Basso, you disappoint me every day. EVERY f*kin day. It is not that you have nothing to add to the discussion, it is that you have said so many stupid things that nobody is willing to listen to you anymore. What is worse is that you don't care!! Your intention is to annoy. On occasion I have thought your comments have warranted further analysis. It never gets it because nobody is willing to listen to the "boy who called wolf." Nobody wants to put in the time on your threads only to find out that it is full of crap, so people dismiss your articles and your polls and they are quite right to do so. I do not know about comments from other posters that you are referring to above, NOR DO I CARE. I think you should take a short vacation from the D&D, then come back with a thread saying that you will have some posting etiquette from now on, and then . . . actually have such etiquette. If you need a role model, then look to Thumbs. He isn't the greatest, but he is kooky and enjoyable to talk to. He is at least a step in the right direction for you. Help me.... help you. Regarding polls, I have found that there is a method to analyze a poll's credibility. I learned it from a political science teacher. And before I go on, let me say that Political Science is the worst major in the world. Thank goodness I only minored in it. There is no student development, and those who take the major to go to law school will be horribly disappointed. And... it is not like law schools want more poly-sci majors, trust me, they have enough already. Diversity is the word these days kids. But I digress. The only worthwhile thing I learned from Poli-Sci is this, The way to analyze a poll's credibility is to: 1) check the sample size (here, 800 is decent); 2) check whether the margin of error is 3% or less (here, the poll is 3%, just border-lining the limit); 3) check if the questions asked are not leading questions or poorly phrased. If a poll does not meet one of these requirements, it should be thrown out. Not even looked at. Here, that is not the case basso! However, you should not be surprised if people have complained about Fox News lacking any one of these requirements in their past polls. Many times they lack etiquette just like you. At this point, I will cease addressing you basso, and will address the D&D community as a whole. Dear D&D: Regarding the Fox News poll, I found this question to be funny as well as indicative that Obama needs to drop this talking point. It is a losing battle, and is unbecoming of a President. 32. If you have heard about Obama's criticism of Fox News: Who do you think is right in this debate? -------------FOX-----Obama--(Both)--(Neither)--(Don’t know) Oct 09-------56%-------29------4--------5------------7 Democrats----20%------60------7-------5-------------8 Republicans---89%------2-------1-------4-------------5 Independents-48%------31------7-------7-------------7
My post is not really about your comment in this thread, but rather your body of work. It is your consistent nature of bringing nothing to the table. We were having a great intellectual conversation. Your comment was not mean or insulting, it really meant nothing. If you would have made a mean comment, everyone would just pile on and my critique would be interpreted as a response to your horrible behavior. However, this "ironic" comment of yours gave me the opportunity to say that I expect more from you, while others just want you degrade you. Forgive me for trying to spin it towards a valid conversation about polling quality. If someone was to look at my comment just in response to yours, they would think I am overreacting. If they would see what you do in this forum overall, they would say this was ultimately necessary. I am trying to help you basso. Readers don't search through your analysis. Instead they search for whatever walrus picture they can put in your thread. I honestly feel that you bring up some good topics every now and then. I will join your side when you do this in a proper way, but I won't go through your spam. Bring up good sources, ask the right questions. I am suggesting that you do have the ability to contribute to this forum. But as of now, you bring nothing. Let's change that. Take a breather from the D&D and turn over a new leaf. Let's work together basso ... to do something great.
What evidence?? And how much has the stimulus been spent? Also, we are not "out of this mess". At best, we have finally hit bottom, we certainly haven't recovered. TARP is the only program that will have even remotely helped. I could see the theoretical example that a failed banking industry would have devastated the economy further, but pork spending and propping up the auto industry will hurt us for years to come. There was ZERO reasons why we should have bailed out the auto industry. If they both have failed, then a new company or two would have risen out of their ashes. The economy is neither Bush's or Obama's fault, per say. As long as we have a federal reserve and greedy politicians passing horrendous bills, we will always have severe booms and busts.
There was ZERO reasons why we should have bailed out the auto industry. If they both have failed, then a new company or two would have risen out of their ashes. See, there's your problem. You have no idea what a shut down of a large company does to actual real people. Mortgage foreclosures, loss of income, loss of insurance, no way to feed your kids, despair, loss of tax base. And, it ripples through everyone in the community. There were hundreds of thousands of reasons to bail out the auto industry.
Why are political parties and their presidents the only one on the hook in this polling? Where's Clinton? Where's the Fed? Where's Greenspan? Where's Goldman? Special interest has nothing to do with the current state of the economy? Most media is trash imo-the only thing it seems good for is to push people apart and make people define themselves based on their differences.
I guess we can forget about the millions that have already lost their jobs? I guess the gov. should have bailed out those companies too? The gov. could have given every employee half a million and still came out better. There is a huge market for American vehicles. Your problem is that you fail to see that Americans do not want crappy vehicles. The reason why the auto industry failed in the first place is because they were not pushing out a good product and making a profit. Bailing them out doesn't fix this problem. Unless they dramatically do a turn around, they will fail again. And with GM going green is certainly not fitting the mold for American demand. As long as they have the union's squeezing the life out of the car industry, they will never be able to R&D properly to stay ahead of the game. What this really amounts to is "if you vote democrat, the government will continue to feed your company money so you can keep your job".
