I thought this would be a good showing on how businessmen = politicians.

http://www.opensecrets.org/parties/index.php

http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/index.php

Select any of those on the list in the following link
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/index.php

Congressional approval ratings:
http://www.gallup.com/...fidence-institutions.aspx

Percent of Incumbents reelected:
http://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/reelect.php


How can anyone look at any of the elections and tell me politicians aren't businessmen. If anything lobbyists and unions are basically the BOD while we the people are just the useful idiots. Clearly people don't like their congressmen, but they somehow get reelected...I smell a snake oil salesman.

Thats a big part of the problem, the cost of running a national election has risen to the point where all politicians are required to spend a sizable chunk of their time hustling for dollars. Who has the dollars (and hence, speech apparently?) big corporations and foundations. The influence of money on getting reelected has increased faster than Al Gore's hockey stick.

Answer?

Single terms - NO reelections. Take away the fear of losing and you might see some courage. 20-30 year veteran congress/senate members wield more real power than a lot of heads of state. If we had a max of one term in the house, senate, whitehouse - we would probably get a lot different demographic running for office - especially if we resumed public election funding.

meh

good academical work requires to look at sources from both sides of a problem, and then try to find a middle ground of it. While you guys just use sources that benefit your theories. Thus posting any sources here is quite worthless, since the opposing side will either stubbornly ignore it anyways or claim that it is wrong.

and here are my 2 cents:
Since sadly most of the worlds economics are bound to your system, your horrible governing for the last decade or more, put most of this worlds economics on a downward spiral. (I'm not making any differences between Bush and Obama here. Even though I loathe the Bush administration for all their screwups and unnecessary wars, Obama didn't use his first 2 years, when he still had the majorities to achieve anything. Now he is just screwed because teaparty idots are blocking him)
And yes, I know that this is a huge responsibility and yes, I also believe that the most likely alternatives of china and russia as leading countries for the world economics would be worse.
CK, you want to run a pure capitalistic system, how do you think that would benefit you. As long as you dont belong to the upper 2% you would suffer from it.
Many big companies and banks(all around the world) screwed up in the last few years, but they even get rewarded by not having to pay taxes or by being bailed out with taxpayer money. now, quite some of them are raking in big gains again, but where do you think those gains go to? Most of it to the elite few, who were responsible for the screwups.
Now lets take a look at your utopia of capitalism: companies who screw up go down. But who do you think will suffer from it going down? The CEOs who give themselves a nice little bonus or retirement package or the workers who work their asses off to make a living?

You fear that raising the taxes will make companies move to other countries? Yes, some propably will, but as long as the taxraises are kept reasonable and there is the possibility of them profiting from a stable US and a stable world market, most companies wont. You say HK is the country with most economical freedom? It neither has the space nor the infrastructure to support all that many companies moving there. I bet Monaco is on top of that list, too.


Stockmarkets worldwide lost about 15% of their value, without having any negative influences from their respective economies, just because the US can't get their fluff together. That's a huge fluffing responsibility. So better solve those problems fast. How to solve them? raise your taxes, they aren't really as high as you think and especially close those loopholes for the fortune 500 (or however you want to call the big companies and .5-2% that have most of the money)

Also sadly I can't discuss this as precise as I would like to, since english is only my 2nd language

I want to comment on this as well because its totally false. In 2011 the budget deficit is projected at 1.65 trillion. Discretionary spending (non-entitlement/interest, including defense) made up 1.378 trillion of spending and mandatory spending was around 2.45 trillion. If you cut military spending and all other discretionary spending to ZERO, we would still be running a $300 billion budget deficit based entirely upon entitlements and interest on the debt. Not touching entitlements and not touching revenues is pure political theater if politicians are serious about cutting the budget deficit.

well no klown, we can just raise taxes "on the people that have means to pay them" because rich people are not paying their fair share. they are all that is wrong with this country...

The problems stem from many facets, but in a nutshell:
-The entitlements became more generous over the years (bipartisan blame that can stretch from Part D to Medicaid that in some states covered all college kids, literally).
-The ratio of workers to social security recipient has gone from 4 or 5:1 to less than 2:1.
-The number of people on entitlements has grown faster than the actual underlying economic movers/shakers
-War time spending
-Domestic spending increases that outpace inflation by 2-3x as much, and I'm not even referencing the intelligence and law enforcement community
-Decreased revenue has contributed to deficits, but not to spending problems. They're not intertwined
-Failure to address the problems at every step of the way


But I don't expect a solution anytime soon either. And I laugh at those blaming the Tea Party because it shows just how ignorant they are to the actual process.

