, so many weeks' wages, rather than a fixed amount.

Income? *How about estimated net worth, and let the defendant prove by
submitting documents that he is worth less. *Most would do what the
poor people do, and just shut up and pay.

From Wiki:
Traditionally, philosophers of punishment have contrasted
retributivism with utilitarianism. For utilitarians, punishment is
forward-looking, justified by a purported ability to achieve future
social benefits, such as crime reduction. For retributionists,
punishment is backward-looking, and strictly for punishing crimes
according to their severity.

I mean, we're talking about punishing criminals, right? *Who's going
to complain that criminals don't deserve punishment? *Somebody commits
some financial malfeasance and bankrupts a bunch of people, they
should be permanently bankrupted and given a job working in a soup
kitchen or something. *You ruin a life, yours gets ruined. *No free
rides, no country club prisons and none of the out in a few years with
most of their ill-gotten gains.

Oh, and counseling is provided free of charge by the Kevorkian
Society. *

R

Sounds OK by me.

On Oct 23, 3:36*am, "tom" wrote:
Occupy Wall Street: My One Demand

By Jinger Dixon

October 18, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- * I was recently asked what
I thought the “one demand” should be for the OWS protest. That's a tough
question. I've seen many lists of the things people are suggesting. Most
seem well intended. However, no one demand alone even begins to scratch the
surface of what‘s wrong here. In fact, in a way, it points out how far we
really are, from seeing where we really are. To sum it all up in one demand
seemed impossible, so I decided to try. After much thought, I constructed
the following analogy to describe my take on this whole One Demand issue.

Take a map and draw a circle, then say, everyone outside the circle is to
have their labor and resources exploited for the benefit of those inside the
circle. If you live outside the circle you say, “this system is completely
****ed up.” If you live inside the circle you say, “this is capitalism and
it’s the best system on earth you should try it it's awesome. Sure, people
outside are suffering, but who gives a **** about them?” Now as the circle
shrinks, as it is designed to do, concentrating accumulated wealth, people
begin finding themselves suddenly outside of the circle. They jump up and
down and cry foul, but the ones still in the circle say, “tough ****, you
were too slow, should'a run faster to stay inside the circle“. But then,
they soon realize that they too are too slow to keep up with the rapidly
shrinking circle, and quickly they find themselves left out, so they cry
foul. “The system is broken!!!” they decry! But is it? Isn't this the way
the system has always functioned? Why is it now broken just because they,
we, no longer reside within the bounds of its benefits? We stand outside the
ever shrinking circle, yelling fixes, throwing band-aids, making demands
that the ever shrinking circle expand! at least big enough to include us so
that we can go back to not giving a **** about the people outside, but alas,
it will not. The circle does not expand, it does not know how. It only knows
how to contract, concentrate, condense, like a dark star collapsing in on
itself. There is no “demand” that will drag the borders of the circle back
around us. And even if you could, would you? Would you go back to ****ing
the rest of the world to have your cable TV and your steel belted radials? I
hope not. I hope the world is ready to say no more. No more. Therefore,
since it is my sincere belief that the circle is/was and always will be
****ed up, I say, surround them and demand that they collapse in on
themselves and disappear into their own black hole.

That is my One Demand.

Hey, not bad. But you need to remember, philosophy/parables are bit
highbrow for this group.

The name of the centre circle BTW is "The American Dream".
It was always a chimera, merely set in place to fool the masses.

In the UK we call it "The Jam Tomorrow Syndrome".

It's all part of the perpetual "growth" fantasy perpetuated by
capitalists.
We live on a finite world with finite resources. We have now reached
their limit.

On Oct 22, 10:36*pm, "tom" wrote:
Occupy Wall Street: My One Demand

By Jinger Dixon

October 18, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- * I was recently asked what
I thought the “one demand” should be for the OWS protest. That's a tough
question. I've seen many lists of the things people are suggesting. Most
seem well intended. However, no one demand alone even begins to scratch the
surface of what‘s wrong here. In fact, in a way, it points out how far we
really are, from seeing where we really are. To sum it all up in one demand
seemed impossible, so I decided to try. After much thought, I constructed
the following analogy to describe my take on this whole One Demand issue.

