Other. Shut it down and give us our money back. We can do a damn sight better job of taking care of it than the government can.
You sure about that? If you’re wrong, you still won’t starve because you’ll be eligible for all sorts of relief for indigent folks, paid for, of course–BY THE GOVERNMENT!!!
Oh, I know I can take care of myself. Its my neighbor I don’t trust to save for the future.
I’m a selfish liberal. I like my social programs because they let me NOT have my cousin and her family living in my basement, keep me from having to live with my mother in law, and buy groceries for my brother in law. Social programs protect me from the poor decisions and unlucky life events of my (loved, but not always forethinking) relations.
I hate SS. I’m not opposed to safety nets, but ideally I’d just opt out or pay a minimal amount to qualify for disability insurance. I was able to max out my IRA when I was making shit money as a grad student, and I plan on continuing to save. I don’t make anywhere near the tax cap now, but I expect to, and I’d rather not continue to pay money I’ll never see back. It sucks that we have to have a forced savings plan because so many people choose not to be able to support themselves, but we’d probably have chaos without it. Just look at all the people who give free loans to the government each year because the only way they can save on the short term is to overpay their taxes throughout the year and wait for a refund.
Yeah. And let’s not have any regulation for mortgage brokers because no one would ever sign up for a mortgage they can’t afford and no banker would ever give them one.
:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
When will you people ever learn that not everyone is as smart as you think you are.
Actually, I have no problem with this. And, we should have let those banks fail as a result. However rather than free market capitalism in this country, we have a social safety net that bailed out companies not due to cronyism but due to thinking it would save jobs.
But who cares about stupid people? Let enough of them start to live like poor Mexicans in Mexico do, and maybe they’ll see the danger, and not be so stupid. The fact the we have virtually no poverty in this county is obscured because “poor” people have no idea what real poverty is, and stupid people don’t worry about it.
Given the reaction when we did let a bank fail, a new Great Depression as the result of letting them fail was a very real possibility. If you’d rather have 25% unemployment, scads of homeless (or dead) old people, so be it. Just make sure everyone knows you are okay with this result, and that it is okay with you if millions suffer due to your ideological purity.
Some people are very smart about money, but stupid about other things. Some people are great poets or actors but can’t manage their money. And it isn’t just money. Some people are opposed to the FDA because they think they are so smart that they can read the medical journals and figure out what is safe. Screw that med school stuff, or training in statistics and biology. And they think that anyone who can’t do this shouldn’t be protected from quack medicine.
Yeah, few people around here are as poor as those in Southern Sudan, except perhaps for those living on the street. I think that is a feature of our system, not a bug. YMMV
It’s not really the ideology that’s at fault. The banks knew they’d be bailed out. The government’s done that many, many times in the past. If there’d been no expectation of a safety line, they’d not have made those loan in the first place. And if people have no expectation of a safety line, they won’t make stupid decisions in the first place. So aside from reforming social security, we also have to let our markets work.
Funny you should mention that. I love the fact that I can go into a Mexican pharmacy and purchase something that I already know that I’ll need without having to waste time going to a doctor’s office first. And you’re right; there are a lot of stupid people who purchase, say, antibiotics for viral infections, but that society recognizes that other people’s stupidity shouldn’t interfere with freedom.
You’re measuring the result and not the cause. Of course the result is a feature of the system, but the inputs are completely different. Sudan doesn’t have our level of economic activity, even on a per capita basis. If you accept that the government should be tasked with keeping Sudanese from being poor, then there’s not enough money in that country available to do so, even if you were to tax everyone at 100%.
My understanding is that social security really isn’t that huge of a problem–certainly not an insolvable one. It’s medicare that is going to bankrupt us: Granny’s last 120 days of life cost the taxpayer more than the 120 months of social security that came before. Hell, the last 120 hours of life can easily cost more than several years of social security.
Actually, I think it is employees, not companies who incorrectly view Social Security as a Retirement program.
If fact, it is 401K programs that companies treat as Retirement programs. The original intent of 401K legislation was to encourage the third, individual savings leg to retirement planning - supplementing pensions and the last resort of Social Security. Instead (with Wall Street enthusiasm), corporations have abandoned pensions and are now heading that way with 401k contributions.
Poor stupid people in Mexico start running drugs and killing not only each other, but innocent people.
In places where poverty is severe and there is no social safety net, life doesn’t tend to be too comfortable for the middle class - who are the targets of crime.
I bet Lehman was sure surprised then. Please provide some evidence that a potential government bailout was a significant factor in their risk assessment. All the information I saw says that first, the housing market going down was discounted in their models and second, they believed in the ratings from the bond rating agencies. We know how good those were.
In addition, the securities that turned out to be deadly had higher returns than the normal ones. Any CEO who resisted dealing in them would see profits fall behind his competitors, and thus be in big trouble with shareholders. Remember, the bonds were AAA.
I suspect a memo saying that someone knew the stuff was junk but it was ok since Uncle Sam was going to bail them out would be big news. Maybe I missed it, so please provide.
Anyhow, even if a bailout was expected, they could not possibly know how few strings there would have been. Tight restrictions and the firing of management would have been very possible.
Is the safety and efficacy of the drug regulated? You used to only be able to get Claritan OTC in Canada. You can still get Tylenol with Codeine there without a prescription. I’m not going to dispute that there are plenty of drugs which could be OTC with little or no risk (like pretty much all the boner pills) but can go for higher prices with prescriptions. That has little to do with the FDA. Want to order some medicine from China and see how you do?
I was agreeing with you. I used to live in Africa, so I know a bit about poverty there. And I don’t think that Sudan’s problems come from over-regulation or massive government intervention. I don’t think the fact that we are rich enough to spare our citizens from that kind of poverty is a problem myself.
Hell yes. We have friends who live in Venezuela (why they are still doing so is beyond me) who have to hire a guard for their house pretty much any time they go out shopping.
:eek: Death panels :eek:
Of course what Palin was blathering about had nothing to do with this, but rather was about paying for Granny to consult with a doctor about what she wanted to do in her last 120 hours.
Give it back? Just how are they going to give back what they already gave to your Uncle Igor, and Grandma Hump? Your money is long gone. Your only hope of getting any of it back is to convince your kids and all their friends to keep paying until you can collect.
Poor black people do that in the United States. Not all of them, though. Mexico’s poor population is a hell of a lot larger (percentage and gross!) than the United States’. The point wasn’t that poor don’t have problems, though. The point was, you don’t know what poor is.
Here’s a good listen. Not quite a cite, and it agrees (as do I) with much of what you say.
Absolutely. However admit I misunderstood your intention.
Well, yeah. I’m probably going to be living there for the next few years.
But that’s the thing. We’re so rich that that kind of poverty can’t exist here on that scale. Maybe some outliers.