@trumper - a lot of that is related to extended life expectancy and higher cost of care later in life. Life expectancy has gone up by 5-10 years since 1970. That doesn't sound like much as a part of a person's life, but you have to look at the change in "life after retirement". If you start collecting most entitlement benefits at 65, we have more than doubled the amount of "life after retirement" across the population.

http://www.cdc.gov/...nvsr/nvsr58/nvsr58_21.pdf

Look many pages down for the 1970 - 2006 life expectancy by gender/race chart.

I tend to support raising the age (some of which is already planned).

Raising the age from 65 to 67 saves you $124.8 billion over 10 years. Check out CBO's deficit reduction report from this past March: http://www.cbo.gov/...10-ReducingTheDeficit.pdf . It has most of the policy options these guys will all use on Super Committee.

Anyway, I don't disagree with your point on age. However, it's coupled in with the lack of payers to recipients (5:1 down to 2:1 is a significant disadvantage) and longer life expectancy. The latter is largely because of advances in the medical community, which aren't cheap. Take for instance the proton chemotherapies. The machines are amazing and can successfully treat most cancers with two one-hour sessions, but they're incredibility expensive averaging about $150-250 million a unit. Whereas a traditional chemo machine costs about $1-1.5 million. So when you have a ratio of payers to recipients in decline, more expensive (but better) medical care and a belief that everyone should be entitled to every service then you have a problem.

And the other items I mentioned.

I wish I had the golden nugget answer, but I don't. The answer isn't some massive set of tax hikes because it will have diminishing affect and because the markets are volatile enough already. The answer isn't eliminating these entitlement programs. So the happy medium has to be something different.

Paul Ryan's solution was to gear it toward market-based answers. Aka, premium voucher support. I think it makes sense, but it will mean seniors have to make up the difference. Democrats bemoan it yet they voted in IPAB, which will cut their services and potentially raise their costs. You can have the government bureaucrats do it or the private sector. But it will happen.

locket: What country are you from? And have we (the U.S.) saved it at least *once* in one of two World Wars?

I'd laugh my ass off if he was from vietnam

*all bow to the high and mighty saviours of the earth*

You realize it wasn't the USA vs the world right? Arrogance.. nice

we might as well have sided with Hitler for all the good it did.

Arrogant, perhaps (I would have just said the native-English speaking countries--Aussies, Brits, Americans and Canadians), but you're still welcome.

I would say the answer is more along the lines of Canada's campaign finance rules... no corporate donations!


-----from wikipedia-----

Per-vote subsidy
For each registered federal political party that received at least 2% of all valid votes the last general election or at least 5% of the valid votes in the electoral districts in which it had a candidate, the per-vote subsidy, also referred to as the "government allowance", gives the party an inflation-indexed subsidy each year of $2.04 per vote received in the last election.[7]
Of the three ways in which federal parties are allocated public funding, the per-vote subsidy is largely seen as the most democratic. 100% of the voters of eligible parties (99% of all voters in the last election) have a say, with their input treated on equal basis (1 voter, 1 vote)


Subsidy of political contributions
Political contributions are publicly subsidized via a personal income tax credit that credits 75% of the first $400 contributed, 50% of the amount between $400 and $750, and 33.33% of the amount over $750, up to a maximum tax credit of $650 (reached when contributions by an individual total $1,275 in one calendar year.) For the current maximum political contribution of $1,100 that can be given to the national organization of each party, the tax credit is $591.67, representing a subsidy of 53.79%.

---------------


Furthermore, campaigns are shorter here.. up to around 30 days -- but not 2 years!! no corporate donations, capped private donations ($1100).

Also, complete transparency should be required; money equaling speech is stupid, and democracy should DEMAND complete transparency in every aspect of government that there isn't a *really* good reason to have secrecy.

