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PoliGAF 2013 |OT1| Never mind, Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

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K

KingK

Member
Yeah, I have no idea what the fuck Obama is thinking with proposing all of these cuts. He gains absolutely nothing from it and loses a lot. Absolutely terrible decision.

If he wants a grand compromise (and I strongly disagree with him that compromise for compromise's sake is a good thing) then at least make the other side fucking say what it is they want so that people know who wants what. Don't fucking do it for them so that they can now criticize the Democrats for implementing Republican policy. Now the Republicans are just going to easily convince everyone that Obama and the Dems want to gut your social programs and raise your taxes!

The only rationale I can see behind this move (and it's really hard to see any) is that Obama just really, really wants to get the budget fights out of the way so that he can actually try to get legislation like immigration passed before the midterms. But even this is fucking stupid because just passing something does not magically fix the economy, and the economy is still #1 for a vast majority of voters.

There is no magical fucking "confidence fairy" that will fix everything if only we could all get along and pass something. This proposal is garbage that will damage the economy because austerity doesn't work (god, it'd be nice to hear a politician say that sometime), and the damaged economy will hurt Dems in the midterms (with Republicans being able to honestly blame it on Obama for once) and he'll just have 2 more fucking years of nothing getting done.

Sorry for the rant, I just honestly fail to see any scenario where Obama proposing and pushing for all these cuts helps him, the Democrats or the country a single bit, and almost every scenario I see playing out helps Republicans a lot. It's such a baffling move, and the only two explanations I can think of are that Obama and his whole staff got drunk one night and decided to go ahead with a terrible political miscalculation, or he actually believes in the confidence fairy, which would be even worse.
 
N

NYCmetsfan

Banned
I will say the people working on Sharpton's show are probably the best at showing GOP hypocracy on mainstream news (Stewart is still better)


Edit: Ugh. Ed Rendell said the job numbers today show why we need to "fix the debt crisis today." Such a flat out lie, It shows why we need to spend more.
 
N

NYCmetsfan

Banned
Thinking about this again I think the white house calculation is to TRY to get the GOP to agree to revenue raises NOW in exchange for these cuts which don't take effect for awhile. The cuts can be reversed (they're unpopular) before they take effect by future congresses.

As the economy improves the need for the cuts (in the publics mind) will go down but the revenues won't need to be reversed since they will probably fall on the rich exclusively.

I'm probably spinning but just a thought I had.
 
K

KingK

Member
I wonder how long it will be until the Democratic party starts to take up the mantle of marijuana legalization like they have with gay marriage.

According to the newest pew poll 59% of Democrats and 60% of independents support legalization, with 52% approval overall. I realize there's a lot more money in keeping marijuana illegal (private prisons and pharmaceuticals) as opposed to gay marriage (where the corporations mostly don't care or support it), but with public support rising so fast how long can it really be until we start getting notable politicians coming out in support? At this pace over 2/3 of the Democrats and independents will support legalization by 2016, and I can't imagine that having no influence on politician's positions.
 
N

NYCmetsfan

Banned
KingK said:
I wonder how long it will be until the Democratic party starts to take up the mantle of marijuana legalization like they have with gay marriage.

According to the newest pew poll 59% of Democrats and 60% of independents support legalization, with 52% approval overall. I realize there's a lot more money in keeping marijuana illegal (private prisons and pharmaceuticals) as opposed to gay marriage (where the corporations mostly don't care or support it), but with public support rising so fast how long can it really be until we start getting notable politicians coming out in support? At this pace 2/3 of the Democrats and independents will support legalization, and I can't imagine that having no influence on politician's positions.
Click to expand...

More states need to pick it up. I say 2020 it will be in the party platform
 
K

KingK

Member
APKmetsfan said:
Thinking about this again I think the white house calculation is to TRY to get the GOP to agree to revenue raises NOW in exchange for these cuts which don't take effect for awhile. The cuts can be reversed (they're unpopular) before they take effect by future congresses.

