http://blog.american.com/2012/02/this-is-the-debt-chart-obama-and-geithner-should-be-ashamed-of/

I mean, we won't have an economy by 2027, but no big whoop.

And yes, i know this assumes no changes to the current path after 2013, but proposals are out there (like the Ryan plan) that were rejected. The President's own debt commission provided a long term plan, which was then roundly rejected. Ignoring our mounting debt issue won't make it go away. At some point, and that point gets closer every day, we will have to deal with it unless we want to see our economy crumble the way Greece has and Italy will in the very near future.

[Edited on February 18, 2012 at 8:45 AM. Reason : I put dept in the title instead of debt. Facepalm.]

2/18/2012 8:44:51 AM

Which department?

btw, I'm curious, do any of Gingromnetorum have a CBO checked plan for reducing the debt and what those projections would look like?

I'm still waiting on one of them to stand up and say that when you have worked on targeted positive inflation and continued creation and easing of credit for decades and pulled demand forward for decades that it is going to take longer than a few years to dig out of that hole. None of them will say that. None of them will get up there and say "the fix for this clusterfuck we allowed to happen might take a decade or more to fix". The American people don't want to hear that shit. They believe in fairies and magic.


[Edited on February 18, 2012 at 9:03 AM. Reason : .]

2/18/2012 8:59:10 AM

i must admit, not much of what the Republicans say makes sense, but Ryan has this one.

to have your plan show unabated continued debt growth is unacceptable. I think this is a valid enough reason for Obama to lose the election, but more realistically, he should have pressure put on him to make a 2nd term budget plan that's not ridiculous.

2/18/2012 9:43:18 PM

the dept of what?

Agriculture? Transportation? Defense?

2/19/2012 12:59:56 AM

Watch out guys! He has a graph! And I think the OP is talking about the dept of education.. Don't worry about it the US is beyond saving educationally..

[Edited on February 19, 2012 at 3:44 AM. Reason : .]

2/19/2012 3:44:07 AM

^ Is that yours and HockeyRomans MO these days? Don't actually add any discussion to The Soap Box, just snark about how Republicans positions are so ridiculous that they aren't debatable?

2/19/2012 8:46:58 AM

Out debt level is unsustainable, a plan that does not address the continued growth of government spending and the inevitable collapse of medicare, medicaid, and SS doesn't deserve discussion. What does deserve discussion is how do we bring our debt back to manageable levels in the near term. I'm not suggesting that we can't ever run a debt, or that we need to eliminate all our debt in the next 5, 10, or even 20 years, but if we don't reverse the trend there will be problems, MASSIVE problems.

But you're right, better to roll out stuff like "Watch out guys! He has a graph!" Maybe you don't have any concern for what we are piling onto the backs of future generations, but some people do.

2/19/2012 9:33:55 AM

What massive problems would those be?

And I'm pretty sure SS is fine as long as we don't dip into the funds and stop giving temporary FICA tax cuts. As far as Medicaid and Medicare, the quickest way to get those costs down would be to get health care costs down in general. If the rest of the developed world is any indication, the quickest path to this is universal healthcare and kicking out the parasitic insurance industry...

[Edited on February 21, 2012 at 9:54 AM. Reason : .]

2/21/2012 9:51:13 AM

I'm not even going to argue with you about SS. It's not currently on a sustainable path. Even the folks running it admit as much (read the letter they send you every year). You and I can hope for, at best, about $.50 on every dollar we give them. Just imagine SS is fine, let's ignore that looming disaster for a while and focus on other stuff.

The massive problems I was referring to are things like interest payments on the debt taking up an increasingly large portion of the federal government's spending. If you have to pay out 1/3 of total income tax dollars taken in just to meet your interest payments (which is about where we are now) it precludes you from using those dollars for other things. Huge public debt can destabilize our currency and certainly weakens the dollar vs. other currencies. Once you hit a certain mark, usually around debt being 120% of GDP or more you start to see very real issues. We aren't there yet, but we're getting there quickly. We are fast approaching a debt level we've only had at the end of WWII, the difference is that now there is not plan or will from the folks in Washington to start paying down the debt like we did before.