What if a Canadian official killed a moose and you wanted to speak out about the killing? Shouldn't you be entitled to spend $2,000 or $5,000 to ridicule it because you're a Moose-lover? And I'm not sure how that's any different for a corportation? What if you're a so-called social-values corporation that opposes Moose killings...you try writing a letter to the editor and it gets rejected, are you collectively not entitled to buy a newspaper ad denouncing said Canadian elected official for killing the moose?

why should we care how much money they spend for advertisements? it's not like we actually pay attention to political ads anymore... i'm usually more critical of the person spending the money on the ad than worrying about what rumor mongering their trying to spread with the ad. if we're dumb enough to vote them into office simply because of what they advertise, then we're dumb enough to get stuck with what we get. where's my boat? think it'll be safe to smoke in the middle of the Atlantic...

RON PAUL 2012

Everyone go vote for the only candidate that actually has the balls to take our country back and stand up against corruption in the name of the people.

rEVOLution!!

I happen to live in one of those 4 places. Other countries also suffered and had resistance so again I wouldnt say it was simply the english speakers.

no, thats exactly not going to work.
in the case of the US elections both parties need ridiculously huge amounts of money and are thus extremely dependant on their "loansharks" who want results from their investments. Once elected the politicians will do far less to hurt the guys that just put him in office than they would if the were unbiased.
in the current system, US politicians are puppets of the corporations and rich ones, but they need to be less of that and be more of a representative of the whole people/country

off you fluff

"CK, you want to run a pure capitalistic system, how do you think that would benefit you. As long as you dont belong to the upper 2% you would suffer from it.
Many big companies and banks(all around the world) screwed up in the last few years, but they even get rewarded by not having to pay taxes or by being bailed out with taxpayer money. now, quite some of them are raking in big gains again, but where do you think those gains go to? Most of it to the elite few, who were responsible for the screwups.
Now lets take a look at your utopia of capitalism: companies who screw up go down. But who do you think will suffer from it going down? The CEOs who give themselves a nice little bonus or retirement package or the workers who work their asses off to make a living?"

This is what happens when we have discussions about capitalism. It starts up with saying that it gets rid of the middle class, which in fact it creates as history has shown with America having the least taxes and regulations of anyone for more than a century and having the largest middle class. Second it moves to the bailouts and the failure of it in this global economy. I'm only going to repeat this one last time, bailouts are not capitalism, they are socialism. It is government control of an economy and picking the winners and losers.

Rednose, when was the last time Capitalism was actually in America? Would you say that according to our regulations we have never been as restricted as now? Would you agree that from the moment of our inception that we were as free as possible, all the way until the turn of 20th century and the introduction of the income tax?

Capitalism is always blamed, but it is the lack of capitalism that is always what is brought up. Bailouts for example would not happen in a capitalist society. These entitlement programs would not be costing us over a trillion each year because they wouldn't exist. The price of gas would not be nearly $4 here because drilling would be open to anybody hoping to make some money. Electricity would not be nearly as expensive because regulations on energy wouldn't block new power plants, they would only make sure they were safe. We have never been as far away from Capitalism in America as today because we only reach further away with each passing minute.

The key to capitalism is production and bringing the price of everything down. What we have now is not capitalism. You say the last decade we have created this mess, I say the last century has been an accumulation of wrong decisions that have final caught up with us.


As to the deficit and blaming the Tea party, are we blaming the fireman for the fire? Tea Partiers have nothing to do with the deficit, nothing to do with the debt. Blaming Republicans means nothing because the only reason the tea party exists is because the Republicans screwed up.

too many words in this thread. To the man who posted though: YOURE ANNOYING

I don't blame the tea party for creating these problems, I blame them for the US not being able to solve them.

Obviously, you didn't even read the last column you even quoted: if companies do not get bailed out, who would you think suffers more when one goes down? The "all-lawyered-up" CEOs with bonuses and retirement packages and millions of income before. Or the employees, who might have some small savings but need their job quite desperately.


"Electricity would not be nearly as expensive because regulations on energy wouldn't block new power plants, they would only make sure they were safe."
I really loled at that. If there was free competition among energy suppliers, they would start shaving costs whereever they could, so that they can offer cheaper energy and thus be the one to sell it. Now where can you shave off a lot of your costs? Oh yes, I know: Safety measures.


