It's one of the reasons our economy is stuttering. You can't sell shareholders the idea that your goal is a stable and modest growth. You gotta be explosive with growth every quarter!
That's basically the difference between capital gains, and dividend stocks... There are fewer dividends than there used-to be, but all indicators show companies that pay dividends are healthier and more stable, long-term. And the investors buying the dividend-paying stocks are in it for the long-term, and vote accordingly.
by the time to go to collect the rebate yours will have expired.Got burned by this once. Didn't turn me into a repeat customer.
Funny... Similar experience didn't convinced me to avoid company XYZ, but instead to completely avoid any and all mail-in rebates... The whole idea is a complete scam that is easily and frequently abused.
I'll take the dishonest, squirrelly, indecisive guy over the true believer, who is determined that he's on the one and only right path, and no amount of evidence to the contrary will convince him he went the wrong way, and is heading over a cliff...
Some of the most poignant moments in history are when reality intervenes in a big way, and the most die-hard proponent of something or other is forced to do a complete 180 overnight... We got several of those when the recession hit.
As a home user, the Chinese government has no interest in me. I have no contacts with the Dalai Lama.
As a home user, you're not too important to anyone, but China certainly could use your connection as a base to launch attacks from. For businesses, though, China is VERY interested in stealing all the trade secrets they can get their hands on, and passing them to domestic Chinese firms who will be happy to offer competing products at much lower prices. They don't even try to keep that part secret...
Limited government DISEMPOWERS corporations. It removes barriers to bring products into the market place which enables smaller cottage players into the game.
That's utter nonsense that has been extensively and repeatedly disproven. There is no government involvement that causes "economies of scale", which naturally favors big, entrenched players. Government involvement PREVENTS collusion that would lock-out smaller players. And we have ample historical references for exactly what you're proposing, and it led to giant monopolies, robber barons and the great depression.
None of the mega banks would have survived the financial crisis without the BIG GOVERNMENT BAILOUTS;
Several big banks were well capitalized and did not need the government bail-out, UNTIL it came time to acquire some of the failing players, in which case the fed helped to cover some of the massive losses they inherited.
Which industries were most abusive: rail, mining, oil would be likely candidates and hmm which industries did the Government have the biggest roles in....
Standard Oil developed WITHOUT government involvement, and it was the Supreme Court ruling that broke it up. They're a good example of what a large company will do to squash all competitors, if there are no government regulations around to stop them. You should seriously read up on it, because this one company alone stands as stark proof that everything you're saying is patently false, and directly contrary to all reality.
How do scientists know, when it comes to any prehistoric animal or human skeleton, when an individual becomes to a new species, to some sort of missing link or just-split subspecies, and not just a slightly different individual belonging to a known species?
The short answer is that there are standards, but this field is an imperfect science, and finds like this, as well as DNA testing do redefine species lines. But does it really matter? A few changes to the ultimate family tree, here and there, doesn't fundamentally change any scientific theories, and probably has zero impact on you. Just consider it the margin of error...
Passenger airline traffic has the potential to disperse a world wide plague more deadly than all past wars combined. It is another issue which is shrouded by deliberate blindness as the cure would be very disruptive.
Air travel only shrinks the oceans... Cars / trains / horses / bicycles are good enough to spread a plague entirely across two or three continents, even if air travel didn't exist at all.
For the sake of destroying the world economy, you'd only be keeping 15% of the world population safe from the plague, and only in the event of a fast-moving infection... Slower-acting infections could be spread via ocean-liner just fine.
you buy a house in the city (or suburbs of the city anyway), when it comes time to retire you sell your house and move to a small town half an hour a way, buy a comparable house for half the price, and the other half becomes most of your retirement nestegg.
Houses depreciate over time, they don't get more valuable (unless you're putting lots of work and money into them. What *usually* becomes more valuable is the LAND your house is on.
