Off-topic -- universal health care

[Lizzie_Claymore]

Yep - that's about the size of it! For reference, Murdoch owns The Times and The Sun (and a more bizarre pair of bedfellows you couldn't expect to find on this side of Loopyville!)

Interesting to note that Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie's brilliant spoof of "It's A Wonderful Life" (with Rupert Murdoch being played by Hugh Laurie and the Angel played by Stephen Fry) spotted what Murdoch was up to some 20 years ago! (If you remember, The Sun was always advertised as the Super Soaraway Sun.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T2zUEiVQU4

[mr angry]

This really is worrying! Although I dont know why I am suprised, it confirms my view (sweetnpied, I dont mean to disrespect your country here, by the way) that the USA is basically a third world country writ large. You know, where a few of them are very rich, riding round in Cadillacs and running the show, whilst everyone else, those who actually do the work, can go to hell, and so what if they end up looking on rubbish tips for something to eat .

The right are just looking after the interests of the capitalist class who run it and become laughably hysterically rabid when someone normal tries to do something to help those less well off. If you look at American history over the 20th and 21st centuries, anything progressive has always come from the Democrat side and they have always had an uphill battle against the reactionary lunatics to get it passed. Probably the most radical president was Franklin D Roosevelt with his New Deal during the great depression, which was, incidentally caused by the lax atitude to the economy and credit by three do nothing Republican presidents during the 1920s, Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. They left such a mess that the country could have easily slid into anarchy so it was a good time to be radical.

Also the civil rights movement of the 60s was opposed by the conservative right and had to be pushed through by John F Kennedy and, after his assassination, Lyndon Johnson.

Finally, the right also have a scary tendency to elect complete imbeciles, George Dubya and Ronald Reagan spring to mind immediately. Did anyone know that Reagan doubled the US national debt? All countries do run up a certain amount of debt and it had taken the USA from independence in 1776 until Reagan's election in 1980 for the debt to get to the level it then stood at, I do not know the actual figure, say, for argument's sake, $100million. By 1988 when he left office it had increased to double that amount, using our arbitrary figure, $200 million.

Sarah Palin anyone? great spolsh pie target, but an airhead like her in the White House?? aaarrrggghhhh!!!!

[Essexgungefan]

Sarah Palin anyone? great spolsh pie target, but an airhead like her in the White House?? aaarrrggghhhh!!!!

Well, Bill Clinton and George W Bush were voted in...

[Boomer]

This really is worrying! Although I dont know why I am suprised, it confirms my view (sweetnpied, I dont mean to disrespect your country here, by the way) that the USA is basically a third world country writ large. You know, where a few of them are very rich, riding round in Cadillacs and running the show, whilst everyone else, those who actually do the work, can go to hell, and so what if they end up looking on rubbish tips for something to eat .

The right are just looking after the interests of the capitalist class who run it and become laughably hysterically rabid when someone normal tries to do something to help those less well off. If you look at American history over the 20th and 21st centuries, anything progressive has always come from the Democrat side and they have always had an uphill battle against the reactionary lunatics to get it passed. Probably the most radical president was Franklin D Roosevelt with his New Deal during the great depression, which was, incidentally caused by the lax atitude to the economy and credit by three do nothing Republican presidents during the 1920s, Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. They left such a mess that the country could have easily slid into anarchy so it was a good time to be radical.

Also the civil rights movement of the 60s was opposed by the conservative right and had to be pushed through by John F Kennedy and, after his assassination, Lyndon Johnson.

Finally, the right also have a scary tendency to elect complete imbeciles, George Dubya and Ronald Reagan spring to mind immediately. Did anyone know that Reagan doubled the US national debt? All countries do run up a certain amount of debt and it had taken the USA from independence in 1776 until Reagan's election in 1980 for the debt to get to the level it then stood at, I do not know the actual figure, say, for argument's sake, $100million. By 1988 when he left office it had increased to double that amount, using our arbitrary figure, $200 million.