Take a map and draw a circle, then say, everyone outside the circle is to
have their labor and resources exploited for the benefit of those inside the
circle. If you live outside the circle you say, “this system is completely
****ed up.” If you live inside the circle you say, “this is capitalism and
it’s the best system on earth you should try it it's awesome. Sure, people
outside are suffering, but who gives a **** about them?” Now as the circle
shrinks, as it is designed to do, concentrating accumulated wealth, people
begin finding themselves suddenly outside of the circle. They jump up and
down and cry foul, but the ones still in the circle say, “tough ****, you
were too slow, should'a run faster to stay inside the circle“. But then,
they soon realize that they too are too slow to keep up with the rapidly
shrinking circle, and quickly they find themselves left out, so they cry
foul. “The system is broken!!!” they decry! But is it? Isn't this the way
the system has always functioned? Why is it now broken just because they,
we, no longer reside within the bounds of its benefits? We stand outside the
ever shrinking circle, yelling fixes, throwing band-aids, making demands
that the ever shrinking circle expand! at least big enough to include us so
that we can go back to not giving a **** about the people outside, but alas,
it will not. The circle does not expand, it does not know how. It only knows
how to contract, concentrate, condense, like a dark star collapsing in on
itself. There is no “demand” that will drag the borders of the circle back
around us. And even if you could, would you? Would you go back to ****ing
the rest of the world to have your cable TV and your steel belted radials? I
hope not. I hope the world is ready to say no more. No more. Therefore,
since it is my sincere belief that the circle is/was and always will be
****ed up, I say, surround them and demand that they collapse in on
themselves and disappear into their own black hole.

That is my One Demand.

Sounds like you're familiar with hippie drum circles....

On Sat, 22 Oct 2011 21:36:00 -0500, "tom" wrote:

Occupy Wall Street: My One Demand

By Jinger Dixon

October 18, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- I was recently asked what
I thought the “one demand” should be for the OWS protest. That's a tough
question. I've seen many lists of the things people are suggesting. Most
seem well intended. However, no one demand alone even begins to scratch the
surface of what‘s wrong here. In fact, in a way, it points out how far we
really are, from seeing where we really are. To sum it all up in one demand
seemed impossible, so I decided to try. After much thought, I constructed
the following analogy to describe my take on this whole One Demand issue.

Take a map and draw a circle, then say, everyone outside the circle is to
have their labor and resources exploited for the benefit of those inside the
circle. If you live outside the circle you say, “this system is completely
****ed up.” If you live inside the circle you say, “this is capitalism and
it’s the best system on earth you should try it it's awesome. Sure, people
outside are suffering, but who gives a **** about them?” Now as the circle
shrinks, as it is designed to do, concentrating accumulated wealth, people
begin finding themselves suddenly outside of the circle. They jump up and
down and cry foul, but the ones still in the circle say, “tough ****, you
were too slow, should'a run faster to stay inside the circle“. But then,
they soon realize that they too are too slow to keep up with the rapidly
shrinking circle, and quickly they find themselves left out, so they cry
foul. “The system is broken!!!” they decry! But is it? Isn't this the way
the system has always functioned? Why is it now broken just because they,
we, no longer reside within the bounds of its benefits? We stand outside the
ever shrinking circle, yelling fixes, throwing band-aids, making demands
that the ever shrinking circle expand! at least big enough to include us so
that we can go back to not giving a **** about the people outside, but alas,
it will not. The circle does not expand, it does not know how. It only knows
how to contract, concentrate, condense, like a dark star collapsing in on
itself. There is no “demand” that will drag the borders of the circle back
around us. And even if you could, would you? Would you go back to ****ing
the rest of the world to have your cable TV and your steel belted radials? I
hope not. I hope the world is ready to say no more. No more. Therefore,
since it is my sincere belief that the circle is/was and always will be
****ed up, I say, surround them and demand that they collapse in on
themselves and disappear into their own black hole.