As the economy improves the need for the cuts (in the publics mind) will go down but the revenues won't need to be reversed since they will probably fall on the rich exclusively.

I'm probably spinning but just a thought I had.
Click to expand...

I thought about that, but that strategy completely falls apart once you realize that if they actually passed these cuts, it would kill whatever small chance the Dems have of retaking the House next election, so there would be no way for Obama to reverse the cuts.

If anything, it would make the reverse more likely (the cuts stay, but Republicans pressure Obama into cutting taxes on the wealthy after they win in 2014).

APKmetsfan said:
More states need to pick it up. I say 2020 it will be in the party platform
Click to expand...
Yeah, more states passing it would help a lot. I think Illinois and some of the New England states are likely to legalize it soon, along with Oregon once they put it on the ballot again.
 
B

Black Mamba

Member
KingK said:
I thought about that, but that strategy completely falls apart once you realize that if they actually passed these cuts, it would kill whatever small chance the Dems have of retaking the House next election, so there would be no way for Obama to reverse the cuts.

If anything, it would make the reverse more likely (the cuts stay, but Republicans pressure Obama into cutting taxes on the wealthy after they win in 2014).
Click to expand...

The GOP will reverse the cuts, I'd reckon, once the media is all SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS TO DECREASE NEXT MONTH and the AARP gets mobilized.

I'd rather not take that chance, of course.

The whole thing is fascinating. Regardless of your opinion of his move, Obama has definitely demonstrated the GOP has no desires to compromise at all even if they win 99% of it. Anyone who doesn't think the GOP is purely there to obstruct is willfully ignorant.
 
G

Gotchaye

Member
speculawyer said:
Not buying it. This is like Romney saying it is OK to have abortion exceptions for the health and life of the mother. That is not going to make the hardcore Republicans suddenly vote for Obama. Obama supporting some cuts is not going to make people vote for the people who want to even deeper cuts. Will some fools get tricked? A small number. Some will flip the other way too.


And as you point out, it is not likely going to pass . . . but now they can't say "Obama won't make ANY CONCESSIONS ON SOCIAL PROGRAMS AT ALL BECAUSE HE IS AN OUT OF CONTROL SPENDER!" Obama comes out as the moderate willing to compromise. The Republicans are the hardcore unable to take "yes" for answer.
Click to expand...

I think it's pretty different. Legal abortion when it's important for the health of the mother is popular. Democrats are basically universally for it. It's clearly a move to the middle by Romney.

Chained CPI is in no way a move to the middle. Republicans don't want SS cuts. Look at the polling. Republican politicians don't even like to talk about the need for SS cuts. To the extent that they do talk about SS and Medicare cuts, they exempt their own voters from said cuts (look at Romney/Ryan's Medicare plan).

There's not really even any evidence that Republican politicians actually care about the sustainability of SS and Medicare except to the extent that they're worried about taxes eventually going up to fund them. They have no reason to support a big revenue + chained CPI bill, and I guarantee that if such a bill passes the House it will do so with a majority of Democrats and a minority of Republicans. Likewise in the Senate.

And Obama absolutely can't use this to demonstrate his own seriousness/reasonableness. What's he going to do, go out and say "look, I was willing to cut Social Security"? Again, Republicans don't want to cut Social Security. Does it help if the media switches from "both sides refuse to compromise" to "Obama wants to cut Social Security"? This sort of thing only works if you can be seen to grudgingly give something up. You can't just say you're doing something grudgingly when as far as anyone can tell nobody else wants it.

As for Republican messaging, I predict that this will have no impact on their ability to shout about Obama not getting serious or giving them any concessions on social programs.
 
K

KingK

Member
Black Mamba said:
The GOP will reverse the cuts, I'd reckon, once the media is all SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS TO DECREASE NEXT MONTH and the AARP gets mobilized.

I'd rather not take that chance, of course.

The whole thing is fascinating. Regardless of your opinion of his move, Obama has definitely demonstrated the GOP has no desires to compromise at all even if they win 99% of it. Anyone who doesn't think the GOP is purely there to obstruct is willfully ignorant.
Click to expand...

