Throw enough money at something, you can sorta muddle through. The objection isn't that government programs don't actually manage to transfer some resources to their intended targets. The objection is that they wind up costing so god-awful much. When Medicare became law, the projected price-tag was a tiny fraction of what it wound up costing.

So, yea, America's government can do things. But the things it tries to do somehow wind up costing far more than they should based on what they cost in other countries.

2/2/2016 2:22:58 AM

Quote :

"The VA is even highly rated in quality of care compared to other providers, although they have a wait time problem. "

This is what is coming if the United States implements single payer: the VA on a massive scale.

2/2/2016 9:54:54 AM

Quote :

"This is what is coming if the United States implements single payer: the VA on a massive scale."

No.

The VA would be an example of government provided services which is not being proposed, single payer is most similar to medicare for all where the government negotiates privates with private providers

2/2/2016 10:09:31 AM

I hear what you're saying and I'm familiar with the concept, but if the federal government in the United States tried to do it, it would turn into another botched program.

If you're delusional enough to believe that Medicare and Social Security are examples of high quality government programs, then I can't help you.

2/2/2016 10:40:00 AM

i just wanted to make sure that you understand the difference between single payer and the VA

I'm still not sure you do though

2/2/2016 10:41:20 AM

I don't think you picked up on my message. moron is touting the VA as a successful government program. I'm suggesting that if we get what he wants, it will be of similar quality to the VA.

This isn't very fun when I have to explain it.

2/2/2016 10:47:19 AM

but the VA is not similar to single payer, medicare is similar to single payer

2/2/2016 10:51:40 AM

^And George W Bush had to shut down a VA hospital before he left because it wasn't sanitary enough. Obama came into office and the VA continues to have problems. It isn't really something a president can solve. Government programs just generally suck.

Quote :

"^ in what ways is obamacare a mess? Medicare is one of the most efficient and highly rated healthcare systems. The VA is even highly rated in quality of care compared to other providers, although they have a wait time problem. And as far as what government has gotten right... A hell of a lot. The USA didn't become the greatest country on earth through the 20th century by chance. We didn't make it through the recession better than other industrialized countries just by luck. Cash for clunkers achieved it's intended goals very well. No human institution is perfect, not even government, just look at how people complain about their insurance companies or Best Buy or Comcast etc, but our government hasn't done too badly, and has done better than most, largely because of progressive leaders that believe in the greatness of our society and what we can achieve together. And China, Germany, Japan, swedes, etc are pushing higher Ed for their citizens, the us will fall behind if we don't keep up."

LMAO! Obamacare is a joke. People's premiums are going up, not down. Plus the deductibles are higher with the new plans. And as I posted above, the VA is a joke too. The Veterans I have talked to hate it.

As for cash for clunkers, that money was the American tax dollar. All that happened was people who would have bought a car a few months, or years later did it sooner, so sales weren't quite as good later. It was also a detriment to poor people. A lot of those $3,000 cars that weren't in mint condition anymore were taken off of the market when they were disposed of. It raised the average prices of used cars which wasn't a good thing for people struggling to pay their bills who needed to find a new used car.

I think we're pretty much fucked already as far as government spending goes under the next administration, but Sanders is the worst out of all of them and will be willing to spend more than the other candidates.

2/2/2016 6:47:41 PM

Quote :

"People's premiums are going up, not down"

That wasn't the goal of obamacare. The goal of obamacare was to get everyone insured. The people who weren't insured weren't insured because their projected costs outweighted the premiums they would pay.

Insurance companies were never going to take on all of this extra burden without compensating somehow to maintain profit margins. That is why they have raised premiums. The only solution to this problem is single payer. The government would not need to turn a profit and all of those profits could be allocated to lowering the "national premium" if you will, even after you account for the loss of efficiency from switching to government management.

Quote :

"I think we're pretty much fucked already as far as government spending goes under the next administration, but Sanders is the worst out of all of them and will be willing to spend more than the other candidates."

He's actually going to collect taxes though.

2/3/2016 5:53:28 PM

Pretty much, obamacare was to help those people with preexisting conditions actually get insurance and making sure that everyone had insurance. In a perfect world forcing everyone who didnt have insurance to carry some minimum and start paying in would offset the cost of those higher risk people but of course it didnt. So as a result the rest of us get to pay to make up the difference. People want to point and say the economy has been doing ok and recovering, but after the premium raise of up to 50% this year things are gonna turn downward quite quickly Id imagine.

2/4/2016 8:34:13 AM

Criticize Sanders for spending all you want, but he's the only one who has proposals for how to pay for the things he wants

2/4/2016 8:46:15 AM

Quote :

"I hear what you're saying and I'm familiar with the concept, but if the federal government in the United States tried to do it, it would turn into another botched program."