Sarah Palin anyone? great spolsh pie target, but an airhead like her in the White House?? aaarrrggghhhh!!!!

Hi Mr. Angry,

You touch on a very curious trend among conservatives in my country.

Ronald Reagan was a President who re-defined the right and left in the United States. Since Reagan, we've had more and more working class people identify themselves as conservative. As such, they have supported policies that are not in their best economic interest. George Dubya's tax cuts benefited the wealthiest Americans, and ran our country into massive debt in order to do so.

It's very clear, when you look at the data, that the middle class is shrinking. Again, not to belabor the point, but most people not covered by health insurance are not the poorest of the poor in the States. It's those who have jobs who aren't covered by their employer. "Trickle Down Economics," a term coined by Reagan, haven't worked--at all. Yet as conditions worsen, many on the right who are feeling the effects the most have become more and more conservative.

The Tea Party movement is made up largely of working class people, with limited education, who didn't show that much interest in politics until recently. Not to paint them with too broad a brush, but that is what almost all the polling shows. Yet these people, 75% of whom identify themselves as Republicans, have turned very, very hard to the right after suffering through a recession brought on largely by a banking crisis that can trace its roots back to deregulation. Yet these same people are screaming for smaller government--among other things.

The Republicans are certainly trying to harness of the energy (anger) of the Tea Party movement, but they have to be very, very careful if they try to ride that Tiger. There is no way over the long term that they will be able to practice corporate welfare and keep the Tea Party crowd subdued. The latest goal for Obama and the Democrats is banking reform. The Republicans have been against it, but they will have a hard time justifying that to people who are incensed about the Federal Government providing the banks--and in particular investment banks--with billions of dollars of bailout money to cover their folly during the housing boom.

B

[muckypup]

This really is worrying! Although I dont know why I am suprised, it confirms my view (sweetnpied, I dont mean to disrespect your country here, by the way) that the USA is basically a third world country writ large.

I don't think we can gloat too much!

[DungeonMasterOne]

Also: we hear about all the opposition from the law-makers but what's the US's general population think? Are they for it or against? I don't think I've heard much about that.

Putting party political dogma to one side, I suspect that those who will reap greater benefits will be in favour, and those that will suffer greater cost will be against it.

I read an interesting article on the BBC a few weeks back on this, and as someone else mentioned regarding the Tea Party Movement, oddly enough it seems to be those with the most to gain who are most violently opposed. Coupling that with another article I read back in 2004, the general idea seems to be "I'm poor but if I work hard one day I'll be rich, and I don't want an interfering federal government taxing my wealth when that happens." Plus that the Right generally campaigns with catchy, easy-to-understand slogans, whereas the "left" (not that the USA appears to have a real left as we in the UK would understand the term) argue more based on facts and figures - which aren't as catchy, memorable, or to an uneducated person, understandable, as the Right's slogans.

[Richard]

I'm probably sticking my neck out here and will be shot down in flames but I think we've all had our say on this topic. Its been very entertaining and enlightening but please can we get back to what this forum is supposed to be for?

[andy250]

I'm probably sticking my neck out here and will be shot down in flames but I think we've all had our say on this topic. Its been very entertaining and enlightening but please can we get back to what this forum is supposed to be for?

Why??? Nothing wrong with an off topic by me, unless Bill feels otherwise, been interesting I've not replied as I've been busy with (non-related splosh shoots, no doubt you'll shoot me down for that Rich, any diffrence????)

regards

Andy and the team.

(busy shooting for other people, if Rich says it's says ok ????!!!????!!)

[sweetnpied]

I'm probably sticking my neck out here and will be shot down in flames but I think we've all had our say on this topic. Its been very entertaining and enlightening but please can we get back to what this forum is supposed to be for?