As for taxes:
-How do you want to pay for schools? Should only rich people be able to get an education? I guess for you, poor people are citizens 2nd class anyways. Same goes for healthcare. Should only the rich be entitled to be healthy?
-How do you want to pay for your infrastructure/clean streets/police/firemen/any other kind of public service? edit: oh I forgot Americas no 1 public spending target: your military

And it is not as easy to earn decent money from scratch, as you imagine. You start out piss poor -> you cant get a decent education -> you'll be stuck in underpayed jobs(because your employers, again, are trying the best for themselves, too) -> you can't save up for your children -> circle starts again for those children.
Now let's look at the other side of this coin: a rich CEO(who was even smart and really had his comany growing) has a dumb as fluff son. That one gets a decent education. But because schools depend on the payments of his rich father, they won't do anything to endanger those payments and call out the sons stupidity. And this goes on and on, until the father retires and leaves the company to the son. Sadly now the company goes down the drain and many jobs are lost.

"The "all-lawyered-up" CEOs with bonuses and retirement packages and millions of income before. Or the employees, who might have some small savings but need their job quite desperately."

Who created those jobs in the first place? Would you say that the employees created the company and thus their own jobs? Or would you say that somebody, the initial President/CEO of the company, created those jobs and passed on the business to another he thought would preserve those jobs? The employees aren't paid off because they didn't do anything to warrant it.

"Oh yes, I know: Safety measures."

Would you say that energy is cheaper in the US or in Europe? Would you say productivity is higher in the US or Europe? See, you close in on the tree in the forest thus do not see the entire cycle of opening up an economy. For example, if not only energy is opened up, but all production avenues, would not the steel to create the plant be cheaper? Would not the machinery be cheaper? Would not anything to run the plant be cheaper? Thus they do not need to cut corners to lower their prices, they find ways to increase efficiency by innovation. Right now they have no incentive to increase efficiency because there is no competition in the market. By your logic man cannot move forward except by lowering safety for it's workers, and yet we constantly find ways to lower costs in all means of business on a daily basis.

"As for taxes:
-How do you want to pay for schools? Should only rich people be able to get an education? I guess for you, poor people are citizens 2nd class anyways. Same goes for healthcare. Should only the rich be entitled to be healthy?
-How do you want to pay for your infrastructure/clean streets/police/firemen/any other kind of public service? edit: oh I forgot Americas no 1 public spending target: your military"

You jump to a radical one or the other. How about this...we remove the cost of paying for public schools if a person does not attend a public school. Create competition in the education system. Right now it goes like this...you are deciding whether to eat at Burger King or McDonalds. At both places the burger you are looking at costs $1, but if you go to Burger King you need to pay for both your burger and the one you didn't get at McDonalds, thus costing you $2 a burger. Which place do you go? Does McDonalds have any incentive to make a better burger? No, and such is our public education system. We spend more than anyone in the world and yet we rate below most industrial nations, why? Healthcare is an even better example. Government got involved with regulation and costs skyrocketed. Why did that happen? Take a look at Massachusetts if you don't believe me on the cost of healthcare. Government only causes people to not be able to afford whatever they regulate, under the guise of helping mind you, and suddenly they have to come in and subsidize the industry because of their own regulations.

As for all that stuff in that last point...how much of our budget it taken up by that stuff? Something like 1.5 trillion is taken up by entitlement programs, so don't give me this fluff about government needing more money for things it should be doing with the first of the money they get.

"Now let's look at the other side of this coin: a rich CEO"

How did that guy become a CEO? Was the business just started by thin air and somebody was appointed the CEO? Most people that are considered wealthy, created that wealth themselves...something like 98% if you research it I believe. So this situation you bring up is only 2% of the wealthy population. The rest of them started out from scratch and worked their way up.

Capitalism would have that fluff son try to take over the company, fail and the company goes under. Meanwhile, somebody else who started out then expands their business to take over the demand and thus they create a bunch of jobs. They then become wealthy themselves and that cycle continues. The "rich" is not a static group of people, but mostly seniors if you check out the numbers. Many people over the course of their lives will be considered in the top 5% at some point. This idea that wealth is static and not created goes back to a conversation I have had before and I don't feel like going into at this time.

Warren Buffett on taxes:
http://www.nytimes.com/...dling-the-super-rich.html

A Swedish friend of mine (actually officially became a US Citizen a few weeks ago) pointed out to me that most of those people who see the US as arrogant will almost always see it regardless of any evidence presented to the contrary. He explained that sure he felt Americans could be more open-minded, but after walking in our shoes for a half dozen or so years he understood both sides and really thought it was amusing that a) we cared about being called arrogant and didn't realize caring isn't often associated with arrogance and b) that we weren't changing anymore than those folks on the flip side weren't changing so what was the point.