"government is always incompetent" isn't a good basis to understand a policy. Government is only incompetent if we let it be incompetent, which Republicans seem to do on purpose (especially on the state level). And in any case, it's no less competent than a private industry, or any other human institution. Since we're in the Donald Trump thread, he's made less money than if he just invested in the stock market, he's used bankruptcy to bail himself out when he took more risks than he could handle-- this would be branded as incompetence if it was the government.

The federal government has thousands of departments that work with many different things, and you never hear about them because they work fine. Our government still functions a lot better than most others on the planet, as big as it is, but if it sucks at something, it's because we let it suck at that thing by electing representatives that don't believe or accept things can be better.

2/4/2016 9:53:37 AM

That's a pretty warped way of thinking.

2/5/2016 10:29:55 AM

Quote :

"The federal government has thousands of departments that work with many different things, and you never hear about them because they work fine. Our government still functions a lot better than most others on the planet, as big as it is, but if it sucks at something, it's because we let it suck at that thing by electing representatives that don't believe or accept things can be better."

Any department can "work fine" when people have no choice but to give you money.

2/5/2016 11:08:08 AM

but before you said it can't work fine

2/5/2016 11:34:46 AM

You really like to nitpick, don't you? The quotes are there for a reason. They "work fine" in the sense that they continue to exist. Bureaucracy can't go out of business. They have no competition, and they have no reason to provide better service.

If I say that the Department of Education "works well", what does that mean? It works well compared to what? This isn't an Uber vs. Lyft situation. Government departments are a monopoly in their domain.

2/5/2016 1:57:19 PM

Could you provide reasons why you feel that Social Security isn't a high quality government program?

2/5/2016 3:09:28 PM

Quote :

"Could you provide reasons why you feel that Social Security isn't a high quality government program?"

Social Security is a failure in many, many ways, but here's the quick and dirty version.

Social Security requires payments from current workers in order to pay current recipients. It isn't even controversial to say that Social Security is on an unsustainable trajectory, practically everyone agrees with this. Plenty of reforms have been suggested, but the fact remains that Social Security will fail in its current form.

I don't think Congress will allow it to fail. Instead, they'll just find a way to collect more payroll tax and pay out less in benefits. Either way, it will be a shitty deal for most folks.

Social Security is a classic case of something you can point to and say "see? look at all the old people that Social Security is helping - what a great success!" Again, this only works if you don't compare it to alternatives.

If people were allowed to opt out of Social Security payroll tax and instead put it into an index fund, you could actually get a really high ROI. The average wage earner would be a millionaire by retirement. With Social Security, your ROI is non-existent. Of course, if people were able to opt out, they would, and the program would collapse even faster than it already is.

Simply put, no one would design Social Security knowing what we know today. The problem with Social Security, and really all government entitlements, is there's no good mechanism to it down once they've been established as grossly inefficient or wasteful. People live or die based on their Social Security check; to even mention the possibility of phasing it out ensures that you will never be elected in the United States.

2/5/2016 3:30:44 PM

^Great response. And to add to that, the fact that we have supplemental retirement plans, such as 401Ks actually proves that SS is inefficient.

2/5/2016 3:36:09 PM

Quote :

"If people were allowed to opt out of Social Security payroll tax and instead put it into an index fund, you could actually get a really high ROI. The average wage earner would be a millionaire by retirement"

You've got to be fucking kidding here.

2/5/2016 3:49:47 PM

Are you disagreeing? I don't even need to exaggerate the numbers to make it work.

-Payroll tax: 12.4% (6.2 from the earner, 6.2 from the employee).
-Average income in the U.S.: about 52,000.
-Let's say you get 7% annual return on your index fund. This is a reasonable expectation.

I'm going to round everything down to be fair, and say you do 5500 a year (the current IRA max), which is less than 12.4% of 52,000. If you do this from age 25 to 65, you should have over a million in the bank, according to my calculations, 1.1 mil. That's going to look a heck of a lot better than your shitty Social Security check - assuming Social Security even exists 40 years from now.

[Edited on February 5, 2016 at 4:12 PM. Reason : ]

2/5/2016 4:11:39 PM

cool, now show how long will it take someone making $12k a year to see that or how long it will take someone who becomes disabled to see that

[Edited on February 5, 2016 at 4:26 PM. Reason : k thanks]

2/5/2016 4:20:21 PM

Are you under the impression that a person making 12k a year is going to be living the good life on Social Security?

The whole fucking point is that even the dirt poor would be better off if their money were going into a middle of the road, tax deferred investment rather than Social Security, but don't that let stop you from throwing out lame gotchas.