No, capitalism is the *one* system where, if you're outside the circle you
can, ON YOU OWN, move inside the circle. You don't need the permission of
those inside the circle.

That is my One Demand.

No, what you demand is that people "inside the circle" give you what you want
with no effort to move inside the circle, on your own. Actually, you demand
your toys without any effort at all.

On Oct 23, 4:55*pm, "
wrote:
On Sat, 22 Oct 2011 21:36:00 -0500, "tom" wrote:
Occupy Wall Street: My One Demand

By Jinger Dixon

October 18, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- * I was recently asked what
I thought the “one demand” should be for the OWS protest. That's a tough
question. I've seen many lists of the things people are suggesting. Most
seem well intended. However, no one demand alone even begins to scratch the
surface of what‘s wrong here. In fact, in a way, it points out how far we
really are, from seeing where we really are. To sum it all up in one demand
seemed impossible, so I decided to try. After much thought, I constructed
the following analogy to describe my take on this whole One Demand issue..

Take a map and draw a circle, then say, everyone outside the circle is to
have their labor and resources exploited for the benefit of those inside the
circle. If you live outside the circle you say, “this system is completely
****ed up.” If you live inside the circle you say, “this is capitalism and
it’s the best system on earth you should try it it's awesome. Sure, people
outside are suffering, but who gives a **** about them?” Now as the circle
shrinks, as it is designed to do, concentrating accumulated wealth, people
begin finding themselves suddenly outside of the circle. They jump up and
down and cry foul, but the ones still in the circle say, “tough ****, you
were too slow, should'a run faster to stay inside the circle“. But then,
they soon realize that they too are too slow to keep up with the rapidly
shrinking circle, and quickly they find themselves left out, so they cry
foul. “The system is broken!!!” they decry! But is it? Isn't this the way
the system has always functioned? Why is it now broken just because they,
we, no longer reside within the bounds of its benefits? We stand outside the
ever shrinking circle, yelling fixes, throwing band-aids, making demands
that the ever shrinking circle expand! at least big enough to include us so
that we can go back to not giving a **** about the people outside, but alas,
it will not. The circle does not expand, it does not know how. It only knows
how to contract, concentrate, condense, like a dark star collapsing in on
itself. There is no “demand” that will drag the borders of the circle back
around us. And even if you could, would you? Would you go back to ****ing
the rest of the world to have your cable TV and your steel belted radials? I
hope not. I hope the world is ready to say no more. No more. Therefore,
since it is my sincere belief that the circle is/was and always will be
****ed up, I say, surround them and demand that they collapse in on
themselves and disappear into their own black hole.

No, capitalism is the *one* system where, if you're outside the circle you
can, ON YOU OWN, move inside the circle. *You don't need the permission of
those inside the circle.

That is my One Demand.

No, what you demand is that people "inside the circle" give you what you want
with no effort to move inside the circle, on your own. *Actually, you demand
your toys without any effort at all.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Tch tch. The ones inside the circle do their damndest to keep everyone
else out. They believe society exists for their benifit alone.

On Sun, 23 Oct 2011 09:02:01 -0700 (PDT), harry wrote:

On Oct 23, 4:55*pm, "
wrote:
On Sat, 22 Oct 2011 21:36:00 -0500, "tom" wrote:
Occupy Wall Street: My One Demand

By Jinger Dixon

October 18, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- * I was recently asked what
I thought the “one demand” should be for the OWS protest. That's a tough
question. I've seen many lists of the things people are suggesting. Most
seem well intended. However, no one demand alone even begins to scratch the
surface of what‘s wrong here. In fact, in a way, it points out how far we
really are, from seeing where we really are. To sum it all up in one demand
seemed impossible, so I decided to try. After much thought, I constructed
the following analogy to describe my take on this whole One Demand issue.