Hence you can go on forever and I'm sure you could even point out Americans not paying tribute to the one Kazak soldier who died in the Iraqi war, but the root facts are still the root facts. (Aka: agreed to disagree).

http://www.forbes.com/...n-buffetts-taxes-are-low/

WB's claims aren't all they're cracked up to be.

The problem with your argument is that it is self-defeating. Americans are far more occupationally mobile than at any other point and that trend follows moving away from unions and company pensions. You see, in this situation you're actually not losing a ton when you leave said company because the son is a moron. Thirty years before you would have risked your company pension and been in a far more dodgy situation.

In other words, a labor market dominated by competing interests that offer benefits (salary, options, benefits, retirement) and used demand/records/experience as determinants has actually screwed the rich kid's stupidass son because now he will lose his talent. In fact, just the knowledge of the kid being stupid and likely taking over the company will lead to other company's pilfering stupid son's future company.

self explanatory

It's all just windowdressing. On one hand, you have the republicans, on the other hand you have the democrats. What you have is the same fluff in two different piles.

Those two parties hold a virtual monopoly on the governments positions. They will both sue to keep a third party candidate off the ballot.

So, effectively, we have a "communist" party of two parts, one republican, the other democrat.

They are all in bed together in the good ole boy network in Washington, so, it's nothing but a smoke screen when they point fingers at each other.

Americans aren't that annoying, merely deluded. They still elect the same criminals to office on Tuesday after thay've been tried and convicted in public on Monday.

It's all decided by who gets the money from the biggest political donors, they are who actually sets the policy here.

You can have the attention of the senate or the congress if you're the president of Proctor and Gamble, but try that as a regular citizen and you're a troublmaker who should be put on a watch list.

+1 Cerberus

I've been brainstorming a way to end national political parties for awhile. My first thought was to ban political money from outside the voting bloc, but I don't think that could be effectively done. Say if you are running for a Congressman position, all funding must come within the district. Governor, it must come within the state. President, the entire nation. It would break up the parties, but I don't think that will do it.

You are correct that parties are the problem first.

erm, so you want more tax? i caculated that the increase in my state's income tax this year is enough to pay for about 68 months of gas for my commute. thats more than 5.5 years of commuting!

that in addition to 76 other taxes increases so far just this year in my state

more tax? cool! erm not really...

one of them is a sales tax increase, so they took away from my income and have made buying anything cost more.

we already have the highest gas price in the lower 48 as well.

seriously, there is 1 thing, that you US guys should never do and that would be to cry about high gas prices. Even at those prices, that you consider so high, you're only paying 60% of current standard prices in europe

And we don't want to pay 100% of European prices so we must complain now.

Hate to break it to you but the US has to reduce the deficit and it's going to hurt either way you do it. Yeah ok you see the effects of tax raises directly on you but the US already has healthcare and education that lag behind the a lot of rest of the "developed world" and you can't just keep cutting back on those. Ok maybe you can cut defense more etc. but there is more than enough room to raise taxes in the US, especially on the rich as Buffett said

We already spend more than anyone on education and healthcare(haven't you heard from the left already?). Our education system doesn't lag behind because of money, it lags behind because there isn't competition in the system. If I want to send my kids to a private school someday, why should I have to pay for both private and public? As for healthcare, we do not lag behind anyone, we are the best by nearly any stat that matters. Most innovations come from the US, most new drugs come from the US, the best hospitals are in the US, survival rates on pretty much everything is highest in the US. And to preempt, average lifespan is not a direct comparison for healthcare, and we all know that.

Plus, there isn't a liberal on here that agrees with our welfare system giving money for nothing. Are you telling me we can't cut back there? Is there anyone that agrees with that system?

Buffet knows his money isn't taxed with income taxes. His words are hollow because he uses all the loopholes that he helped create and now he complains. How about he writes a big check to the US government and at least follow his own words for a change. No, he is about pulling the ladder up behind him. He made his billions, now lets make it tougher for anyone to follow him.

Arrogant is the right word. The OP's comment made it out to seem that the US has saved every country in the world. Definitely not the case. I'm from a country that the US basically sold to Stalin at Yalta/Tehran. In the end, we didn't get Marshall Plan money, avoided communism on our own and paid back our debt to the US as well as reparations to the SU. No thanks to America.

And citizens of a lot of Latin American/Middle Eastern countries have a lot more reason to hate the US than be grateful.