Forbes posted the former "Car Czar's" lengthy account of dealing with the auto crisis. http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/21/autos/auto_bailout_rattner.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009102109 A really, really, really good reason for the bailout was that even in the event of bankruptcy, the governments would've had to assume control and liquidate whatever pittance of assets were left. It's chockful of detail, but I found his account over "shafting" the secured creditors to be very interesting. Chrysler was only worth 1 billion in fair market liquidation. Secured creditors knew they could only get that amount of money. Car Czar had the leverage. The government upped the handout to 2.25 billion to get the creditors to agree. He claims, "Every stakeholder did better under our plan than they would have in the alternative: a liquidation, in which the lenders would have gotten far less than the $2 billion they wound up with. "
I guess we can forget about the millions that have already lost their jobs? I guess the gov. should have bailed out those companies too? The gov. could have given every employee half a million and still came out better. You do what you can do. The large automotive companies are easier to support than a myriad of smaller companies and they are systemic to the American economy. In a sense the companies did go bankrupt since the incompetent owners, the stockholders lost their value; giving way for the new owners to reorganize to build a more competitive product. If you would have let them shutter the doors, not only would you have allowed a great social disaster to occur, you would have reduced the chances of revamping. As a choice of what to use the power of the federal government on, GM was a good one.
It may sound like a subtle point, but the reason the American auto companies failed was because of their competitive disadvantage in what it cost them to produce their cars. The way that played out in the showrooms was that a GM car that cost $20,000 to manufacture was of a lower build quality than a Toyota car that cost $20 to manufacture. Basically, the American auto companies were presenting cars that in many cases belonged a notch down in their line up to compete with the non-American care. However, when quality studies were performed, evaluating the car according to the standards of what it was manufactured to be, the American cars routinely have measured up pretty well in recent years. Of course, the higher costs of the American cars has been largely due to high union wages, healthcare and retirement benefits, all of which significantly increased the cost to manufacture these cars. The bailout arrangements finalized by the Obama Administration, which have cost the American taxpayer over $80 billion so far, did not correct these cost issues. So, going forward these same problems are expected to continue.
the unions have made concessions, and I believe giving them some ownership in these companies will force their hand also. ultimately it is in their interests for these companies to survive
If we had a single payer system for healthcare, GM would be able to be even more competitive, as would every American business.
Healthcare is the top one and I'm glad you pointed that out. How can the U.S. auto-makers compete against companies that are essentially subsidized by their gov't in the form of health care? Are you saying the U.S. should just get out of the auto-industry?
Healthcare services should not be delivered through employers. If everyone were to purchase their own health insurance, and also receive the benefit of the health care related tax deductions that these companies currently enjoy, then these companies would not be at any sort of competitive disadvantage. These costs would be completely eliminated from their incomes statements and balance sheets. There is no economic justification for having employers administer healthcare insurance programs other than that is what we have been doing since WWII. Also, it will be virtually impossible to control healthcare costs until individuals are personally aware of, and concerned about, what the costs of their health care actually are. When individuals are responsible for these decisions, they diligently focus on reducing these costs and unnecessary healthcare expenditures. When an employer is responsible, individuals just say "its covered" and just mindlessly receive tests and treatment for everything under the sun, whether they need it or not. What do they care? They do not even know what it costs. This responsibility needs to be given to individuals and removed from employers. Doing this will also have the benefit of making everybody's healthcare insurance portable and permanent. We should not have to change our health insurance plans when we lose a job or change jobs. That is just silly. The U.S. Government should certainly not be in the auto industry. That is for certain.
An intriguing take for certain. But what do you do with those who can not afford to pay health insurance? Let's say for an auto working family, that might run up to a grand or more a month, about $14k a year. Today, this family pays about a quarter of that cost - and is struggling to make ends meet. I mean, an autoworking family isn't pulling in a $100k salary. So where are they going to come up with the extra $10K? If their H.H. income is about the average for the U.S. - or even higher, let's say it's $70K. That amounts to a disposible income of around $45k. Now you want to take over 20% of someones income for health insurance? What you are saying is that family shouldn't be able to get quality health insurance. That hey - they can't afford it, too bad. And if they spend that, what are they sacraficing? Sending their kids to good schools and colleges which cost over $30k a year now? Maybe America just can't compete. Maybe it's over for us. Other countries are subsidizing their industries with free healthy care and benefits - you are clearly against that, and not really for American workers judging on the cruel way you'd take $10k away from working families each year.... I guess that's fine. But I for one think that American families are the backbone of this nation, and if you try to break that backbone for your ideological passions, well, you are going to kill this economy.
Health insurance for a family should not cost $1,000 a month or more. And it certainly does not need to. You can certainly get good coverage for your family for less than that. Apparently UAW workers are accustomed to that sort of coverage, but that cannot be the standard for everyone in this country. That is just too expensive. Individuals and their families cannot afford it. And the government cannot and will not be purchasing that level of coverage for people either. However, subsidies should be provided to people who are truly in poverty or that truly cannot afford insurance for themselves. This would not be for a UAW class Cadillac health insurance plan. But something more basic. I heard an estimate of what it would cost to purchase health insurance for those who cannot get health insurance and want it right now, about 12,000,000 people, and it was about $45 billion or something like that. I do not remember where I heard that, and I do not have a link. But break out your calculator and add it up for yourself. That should certainly cover it. And it is quite a lot less than $900 billion that the latest Senate bill is estimated by the CBO to cost. But that would not give control to the government. So I guess the Democrats do not want to look at doing anything like that.
