Why doesn't socialism work?

That's just silly Bill Clinton wasn't a Republican neither were the Clinton cronies who got richer running Fannie and Freddie into the ground while the Democrats covered for them. Bush inherited the system neither he nor the Republicans created it.

 

Wash trading was okay back then, and that's about as crooked as you can get.

Very true. The crooked lending got way out of hand.

 

You can't believe the ideas high school students have about socialism, capitalism, how the economy works, the history of unions, etc. I like starting with unions because of the violence employers directed at workers.

 

You must work if you want to eat, in ANY economic system.

For my part, I am championing is the right for everyone to work, at above poverty level. (see article 25 of the UNUDHR).

If your system cannot fulfil that right, then it needs fixing so that it can.

Note: before the pandemic, the best involuntary un+underemployment rate (U6) achieved in the US was 6.7%
Add on those who have given up looking for work and therefore not included in U6, and we have the reality of involuntary underemployment of >10% - ie, a permanent recession faced by >10% of the working age population.

 

"Productive"? The nation can't even fix it's aging infrastructure, nor offer basic rights such as universal health care.
BECAUSE its tax payers pay less than other rich counties.

Forget efficiency and health enhancing infrastructure like high-speed rail.....go for junk consumerism instead, and create obesity and diabetes in the population, all in the drive for private profit.

I'm not sure if you have the makings of a novelist; you are showing some fiction-creating ability here. Note: I have already pointed to the responsibility that both Repub and Dem administrations must take for the GFC.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-09-04/hiltzik-medical-bankruptcy-american-scandal

Column: Medical bankruptcy is an American scandal — and that’s not debatable

What’s clear about the financial consequences of the American system of healthcare financing, which places much of the burden on households, is that they’re widespread and scandalous. One signpost is the rise of crowdfunding campaigns via platforms such as GoFundMe to raise money for families facing medical bills. In a civilized country, public appeals for help with medical bills shouldn’t exist. Yet GoFundMe reports that it hosts more than 250,000 medical campaigns per year, raising more than $650 million a year.

 

Yes, you're Establishment right down the line. Right down to the fact that you have no clue that you are.

Do you even know what the Establishment is?? What the terms Robber Barons and Money Trust mean, and who those people were??

 

Republican crony regulators allowed private financial institutions to run wild. Fannie and Freddie share of the market went from 70% to 30% around 2003. A disgrace.

 

All about corrupt crony regulators looking the other way big time with their pals running financial institutions private ones. As well as big o oil big pharma etc..... Big health.

 

Yes government is not a very efficient use of the nations capital and if you are advocating taxing the lower incomes more I don't think you're going to get much support.

High speed rail even in California has been a bust due to the government management and a HUGE waste of taxpayer money. If the market wants it the private sector will build it.

Yes you dodge by trying to assign "blame" so as not to discuss the economic policies and the results of each.

And no I don't take the number of crowdfunding campaigns as a valid measure. The actual stats say different. And again the people mostly effected had nothing to lose in a bankruptcy anyway it was a means of getting out of the debt and not paying for the medical care they received.

The truth about medical bankruptcies
"Their method is considerably more robust than the one adopted by Warren et al., who looked at the presence of medical bills in bankruptcy filings. The problem with doing that is that bankruptcy tends to be multi-causal. If you have a half-million-dollar house, three luxury cars, a boat — and also a heart attack — which of these things “caused” your bankruptcy?

So Carlos Dobkin, Amy Finkelstein, Raymond Kluender and Matthew J. Notowidigdo did what’s called an “event study.” Instead of looking at bankruptcies to see how many involved medical bills, they started with the illness, and asked how much more likely people were to declare bankruptcy after they got sick. That’s a much better way to tease out causation than asking whether someone who just went through a financially ruinous divorce also owed his or her dermatologist thousands of dollars.

The answer they came up with will surprise even critics of Warren et al.: The fraction of bankruptcies caused by medical events is just 4 percent. And even among those bankruptcies, it seems that medical bills may be less of a problem than the other things associated with an illness, such as lost labor income.

In other words: Medical bankruptcy probably wasn’t nearly as big a problem as people thought when we were passing our giant new health-care program. And to the extent that it was a problem, Obamacare probably didn’t do much to fix it.

That jibes with what we’ve seen in the bankruptcy data since Obamacare passed. If medical bills really were driving so many people into bankruptcy, then we would have expected filings to plummet after 2013, when millions of people gained health insurance coverage. Instead we see a smooth decline from the recession-era peak."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blog...8/03/26/the-truth-about-medical-bankruptcies/

And as the author notes that may be a low figure but double even triple it even quadrouple it and no where near what is claimed.

 

Their pals and most of their cronies are Democrats. Why do you think most of the crap Democrats propose is all about limiting competition not protecting people. The only two administration that ever broke up a monopoly were Calvin Coolidge, Standard oil and Ronald Reagan Bell telephone. By the way Dems have been doing everything in their power to put them back together. Big government loves them some big business. Easier to heard a dozen or so dinosaurs than hundreds of kittens.