I'm not suggesting that we can't have public debt or that debt itself is bad, but we cannot continue to grow our debt without a plan to keep it in check or we will reach the point where we cannot reverse the trend.

Look at what is happening in Greece and what is going to happen in places like Spain, Portugal, and Italy. That same mess is coming soon if we don't put our fiscal house in order.

2/21/2012 11:46:46 AM

Here's some fun reading for you:

http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/21/news/economy/spending_taxes_debt/index.htm

and there's some good stuff in the Wikipedia page about the budget.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget

2/21/2012 11:55:23 AM

Quote :

"the quickest path to this is universal healthcare and kicking out the parasitic insurance industry..."

yes the fastest path to a slightly differtent version of the same bad system is to stop using the current bad system

2/21/2012 12:07:03 PM

I wouldn't compare us to EU countries. Spain, Portugal, and Greece can't just create money, they have to get a bailout. We can create money, and the Fed has demonstrated that it will create any amount necessary to keep the stock market afloat. We also know that they'll hold interest rates close to zero for as long as necessary, which could be a decade or more.

Japan is 250%+ GDP to debt ratio. Their debt is mostly internal, which does make a difference. The Japanese people can't really pull the rug from beneath themselves. The U.S. is in a different position, in that we don't actually make anything and a lot of our debt is owned by foreigners. If you hear what Bill Gross of PIMCO (one of the biggest bond holders out there) is saying, you know that we're basically stagnating right now. Zero percent interest rates are very, very bad, but moving interest rates up would result in a financial shit storm. I don't know what's coming, no one does, but when the economic winds do finally shift, it can't be pretty.

Quote :

"Zero-bound interest rates don’t always force investors to take more risk by purchasing stocks or real estate, Gross said. When investors are more concerned about the return of, rather than returns on, their money, the liquidity being provided by central bankers can instead be “trapped” in a mattress, bank account or Treasury bills, he wrote. “We are witnessing the death of abundance and the borning of austerity, for what may be a long, long time,” Gross said."

http://riacentral.com/2012/02/21/bill-gross-blasts-interest-rate-policy-killing-economic-abundance/

2/21/2012 12:11:37 PM

What do you mean we don't make anything?

http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/01/making-it-in-america/8844/


[Edited on February 21, 2012 at 12:25 PM. Reason : a]

2/21/2012 12:17:23 PM

Alright, it's an exaggeration to say we don't make anything, but we make a small percentage of the things we consume and use. That's the nature of globalism, but if something happened and the dollar was no longer "king" of world currencies, we'd be in store for a major decline in standard of living or a rise in cost of living. We're playing a dangerous game.

[Edited on February 21, 2012 at 12:27 PM. Reason : ]

2/21/2012 12:26:32 PM

Don't you worry about dept, let me worry about blank.

2/21/2012 12:50:39 PM

^^

I'm not following what you're getting at. Are you claiming the current unemployment rate is due to our import/export ratio? Or that we'd suffer an economic collapse if the dollars position in the world changed?

2/21/2012 1:33:13 PM

More along the lines of the second thing. Our dollar is pegged to China's RMB, but if a floating exchange rate was allowed, it would be a bad thing for us.

2/21/2012 1:35:15 PM

Quote :

"Zero percent interest rates are very, very bad, but moving interest rates up would result in a financial shit storm. I don't know what's coming, no one does, but when the economic winds do finally shift, it can't be pretty."

This is a discussion I find downright fascinating. I wish I understood it better.

I've noticed a recent meme of companies getting loans at 2.5% interest rates. No really. This is actually happening. I promise. So the power company is probably sitting there internally maintaining that their IRR is 9% and they get an offer from the bank at 2.5% and are like "are you fucking shitting me?"

Oh my dear word, I would take a loan for 2.5% interest rate. I'd take as much as you're willing to give me. I would live my life as a stock trader if I got money that cheap. To some extent, it's hard to argue with the idea that cheap money creates economic activity.