2/5/2016 4:30:45 PM

What would be the outcome in your scenario if the stock market were to crash and wipe out everyone's retirement savings?

Quote :

"... Social Security is on an unsustainable trajectory, practically everyone agrees with this."

I don't agree with this.

2/5/2016 4:40:03 PM

Quote :

"What would be the outcome in your scenario if the stock market were to crash and wipe out everyone's retirement savings?"

The entire system would be completely fucked and no amount of government intervention would be able to salvage the situation.

Quote :

"I don't agree with this."

Do you agree with the numbers?

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/08/18/5-facts-about-social-security/

2/5/2016 4:42:49 PM

Quote :

"... no amount of government intervention would be able to salvage the situation."

I don't agree with this either.

Social Security's inflows and outflows aren't constant and could easily be remedied through modest reform.

2/5/2016 4:59:39 PM

I don't think enough people are going to drop out of the race in time for Trump to lose. Does anyone see cruz or rubio getting out? People like Kasich and Bush still think they can win at this point and will take a huge chunk of delegates. Fiorina and Carson are still taking up some of the vote.

The establisment needs to consolidate asap.

2/5/2016 5:07:42 PM

Quote :

"You've got to be fucking kidding here. "

If you are middle class, there is no reason not to become a millionaire if you want to. It's just a matter of priorities, and making them priorities early on in life.

2/5/2016 7:12:06 PM

That's not the ridiculous part

2/5/2016 8:22:53 PM

yah i don't disagree with that, but that's not what we're discussing.

2/5/2016 8:49:29 PM

Quote :

"Social Security is a failure in many, many ways, but here's the quick and dirty version. Social Security requires payments from current workers in order to pay current recipients. It isn't even controversial to say that Social Security is on an unsustainable trajectory, practically everyone agrees with this. Plenty of reforms have been suggested, but the fact remains that Social Security will fail in its current form. I don't think Congress will allow it to fail. Instead, they'll just find a way to collect more payroll tax and pay out less in benefits. Either way, it will be a shitty deal for most folks. Social Security is a classic case of something you can point to and say "see? look at all the old people that Social Security is helping - what a great success!" Again, this only works if you don't compare it to alternatives. If people were allowed to opt out of Social Security payroll tax and instead put it into an index fund, you could actually get a really high ROI. The average wage earner would be a millionaire by retirement. With Social Security, your ROI is non-existent. Of course, if people were able to opt out, they would, and the program would collapse even faster than it already is. Simply put, no one would design Social Security knowing what we know today. The problem with Social Security, and really all government entitlements, is there's no good mechanism to it down once they've been established as grossly inefficient or wasteful. People live or die based on their Social Security check; to even mention the possibility of phasing it out ensures that you will never be elected in the United States."

Great explanation. There is a generation somewhere along the line that is going to have to give in and just not collect social security. Of course that will take 100% of that generation investing in retirement funds.

As for Obamacare, not only does the cost for the individual suck, but more employees were also hired by the IRS to handle all of the fines being handed out to the people who don't buy the insurance. Things like this are why government programs suck. All they do is spend and spend and spend.

Also, welfare programs are another classic example of things that don't work well. There are millions of dollars lost each year because of medicaid fraud. People on food stamp programs also screw the system. I worked at a grocery store for 7 years. Some of the people with EBT cards used to offer other people the opportunity to use their card to buy groceries if they promised to pay them back in cash, so they could take the money to buy cigarettes. And people actually went along with that. A lady I worked with once used her friend's EBT card to buy food for a cookout that they were having at the end of the summer before school started again. It is things like this that I am against more government spending and programs.

2/6/2016 7:35:46 PM

Quote :

"Are you disagreeing? I don't even need to exaggerate the numbers to make it work. -Payroll tax: 12.4% (6.2 from the earner, 6.2 from the employee). -Average income in the U.S.: about 52,000. -Let's say you get 7% annual return on your index fund. This is a reasonable expectation. I'm going to round everything down to be fair, and say you do 5500 a year (the current IRA max), which is less than 12.4% of 52,000. If you do this from age 25 to 65, you should have over a million in the bank, according to my calculations, 1.1 mil. That's going to look a heck of a lot better than your shitty Social Security check - assuming Social Security even exists 40 years from now."

You could at least try to compare apples to apples.

Social Security pays an inflation adjusted monthly benefit from retirement until death. We can estimate the value of those payments using a safe withdrawal rate. Four percent is typically thrown around as the maximum amount that can be withdrawn from an investment annually without depleting the investment over time. Some Average Joe earning $52,000 annually over 40 years will receive a monthly Social Security benefit of $1,642, or $19,704 annually. If that person were to go it alone, as you suggest, he would need $492,600 at retirement to pay himself Social Security. Saving 12.4% of his income, Average Joe would need about a 3% annual return to reach $492,600 at retirement.