 

Gates and Buffet say they should be paying more taxes. Wonder why?

[The top 20% in the US own 90% of total household wealth, might have something to do with it; and 60% of the population can't find savings of $1000 in an emergency]

But you know my own thoughts on taxation, ie government doesn't need to tax or borrow, in order to spend.....OTOH, I trust you are OK with Trump spending $3 trillion and more, to ensure people can eat and pay rent....

http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/mmt-overcoming-the-political-divide.569365/

The market is blind to social and environmental values, it only sees profits....regardless of whatever ill-health generating junk is traded on markets.

Neoliberalism followed by Dems and Repubs has resulted in inequality rivalling the pre GD era. G-S was enacted for a reason, and later repealed for the benefit of financial casino players leaching off the real economy.... resulting in the GFC, as has been pointed out by other posters.

That's US neoliberalism..." an American scandal — and that’s not debatable"

Lack of a universal healthcare caused it...or you are saying we must put aside enough to pay for a possible heart attack. In any case, most of the population don't have those assets, in your example above.

Single payer will fix it.

Obamacare was mostly an abortion: it covered a few more people, but it maintained the private insurance and big pharma profit-driven money machines, which is the real problem behind the cost of health care in the US, which is about double the costs in comparable OECD countries.

 

I could care less and they are free to do so, do they? I wonder why not.

I don't care how much wealth someone else is able to earn it has no effect on me and I keep asking you how it has affected you specifically and you have yet to respond.

Trump is not spending $3T the Congress has allocates spending.

No it's not it reacts to social and environmental values and responds to them. I guess you also believe the rich want everyone else to be poor.

And that has affected you how? We have never seen the global economy we have now nor the the ability for someone, like Gate, to invent something that becomes such a global necessity and they make HUGE sums of money.

Highly debatable.

Lack of personal responibility.

You guys are complaining about the government response to the COVID emergency yet want to turn all health care over to the government, what folly.

And did not change the incidence in which medical bills were part of personal bankruptcy. People go bankrupt for a variety and mix of reasons but rarely because of just medical expenses.

 

Actually Democrats are behind Fannie and Freddie and Republicans just loved countrywide etcetera they got us into that mess.... Duh.Fannie and Freddie share the market went from 75% to 30% around 2003 thanks scumbag GOP.... And their misinformed minions....

 

all of the problems with Obamacare and our ridiculously expensive healthcare are due to Republicans and their blind support of big pharma big health etc etc. There would be millions more covered with Medicaid if those 14 scumbag red states joined in. They have no reason not to except pure obstruction of the black guy.... Also myriad strategies of obstruction and sabotage. Your ridiculously misinformed support of them is noted....

 

WOW that big pharma and private sector that is coming to our rescue and the government failures. And if those millions more were brought into Medicare, Medicare would no longer exist. And turning it into a racial thing just sent the credibility of you post to the bottom of the totem pole, how pitiful for lack of anything of merit to say?

 

Of course, I know who these people were and the impact they had on society. I just don't subscribe to screwy theories about what they did.

 

Almost all of countrywides donations went to Democrats, most notably Barney Frank, and Barak Obama, they even gave sleepy Joe a sweetheart deal on his mansion.

 

The reaction to this disease has been a disgrace from the Trump administration and especially the orange clown. Of course Republicans have been incompetent since Reagan. Yes yes there is no racism anymore.and we have nothing against corporations or the rich if they pay their fair share in taxes. You are totally misinformed.

 

Link to that garbage propaganda? Fannie and Freddie share of the market went 75% to 30% and GOP pals went crazy with garbage mortgages etc etc.... The GOP is pro lobbyists and their members are in the revolving door much more than Democrats. Wake up and smell the coffee for crying out loud. The GOP is open about it! Only ridiculous propaganda makes this mess possible.

 

we're talking about Medicaid. Like most Republican voters you know absolutely nothing about healthcare in this country.

 

You wake up. If you need a link to that you must have been asleep at the time.

 

Someone is always working at near poverty level though only things minimum wage hikes do is raise the poverty line and increase the percentage of people at or near it.

 

The crooked part of mortgage business got out of hand under Bush.

 

Doesn't mean a damn thing. They are in bed with Republicans. Silly propaganda.

 

Because the Dems stonewalled his attempts at reform. Ole Barn and Obama Ong others were getting campaign funds hand over first from country side et Al to turn their backs on reigning in excesses at Fannie and Freddie where they were busy insuring any damn loan sent their way because in the waning days Billy Bob they redone the pay of the of his cronies who ran it to reflect the number of loans insured under written what ever. The result being that no one there cared to even look at the soundness of the loans in question. Hell I remember looking at buying a home in Alabama in about 93 when I was making about ten bucks an hour and some dude telling me I could afford an 80 k home. I looked at him and said sure I can but we could only eat every other day and someone else would have to pay the gas an electric.