Thanks for your strong argument and excellent display of evidence to back it up.
There's no point even trying. It should be obvious why the "billions of dollars in new infrastructure is free" argument is faulty. The only people who argue otherwise use entirely nebulous and arbitrary "externalities" to try to make an argument. Good look trying to argue against those kind of "facts".
Tax revenues are always a percentage of GDP. Because of that, GDP is absolutely relevant.
No it isn't, because GDP is a constant in that equation (namely, if you're using "revenue as % of GDP", you're also using "spending as % of GDP"). GDP hence does not matter because the end result is the same when the GDP component drops out.
If you absolutely must use GDP, you'll see the same result: higher spending and higher revenue:
2014 US GDP: 15.7 trillion
2014 federal budget: 3.8 trillion
2014 revenue projections: 3 trillion
2014 spending/GDP: 24% of GDP
2014 revenue/GDP: 19% of GDP
2002 US GDP: 10.6 trillion
2002 federal budget: 2 trillion
2002 revenue: 1.85 trillion
2002 spending/GDP: 19% of GDP
2002 revenue/GDP: 17% of GDP
But it's just as important to realize that as a percentage of GDP revenue is down. Those tax cuts mean the government is taking in a smaller percentage of economic output. So when inflation drives up the cost of guns/tanks/healthcare/office space/contractors for the government there isn't a corresponding increase in revenue to off set it, because we've chosen to end taxes on a number of things that get inflated (like the wealthiest 1%'s salaries).
In summary, in inflation adjusted dollars over the course of a decade, revenue is at +10-30% and spending is at +50%. My best guess is that this chart being off is that is probably tries to focus on income tax revenue, ignoring all other inlays. But it is wrong.
Incorrect. Social Security/Medicare is paid for by payroll taxes. The government has borrowed from SS/M to pay for tax cuts for the rich.
You are wrong. There are insufficient payroll tax inlays to cover the current (and future) cost of SS/Medicare. They have borrowed from the general fund to supplement the lack of funds from payroll. This is especially true during Obama's "payroll tax holiday stimulus". You lamebrains continue to treat a 12% tax on income as if it's some phantom non-existant expense rather than the major drain on our incomes that it is -- simply because it's apportioned. No wonder you think the programs are "free".
If people like Romney paid the same percentage of their income in taxes I do we would not have a deficit.
You could take all the income of the top.1% and you wouldn't address the deficit we have. We have a huge spending problem.
So was it the Dem's in Congress who didn't want it? Or was it Obama?
Half the Dems wanted it, half didn't. Obama wanted it. Basically half the Dems who didn't want it + all the Republicans who didn't want it == wasn't gonna happen.
It seems to me you're putting the blame on Obama for something Dem's in Congress caved on...
It's not at all uncommon in American political discussions to do this kind of bullshit. Basically a failure of the party is a failure of the president in charge. This is also why you hear lots of vitriol against Bush when referring to past events, but not much against anyone else. You'd think presidents were dictators the way people behave.
It's more likely that **Obama** wanted the "public option" but the Dem's in Congress (like the pussies they are) caved and tried to be "bipartisan" with the GOP...to their failure...
No, there was no bipartisan effort. The Dems in Congress didn't want a public option (or at least not enough of them to get it passed). It's as simple as that. Bipartisanship wasn't even attempted until the Republicans regained control of the House.
Back to GP's conspiracy theory....NO Obama did not *want* the ACA to fail...but he knew it would without a public option...that doesn't mean he **wants** it to fail...
But there's some truth to the claims that Obama knew there would be issues. For instance, he knew people would lose their insurance plans despite claims that "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan". There are many things he knew about ACA, but didn't broadcast to the public because it would cast the law in a negative light and give the Republicans more fuel against the bill.
and he can't trash the shitty version of the ACA that they passed either...
This is not a matter of "they passed" -- this was a joint passage, and he was on board. Given the choice of passing the shit or going back to the drawing board to craft a smaller, less complex piece of legislation without a supermajority (namely, something bipartisan and likely less prone to complications), he opted for "passing the shit". He is every bit to blame for this as the Dems in Congress. Particularly since he has/had an enormous amount of influential power from the bully pulpit.
So in summary, that is why we have the shit we do today: because the Dems (+Obama) would rather pass partisan legislation they knew to have major flaws than sit down with Republicans and find sensible middle ground.
Secondly, that people will be discouraged from using those plans via the excise tax
Putting a floor on a market forces the minimum plan premium higher -- "Cadillac plans" (which already have a definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_insurance_plan) are effectively being mandated. Namely, you won't be able to get a "low premium" plan, unless you're being partially subsidized due to low income.
under the cruel notion that having non-junk insurance is some kind of luxury.
I liked my cheap insurance. It performed the exact function it was meant for, namely insurance for unforeseen catastrophes. instead, I'm now forced to pay for maternity and a whole host of other things, whether I'm going to use them or not -- perhaps you should look up the definition of "insurance".