That was already true before.

I admit that I could be wrong here, but I very much doubt that anybody is going to see these cuts and suddenly realize that the GOP are just obstructing everything. Polls show that everybody already knows that, and the few who don't agree are the hardcore Republicans who will never vote for the Dems regardless. I just don't think he gains any support at all for this and loses a lot of support in the left and middle.

The right will continue to attack him on whatever they want, facts be damned, and now he's given them actual bad policy he's proposed to use as more effective ammunition than lies.
 
P

Piecake

Member
RDreamer said:
I just have to rant a little. Seriously, fuck this nation's stupid healthcare system. My wife had a some abnormal results on something and had a follow up thing. It was a 10-15 minute procedure. I figured we'd have enough in our HRA and with health insurance it'd be mostly covered. Well today we get like 3 things in the mail detailing all this crap and apparently we owe $600... I think. I can't make heads or tails of any of this horse shit. It's filled with so much fucking jargon I don't know who paid what or what's going where or what came out of our HRA already. It looks like the total for everything was about 3 fucking grand, of which about 500 came out of our account (so, already out of our pocket) and we owe 600 more. For a 15 minute procedure. Yeah...

This stuff is crazy, though. How does anyone read this stuff? How does anyone think this is a real market? It's practically gibberish to me and I'm a pretty educated guy. Everything's all convoluted when you have a HRA thing, too, because things show up as $0, but you're realistically paying for it (since it's coming out of your account). And, again, it was, to us, one big transaction, but we're getting like 3 different claims reports of it all split into stuff.

I really don't get how people can defend this stuff. I don't, and I never will.
Click to expand...

Luckily your wife didnt get her toenail clipped. That would have cost you 1200 bucks

Black Mamba said:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...ents-are-the-problem-maybe-theyre-the-answer/

And yet the national conversation revolves around cutting Social Security?
Click to expand...

Yup, 401ks have been a complete failure. Anyone who claims otherwise is living in a fantasy land, enamored by the vehicle instead of looking at the actual results
 
S

speculawyer

Member
KingK said:
I wonder how long it will be until the Democratic party starts to take up the mantle of marijuana legalization like they have with gay marriage.

According to the newest pew poll 59% of Democrats and 60% of independents support legalization, with 52% approval overall. I realize there's a lot more money in keeping marijuana illegal (private prisons and pharmaceuticals) as opposed to gay marriage (where the corporations mostly don't care or support it), but with public support rising so fast how long can it really be until we start getting notable politicians coming out in support? At this pace over 2/3 of the Democrats and independents will support legalization by 2016, and I can't imagine that having no influence on politician's positions.
Click to expand...

Give it a few years. Obama can't be involved. You can't have the first black president legalizing pot. We'll never hear the end of it.
 
P

Piecake

Member
P

Piecake

Member
In a policy paper for the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, Robert Berenson, John Holahan and Stephen Zuckerman propose a package of changes that would save more than $700 billion over 10 years. One of the changes they propose is raising the age of eligibility from 65 to 67. But in order to blunt the impact of that change, they propose letting people between the ages of 65 and 67 buy in to Medicare on their own — that way, they can take advantage of Medicare’s lower prices, even if they’re paying for them out-of-pocket. “Buying into Medicare gives them as good a deal as they’re going to get,” Berenson says.

If it’s such a good deal for the 65-to-67 crowd, then why not let 55-year-olds buy into Medicare, or even let everybody buy into Medicare? “I’ve always assumed it was just political opposition from Republicans,” Berenson replied. I asked him to put aside the politics and just assess whether it would work. “Conceptually, I don’t see a problem,” he said.
Click to expand...

I never thought of doing it this way. Instead of extending medicare to everyone through tax increases (good luck getting that passed), we could allow people to buy medicare coverage. Republicans will have a hard time coming out against it with their typical government take over death panel garbage when it will be a 'choice' (who the fuck wouldnt sign up for medicare though?)
 