Take a map and draw a circle, then say, everyone outside the circle is to
have their labor and resources exploited for the benefit of those inside the
circle. If you live outside the circle you say, “this system is completely
****ed up.” If you live inside the circle you say, “this is capitalism and
it’s the best system on earth you should try it it's awesome. Sure, people
outside are suffering, but who gives a **** about them?” Now as the circle
shrinks, as it is designed to do, concentrating accumulated wealth, people
begin finding themselves suddenly outside of the circle. They jump up and
down and cry foul, but the ones still in the circle say, “tough ****, you
were too slow, should'a run faster to stay inside the circle“. But then,
they soon realize that they too are too slow to keep up with the rapidly
shrinking circle, and quickly they find themselves left out, so they cry
foul. “The system is broken!!!” they decry! But is it? Isn't this the way
the system has always functioned? Why is it now broken just because they,
we, no longer reside within the bounds of its benefits? We stand outside the
ever shrinking circle, yelling fixes, throwing band-aids, making demands
that the ever shrinking circle expand! at least big enough to include us so
that we can go back to not giving a **** about the people outside, but alas,
it will not. The circle does not expand, it does not know how. It only knows
how to contract, concentrate, condense, like a dark star collapsing in on
itself. There is no “demand” that will drag the borders of the circle back
around us. And even if you could, would you? Would you go back to ****ing
the rest of the world to have your cable TV and your steel belted radials? I
hope not. I hope the world is ready to say no more. No more. Therefore,
since it is my sincere belief that the circle is/was and always will be
****ed up, I say, surround them and demand that they collapse in on
themselves and disappear into their own black hole.

No, capitalism is the *one* system where, if you're outside the circle you
can, ON YOU OWN, move inside the circle. *You don't need the permission of
those inside the circle.

That is my One Demand.

No, what you demand is that people "inside the circle" give you what you want
with no effort to move inside the circle, on your own. *Actually, you demand
your toys without any effort at all.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Tch tch. The ones inside the circle do their damndest to keep everyone
else out. They believe society exists for their benifit alone.

Like everything else you write, complete bull****.

"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message
"Robert Green" wrote:

Dude, it's clear that you're much more up to speed on this stuff than I
am.
I've got to read some of your statements 5 times before I follow what
you're
saying. Anyone who thinks selecting a Medicare provider is easy hasn't
waded through the miasma that they send my neighbor. This year we're
weighing it because I'm going to write an article on how virtually
impossible it is for anyone but a subject matter expert to wade through
it.
But I digress.

And the Part D hooha is even worse, unfortunately, because of the
various formularies. You have to match the provider's plans with your
constellation of medicine.

I've done that for my neighbor three years running and two months after she
switches to another plan the formulary changes. From the number of times
I've complained on her behalf (which "HIPPO" (sic) makes very nearly
impossible, FWIW) the answer I get is "we can change our formulary at any
time by giving notice." That's changed slightly from the first time I
called. It used to be said without the "notice" part. I guess somebody
complained. By the thousands.

There certainly IS a distinction to be made between working for your
money
and having enough money to have it work for you in addition to your own
labor. The distinction is what the progressive tax code was *meant* to
be
all about but moneyed interests have bought changes that continue to
favor
them in ways that mean the divide between the richest and the poorest
keeps
expanding. I will admit there have been attempts at corrections, but
the
bottom line is that the net worth of the wealthiest people has
skyrocketed.

But we don't tax on wealth (at least yet, although I suppose the case
could be made that the estate tax comes close).

Wait. What would make it NOT a tax on wealth. If you inherit over X
dollars, Uncle Sam and his state cousins will have their hand out for a big
chunk. We've also had a round of luxury taxes in the US that some talk
about reviving even though the results were not what the Feds expected.
Both are taxes poor people can only wish they'd have to pay. Mostly what
the poor inherit is the cost of burying their parents and getting phone
calls from creditors trying to convince them they're liable for their
parent's debts. They are not, but many pay anyway.

The facts are and always
will be, that on INCOME taxes, the rich payer a higher percentage of
their income on taxes than the poor do. (Okay maybe not always, but
always under the current system).