Where I looked, bare land was $200,000, with a house on the same sized lot being $600,000. For that $400,000 difference, you can pay rent for a LONG time. And the cost of the house will balloon as you pay insurance, perform repairs, etc., making rentals even better deals.
If you're really doing this as an investment strategy, buying up as much vacant land as you can afford, while continuing to rent, is the far better deal. You'll probably come out a decent bit ahead with the house, but not nearly as much. And you're a fool if most of your retirement savings is tied up in a single house, single piece of land, or single stock... And of which can be worth little at the time you want or NEED to sell it. Diversify.
Property isn't the best of investments, either. The worst areas may experience gentrification and become immensely valuable. While the most expensive areas may decline severely. I've seen it first hand, and you can't possibly know your home will be immune.
Where did I confine to the EU or the OECD? That's right, I didn't.
Oh good! We're right back to the bait and switch... You talking about how nice and effective the UK's NHS is, in the same breath as saying how cheap Taiwan's public health care is. Sorry, but no.
The UK's NHS is okay, but it's not an example of massive savings or substantially better treatment. If you want to talk about massive savings, then you have to discuss the shortcomings IN THOSE COUNTRIES, because there are many.
That said, even the "okay" service on the northbound trip was FAR better than any airline experience I have ever had- even when I've flown first class.
Seconded. It's a shame so few people even consider traveling by train. If the train ride is less than 24 hours long, I won't even consider flying to the destination.
Instead of the familiar misery of flying or driving, it's like you've walked into a friendly neighborhood park... People are just up and strolling around, everyone talking to each other. No popping ears, no headache from low pressure (or from the screaming baby). Super-smooth ride even those who get car-sick are fine with. Electrical outlets everywhere. No emergency briefing. No mass (cattle-like) disembarking. No TSA x-rays and nail clipper confiscations. No long drive to the airport. No reason to get to the station 10 minutes early. etc.
If people just go to their favorite travel website and sort flights by cost this will continue to happen.
Except ALL the airlines are squeezing passengers. There is no expensive carrier you can select to get more room. Paying more for nothing is just throwing money away...
I've long wanted something between coach and first/business class... but nobody offers it. A little more legroom both in front and to the sides, a seat that reclines significantly more, and TWO OF MY OWN DAMN ARMRESTS YOU BASTARDS!
If they could get away with charging more for bean bag seats they would respond.
Nope. They will not deviate from the lowest-common denominator unless you're willing to pay business-class prices for your ticket... At which point I might just buy TWO adjacent coach seats for myself, instead.
Actually, it is true. If you go by percentage of GDP it's even worse for the U.S.
Even going by your source, and using your metric, the numbers still don't match your claim. Based on that OECD chart, as a percentage of GDP, no countries in Europe are paying only half as much for health care as the US...
In countries like the U.K. the doctors are employees and so don't go out of business.
And this is EXACTLY what happens in every discussion... Proponents pick and choose feature X from country Y, pass over the shortcomings, and combine them into a theoretical system that sounds great, but doesn't exist...
If you'd like to compare the US and UK, fine, but say so, and keep everything strictly confined to those two...
Insurance can't make healthcare less expensive in the aggregate, it can only spread the cost evenly across the insured population.
That's complete nonsense. Insurance companies negotiate prices with individual hospitals and private doctors, and can dictate to their customers which doctors they can and cannot visit. The prices for Kaiser Permanente are completely and totally different than for BlueShield, and the former was studied by the UK Health Service because they were lower-cost than the UK.
Under socialized medicine, wait times for elective procedures can be longer than in the U.S.
Let's grab a few quick numbers about the NHS:
"1 in 10 dentists having left the NHS totally."
"An NHS trust has spent more than £12,000 on private treatment for hospital staff because its own waiting times are too long."
"The average wait before having a new knee fitted rose from 88.9 days to 99.2 days, while patients needing hernia surgery typically waited 78.3 days in 2011"
Even that's too fair to the NHS as the average doesn't mention the longest people have had to wait and suffer. Wait times are a way to ration health-care, just as much as increased prices are. It would be a hard sell to the US public that they can't get treated right when they need it, but need to wait months. And the competition between NHS and private insurance is just as much a reality when two private insurance companies must compete.