If Republicans weren't pathetic partisan hacks, they wouldn't have wasted years fighting the passage of their own health care plan, and then years trying to repeal it.
Sigh, I'm not even going to try. You're an idiot. That is all.
I'm not making a point of contention...just asking...anyone...wtf happened to the public option???
The "public option" was "single payer". What happened to it is that is didn't have enough support to become law, even among the Democrat party (particularly among the Blue Dogs). That's why the idea was shelved fairly early in the design process.
That's funny. I have the opinion that Obamacare is bad because it's nowhere near socialist enough. It's trying to take the basically socialistic concept of spreading financial burden over a nationwide population and twist it to fit the mold of the mythical "free market".
Forcing everyone to participate in a gamed system with a price floor is not a "Free market". The fact some 90 million people are losing their current insurance plans is proof of this.
A single-payer system would have been much better. IMHO
I'm willing to bet large amounts of money that you couldn't explain to me the "how" or "why" of this statement. You'd fall back on some fallacy of "but everyone else does it and they pay less than us!", knowing absolutely nothing about market dynamics, cost controls, or consumer choice.
'm not sure how much of a political embarrassment it really is. Yeah it should be working, but I'm not sure embarrassment is the right word. The right wants to make the website it an embarrassment, but they would want to paint whatever happens as an embarrassment even if the website worked perfectly. The left wishes the website would have worked.
Isn't it obvious why it's an embarrassment? Obama said "the government can do this better than the free market" while the Republicans said the govt would be far more ineffective and even more costly, particularly in regard to this particular healthcare implementation. What's happening is proof of the latter. What's happening lends credence to the claims that leaving something in the hands of big govt is more likely to fuck things up than fix things. On top of that, this is supposed to be the "big achievement" of this administration, and besides from it's terrible rollout, it's done a great deal of harm already (people losing their insurance, premiums spiking, etc).
No, a fraction of the Democrat party wanted single-payer. They didn't have enough support to pass it, otherwise we would have it. The bill passed with a supermajority after all.
The ACA was a conservative idea -- from the heritage foundation, supported by top conservatives up until Obama's election.
Oh? Cite? Last I heard, the Heritage plan was a 15+ year old idea that went out of style long before Obama entered office. And it's way different than what was actually passed (for one, the Heritage plan wasn't a federal plan -- for two, it wasn't thousands of pages long with all kinds of bells and whistles).
If the ACA is so bad, just remember, it's a conservative idea.
Nowhere here is there any price controls, rather it sets up a much more fair marketplace (i.e.: one more true to capitalist theory) than the deceptive an exclusionary one we have now.
False, it shifts from one exclusionary model to another. So instead of insurance companies selectively dropping people because of conditions (which ACA fixed), now insurance companies are forced to offer Cadillac plans by law (which excludes "true insurance plans" that are intended only for catastrophic events). Basically, ACA forces everyone to pay for the kitchen sink, whether they need/want it or not, even if they'll never need it (such as people who will never have kids being forced to pay for maternity care).
The response to Snowden has been mostly to blame Obama. Even though most of the privacy invading policies were polices of GEORGE W BUSH (patriot act, warrentless wiretaps, etc etc)
Obama extended the Patriot Act in both 2006 and 2011. The fact you still continue to try to assign blame to Bush some 5 years later is both sad and telling for the Obama shill that you must be.
The average stay on welfare at least used to be three years, which means that most (not all) wanted to get off it. In that case, for most people it does not foster dependence or entitlement complexes
Pre or post reform? Because the Clinton reforms are largely viewed as a success in reducing dependence on the system by reducing the false positive rate: http://www.fordschool.umich.edu/research/poverty/pdf/Isrconference.pdf. Studies on welfare outside of the US seem to concur with a similar view on dependence as well, such as this study from Canada:
You also seem to ignore the other entitlements as well, since welfare is not the end all of dependency syndrome. It is in fact one of our best designed safety nets since its reform in '92.
and it does serve a social benefit, namely allowing somebody to resume being a productive citizen after some hard times. You may want to do your own research.
You misunderstand. I concur that safety nets in general serve a societal benefit. However, the statement I made is that Demcorats generally believe that any spending on any implementation of a "safety net" is a net win for society, regardless of effectiveness or design. And I'm saying that the effect is a net loss for society. Safety net programs require careful design, limits, and milestones -- they must be designed to fight the human predisposition to take advantage, as well as designed to teach people to be "fishermen" rather than just "giving out fish". Democrats are very poor at this, generally (and naively) viewing that any opportunity to yank money out of a rich man's pockets and give it to a poorer person is a "win". It's also largely what fuels the "taxes as theft" argument amongst Repbulicans. If Democrats truly cared about an effective program, they'd be far more judicial with their handouts, requiring more accountability in the programs.
I don't know how we could kickstart competition either. Perhaps nobody knows that. That's why my preference is to go with a solution that is already known to work because the entire first world but us has already done it.