But when we look at real value creation, I think it's hard to say that 2% versus 4% matters. A startup can't get either, lol. It's not about the low risk low rate availability of capital. At least not entirely.

I can't convince myself that there aren't viable investments that have extremely low risk in return for a low payout. You could have a public water processing plant that needs capital. I'm pretty sure the chance of it not completing is very low. Most construction has very low risk in the sense that what gets started gets completed, and the companies building the stuff already have the payment in the contract.

Case in point:

We are building natural gas plants. We are building few coal and nuclear plants.

The decision to build NG plants reflects a perception that money is expensive. It's hard to get capital, so you pick the option that has the lower upfront cost. But these are the same companies getting the ridiculous 2.5% loans. Why didn't they take out more money and build a nuclear plant instead? It's super long term, but that's the point, money is cheap so you should invest as much into assets as you can in prep for the next boom time.

The world doesn't make sense to me. Le sigh.

2/21/2012 2:05:40 PM

nuclear has a long design and approval process. an approval process thats risky as hell if the government is as unstable and scared of everything as ours is. if the government reneges on some part of the process or some really stupid people get in power and cancel it all together then you lose your entire investment.

which is really a shame cause nuclear is really the only long term way out of this energy mess.

[Edited on February 21, 2012 at 2:29 PM. Reason : e]

2/21/2012 2:28:26 PM

Right, but what are the defining financial aspects of a nuclear build?

You have long term and short term investments,
risky and secure investments,
then high return and low return investments.

By just looking at it, we see that nuclear plants are a long term investment. Now, they're not alone in this property. Hold old is the Hoover Dam? The Panama Canal?

We think that the investment risk and return should determine each other. A low risk high payoff investment doesn't exist and no one would invest in a high risk low payoff project.

From the perspective of macroeconomics, what should we expect people are looking for today? I want to know why people decide to invest in others debt as opposed to creating something of value that will pay dividends long into the future.

2/21/2012 4:16:25 PM

Quote :

"The decision to build NG plants reflects a perception that money is expensive. "

What?


[Edited on February 21, 2012 at 4:43 PM. Reason : z]

2/21/2012 4:43:13 PM

Quote :

"By just looking at it, we see that nuclear plants are a long term investment. Now, they're not alone in this property. Hold old is the Hoover Dam? The Panama Canal"

i'd say those are even less likely to be built than new nukes in the current political environment. the point is that large scale projects like the hoover dam or panama canal require alot of government buy in. Something like nuclear power requires lots of government approval. Even though these are all pretty worthwhile projects, the risk created by our unstable political environment prevents any kind of investment.

if we had a more reasonable government we'd see banks go crazy lending on these projects.

we need to move from a government that promotes fear, ignorance, and short term thinking to a government that promotes rationality, science, and long term thinking.

tl;dr: the government doesnt think long term so banks wont lend long term

[Edited on February 21, 2012 at 5:13 PM. Reason : .]

2/21/2012 5:12:42 PM

Quote :

"And I'm pretty sure SS is fine"

What do you mean by fine? You mean that we eventually exhaust the funds but the date is known so thats cool?

[Edited on February 21, 2012 at 7:21 PM. Reason : .]

2/21/2012 7:19:20 PM

Quote :

"And I'm pretty sure SS is fine as long as we don't dip into the funds and stop giving temporary FICA tax cuts."

yes. that's why we've had to continue manipulating the formula for it every so often. If you have to dick with it continuously in order to "keep it working," then it aint fucking working.

Quote :

"As far as Medicaid and Medicare, the quickest way to get those costs down would be to get health care costs down in general."

And putting the gov't in charge of ANYTHING is the WORST way to get costs down. Unless you think toilet seats are generally more expensive than $1000 a pop and hammers are generally more expensive than $500 a pop.

2/21/2012 10:43:55 PM

Quote :

"yes. that's why we've had to continue manipulating the formula for it every so often. If you have to dick with it continuously in order to "keep it working," then it aint fucking working."

Have you ever adjusted your personal budget? Ever? If so, kill yourself, you are a failure.