What advice did I give, exactly? You'll have to tell me, because I don't think I gave any, except to say that the problem needs to be tackled in a deliberate manner.
No, you specifically said: "sooner", which you conveniently left out this time, in a sad and transparent attempt to backpedal.
Farms allowed people to subsist, instead of starve at the end of a broken supply chain.
Except they absolutely did NOT. Farmers were in the worst position of all, and made up a huge number of those that were completely starving, until government programs came along to rescue them.
My own father had a farm in the midwest, where men came by daily and begged to be allowed to work there in return for one meal a day and the right to sleep in the hay barn.
That's absolutely not unique to farms at all. The starving would make the same offers at any and every private home they came across, too, and they similarly got a meal.
At which point we'll make some token efforts that will look good for a little while because the healthier economy will provide greater tax revenue... until the next downturn.
That's a legitimate concern, but slashing and burning the fed now, at the worst possible time, and destroying the economy in the process, is still a HORRID idea, and past mistakes won't make it cease to be a horrible idea.
If GW had lost in 2000, we'd certainly be in a far better position, now... Al Gore's "lock box" would have paid down the debt further, rather than increasing it by leaps and bounds like GW. Only having a single war, instead of two at a time, would have developed far less of a hole for us to get out of. And the lack of a tax cut on the rich would have kept far more revenue flowing in before the crash. Who knows, his administration might even have gotten a handle on the housing and financial bubble before it burst, but that bit is just speculation.
My point being, the ones yelling loudest about how we need to reduce our deficit, are the ones that repeatedly voted to grow it the most, didn't pay it down when they could have, and put us in this unnecessarily deep hole.
There is a large and increasing number of economists who disagree
There are always conservative shills, but everything they have to say has been flatly discounted by the facts decisively and repeatedly for decades. There is no truth to their claims, and they know it as well as anyone.
Meanwhile the countries that just went ahead and implemented proper socialized medicine are getting much better results at half the cost.
That's really not true. 1/3rd cheaper at best, and all the socialized medicine systems out there have some gaping flaws in them. Whether it's empty beds, long wait times for certain procedures, hospitals/doctors barely making any profit and going out of business, or more, they all do have some kinds of issues that we don't have to contend with in the market-based private US healthcare system. The US certainly does have worse health in many indicators, but the mandatory health insurance with subsidies *might* be an adequate solution to that glaring problem.
With the implementation, I see the benefits of a socialized system for the poor... They suddenly have a huge additional monthly bill that is mandatory, without any pay increase to cover it. They can't afford even the discounted insurance rates, and the penalties at the end of the year will be devastating.
if Tea Party candidates start to win more and more primaries by pandering to far right populist agendas; then they start to alienate the centrist voters who can swing an election
That's only true of NATIONAL elections, or a few "swing" state senate races. In most local elections, either because of gerrymandering or just because of naturally occurring demographics, the area is heavily R or D, and there isn't a large enough center to swing the vote. That's why the House is such an intractable mess... Each of them has to answer to the fools in their tiny sliver of the map, the size of a couple cities, and nobody else. If that group is crazy conservative, their Rep has to be, too, and it doesn't matter how badly they screw-up the country, so long as their electorate is happy with them.
It is going to get ugly, without a doubt. The sooner it is tackled, the less ugly it will be.
Slashing the budget during a recession with already-high unemployment is a GREAT way to drive us into a real depression. So yes, doing this soon is a TERRIBLE idea. It needs to wait until the economy is growing.
Everyone who remembers the great depression is at least in their eighties, and they were just children then. Ask them what it was like in order to prepare yourself. Those days were ugly, and we may see a repeat.
I agree... If we follow your idiotic advice, that's exactly what we'll get.