Don't you mean that they are "supposed to pay a higher percentage?" Warren
Buffet strenuously claims the reverse of what you are saying is true.
Buffet says he pays a lower overall percentage than his staff.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...s-millionaire/

says: Their conclusion: As we said at the outset, we don't get into
questions of opinions such as whether secretaries should pay a higher tax
rate than billionaire bosses. But that situation is possible under the
current tax code, if an employee is sufficiently well paid and if the boss's
income comes from stock market investments or managing a hedge fund. Is it
the norm? No. Millionaires who count on a salary pay higher taxes than those
who draw most of their earnings from investment income. And most secretaries
earn too little to pay such high rates.

The rate of taxation takes total
income and total taxes which smoothes out all of the differing stuff
inside the box.

What box? (-:

Krugman claims the inflation-adjusted income of families in the middle
of
the income distribution rose 21 percent and that over the same period,
the
income of the very rich, the top 100th of 1 percent of the income
distribution, rose by 480 percent. In other words at the very top the
average annual income of that group rose from $4.2 million to $24.3
million.
That's staggering and it's an indication that progressive taxation is
failing from both ends and depleting the middle class.

I don't get how. We, again, are talking wealth and that has nothing
to do with the relative progressiveness of taxes. If you want to
regulate wealth by taxation you have to make it VERY regressive at the
top end. Which is a whole ball of policy wax.

Indeed. Very steep taxes for the uber-rich may eventually come to pass as
the gulf between American's richest and poorest people widens. I don't know
where the answers lie, just that there are some troubling issues to be dealt
with, like people with skills willing to work but unable to find jobs. You
know there's trouble when Wal*mart advertises for 100 new positions and gets
10,000 applicants, even with crappy benefits. They are also pros at hiring
mostly part time workers whom they don't have to pay ANY health bennies.

OWS might finally convince Wall St. that if they can't rein in excessive CEO
compensation, they run the risk of Congress doing it for them. While you've
talked about how that's been a failure, given enough time, they could close
the necessary loopholes to make it so. In the long run, very few people are
going to vote for taxing themselves and not the uber-rich. As you've noted,
when they're compensated in stock, that devalues every other shareholder's
investment. With so damn few people supporting it, I find it amazing that
it not only persists, but appears to be growing each year.

Krugman likes to ignore those stats that disagree with what he
wants
to say.

Is it my turn to say "you say you've been watching Washington, DC
operate
for how long?" (-:

Never said otherwise, did I? Just making a comment (okay, stating
the obvious).

The problem is that what's obvious to you is not obvious to a lot of people.
Small armies of people on both sides believe everything Krugman and Limbaugh
have to say about the economy. Cherry picking stats, generalizing from
small, poor examples, etc. are techniques used by both sides. I'd say very
few people take economics courses by choice so they end up extrapolating
their own experience to how the government collects and spends money. They
don't realize the economic laws of the small household just don't "scale up"
to the operations of the Federal government.

HeyBub, IIRC, is fond of saying Obama's stimulus money just disappeared.
But money doesn't vanish. People who get even "make work" jobs spend that
money in the economy which keeps it from shrinking even more. People who
get unemployment money are often so close to the edge that their checks are
spent as soon as they get them, and probably a lot sooner since they're
likely in serious debt. An article in today's NYT claims the only different
between OWS and the Tea Party is who they blame for the 2008 crash. Another
interesting column by David Brooks talks about whether we're really the
rational agents that economic theories often rely on:

Pro golfers putt more accurately from all distances when putting for par
than when putting for birdie because they fear the bogie more than they
desire the birdie. Israeli parole boards grant parole to about 35 percent of
the prisoners they see, except when they hear a case in the hour just after
mealtime. In those cases, they grant parole 65 percent of the time. Shoppers
will buy many more cans of soup if you put a sign atop the display that
reads "Limit 12 per customer."

Unfortunately, business is well aware of these foibles and uses them to
sell, sell, sell. That pressure pushes a lot of people to think they need
something they really don't. Part of the great real estate crisis was the
belief that owning a home was a one-way ticket to wealth and that houses
will always rise in cost. It sadly parallels the belief that a college
diploma is an automatic ticket to wealth.

But none of that is shown by the stats instead of the estimates.

If you're saying he's a liar, you'll have to take it up with him.