Quote :

"And putting the gov't in charge of ANYTHING is the WORST way to get costs down. Unless you think toilet seats are generally more expensive than $1000 a pop and hammers are generally more expensive than $500 a pop."

Yeah, it's way more cost efficient to have 50 insurance companies, each with billions going into redundant bureaucracies, information databases, legal teams, and marketing departments. And yet, somehow every single OECD country that instead has a single provider spends far less on healthcare as a % of GDP and reports higher patient satisfaction.

Can you give a single example of a less-government-controlled health insurance system that outperforms ours? Just one example to serve as a model, that's all.



[Edited on February 22, 2012 at 1:35 PM. Reason : .]

2/22/2012 1:33:14 PM

insurance overhead isnt why healthcare is expensive and anyone who thinks it is is a liar or an idiot

2/22/2012 3:32:19 PM

^

The red tape of having 5 payer systems is a big part of it. http://www.amazon.com/Healing-America-Global-Better-Cheaper/dp/B004KAB348

My wife used to be the accountant for a bunch of medical practices (mostly specialists) and almost all of the doctors pulled in over $1 mil a year in salary.

2/22/2012 6:25:19 PM

Quote :

"Have you ever adjusted your personal budget? Ever? If so, kill yourself, you are a failure."

What a completely irrelevant comparison. SS is unsustainable, this is not a matter of opinion. This is an inevitable fact based on demographics and ever increasing life expectancy. I know you really, really, really want it to be self funding and sustainable, but it isn't. Unless there is a sudden, massive spike in birth rates it's a system with no future. If you are under the age of 40 you should not count on it being there for you. Any financial planner worth their salt will tell you the same thing.

2/22/2012 8:56:22 PM

Quote :

"Have you ever adjusted your personal budget? Ever? If so, kill yourself, you are a failure."

I've never claimed that my personal budget would withstand the test of time, either. Nor am I running a fucking Ponzi Scheme and pretending it will work.

Quote :

"Yeah, it's way more cost efficient to have 50 insurance companies, each with billions going into redundant bureaucracies, information databases, legal teams, and marketing departments. And yet, somehow every single OECD country that instead has a single provider spends far less on healthcare as a % of GDP and reports higher patient satisfaction."

Yeah, $1000 toilet seats are the hallmark of government efficiency. You should see all those $20000 toilet seats they have at the insurance company! And other governments pay less? THEY FUCKING RATION, of COURSE they pay less. And then those gov'ts report satisfaction? Just like the treasury is reporting that TARP is perfect and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will never again ask for more money (until they do)

2/22/2012 10:10:25 PM

^

It was $600 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_seat

The P-3C Orion antisubmarine aircraft went into service in 1962. Twenty-five years later it was determined that the toilet shroud, the cover that fits over the toilet, needed replacement. Since the airplane was out of production this would require new tooling to produce. These on-board toilets required a uniquely shaped, molded fiberglass shroud that had to satisfy specifications for vibration resistance, weight, and durability. The molds had to be specially made, as it had been decades since their original production. The price reflected the design work and the cost of the equipment to manufacture them. Lockheed Corp. charged $34,560 for 54 toilet covers, or $640 each.[2]

President Reagan held a televised news conference in 1987, where he held up one of these shrouds and stated: "We didn't buy any $600 toilet seat. We bought a $600 molded plastic cover for the entire toilet system." A Pentagon spokesman, Glenn Flood stated, "The original price we were charged was $640, not just for a toilet seat, but for the large molded plastic assembly covering the entire seat, tank and full toilet assembly. The seat itself cost $9 and some cents.… The supplier charged too much, and we had the amount corrected."[3] The president of Lockheed at the time, Lawrence Kitchen, adjusted to the price to $100 each and returned $29,165. "This action is intended to put to rest an artificial issue," Kitchen stated.[2]

2/22/2012 10:24:23 PM

meanwhile, I've also seen $2000 buckets and millions wasted in "design" which amount to nothing more than an engineering outfit saying "no" to everything and never actually saying what needed to be done. But, yes, gov't is waaaaaaaaay more efficient. So much more efficient that Lockheed had serious reservations about ever charging 600 bux for a toilet seat. oh, wait...