 Salary     Ann. Contrib.   Annual SS   Bal @ Ret   Annual Return
 $118,500   $14,694         $29,868     $746,700    1.19%
 $75,000    $9,300          $24,180     $604,500    2.34%
 $52,000    $6,448          $19,704     $492,600    3.06%
 $45,000    $5,580          $17,748     $443,700    3.23%
 $25,000    $3,100          $12,168     $304,200    4.14%
 $12,000    $1,488          $8,544      $213,600    5.70%
 $10,000    $1,240          $7,836      $195,900    6.08%

 Salary     Ann. Contrib.   Annual SS   Bal @ Ret   Annual Return
 $118,500   $7,347          $29,868     $746,700    4.28%
 $75,000    $4,650          $24,180     $604,500    5.30%
 $52,000    $3,224          $19,704     $492,600    5.95%
 $45,000    $2,790          $17,748     $443,700    6.11%
 $25,000    $1,550          $12,168     $304,200    6.93%
 $12,000    $744            $8,544      $213,600    8.39%
 $10,000    $620            $7,836      $195,900    8.75%

2/6/2016 8:00:57 PM

I'm not going to dispute your numbers; the fact that the employee and employer pay 6.2% equates to a 12.4% tax on the employee to me; the employer money could be paid in wages instead.

Quote :

"But most importantly, it's insurance against human nature. You are an absolute idiot if you think phasing out FICA is going to result in higher retirement savings."

Oh, if you just phased it out and replaced it with nothing, most people wouldn't save anything for retirement, because most people are too busy maxing out credit cards and buying brand new cars in their prime earning years. That's a trade off as far as I'm concerned. You can either have your status symbols when you're young, or you can eat something other than cat food when you're old. If you're smart maybe you can even have both.

In any case, I'm pretty opposed to government programs that protect people from their own idiocy. Sometimes, safety nets make people a lot more reckless when they're close to the edge.

2/7/2016 4:23:36 PM

Quote :

"I'm pretty opposed to government programs that protect people from their own idiocy"

Ignoring the fact that not everyone needing Social Security is in that position due to their own idiocy, there's a big difference between this and being against Social Security because you think it's a failure (it's not). If you simply do not like the idea of Social Security, that's fine. Own it.

Also, it's really cute that you think this:

Quote :

"the employer money could be paid in wages instead"

2/8/2016 6:58:36 PM

It's a failure and and I don't like the idea of it.

Yes, I know liberals don't believe that employer expenses have anything to do with how much employees get paid. In reality, most businesses want and need to pay employees more, and -6.2% helps them do that.

2/9/2016 10:05:49 AM

Still unclear why you think Social Security is a failure other than you don't like it and think it's a failure.

2/10/2016 7:41:11 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D8GoGj7ccQ
can't believe i hadn't heard about this.

1. plant people in your crowd to make your insults
2. ask them to repeat it
3. call them out for saying it to make sure everyone hears it

trump is a genius

2/12/2016 11:08:00 PM

Kanye west is the younger black version of Donald trump.

2/15/2016 12:37:34 AM

they are both humans, so they have that in common

that's about it, though

2/15/2016 1:03:39 AM

They both describe themselves as geniuses, they proclaim everything they do as the greatest, they seem, at least publicly, to have very little ability to self reflect, very prone to hyperbole, they have thin skin, etc.

2/15/2016 1:11:12 AM

one is one of the most artiscally creative people of his time

and the other is Donald Trump

2/15/2016 1:50:18 AM

uh oh, did somebody say something bad about Kanye? (how is he relevant here?)

2/15/2016 10:27:37 AM

Quote :

"one is one of the most artiscally creative people of his time"

lol

2/15/2016 10:53:25 AM

Now he's saying the RNC is going back on their pledge by not supporting his positions on Cruz.

Do we really want an f'n crybaby in the White House?

2/15/2016 3:39:07 PM

LOLOL Jeb forgot to renew his website, now Trump owns it.

http://www.jebbush.com

2/16/2016 1:43:43 PM

that's funny

2/16/2016 9:07:45 PM

Except that's never been Jeb's website, and Trump doesn't own the domain.

2/16/2016 10:56:45 PM

^ I figured that was the case, but I actually tried to find Jebs site via Google, and only that site and stories about it came up...
pretty sad...

2/17/2016 12:35:42 AM

HEAT CHECK V. THE POPE

2/18/2016 1:12:06 PM

Quote :

"I actually tried to find Jebs site via Google, and only that site and stories about it came up... pretty sad..."

https://www.google.com/search?q=jeb%27s+site

2/18/2016 1:50:06 PM