Actually I thought it was rather clever that all of a sudden he
brings in AND PAYROLL taxes, including the SS taxes. This, of course, is
going to skew the results to where he wants them because of the cap on
SS taxes. But again, the cap on taxes coincides with the cap on
benefits. If you want to change one of the bedrock principles of the
system from the getgo and not base paying in on what one is getting in
return, debate it out front and don't even begin to pretend it is some
sort of unfairness in the system.

We're going to eventually see a debate about "where wealth comes from" and
whether accumulated wealth should be taxed heavily to prevent so much money
from concentrating in the hands of so few that the economy locks up. Henry
Ford presciently said he paid his workers a good wage so that they could
afford to buy his products. Turning that premise on its head, Wal*mart just
announced it's cutting back on the meager health benefits that it pays its
workers. If people can't work hard and become successful, the American
Dream is dying. And people at Wal*mart work pretty damn hard to get mostly
nowhere. That worries me.

Another thing that worries me is how cut-throat and unethical parts of Wall
St. have become:

Securities and Exchange Commission unveiled its latest charges involving
mortgage-backed securities. In what may be a new low for conduct by a major
Wall Street firm in the walk-up to the financial crisis, Citigroup settled
charges (without admitting or denying guilt) that it defrauded investors by
creating a package of mortgage-backed securities for which it selected a
pool of mortgages likely to default, bet against the security for the bank's
benefit by shorting it and then foisted it off on unwitting investors
without disclosing any of this. According to the S.E.C., one trader
characterized this particular security in an all-too-candid e-mail as
"possibly the best short EVER!"

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/bu...ef=todayspaper

"Without admitting to guilt." A blind man could "see" their guilt with his
cane.

(-: If
it's true, it's more evidence that the middle class takes the lumps, the
upper class gets the lion's share and they give the lower class a break
to
keep the bread and circuses flowing. I will agree, however, that
estimates
are like opinions are like "hassles" - everyone's got one and no one
think's
theirs stinks.

Not really, especially with the SS taxes artificially tossed in.

If you're saying the middle class is still A-OK, I've got to strongly
disagree. When Wal*mart ****s (oops, shifts!) the burden of health care
costs onto the backs of its middle and lower class employees, they are
taking a serious pay cut. Wal*mart stockholders (whom I believe are mostly
upper class and wealthy) gain, middle and lower class workers lose. That
same scene is being repeated all across America. It's a recipe for social
disaster. Part of the reason fewer jobs are open to young people is that
older folks have determined they HAVE to keep on working until they can't
work anymore just to be sure to have enough to survive their old age.

Okay, I had to check. Here's the scoop on Wal*mart:

Walton Enterprises LLC owns an estimated 1,680,506,739 shares of Wal-Mart
stock. The entire Wal-Mart company is divided into 3,636,547,192 shares.
That means that the family holds somewhere around 46.2% of the firm with
other investors owning the other 57.4%. We know that Wal-Mart Stores pays a
dividend of $1.21 per share. That means that the family holding company,
Walton Enterprises LLC, collects a staggering $2,033,413,154+ before taxes
each year in dividend income.

http://www.joshuakennon.com/walton-e...lding-company/

And who says the gulf between rich and poor isn't widening? (-:

That is another debate, one we probably would be closer in thoughts
on.
Although I would also remind one and all that you have to wade through
the first 15 "tax expenditures" (what the government euphemistically
calls tax breaks) before you get to one that is business related.

I did look that up and spend considerable time trying to shoot holes in
it.
You're right. The hoi polloi get most of the joy, tax wise. It's
coming
more and more clear that *no one* is paying their fair share, at least
when
you consider how much everyone is spending on present and (mostly)
future
tax dollars on.

That is one of the most interesting (and annoying) things to look at
each year. It is probably the biggest indictment of the (alleged) system
of taxes that you can find.

All deficit spending needed was to "appear" to have worked once. Then the
fix was in. Why budget when some economic miracle in the future would pull
your butt out of the fire?

They
get theirs, but we get ours too and these end up to be a MUCH greater
burden to revenue. So, we need to keep both in the discussion.