Only this time, instead of 50% of the population being rural/farm and having the ability to at least grow a garden for their own food, today only 1% of the population lives on farms
So, I take it you've never read or watched "The Grapes of Wrath", and have never heard of The Dust Bowl? Farms didn't save the US from the depression AT ALL. Roosevelt's government programs did...
This means the rural doc who has little overhead recieved more the he would normally change and the urban doc who pays 5 times the rent snd deals with 30% more taxes gets less. So the urban doc has to charge more to raise the averages and get what he needs.
OR the urban doctor could put a sign out front saying "Medicare NOT ACCEPTED". Problem solved!
Of course that doesn't work, because MEDICARE IS NOT THE PROBLEM. The phenomenon you mentioned is indeed true, but it's only the tiniest of issues the medical industry has against it.
The fight to limit spending is a fight for the economy. I'll leave the research to those really interested. Current deficit is about 17.5 trillion.
That's exactly what's supposed to happen during an economic downturn. The government spends more money, incurring debt, to stimulate the economy. When the economy climbs back out of the hole, THEN you need to pay down the huge deficit.
And the cries about our terrible, unmanageable, record deficit are complete BS. It has been FAR higher in the past... In fact it was highest right before the US golden age of prosperity and growth...
your interest payments were over 60% of your income before taxes, and you still had taxes, insurance payments, water bills, and other obligations, would you consider yourself a AAA credit risk?
If I had carte blanch to determine my "income". Yes, absolutely.
If you have a choice between housing and insurance, which will you drop?
I'd tell my rich uncle staying in the spare bedroom to start paying his rent... Back when FDR was president and introduced these programs, the top tax bracket was around 90%. Compare that to current capital gains taxes of 20% on multi-billionaires.
In medical terms, prevention is less expensive than treatment after the fact, and on a country-wide scale, we spend more because people don't have access to medical treatment, than it would cost to provide that care.
Welcom to the welfare state. You voted for it.
Every other industrialized nation in the world has more public / social services than the USA, INCLUDING healthcare. We voted NOT to be a 3rd world country anymore...
the moderate Republicans in the House would eventually force Boehner's hand. Even Boehner knew it, but this little dance had to go all the way because the moderate Republicans are as terrified of the Tea Party as they are of voters.
Boehner was pandering to the Tea Party's demands, to try and maintain his speakership. He has ingratiated himself with that splinter group, in order to fight off challengers.
The Republicans aren't really "terrified" of the Tea Party, they're just afraid of them splitting off from the GOP to form their own party. With "conservative" voters split between two parties, and "liberal" voters concentrated in a single party, there would cease to be any national party that could counter the Democrats.
Of course, demographic and cultural shifts mean even with the Tea Party under their umbrella, the Republican party doesn't have long (maybe a decade) until that happens, anyhow. That is why the GOP has done a complete 180 degree shift on immigration in the past couple years, desperately trying to undo the disenfranchisement of Hispanics to shore up their voter rolls. Seems very likely still a doomed effort, and a party on the eve of self-destruction.
It has happened in the past, which is why you don't hear much from the Whig party anymore, but not without painful consequences. The Republican party was formed just a few years before the Civil War. I can't even guess what kind of a mess we'll be in-for this time around.
The bill passed the House, but 144 votes were cast against it -- more than 1/3 of those voting! One can only guess at the careful thought that went into casting those votes.
If they needed more Republican votes, there would have been more Republican votes. EVERYONE voting knew exactly how many votes it was going to get, and the leaders made sure the numbers were up to snuff before bringing it to the floor. The Republicans offered just enough votes to get it passed, while the rest played dumb so they could go on Fox News and continue to rant about how much they hate Obama, without taking any responsibility for this vote.
Slashdot Mirror
That's basically the difference between capital gains, and dividend stocks... There are fewer dividends than there used-to be, but all indicators show companies that pay dividends are healthier and more stable, long-term. And the investors buying the dividend-paying stocks are in it for the long-term, and vote accordingly.