Why??? Nothing wrong with an off topic by me, unless Bill feels otherwise, been interesting I've not replied as I've been busy with (non-related splosh shoots, no doubt you'll shoot me down for that Rich, any diffrence????)

regards

Andy and the team.

(busy shooting for other people, if Rich says it's says ok ????!!!????!!)

Richard
Yas knows I loves yas sweetie. But I gotta go with Andy here. If this thread is boring you, maybe consider don't visiting it. (Smoochies, Richard and Andy.)

And I have to say, my god, I had never met Boomer until he started chatting in this thread. As a person who lived through most of the era he describes (I was a little young for Reagan, at least his early years as president, but certainly studied his presidency in college), OMG does Boomer EVER have a lot of the politics in America NAILED!!! (As further evidenced by his earlier commentary on the health care bill in America.)

My personal view on some of this... After 9/11, our economy was in dire straits. So good old dubya came up with a truly BRILLIANT plan. (Notice the dripping sarcasm in my voice.) Let's dergulate the banks and sell Americans on the concept that EVERYONE should own a home, REGARDLESS of whether or not you could afford one. Well, unfortunately in a capitalist society, supply and demand rules, and as more people wanted homes and banks were willing to lend ANYONE money (even 105% of the value of the house with NO MONEY DOWN, with banks and consumers always assuming property values would never stop climbing). I have been warning people for YEARS, that this was a house of cards simply waiting to fall. It is impossible for ANY economy to sustain such recklessness.

And this next thing I'm going to say is something I know a LOT about from what I do as my real job. This opened up the whole area of real estate in this country to fraud of immeasurable proportions. People just kept flipping properties with straw buyers and banks closing their eyes to what they HAD to know was massive fraud. Why? Because EVERYONE was making a SHITLOAD of money by constantly buying and selling properties. Until the day came that this unjustifiable growth became unsustainable. America will be lucky to survive this shitstorm. Especially once the government moves out of the subsidizing of sustaining the mortgage industry, which happens TOMORROW. Already the experts are talking about lending rates climbing rapidly. And if that happens, with our economy still not sufficiently recovered yet to permit enough people to get back into real estate, this could be another recession to borderline depression waiting to happen.

Thank god, the stock markets have been showing steady growth indicating a general belief that we are heading in the right direction. But I wonder how long even THAT will continue. The stock markets are all about the perception of the direction of the economy, and rarely about the reality of where the economy is heading. Much like the betting line that bookies draw up for sporting events.

I know Obama is taking a lot of heat for his policies. But I really think he's trying the best that he can, and doing as reasonably well as possible, having inherited an ABSOLUTE mess, that this world has only faced ONE OTHER TIME in relatively recent history, and under MUCH different circumstances. He REALLY is trying to steer this country through a total nightmare without much of a blueprint of past experience to rely upon.

And if McCain-Palin had taken over, I suspect there is absolutely no way we would have made it. And I'm still not sure we will. This is a critical juncture in America's ability to maintain its prominence as the engine that drives the worldwide economy. And it truly is in the world's best interest that America remains the straw that stirs the worldwide ecomony's drink. And I don't say that as some proud bragging American. It's probably the truth. If this country fails, we're going to drag alot of other countries down with us. Countries that this world needs to stay economically strong in this time of such political upheaval throughout the planet.

The good news is that the US still has the advantages of a great number of natural resources, an immense population, and a very skilled labor force. But we are also very close to being, if not already irrevocably beyond, completely unbalanced in our manufacturing capabilities. I read somewhere that our manufacturing workforce is currently less than 10% of our population and that any stable economy needs at least 20% to remain stable. We are currently such a nation of service industries, that we are very vunerable to forever being subservient to unbalanced importing from the current manufacturing nations of the world (i.e., the far east where labor is so cheap that our capitalist-driven society has shipped all our manufacturing capability to them so that we can have the lowest cost of goods here in our country). Well, eventually this country has to pay for THAT short-sightedness as well.