So yes, it's arrogance - the majority of nations in the world probably weren't "saved" by the US (not that the Soviet Union, Britain, France etc. didn't do anything in World War II either)

The US isn't the best in healthcare by any stat that matters unless "any stat that matters" refers to any stat about corporate profits or quality of care for the richest 20% of the population. As for education... get real. Public schools aren't desperately competing with each other/ private schools for funding in Finland, South Korea, Japan or New Zealand (OECD PISA top countries). For all the masturbation that right wingers do over the Swedish system (competition, private&public schools etc.), Sweden is a mid-table country in that.

The welfare system doesn't intentionally give money for nothing. There are problems within it that need to be solved. You can't just say "LESS MONEY" and hope that fixes the problem like the teabaggers are trying ot make it out to be.

Buffett is giving his money away to charity at the end of his life. I'd say that's a more worthy cause than the US government. And "make it tougher for people to follow him"? Seriously? You think there are people in the world who SHOULD have a billion dollars? fluffing ridiculous. No one needs that much money and it would be much better used on helping the poor. And I'm pretty sure that the effect on entrepreneurship and corporate governance of a hypothetical 100% tax on all wealth above $1bn (not that I advocate something taht extreme but I'd support a wealth tax of some sort anyway) would outweigh the social benefits of handing out the money you're delusional about the motives of entrepreneurs and the supply of good executives.

If we really want to fix things here, the method of fixing it could be as simple as establishing term limits as suggested in a previous post, AND making the political donor booth as anonymous as the voter booth, this way, the recipient of a political donation cannot possibly know who it was that made the contribution, thus you eliminate the possibility of a politician selling his seat to the highest bidder.

We KNOW that is only part of the problem, the other part of the problem would have to come from societal change. Americans would actually have to start giving a fluff what goes on and voting accordingly after educating themselves on the situation.

I'm sure that the majority of us know how that will pan out, don't we.

AMERICA spends too much time at the mall, and too much time in front of the boob tube watching "reality" shows, so that they can look at it and say, "we're not so bad".

AMERICA is on a STUPID BENDER that is being pushed politically by the Government itself. After all, STUPID people vote too, and you can fool them over and over again. Yet, their vote counts just as much as someone who actually knows what the deal is.

Smikke, lets see some stats about how we are behind in healthcare then. I know that in cancer rate survival we outstrip everyone. Infant mortality rates would be another you would look at, but we even count still borns as a death, which other countries do not. Please, if we are behind, enlighten us.

When government gets involved smikke and they choose to indoctrinate, there is no alternative with our system. I say we compare our private school levels with other countries and see where that gets us. Our government has created this mess and our schools have gone downhill ever since the DoE took over. I've seen the numbers, but I don't feel like researching it.

Ah, so you are the lone liberal in here smikke that defends our money for nothing welfare system. Why should we give money to somebody simply for being alive? They choose not to help society, and yet we give them money. Why? Nobody is saying "LESS MONEY", we are saying reform and then less money. I mean, would you agree if I said liberals were saying just "MORE MONEY"?

If you want to take their money, whats to stop the government from taking yours? See, your way of thinking is what this entire world was about pre-America and with that came a lower standard of living. It can be measured almost nearly from 1789 that the GDP of the world spiked and hasn't looked back, would you say that is attributed to freedom? If you want to force all the money outside of the United States, you are free to try and do that, but don't go blaming capitalism when the money leaves for Hong Kong or some other society where people are actually free to make their money.

As for Buffet himself...oh after he dies, fantastic. Why not now? Why is he keeping that money now? And how much money of his is already kept safely away in tax free accounts for his children? I can respect him if he walks the walk, but he hardly even talks the talk.

"The US isn't the best in healthcare by any stat that matters unless "any stat that matters" refers to any stat about corporate profits or quality of care for the richest 20% of the population."

Richest 20%? How is the care of the richest around here any different than the median? We all have health insurance that pays for too much already and my insurance is pretty failsafe. If I go to the hospital for anything, would I not get the care that pretty much the entire country would get? People say that all the time about our system, they really have no idea how it works and it really removes any credibility from the conversation.

Cerberus, term limits are...a little yin and yang there. Yes, it gets rid of people that are not doing their job automatically, but it throws the baby out with the bathwater as well. I think your second point about a culture change is more important. If people actually started paying attention, term limits would be moot. I've read lots about the founders thoughts on term limits and they decided against them, hoping the people would be smart enough to get corruption out when needed.