2/22/2012 10:27:45 PM

Any large organization has huge amounts of cruft.

It's funny to me that those arguments were used to combat Reagan and privatization in the 80s and now they are being used to put down government bureaucracy itself.

2/22/2012 10:32:26 PM

Quote :

"insurance overhead isnt why healthcare is expensive and anyone who thinks it is is a liar or an idiot"

It is the reason health insurance is so expensive. Try and guess what their overhead is, please.

Quote :

"THEY FUCKING RATION, of COURSE they pay less. "

And yet they have a longer average lifespan, larger net of coverage, and higher patient satisfaction, consistently and reliably. Do you not understand how the private system rations care? Perhaps you've never had a chronic or pre-existing condition...or been poor...

And yeah, props for spewing that toilet seat story that is not only decades-past being debunked, but was debunked by Reagan himself. You're a tremendous sap. Do you actually read papers or news sites, or just open up a few dozen forwarded chain-emails every morning to get informed? Honestly I'm astounded you're not a birther too, you're like a bizarro version of snopes.

[Edited on February 23, 2012 at 9:21 AM. Reason : .]

2/23/2012 9:15:39 AM

Quote :

"And then those gov'ts report satisfaction? Just like the treasury is reporting that TARP is perfect and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will never again ask for more money (until they do)"

This isn't even an argument. "Oh? You believe that the unemployment level is down? Well did you believe the GOVERNMENT during...WATERGATE??? THINK ABOUT IT, MORAN"

2/23/2012 10:43:26 AM

Quote :

"It is the reason health insurance is so expensive. Try and guess what their overhead is, please."

I think it was the Obama administration trying to pass a law saying that over 60% of the revenue from premiums has to go to health care - as in, payouts to hospitals.

Some companies had trouble with that. That means that the other 40% was going to pay for their paper pushers, and who knows, lawyers paid to deny you claims. You pay 60% of insurance to cover unexpected medical costs, and then you pay most of the rest so that someone can fight your claims and deny payout for those costs.

I also vaguely remember reading that on average something like 2% of health insurance company revenue goes to profits. So it's not exactly like they're sucking all the money out of the system to pay it directly to the capital markets. But then again, what % did they pay their executives in salary?

Yet another completely different cost: how much has insurance increased the hospital's cost by the paperwork burden? If I walked into a doctors office and paid out of pocket, they'd have very little overhead in receiving and processing the payment. They'd still charge me the normal price, but that's how it goes.

2/23/2012 1:48:55 PM

Quote :

"It is the reason health insurance is so expensive. Try and guess what their overhead is, please. "

frivolous lawsuits - lawsuits asking for millions/billions/trillions of dollars and actually losing and having to pay out.

cost of employees salaries

cost of rent/property/taxes/assets/paper for paperwork/electricity/water/computer/xerox repair/tech support/phone bill/accountants/advertisement

insurance fraud

[Edited on February 23, 2012 at 1:53 PM. Reason : .]

2/23/2012 1:53:14 PM

^

http://cherryhill.injuryboard.com/medical-malpractice/how-much-do-medical-malpractice-lawsuits-contribute-to-health-care-costs.aspx

Quote :

"While these numbers may sound high out of context, it’s important to remember that they account for a mere 2.4 percent of the country’s total health care costs—which wouldn’t change significantly even if malpractice lawsuits were completely eliminated from the landscape."

2/23/2012 3:24:52 PM

Quote :

""While these numbers may sound high out of context, it’s important to remember that they account for a mere 2.4 percent of the country’s total health care costs—which wouldn’t change significantly even if malpractice lawsuits were completely eliminated from the landscape.""

This is VERY misleading. It doesnt account for the number of tests ordered to CYA, which DOES in fact add to costs.