Funny... Similar experience didn't convinced me to avoid company XYZ, but instead to completely avoid any and all mail-in rebates... The whole idea is a complete scam that is easily and frequently abused.
I'll take the dishonest, squirrelly, indecisive guy over the true believer, who is determined that he's on the one and only right path, and no amount of evidence to the contrary will convince him he went the wrong way, and is heading over a cliff...
Some of the most poignant moments in history are when reality intervenes in a big way, and the most die-hard proponent of something or other is forced to do a complete 180 overnight... We got several of those when the recession hit.
As a home user, you're not too important to anyone, but China certainly could use your connection as a base to launch attacks from. For businesses, though, China is VERY interested in stealing all the trade secrets they can get their hands on, and passing them to domestic Chinese firms who will be happy to offer competing products at much lower prices. They don't even try to keep that part secret...
That's utter nonsense that has been extensively and repeatedly disproven. There is no government involvement that causes "economies of scale", which naturally favors big, entrenched players. Government involvement PREVENTS collusion that would lock-out smaller players. And we have ample historical references for exactly what you're proposing, and it led to giant monopolies, robber barons and the great depression.
Several big banks were well capitalized and did not need the government bail-out, UNTIL it came time to acquire some of the failing players, in which case the fed helped to cover some of the massive losses they inherited.
Standard Oil developed WITHOUT government involvement, and it was the Supreme Court ruling that broke it up. They're a good example of what a large company will do to squash all competitors, if there are no government regulations around to stop them. You should seriously read up on it, because this one company alone stands as stark proof that everything you're saying is patently false, and directly contrary to all reality.
The short answer is that there are standards, but this field is an imperfect science, and finds like this, as well as DNA testing do redefine species lines. But does it really matter? A few changes to the ultimate family tree, here and there, doesn't fundamentally change any scientific theories, and probably has zero impact on you. Just consider it the margin of error...
Air travel only shrinks the oceans... Cars / trains / horses / bicycles are good enough to spread a plague entirely across two or three continents, even if air travel didn't exist at all.
For the sake of destroying the world economy, you'd only be keeping 15% of the world population safe from the plague, and only in the event of a fast-moving infection... Slower-acting infections could be spread via ocean-liner just fine.
Engineering? http://astro.sfasu.edu/News/uploads/Engine-Earring.jpg
Houses depreciate over time, they don't get more valuable (unless you're putting lots of work and money into them. What *usually* becomes more valuable is the LAND your house is on.
Where I looked, bare land was $200,000, with a house on the same sized lot being $600,000. For that $400,000 difference, you can pay rent for a LONG time. And the cost of the house will balloon as you pay insurance, perform repairs, etc., making rentals even better deals.
If you're really doing this as an investment strategy, buying up as much vacant land as you can afford, while continuing to rent, is the far better deal. You'll probably come out a decent bit ahead with the house, but not nearly as much. And you're a fool if most of your retirement savings is tied up in a single house, single piece of land, or single stock... And of which can be worth little at the time you want or NEED to sell it. Diversify.
Property isn't the best of investments, either. The worst areas may experience gentrification and become immensely valuable. While the most expensive areas may decline severely. I've seen it first hand, and you can't possibly know your home will be immune.
Oh good! We're right back to the bait and switch... You talking about how nice and effective the UK's NHS is, in the same breath as saying how cheap Taiwan's public health care is. Sorry, but no.
The UK's NHS is okay, but it's not an example of massive savings or substantially better treatment. If you want to talk about massive savings, then you have to discuss the shortcomings IN THOSE COUNTRIES, because there are many.
Congratulations! You've invented the book store... In a few years they won't exist, and you can rediscover them.
Seconded. It's a shame so few people even consider traveling by train. If the train ride is less than 24 hours long, I won't even consider flying to the destination.
Instead of the familiar misery of flying or driving, it's like you've walked into a friendly neighborhood park... People are just up and strolling around, everyone talking to each other. No popping ears, no headache from low pressure (or from the screaming baby). Super-smooth ride even those who get car-sick are fine with. Electrical outlets everywhere. No emergency briefing. No mass (cattle-like) disembarking. No TSA x-rays and nail clipper confiscations. No long drive to the airport. No reason to get to the station 10 minutes early. etc.
