Bernie Sanders 2016 Feel the Bern!

1) Thank the Fed. You might have paid even lower, btw.

2) Have you never travelled before? Realized that the machinations of currency traders and the rigging of the markets affects the currency you're paid in? Sure, USD is strong now, but don't look at Soros breaking the GBP to know that can change on a dime.

3) Are you happy with an economy that is under capacity beyond your stock positions? This could involve employment prospects for your non-criminal children, who are walking full force into an economy with crushing student debt, declining wages, and youth underemployment.

4) Pray tell how the government created the insurance industry?

5) So you're ok with private companies that have infinitely more data on you selling it to government?

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/vigilant-solutions-surveillance/427047/

6) They don't have to be.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html?_r=0

also don't forget--war profiteering, human rights abuses, laundering money from suspect allies, continuing the war on drugs through carte blanche laundering, environmental impact etc.

To be bluntly clear, I'm only really referring to the capital-only echelons of the 1% which are the very top and don't encapsulate the typical two-doctor household setup, 1er% is just catchier than that, so we're largely in agreement otherwise.

 

Jobs aren't created by 1 percenters, they're created by technological innovations and research labs. The people who distribute those technologies deserve some credit, but not as much as the original creators.

Tim Berners-Lee has created more jobs than anybody in history and he's not exactly rolling in the riches, having renounced monetization and privatization of the Internet (you can say goodbye to Google, Facebook, Twitter and etc. if he had been a little bit greedier).

Anyways, you want to live "comfortably". That's your prerogative. But don't stare with goggly eyes if somebody wants to do better. isn't that the whole point of the inherent jealousy that powers capitalism and unnecessary materialism?

 

Because people should do what benefits them not some one else. If every incremental dollar could go to the 1% or the bottom 1% it would be better for every incremental to go the bottom 1% since they are more likely to spend it.

 

I'll thank the Credit Union that gave me the loan, even if they suck. I think they shouldn't loan me at interest rates this low.

I've traveled, just happens that I do it within the country. Like the vast majority of Americans, I can't afford to visit other countries. I don't even have a passport. Assuming I stay healthy, I would expect to go in about 20 years when my daughter is out of the house.

Because financially I've never been better off in my life. I've never been happier. Neither my wife nor I had any problems finding jobs during the recession. My children won't have crushing student loan debt, unless they are idiotic. They will go to state colleges instead of private ones, and if necessary live at home. They should be able to cover their tuition through the HOPE scholarship and will have access to their college savings accounts.

Never said that it did. Just saying for all the wrong health insurance companies have done, a lot of why costs continue to rise isn't on them.

It doesn't overly bother me, otherwise I wouldn't use credit cards.

It would take an insanely rare occurrence. I had my fair share of run-ins with the law as a kid, yet never ended up in jail. Do the penalties given concern me? Yes. I prefer prisons focus on rehabilitation and protecting people from truly dangerous individuals, not ruining lives of non-violent individuals.

 

I definitely understand that.

I am actually a Bernie supporter, and would likely vote for him in the General, though I'm undecided which party to vote in on Super Tuesday. No candidate is ever going to be fully in tune with me, but I respect Bernie for not selling himself to corporate America and I support universal healthcare. I think he will do more than any other candidate to bring real change to issues Americans strongly care about.

 

Jobs are created by demand, not 1 percenters.

 

I'm watching Sanders on Colbert and I hate to say it but I agree with Bill O'Reilly in his response to Sander' upholding Denmark as an example for the US for universal health care. Sanders' called that argument absurd but O'Reilly is right that Denmark is much smaller and there is an issue of scale to compare that to the US. Further citing countries like Canada, the UK and Germany also ignores that the US is much larger than those countries.

The problem of scale is going to be a challenge to a national health care system. Just developing the bureaucracy to administer it is going to be a difficult.

 

I googled precedence of failed UHS due to scalability and I was unsuccessful. So it seems that O'Reilly wants us to focus on this scalability issue (which may or may not be there) instead of the proven success of all those countries mentioned? Seems like more boogeyman talk.

I understand that if the U.S. goes this direction, that it would be very challenging but should never be a factor in determining if that's what's needed to be done.

 

It sounds like the healthcare debate will be among the top 3 issues for people in the Bernie Sanders camp. Being in the medical profession (GI fellow), I can offer my two cents here. It is not about scalability. It is about the different circumstances with which the US has to contend.

1. We are not as healthy as Europe. Americans have the second highest average BMI in the world (surprised we're not #1? that goes to Kuwait at this point, but don't worry America, I'm sure we can take back #1 if we work at it. cuz if you ain't first, yer last!). Each person in America gets sicker and has a more prolonged and drawn out end of life course than any other country in the world. Hence they require more healthcare.