2/23/2012 3:35:47 PM

Quote :

"insurance overhead isnt why healthcare is expensive and anyone who thinks it is is a liar or an idiot"

It's certainly a contributing factor. Though that applies to the government too, such as Medicare which still does paper billing. Companies (like the pharmacy I work for) submit claims electronically to a third party and pay that third party to print out and mail those claims to Medicare. But each insurance claim processor has their own standards and ways of doing things, so most places contract with a third party and pay them to handle that rats nest. You can save considerable money dealing with the processor directly, but usually only in volume, and even then, you need someone that can help you communicate with them the right way.

Quote :

"It is the reason health insurance is so expensive."

Insurance isn't that expensive for the majority of americans. I don't remember the original source, but when we had the giant health care thread, I found one that broke down the cost of the average american in health care needs over a lifetime and it worked out to somewhere around $300 / month, with a huge majority of that cost occurring at end of life. If you got online and tried to get a private insurance quote, as an average american you'd probably be looking at about $350 - $400 / month. If you ever looked at what your employer pays, it's about that much. And for comparison, here is Switzerland, which has a system with compulsory insurance and a government mandated package much like the proposed system during the health care debates:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Switzerland

2010 Average Monthy Premium for Compulsory Coverage for an Adult (26+) CHF 351.05, which is $389.44 US

This isn't to say that there isn't waste or room for improvement (because there certainly is) but it's not as astronomical as most people think either.

Quote :

"If I walked into a doctors office and paid out of pocket, they'd have very little overhead in receiving and processing the payment. They'd still charge me the normal price, but that's how it goes."

This isn't just the cost of paperwork. It's also necessary to keep your UCR up, so that insurance companies (and the government) continue to pay you a reasonable amount. Insurance companies and medicaid / medicare pay a percentage less of what essentially amounts to how much you charge on average. If you charge your cash patients too much less, you drag your UCR down, and then the insurance companies start paying you less. I've mentioned before the experience the pharmacy I work for had with this, but the short version is, they opened services in SC, SC medicaid will only pay for the first 8 or 10 medicaitions for a patient, after that they have to pay out of pocket. Our average customer is on 14 medications. We did the math and discovered we could bill the most expensive 10 medications and give away the rest to our SC customers and still make money. Unfortunately, we also discovered that if we did that, SC medicaid would see that as a lowered UCR and reduce our compensation the next year, and then we wouldn't make any money. So we have to charge them, and we have to charge them something close to what we charge the insurance companies.

Quote :

"While these numbers may sound high out of context, it’s important to remember that they account for a mere 2.4 percent of the country’s total health care costs—which wouldn’t change significantly even if malpractice lawsuits were completely eliminated from the landscape."

And yet, as MrFrog pointed out, so do health insurance profits, but we still rail against the evil insurance companies.

Quote :

"This is VERY misleading. It doesnt account for the number of tests ordered to CYA, which DOES in fact add to costs."

According to the linked article it did. But I wonder if it included the costs associated with doctors choosing more specialized fields, and joining up with hospital groups to be able to pay (and reduce their costs on) the malpractice premiums.

2/23/2012 5:20:54 PM

Quote :

" It doesnt account for the number of tests ordered to CYA"

Question for you, the doc, if you're already paying for malpractice insurance, why order the additional tests - which themselves are presumably insurance?

I've had interactions with doctors that range the gamut from "if the tool is available lets use it" to "lets wait and see if we need to use that tool".

2/23/2012 5:22:15 PM

Quote :

"Question for you, the doc, if you're already paying for malpractice insurance, why order the additional tests - which themselves are presumably insurance?"

Thats easy. It's the same reason why you don't report every minor fender bender to your insurance company. Because sometimes its just cheaper to pay the $500 out of pocket than it is to pay your deductible and then have a premium hike. Only in the case of the doctor, they have even more of an incentive because patients with insurance will usually make them some money on those tests as opposed to costing them money.

2/23/2012 6:08:55 PM

Quote :

"It's the same reason why you don't report every minor fender bender to your insurance company. "

Are you equating malpractice cases to fender benders?