Except ALL the airlines are squeezing passengers. There is no expensive carrier you can select to get more room. Paying more for nothing is just throwing money away...
I've long wanted something between coach and first/business class... but nobody offers it. A little more legroom both in front and to the sides, a seat that reclines significantly more, and TWO OF MY OWN DAMN ARMRESTS YOU BASTARDS!
Nope. They will not deviate from the lowest-common denominator unless you're willing to pay business-class prices for your ticket... At which point I might just buy TWO adjacent coach seats for myself, instead.
Actually, the comments are more enlightening than the main story. For instance:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4349525&cid=45160887
It seems we've had the discussion just a bit too soon:
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/10/17/2337204/british-nhs-may-soon-no-longer-offer-free-care
Even going by your source, and using your metric, the numbers still don't match your claim. Based on that OECD chart, as a percentage of GDP, no countries in Europe are paying only half as much for health care as the US...
And this is EXACTLY what happens in every discussion... Proponents pick and choose feature X from country Y, pass over the shortcomings, and combine them into a theoretical system that sounds great, but doesn't exist...
If you'd like to compare the US and UK, fine, but say so, and keep everything strictly confined to those two...
That's complete nonsense. Insurance companies negotiate prices with individual hospitals and private doctors, and can dictate to their customers which doctors they can and cannot visit. The prices for Kaiser Permanente are completely and totally different than for BlueShield, and the former was studied by the UK Health Service because they were lower-cost than the UK.
Let's grab a few quick numbers about the NHS:
"1 in 10 dentists having left the NHS totally."
"An NHS trust has spent more than £12,000 on private treatment for hospital staff because its own waiting times are too long."
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jun/03/nhs-waiting-times-getting-longer-report
"The average wait before having a new knee fitted rose from 88.9 days to 99.2 days, while patients needing hernia surgery typically waited 78.3 days in 2011"
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/apr/19/david-cameron-pressure-nhs-waiting-times
Even that's too fair to the NHS as the average doesn't mention the longest people have had to wait and suffer. Wait times are a way to ration health-care, just as much as increased prices are. It would be a hard sell to the US public that they can't get treated right when they need it, but need to wait months. And the competition between NHS and private insurance is just as much a reality when two private insurance companies must compete.
No, you specifically said: "sooner", which you conveniently left out this time, in a sad and transparent attempt to backpedal.
Except they absolutely did NOT. Farmers were in the worst position of all, and made up a huge number of those that were completely starving, until government programs came along to rescue them.
That's absolutely not unique to farms at all. The starving would make the same offers at any and every private home they came across, too, and they similarly got a meal.
That's a legitimate concern, but slashing and burning the fed now, at the worst possible time, and destroying the economy in the process, is still a HORRID idea, and past mistakes won't make it cease to be a horrible idea.
If GW had lost in 2000, we'd certainly be in a far better position, now... Al Gore's "lock box" would have paid down the debt further, rather than increasing it by leaps and bounds like GW. Only having a single war, instead of two at a time, would have developed far less of a hole for us to get out of. And the lack of a tax cut on the rich would have kept far more revenue flowing in before the crash. Who knows, his administration might even have gotten a handle on the housing and financial bubble before it burst, but that bit is just speculation.
My point being, the ones yelling loudest about how we need to reduce our deficit, are the ones that repeatedly voted to grow it the most, didn't pay it down when they could have, and put us in this unnecessarily deep hole.
There are always conservative shills, but everything they have to say has been flatly discounted by the facts decisively and repeatedly for decades. There is no truth to their claims, and they know it as well as anyone.
