under obama's or mccain's leadership the u.s. will continue on it's march towards catastrophic economic failure. neither has outlined any significant plan to control spending and figure out a way to deal with the obligations of social security and medicare. congress has further proven itself to be utterly incompetent as well. http://dallasfed.org/news/speeches/fisher/2008/fs080528.cfm Dallas Fed Reserve Bank CEO Richard Fisher does an excellent job explaining how much trouble we are facing. It is a long read for something on clutchfans.net but I will bold the important parts. Hell, everything is important...hopefully I didn't get too bold happy.
maybe i should have just named this thread something more controversial so it would actually get attention. maybe something like "barack and the democrats WILL bankrupt america" or "mccain's economic idiocy and wasteful military spending will destroy america"...that may have got people to actually care about the single most important issue facing america. people don't seem to understand that this problem will lead to an economic collapse of america. the current credit crisis we are in now is absolutely nothing compared to this problem. if it's not in the here and now then no one gives a damn.
We need more bipartisan work. In the early 90's, BushI agreed to raise taxes and then we agreed to lower spending CHA-CHING balanced budget. Since 9-11 we have reduced taxes and increased our debt from medicare by trillions.
if medicare spirals to trillions per year I just don't think the govt will make the outlays and change the funding to b a lot tless.
That is a good point about the health care system. We need massive reform of our bloated military budget which equals that of the rest of the world. We also need to start taxing our wealthy at rates like the other advanced countries. These three things are probably the biggest steps least painful steps we can take. I believe other advanced countries such as Western Europe, Canada and Austrailia are doing a better job at manging deficits , pensions for the elederly and health care than we are.
so then who takes care of the aging population? is the government going to find a more efficient way to spend money? will the bills simply not add up to the numbers fed's fisher and others are putting out there? i'm seriously trying to get educated on this because i honestly feel this presents a major threat to the money that i am saving. everything i have read does not point to what you say. everything i have read reminds me exactly of the sentiment that was out there before the credit crisis hit even when the writing was on the wall. people were aloof to the idea that things could get this bad even when massive warning signs were flashing. it was like a "this could never happen to us" mentality. i would really love to see something that gives me some sort of confidence that things could turn out the way you are saying and result no real consequences to the american public.
we would be a lot better off wrt healthcare if we could get our fat ass population to lose weight. isn't diabetes the fastest growing disease in america?
If they die off faster then we spend less on them. What we need to do is stop 5g's for one night at the hospital.
I'd put up caps on how much the medical industry can profit, nationalize the sucker, and host a prize competition on who can integrate the system the most efficient and broad manner as possible. Four years ago, I think our expected debt 2020 was ~54 trillion..too lazy to dig up that link. It seems we're on an exponential spending curve. Something's gotta give. Either we socialize several key industries, or privatize everything.
i have diabetes, i'm 5'10", 180. mentioned this another thread, the funny thing, I found out i had diabetes because i lost about 60 lbs in a matter of a year.
wow i didn't know you could get it like that. sorry to hear about that. i didn't mean to sound overly insensitive but when national healthcare is discussed it irritates me that obesity/poor eating habits never really seem to get addressed as a major issue along with healthcare reform. and i hope you don't develop anything serious because i had a cousin who died from diabetes. it was mainly horrible doctor's advice that led to her death so make sure you are careful.
Type II Diabetes is heavily influenced by genetics. My dad had it. My aunt has it. My uncle from my mother's side died from a related complication. My aunt from my mother's side had it too. Diet helps things, but because the modern diet has moved beyond cultural norms from what people ate a 100 years ago, eating marginally healthy might not matter. It might take a very drastic change in eating for it to influence your health. At that point not many are turned onto the idea.
I feel the entire system is flawed but I'll only address the health care system statement as a personal trainer. What is extremely sad is the fact that insurance won't cover any preventative medicine such as seeing a dietician or paying for personal training. I think there needs to be an elective health care option that covers prevention becuase when the insurance industry only wants to cover treatment then it ends up costing probably 10x the amount it would have cost to prevent. Most of the people that I have trained and have helped to lose weight is merely obviously the reversal of a combination of poor diet and lack of exercise. But our society for the most part is ignorant to these topics and I don't feel the FDA does a good job in regulating our food (whole other topic right there). I'm sure if the option existed to be partially covered to seek help before it really became an issue, people would opt for it. In my success as a personal trainer I've helped many people drop weight and drop medication for blood pressure and cholesterol to name some. I've even taught people how to regulate their blood sugar level if they have type II diabetes to the point that they don't need insulin. Can you imagine how much money that would save the system? Oh right, I forgot my industry (preventative medicine) doesn't help fund the FDA or have lobbyists representing us. Too bad. I agree with the OP, the economy is doomed to tank and is a direct result of years of over spending by the r****ds we have in congress who are there representing their own interests more then their constituents.
Can I ask why everyone believes that universally available healthcare is such a great idea? Think about it.
it sounds good to people who want a change and to people who don't have healthcare but people don't realize the problems we already have ahead of us due to medicare and mismanagement of it. i really hope something changes and that some grassroots movement begins so that people understand that this problem needs to be addressed immediately because it is almost too late. but the par for the course of american government is to do nothing until it's too late. except this time too late means catastrophic failure. if anyone finds anything that gives good counter points on how this disaster might be not as bad a perceived please post the articles. you can never have too much knowledge on this subject.