2/23/2012 6:18:24 PM

Chance there are really 2 main reasons. 1. You want to avoid a lawsuit. Regardless of your malpractice(which will go up if you get sued, or will find it difficult to get if you have too many) it is simply bad for business. You dont want that hurting your business and restricting you from getting on different insurances. Despite having Malpractice you still would have costs associated with the lawyers and time out of office. 2. Running more tests increases revenue per patient. So you might be 99% sure it isnt anything serious, but you get an xray or photo just to back you up and increase revenue.

Ive given this example a bunch of times on here so one more wont hurt. In school we were in our neuro class and our doctor asked us if a young 18 yr old females comes into your office complaining of headaches. You do your exam and everything looks fine. What is the chance that she has a brain tumor? And who would order a MRI? (basically only the kiss ass in the class raised her hand) He said basically everyone was right (doing it and not doing it) the problem is that if this patient is in that 1% that has a tumor their lawyer will ask you two questions. 1. Will a MRI have shown the tumor? (yes) 2. Why didnt you order one? (and you are dead in the water, people dont care about percentages when it happens to them. "It isnt rare if its in your chair") So you have it drilled into you to do extra tests. You dont realize ANYTHING about costs or insurance until after you graduate though.

2/23/2012 6:33:58 PM

Quote :

"we won't have an economy by 2027"

curious. as this is the year where we supposedly run out of several fossil fuels


hey, so the mayans were just off by 15 years. they were pretty damn close though.

2/23/2012 7:41:31 PM

2/23/2012 8:25:44 PM

I have graphs too:

Quote :

"Today, public debt is equal to about 70% of our economy. If Congress allowed current law to play itself out, the Bush tax cuts would expire and that number would fall to about 60%, according to various estimates. That's pretty stable. But nobody wants the "current law" scenario to play out. Not Congress, not the Senate, not the White House, and certainly not the Republican field. So we need another plan. Problem is, most of the other plans don't get us anywhere near stability. In fact, the GOP plans would raise our debt burden to anywhere between 67% and a whopping 126% of the economy by 2021, according to CRFB. This graph compares the moderate estimates for each candidates' debt plan against the president's. This is all smart guesswork, mind you, but it offers a nonpartisan view of the sort of "deficit reduction" we're really getting under these proposals. This Y-axis starts at 60, which is the target debt/GDP ratio for CRFB. "

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/the-big-deficit-lie-every-gop-debt-plan-leaves-us-with-more-debt/253501/

2/23/2012 9:28:50 PM

"Let me anticipate some of your objections."

Hahaha, I'm going to start prefacing everything I post here with this-

2/23/2012 9:38:28 PM

Quote :

"And yet they have a longer average lifespan,"

because they are not fat as fuck like we are. jesus, do we have to go through this every fucking time you try to compare apples to street signs?

Quote :

"Do you not understand how the private system rations care?"

yes, it rations it in the fairest way: if you can't pay, you don't get it. pretty damned simple. as opposed to "if you don't know the right guy, you're fucked". it also allows the market to adjust to limited resources by trying to create more resources, as opposed to the gov't maybe eventually getting around to fixing a scarcity. If someone can make a buck by creating more of something, they'll do it. The gov't has no incentive to do so, especially since it can use the scarcity for its own ends.

Quote :

"And yeah, props for spewing that toilet seat story that is not only decades-past being debunked, but was debunked by Reagan himself."

it hasn't been debunked. it was actually proven true, and shows the real problem w/ the gov't. Again, Lockheed thought nothing of billing such an insane amount to the gov't over something trivial. And no one down the line said "that's outrageous, we aint paying it!" It took someone on the outside to say "wait a minute..." Even then, no one even so much as batted an eyelash. Proves the point, dude.

2/24/2012 1:15:40 PM

Once upon a time, aaronburro saw a toilet seat at Walmart for $11.99. Forever after, aaronburro could never understand how anything toilet related could ever possibly cost more than $11.99.

The end.

2/24/2012 2:22:45 PM

Price anchoring

http://danariely.com/the-books/excerpted-from-chapter-1-%E2%80%93-the-truth-about-relativity/

2/24/2012 2:36:00 PM