[Lizzie_Claymore]

Given that America is currently propped up on billions of dollars of Chinese cash, used to purchase US govt. bonds, I suspect it may already be too late, as you say.

We have the same problem with manufacturing in the UK. If you look at the process of wealth creation, you add wealth by taking raw materials, processing them (thus, adding value) and re-selling them for a profit. Moving money from A to B doesn't really add much value to the nation (although it's pretty good for the person who actually does so!). Hence, building an economy entirely on the service sector is a ludicrous notion. We can't just all take in each other's washing! The UK is currently down to something like 13% in manufacturing and engineering and I think (I hope!) people are finally waking up to why that is A Bad Thing. The snag is it would take several generations to boost it back again, if indeed such is possible given the disparity in labour rates between here and the far east. What we do in the meantime is anyone's guess.

[Richard]

Ok folks, I'll stand back. I've nothing against 'off topic' threads, just voicing an opinion like the rest of you and thought this subject had gone on a bit too long. I have no authority to tell you what to do, so don't listen to me if you don't want to.

I'll still be posting on other threads if thats permitted!

[frenchie]

Hi,

Interesting statistics. An American fiction author was on breakfast TV today talking about her novel in which a mans partner is dying of cancer. Part of the storyline concerns the problem of the cost of healthcare.

As an aside the author said that in the US most of the bankruptcies are caused by health care cost issues and that in most cases those concerned had health insurance.

Verrrrry interesting.

Frenchie

[sweetnpied]

Ok folks, I'll stand back. I've nothing against 'off topic' threads, just voicing an opinion like the rest of you and thought this subject had gone on a bit too long. I have no authority to tell you what to do, so don't listen to me if you don't want to.

I'll still be posting on other threads if thats permitted!

Awwww, Richard, sweetie. I hope I wasn't been too rude to you. I'm certainly no administrator and was not trying to tell you what to do. Was just giving my opinion and a little advice, too, that if this thread was annoying or bothering you nobody's dragging you in here to read any of this. The fact that this thread has remained so popular (which has certainly shocked the shit out of me as I've repeatedly said in this thread), I guess means some people sometimes want to talk about other issues.

Hey, I also don't have ANY problem with you coming in here and telling us to knock it off. That was your opinion and, as I see it, you're just as entitled to give that as any of the other opinions in here. (Not that you need to hear me... okay, READ me, say that to you. I'm just letting you know my opinion that I'm perfectly fine with you telling me to stop talking about this subject.)

Next time, just throw a pie in someone's face. If you want, you can start with me! I love pies!

And I'm sorry if I got up a little too much on my soapbox last night. I was, as you all who know me now can probably guess, into my 2nd Tanqueray and tonic of the night, and I guess my fears about where my country is headed got the best of the little governor I usually have in my head that tells me not to talk politics and economics. Boomer got me going I guess.

I'll try to keep my remarks in this field limited in the future. Besides, I have a very messy wam sex story to finish in the Reading Room. That REALLY was my original intention when I went on the puter last night, until I caught up with this thread and saw Boomer's remarks. It just set me off.

And I've been struggling a little bit with Part II of my wam story. I always write much better in the morning than at night. And I think I finally broke through some of my writer's block this morning. Hopefully, I'll get Part II posted sometime this weekend.

Smoochies all (and a big smoochie to Richard)

[BillShipton]

Since there are plenty of on-topic threads and only one or two off-topic ones I've been letting this one go. Also there have been some interesting and erudite contributions - not extremist flame-warring rants as I feared. I am sure the thread will disappear as everyone runs out of things to say on the subject.

[DungeonMasterOne]

Given the date, and with Easter in mind, what both the US and UK really need is state funded, de-stressing chocolate baths. With different rooms for fully clothed, skimpy, swimwear, and nude use. Attended by uniformed nurses (of all genders and sizes, so everyone finds someone they think is hot!), of course. Now that's what I'd call healtcare!