Cain's flat tax could actually work with the right formula - food would
be
tax free and other necessities could be exempted to make it somewhat
less
burdensome on the poor.

And everybody against it tries to pretend it is rocket science to do
that, conveniently forgetting that pretty much every state sales tax
does exactly the same thing.

People hate change, even small amounts of it. Rewriting the entire tax code
short of rebuilding the nation after a nuclear war isn't going to happen.
Only disaster spurs massive change. It won't come from the stalemate we're
currently seeing between Democrats and Republicans.

The Tax Code has passed the point of what my CMSC
610 prof (who was the retired head of the FBI data operations in DC)
said
was ""intellectual control." It has become so vast, arcane and
specialized
that only accountants with detailed specializations can understand it or
when it's been violated. I watched my dad struggle for ten years with
an
oil and gas partnership that the IRS took a dislike to. That required
energy tax lawyers, CPAs and years of mail tag and finally tax court by
which time the partnership one, but the profits had largely been paid to
lawyers defending the profits.

When even the IRS won't stand behind what its own employees tells
you over the phone...

My journalism professor was of a mind that if it happened over the phone, it
didn't really happen. Sort of like Tip O'Neill's (IIRC) famous comment "why
write what you can say, why say what you can nod, why nod what you can
wink?" when talking about being held to something you've written in a memo.

Never said that now did I? I find that especially entertaining
since you exclaim your rights to have an opinion while taking away
mine.

It's the new order my friend. Sorry for being so harsh. I should have
said
"Do I look like Tax Cheatin' Timmy G? I don't formulate no stinkin' tax
policy." (-"

Happens a lot in political debate any more.

Is that really the right use of any more? (-:
Trying to give the benefit of the doubt (g).

I'm not trying to be a needle-dicked bug raper, but what "IT" do you
mean?
I am going to beat proper pronoun reference into you if it's the last
thing
I do, and it could easily be. (-:

It was the entire section above it about how revenue plummeted. I
figured that since it was your discussion, you would realize that. I
guess I am underthinking at the same you are overthinking (g).

OK, I'll buy that, but you have to remember I have some serious short term
memory problems and apparently that's one way they evidence themselves, as
in WTF is he referring to? The STML doesn't seem obvious in writing posts
because it takes 8 hours of writing to pound out what I used to be able to
write in 8 minutes. Eventually I'll have to stop when things erode too
much. So far, my neuro says this is good therapy. Doesn't feel like it.

The dirty little secret that both sides like to ignore is that
the
state of the economy is the biggest part of the revenue puzzle.

Agreed. While reducing expenditures is in theory a good idea, in
practice
it's an awfully painful one. I don't expect a recovery any time soon
and in
fact believe we're seeing 1929 play out in slow motion.

We had one of the longer expansions with (relatively) light
recessions until this one. EVERYBODY (government, consumer, industry)
got caught up in the Euphoria deciding that this time was different
(about the time I automatically start raising cash-g) and that this
particular tree would, indeed, grow to the sky.

What bothers me is the banks and Wall Streets resistance to reinstating some
sort of law that would reduce the exposure of FDIC insured banks from huge
speculative losses.

Heck, if you bought into the Prevailing Wisdom, even the bad loans
were a great idea since (both sides of the equation thought) the house
HAS to be worth a lot more in a couple of years than it was now. So, the
homeowner KNEW that they would be able to sell the house for more than
the balloon payment or that their salary HAD to keep going up. The worst
case scenario for the lenders was they foreclosed and got a house to
resell on the cheap. (There were similar idiocies on the general
business side)

Until there were so many foreclosures that they collapsed the entire market.

When that (surprise, surprise) did not happen, the house of cards
collapsed. So, with Everbody leveraged to the eye balls, there was
nobody to lead us out of the recession. Deleveraging is a bear (so to
speak). I also would like to note from a purely statistical aspect,
quite a bit of this is returning to the norm. You have an extended time
of above average growth, you have to have a time of below average.