I can see where it would help and possibly it is worth it, but I'm just not convinced I would say.

Aside from the French, who came to the US' aid in our struggles? Yet you'll complain about Yalta/Stalin while simultaneously citing the fact that Soviet troops parished in WWII? Give me a break. Many Americans would LOVE for America to be isolationist. Perhaps you will get your wish.

Working backwards:

American education system: You seem to believe it's a funding issue, but that's actually not the case. If it were the case Washington,DC would have some of the best educated students on the planet. Malcolm Gladwell touches on the subject in Outliers. The main issue is actual education time. He points out that the Kipp Academy (charter school) students perform better and the reality is that's simply a derivative of more instructional time. Point being, the nations you cite have their kids in school longer. Do you know why American kids don't go to school longer? I'll give you a big hint, it's not about funding and it's not about parent's or student's wishes.

Health care: America has arguably some of the best outcome-based health care in the world. You're arguing affordability and access as defining health care. He's arguing that health care is determined by performance of those within the sector. Our doctor's (especially in perioperative settings) performance relative to the patient's needs is definitely top tier. Few doubt this. Access to the hc system is what's disputable and that's the byproduct of a number of things including medical malpractice insurance, Part A, general population's unhealthness, and a system that rewards totality of visits over success (the latter point they're trying to augment in items like ACOs).

Finally, Warren Buffet is pushing for tax policy that benefits Berkshire Hathaway. Increase the estate (death) tax? Great, his life insurance company's and their estate planning businesses will thrive. Increase income taxes to help pay for infrastructure? Great, his state and municipal bonding companies benefit. It's funny how he forgets to disclose his own business interest in increasing these taxes. Shoot, in his shoes I would want to increase them as well. What's amusing is that since he doesn't pay out dividends and keeps Birkshire as a holding company, he is avoiding paying capital gains tax. If he paid capital gains tax then he would paying more than he would have if he derived that money in the form of straight salary. Carnegie was a real philanthrophist who donated every last penny to charity (literally his last $30 million to his name was willed away to charitable interests), but he was also a ruthless businessman. If Warren Buffet's I'm rich and I say raise taxes more mantra sounds too good to be true then surprise, surprise, it probably is too good to be true. PS--I hope he decides to write a nice big juicy check to the US Treasury to put his money where his mouth is.

I can't see the liberal v. conservative argument here. In both cases, you're saying that the government will be able to spend your money more effecgtively than you can, is that right?

That can't be right. A government that can give you everything, can also take away everything you have. Keep that in mind folks.

And that's why you want power to rest as much as possible/feasible with the people.

"The tea part/republicans are trying to blame it all on Obama, as if every single dollar of this massive debt started when he started his term. Thats just ignorant."

This i just have to agree with, locket If you recall it was the last president who screwed the american people by wanting to finish what his daddy started. George W Bush and probably the debt has been around since His Daddy George Bush was president.

No the tea party is awfully wrong about what they say . infact the tea party argues with themselves. cause the Rep and Dems just dont talk to them, so they just argue with themselves which just make them fools in the eyes of the world.

"Republicans claim Obama never had a plan and its all the democrats fault. One I saw even mentioned that its the first time there have been spending cuts with a raise in the debt ceiling but they weren't enough, failing to mention that any time the republicans have raised it in the past they obviously didn't even think to do cuts."


Obama had a plan but the republicans and Dems nixed everything he has tried to do. He had to follow suit as to the war when he took office cause the past president molded it that way to happen. He has brought home some troops and plan to bring home more. There has been no more military build up since he took office (that he has ordered) everything is running as if Bush was still in office. So by bringing home a ton of troops he is reducing the war deficit not increasing it. and now on his hope full second term he will be in the reconstruction of this country. Hopefully there will be more jobs and lower the debt ceiling.


But as for the " Their finger pointing is just stupid. Their infighting is annoying and damaging their country. Its just sad to watch."

Agreed it is truly sad to watch but untill the american people can elect the right people to run this country) Thats just american politics

uh, grumpy, if you want to argue policy, I would be glad, but most of what you just said is either straight opinion or false.

Agreed. He's confusing opinion and policy as one in the same. Simply saying Obama had a plan or winded down troops in Afghanistan doesn't necessarily make it so.