2. The healthcare that Americans receive is the most expensive in the world. It is true--and people get angry about this the most--that all medical companies, from Big Pharma to medical device firms, use the United States as their cash cow from which they will develop their products and then sell at much reduced prices to the rest of the world. Drugs, CT/MRI scanners, DaVinci robots, most of them are developed in the US with the cost of development being paid forward to the US consumer, while each country in the EU for the most part gets to negotiate prices with much better leverage, being that they are social systems who can take an all-or-nothing approach to letting in those companies' products.

By trying to make the US employ the same policies that Europe has, yes you will lead to reduced costs upon the taxpayers. But the domino effect of reduced profitability for everyone in the healthcare industry is such that the US might risk losing its Most Favored Nation status as the world leader in research for these things. Right now, every smart person in the world tries to come to America, not because our quality of life is significantly better (many times with our incessant driving, idiotic loyalty to the suburbs, and the aforementioned poorer health outcomes in America, we actually live worse than Europeans). Rather, they come to America because we are the best representation of a free market system, where you might see where your wits take you and actually be compensated fairly for it. If America forsakes its past as a beacon of capitalism, then you can eventually kiss that Favored Nation status amongst international academics and researchers goodbye.

Right now the healthcare sector is hovering right around 17% of our GDP, which is the highest for all developed countries. Of course we would like it to get smaller, but right now asking it to do so would be like asking the federal government to stop expanding and all of a sudden start firing workers. Anyone who works in the government or is contracted by them knows that this does not happen. Healthcare has reached Too-Big-To-Fail status in the US. Of course, doctors are resistant to being squeezed (although they are slowly but surely losing all the overhead income potential they once had as small business owners). But think about the nurses, PA's, NP's, radiology techs, all "health care extenders", nursing supervisors, hospital administrators, coders, EMR consultants, drug reps, really anyone who works in the hospital setting. The Texas Medical Center employs over 100,000 people, and that's not even counting the innumerable financial advisors and lawyers who look at the industry as a huge cash cow for them too. Even with tort reform, you think lawyers have any incentive to make the healthcare industry any more threadbare? They are the lions, and we the bison, and if we die so will they.

So the US and EU are like apples and oranges. In the end, nothing that Bernie is selling to his supporters is grounded in reality. It's going to take some people that have been entrenched in trying to reform the healthcare system (*cough* Obama *cough*) to call Bernie out on his promises before people start to take the blinders off. All this is not to say that healthcare reform should not take place in some meaningful fashion; it's just important that you listen to some people with actual perspective before you set off spouting idealist bull**** to the masses.

 

You are right, so many people do not see how hard it would be to reform the healthcare system and turn it into a single payer system. Sanders can promise all he want, in the end it will not get done. The only way this happens is health care cost becomes too much of a burden for too many people, and a majority of the people demand complete reform. Right now too many conservatives cannot see that a single payer system like the one in Germany is the best system, they keep coming back to we have the best healthcare system in the world fiction. Free college, that will be just as hard to complete. That's why I say Sanders is not grounded in reality.

 

Entitlement speak....

 

-Its taken by force; its not optional
-Its not yours to take out anytime
-You can't pass it on through inheritance
-The amount you receive depends on how much you invested over a 20 year period (not a lifetime) and when you start withdrawing.
-(key factor) There are no caps on how much SS you can take out over a lifetime.

The only resemblance it has to a investment vehicle is that the amount you receive is scaled by how much you put in. You put none in, you get very little out; You put the max in, its still not a very good pay out.... unless you consider $2600 a good payout.

 

I just wanted to address the first two points because you can't have it both ways.

If you want to complain about evil speculators and traders rigging the market then you have to realize that these same evil people are in the bond market "rigging" prices higher and yields lower. The Fed and other Fed banks have been basically following the markets and the markets have pretty much ignored the actions of the Fed.

Also, my home loan from a credit union is based off the 10 year treasury and not the Fed.

 

It isn't an "investment vehicle," it is social insurance, payroll taxes are the premium for being assured you won't be completely destitute when you're too old to work.

 

Did you know in Bernie's socialist heaven of Denmark that the retirement system is basically all private?

For what it's worth I actually prefer how they set up their contribution limits. It is much better than in the US. However, their taxes seem to be much less regressionary from what I saw compared to the US so lower income people would have much more to contribute.

 

There are differences in quality between the national health care systems of UK and Denmark that I would attribute to scalability issues. My understanding is that there are far more complaints and delays in service compared between the larger systems and the smaller ones like Denmark. The US is about 3 times the population of the UK so that alone would present greater challenges.

How something is done should be a factor in the what should be done. The implementation of any ambitious and challenging plan should be a consideration in how it's done.