C

Chichikov

Member
Piecake said:
Luckily your wife didnt get her toenail clipped. That would have cost you 1200 bucks



Yup, 401ks have been a complete failure. Anyone who claims otherwise is living in a fantasy land, enamored by the vehicle instead of looking at the actual results
Click to expand...
I really wish 401k is the next big progressive cause, that stuff is appalling and fuel many of the biggest problems this country face.
I can't imagine it will be hard to get public support for that, people bought that "choice" bullshit because they didn't understand what they are.
Now we all know better.
 
F

Fenderputty

Banned
Chichikov said:
I really wish 401k is the next big progressive cause, that stuff is appalling and fuel many of the biggest problems this country face.
I can't imagine it will be hard to get public support for that, people bought that "choice" bullshit because they didn't understand what they are.
Now we all know better.
Click to expand...

What would you envision?
 
C

Chichikov

Member
Fenderputty said:
What would you envision?
Click to expand...
Economically, the only thing that makes sense is a tax funded defined benefit universal system.
I think I made this point before here, but the problem with the 401k model is that you're asked to answer impossible question - how much money will you need for retirement, and you can't know it without a crystal ball (well, at least since the fat cats at Washington banned Miss Cleo).
You can figure out the average amount required to retire, but what good would that be?
You do that and you still probably running a 30-40% chance of running out of money and dying in the street (or burdening your children).
So the only smart move is to oversave, not everyone can do it, but even if you could, that still a whole lot money going to wall street that could've been used by more productive members of society.

The problem is that you bare 100% of the risk, wherein if you share the risk with the entire population, you only need to "save" (in this case, taxed) by the average amount required (which is very easy to figure out too). That's billions (if not trillions) of dollars that can stay in the real economy. okay, probably not trillions, but many billions most likely, like hundreds of them or something (I really couldn't a figure about how much do we contribute to 401k as a nation in a year).

p.s.
You do this and as a bonus we get to collectively stop stressing over that issue and we can once and for all stop pay attention to Wall Street.
That's the biggest con those fuckers pulled, we're all pretty much forced to play in their shitty little game and it needs to stop.
The great recession couldn't have happen (or at least couldn't have happened to that extent) if those fuckers didn't have all of our pension money to play with.


Edit: I've been in this country for over a decade now, I traveled it far and wide, I've seen many different people with many different opinions, I have never met a person who like the 401k model who didn't work in the financial industry.
Not a single one.
 
C

Chichikov

Member
Giant Panda said:
The government shouldn't be in the business of guaranteeing outcome, it should only guarantee opportunity.
Click to expand...
So we should go with an inferior system because slogan?

That does not seem like a smart way to decide on policy to me.

401k was sold to the American public as this great market solution that will work great for everyone, well guess what, it only works well for wall street.
You have another market solution you want to offer?
I'm all ears.
But if this the best you got, I say fuck dogmatism, because my side of the isle got ideas that worked great in other parts of the world.
Fuck, they worked great in this part of the world.
 
H

Hitokage

Setec Astronomer
Giant Panda said:
The government shouldn't be in the business of guaranteeing outcome, it should only guarantee opportunity.
Click to expand...
This slogan gets used by people who don't mind inequality in schooling. Apparently opportunity only applies to being born. After that you can go fuck yourself.
 
P

Piecake

Member
Giant Panda said:
The government shouldn't be in the business of guaranteeing outcome, it should only guarantee opportunity.
Click to expand...

And whats your solution? Pretty words and theories? Continue with 401ks and the like? Perhaps you missed the previous posts where the vast majority of those are ridiculously underfunded and won't be able to support people in retirement?
 
Y

Y2Kev

TLG Fan Caretaker Est. 2009
My mom, who is not really connected, asked me today why Obama is cutting SS. This is just a poor gambit on his part. People don't understand why this is even on the table.
 
P

pigeon

Banned
Sorry, I got distracted by the direct response to me!