So what you're saying is look for a turn-around in 2016. I might not even
know who I am by 2016. Perhaps it's time to spend while I can still
appreciate it. Actually, Medicare will pressure me to spend wildly and
divorce my wife just to be eligible for nursing home care. We keep joking
that we should get divorced now so it won't be considered a sham divorce.

An explosion like the 2008 debacle every once in a while serves to make
people stop and really examine what's going on. I think the unfunded
pensions and health benefits hand grenade might have really grown in
explosive power if the crash hadn't occurred and sent all the states
scurrying to look more closely at expenditures.

Yet we are ignoring the single biggest unfunded liability, the SS
"surplus"

Well, if we're ignoring the liability of the states, why not the much larger
one? They're all invisible elephants in the room.

Obama's job plan would have at least tried to get some segments of the
economy back on track so that growth can resume. I suspect no matter
which
side wins in 2012, we're going to continue in our lost decade just the
way
the Japanese did.

Largely the union segments. Found it interesting, at least from an
Indiana perspective, that the places in the state getting all of the
green seed money are places like GM, Delphi, etc., that are UAW while a
maker of green police cars and a couple other real start-ups are still
waiting.

The power of lobbying. It doesn't surprise me a bit.

There are no accounting tricks that make it look smaller. It is what
it
is. Although there is a certain amount of self-fulfilling prophesy
about
how the total package is put together. Sorta like Canada does with
their
brand name medications. They use a market basket of the countries that
pay the least.

Ah yes, one of the very tricks I was talking about. The statistics
about
labor and income from now and 30 years ago require so many adjustments
to
draw valid comparisons that I'll bet a good economist could make a case
for
the equivalent of economic anti-gravity. When I grew up, most fathers
worked, most women stayed at home and we enjoyed a comfortable standard
of
living. Now, to enjoy that same standard, both parents have to work.

Houses are now almost 1/4 bigger than they were in the 50s (although
that might be heading back down). We have internet, A/C, regulations
adding something like $1500 to the cost of a car and around $7500 to the
cost of a house, etc. etc. We are enjoying a better standard and for
that both have to work.

Is it really that much better? The fact that the poor have such "amenities"
now indicates that the baseline has moved, but that a higher income is not
necessarily required to have those things.

The first $100 million is a struggle, the second $100 million is
inevitable (g).

I know enough millionaires to know that being a millionaire sure doesn't
mean what it used to mean.


I ran a million through an inflation calculator using 1980 as the
base year (rather arbitrarily half way between the start of Standard Oil
and its break up. "RIch as Rockefeller" seems to be about the time
millionaire was brought into the vernacular. You would arond $24 million
to be a millionaire in what I will whimsically call "real money".
Doesn't really add anything to the discussion, but was a mildly amusing
what if game.

I read another disturbing item in the NYT that makes me wonder if we haven't
changed for the worse. It's about how accounting firms can keep charges of
malfeasance against them on the down low for years:

The board also has the authority to file enforcement actions against
auditors, but those, too, are private until the S.E.C. rules on an appeal.
It is as if charges of robbery had to be kept confidential until all appeals
had been completed. There is no way to know if the accounting board has
taken action against anyone. An auditor that the board deems to be in
violation of rules may keep working for years while secret proceedings
continue.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/bu...ef=todayspaper

We're in a nasty state with control shifting back and forth between
elections, Supreme Court decisions of 5-4 inviting future (and now it seems
inevitable) reversal. We're acting like a poorly designed thermostat that
rapidly switches on and off when the set temperature is reached instead of
staying on or off until room temperature has varied by a few degrees.

I'm not sure what can be done to fix it. Both sides dream of a getting a
massive majority in the House, Senate and Supreme Court, but that's probably
not going to happen any time soon. As dissection of a battery will tell
you, differences in polarity can result in a lot of work being done, and
once upon a time America could do that. Now, we seem utterly paralyzed with
neither side willing to give a millimeter to the other. Has the battery of
economic power in America finally run down? I'm worried that everyone's
struggling to reach a level of post WWII prosperity that was an incredible
fluke and the likes of which we'll never see again.

--
Bobby G.