That's really not true. 1/3rd cheaper at best, and all the socialized medicine systems out there have some gaping flaws in them. Whether it's empty beds, long wait times for certain procedures, hospitals/doctors barely making any profit and going out of business, or more, they all do have some kinds of issues that we don't have to contend with in the market-based private US healthcare system. The US certainly does have worse health in many indicators, but the mandatory health insurance with subsidies *might* be an adequate solution to that glaring problem.
With the implementation, I see the benefits of a socialized system for the poor... They suddenly have a huge additional monthly bill that is mandatory, without any pay increase to cover it. They can't afford even the discounted insurance rates, and the penalties at the end of the year will be devastating.
That's only true of NATIONAL elections, or a few "swing" state senate races. In most local elections, either because of gerrymandering or just because of naturally occurring demographics, the area is heavily R or D, and there isn't a large enough center to swing the vote. That's why the House is such an intractable mess... Each of them has to answer to the fools in their tiny sliver of the map, the size of a couple cities, and nobody else. If that group is crazy conservative, their Rep has to be, too, and it doesn't matter how badly they screw-up the country, so long as their electorate is happy with them.
Slashing the budget during a recession with already-high unemployment is a GREAT way to drive us into a real depression. So yes, doing this soon is a TERRIBLE idea. It needs to wait until the economy is growing.
I agree... If we follow your idiotic advice, that's exactly what we'll get.
So, I take it you've never read or watched "The Grapes of Wrath", and have never heard of The Dust Bowl? Farms didn't save the US from the depression AT ALL. Roosevelt's government programs did...
OR the urban doctor could put a sign out front saying "Medicare NOT ACCEPTED". Problem solved!
Of course that doesn't work, because MEDICARE IS NOT THE PROBLEM. The phenomenon you mentioned is indeed true, but it's only the tiniest of issues the medical industry has against it.
That's exactly what's supposed to happen during an economic downturn. The government spends more money, incurring debt, to stimulate the economy. When the economy climbs back out of the hole, THEN you need to pay down the huge deficit.
And the cries about our terrible, unmanageable, record deficit are complete BS. It has been FAR higher in the past... In fact it was highest right before the US golden age of prosperity and growth...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Federal_Debt_Held_by_the_Public_1790-2013.png
If I had carte blanch to determine my "income". Yes, absolutely.
I'd tell my rich uncle staying in the spare bedroom to start paying his rent... Back when FDR was president and introduced these programs, the top tax bracket was around 90%. Compare that to current capital gains taxes of 20% on multi-billionaires.
In medical terms, prevention is less expensive than treatment after the fact, and on a country-wide scale, we spend more because people don't have access to medical treatment, than it would cost to provide that care.
Every other industrialized nation in the world has more public / social services than the USA, INCLUDING healthcare. We voted NOT to be a 3rd world country anymore...
Boehner was pandering to the Tea Party's demands, to try and maintain his speakership. He has ingratiated himself with that splinter group, in order to fight off challengers.
The Republicans aren't really "terrified" of the Tea Party, they're just afraid of them splitting off from the GOP to form their own party. With "conservative" voters split between two parties, and "liberal" voters concentrated in a single party, there would cease to be any national party that could counter the Democrats.
Of course, demographic and cultural shifts mean even with the Tea Party under their umbrella, the Republican party doesn't have long (maybe a decade) until that happens, anyhow. That is why the GOP has done a complete 180 degree shift on immigration in the past couple years, desperately trying to undo the disenfranchisement of Hispanics to shore up their voter rolls. Seems very likely still a doomed effort, and a party on the eve of self-destruction.
It has happened in the past, which is why you don't hear much from the Whig party anymore, but not without painful consequences. The Republican party was formed just a few years before the Civil War. I can't even guess what kind of a mess we'll be in-for this time around.
If they needed more Republican votes, there would have been more Republican votes. EVERYONE voting knew exactly how many votes it was going to get, and the leaders made sure the numbers were up to snuff before bringing it to the floor. The Republicans offered just enough votes to get it passed, while the rest played dumb so they could go on Fox News and continue to rant about how much they hate Obama, without taking any responsibility for this vote.