Giant Panda said:
The government shouldn't be in the business of guaranteeing outcome, it should only guarantee opportunity.
Click to expand...

Why? We're already in the business of guaranteeing outcome by making it as hard as possible to get shot or enslaved. What's wrong with extending that safety net?
 
C

Chichikov

Member
Cyan said:
Hell, I work in the financial industry and I'm not a big fan.

I mean, it's awesome for me. Not so much for people in general.
Click to expand...
I didn't mean to imply that every person in banking like it, that is far from true.
But I did meet some people who voraciously defended that scam of a model.
They were all hedge fund managers or financial planners.
 
J

Jooney

Member
Not sure why people are upset that Obama apologised. When I read the original comment I thought it was unfortunate and a rare misstep for someone who knows how to connect to an audience. Successful women don't need to be introduced with explicit mention to their looks. Let their accomplishments speak for themselves.

Apologising and nipping this in the bud was the right thing to do.
 
T

Tamanon

Banned
Social Security was designed around a completely different economic model for workers. It was designed around 1 worker, 1 job, complete benefits. People didn't move jobs much, so the jobs that existed had to provide for their employees to ensure loyalty. In that sense, a supplement is perfect.

The 401(k) transition was good for the changing economy by adding portability and an ability to accrue benefits while working for variable amounts of time. The problem is that the design of the 401(k) also meant that it could "easily" be tapped into in economic hard times, or between jobs. And since the whole concept is based around compounding your investment, it means less money in the end.

Only something like Social Security but higher and tied to a percentage of COLA(like 80% or so), or even 100% COLA would work IMO. As it stands now, people are only able to start saving much later in life, so they're missing years of compounding their investment.
 
G

Giant Panda

Member
pigeon said:
Sure there is. It chokes off any potential concern trolling in the bud, and it's 100% free.
Click to expand...

Either way it was gonna blow over fairly quickly, this way comes across as silly and emboldens the overly PC crowd.

Piecake said:
And whats your solution? Pretty words and theories? Continue with 401ks and the like? Perhaps you missed the previous posts where the vast majority of those are ridiculously underfunded and won't be able to support people in retirement?
Click to expand...

My solution is that the government needs to actually guarantee opportunity in areas it is currently lacking (healthcare, education, etc.) which alone will greatly help most people's finances, but people also must show more personal responsibility.
 
M

Manmademan

Member
Tamanon said:
Social Security was designed around a completely different economic model for workers. It was designed around 1 worker, 1 job, complete benefits. People didn't move jobs much, so the jobs that existed had to provide for their employees to ensure loyalty. In that sense, a supplement is perfect.

The 401(k) transition was good for the changing economy by adding portability and an ability to accrue benefits while working for variable amounts of time. The problem is that the design of the 401(k) also meant that it could "easily" be tapped into in economic hard times, or between jobs. And since the whole concept is based around compounding your investment, it means less money in the end.

Only something like Social Security but higher and tied to a percentage of COLA(like 80% or so), or even 100% COLA would work IMO. As it stands now, people are only able to start saving much later in life, so they're missing years of compounding their investment.
Click to expand...

Social Security would be fine had congress not raided the fuck out of it in the 1980s-90s. Pretending the program is somehow the problem when the problem (as always) is congress itself is laughably stupid- almost as insultingly appalling as "the post office is bankrupt!!!"

edit: The postal service "financial crisis" (and almost certainly using the postal retirement as a slush fund) was put into play almost exactly at the same time social security funds were placed off limits to congress raiding it. This is not a coincidence.
 
T

Tamanon

Banned
Manmademan said:
Social Security would be fine had congress not raided the fuck out of it in the 1980s-90s. Pretending the program is somehow the problem when the problem (as always) is congress itself is laughably stupid- almost as insultingly appalling as "the post office is bankrupt!!!"
Click to expand...

I'm not even talking about the funding of Social Security. I'm talking about the benefits disbursed themselves. It was designed as a supplement to something that doesn't exist any more(guaranteed retirement income).
 
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