For the other side, it is life-for-goods, and very few people are willing to put a finite value on their continued existence. In that perspective, a "rational" healthcare provider should behave exactly as a mugger and demand all of his customer's assets. There is no motivation for providers to compete on price...................No, most health care spending occurs in the last year, even the last month, of one's life.
You speak of this like it's a bad thing. If our choices are:
1) have everyone pay exorbitant healthcare costs their entire life so everyone can live an extra week at the end of their lifespan --or-- 2) have everyone pay reasonable healthcare costs their entire life and then decide if they want to break the bank to live an extra week.
The latter seems far more optimal for society. Instead, with ACA, we've apparently chosen #1, or at least left that decision in the hands of the government.
You're lucky...many folks with policies they like are being dropped from them and made to go on more $$ ones due to the new 'minimums' obamacare is forcing upon them and their insurance companies.
Like me. The HDHP I was on increased 91% in premium cost, so I had to shift to a different HDHP which offered less benefits than the one I was on.
So your idea of reforming welfare is to humiliate the recipients, remove children if there's any failure on weekly drug tests, and throw them off on a fixed schedule. I fail to see anything positive, like trying to help them get useful skills and become employable.
Umm, is not the point of the programs to be to accomplish those positive things? If not, it's a poorly designed program.
What we need to provide instead is job training
Public school is already free. I guess this once again points to poorly designed programs.
My ultimate takeaway from all this is the same takeaway I've always had: Democrats are fools who are more interested in throwing money at any cause that claims to benefit the poor, regardless of effectiveness or cost. The end result normally fosters dependence and entitlement complexes rather than societal benefit.
I never made the claim that they wouldn't do ANY product safety, only that it would be inadequate.
Actually, you did -- you said that corporation "will not be doing" those things without government involvement. Basically, your statement was just as hyperbolic as the OP you jumped on. So how about we give people some slack before building up these ridiculous straw men next time? We're not anarchists, you're not a socialist. Middle ground.
So stubborn he's repeatedly signed various bills for spending cuts
What cuts??? Seriously, I quoted you the budget -- no cuts have occurred. Simply reducing one program while increasing another is not a cut. I'm talking about a cut in total spending. I might also add that the "cuts" that have occurred (such as the Sequester) are largely irrelevant, because they're a drop in the bucket of total spending. What Obama has done is largely lip service.
the only "more taxes" that have been passed are (a) allowing the Bush-era tax breaks to expire on some tax brackets, (b) allowing the economic recovery tax cuts (you know, the ones Obama signed) to expire, and (c) the whole ACA-fine as a tax
Actually figuring out *how* to get to those levels is the hard part and getting buy-in is the even harder part.
That's fantastic thinking -- let's start that conversation. Republicans have tried to put entitlement reform on the table many times (since the bulk of our spending is Mandatory spending), but the Dems won't even approach that debate in earnest.
Again, childish response. Democrats act like dicks, so we have to too.
Whoa whoa whoa, huge difference. This isn't just "you guys were mean, so we'll be mean too". It's not "you obstructed our bills, so we'll obstruct your bills". They actually passed an entire program on their watch. "Tit-for-tat" would be repeal of the program. At a minimum, the Democrats should find reasonable middle territory and be the ones to give ground by saying "while we won't repeal, but we're willing to reform" -- they haven't even done that though (remember, the Republicans second and third budget proposals during the standoff weren't even asking for repeal, they were asking for changes or delays in the program -- none of that got traction either). So until the Dems stop continuing to be childish, I'm afraid I don't see a 1-to-1 comparison here. The only thing I agree on is that the demand for straight-up repeal was stupid. But they backed off of that demand relatively quickly.
Really, your argument doesn't explain why not a single "reasonable Democrats" voted against the bill. No, it was lock-step partisanship.
They did. 34 Democrat congressmen voted against it. It barely squeaked through the House.
You do realize, btw, the whole government shut down thing was just an act by Republicans to appease their constituents and keep their jobs and not an attempt that they thought had any
How do you propose to kickstart a healthcare market?
Like I said, that's the exact question the government should be spending money + brainpower solving. I know it's not impossible, but I acknowledge that's it's not trivial either. What I'm saying is that no one is even trying to address this problem, seemingly more content to let insurance companies run the show.
Keep in mind, if you're in an accident, you will be taken (often unconscious) top the nearest facility. There is no shopping around and they don't even know what your preferred hospital might be.
If we could turn 98% of the healthcare system into a true competitive market, that would be plenty sufficient for me. The 2% we could deal with through other means.
I agree in principle but it is not all-or-nothing. There is an appropriate balance. Keeping the right balance is hard: it is an endless tug of war among special interests of all kinds.
Do you know when the "balance" was good? The Clinton era. Do you know what government spending (and therefore government size) is relative to then? +50%, in inflation adjusted dollars.
Then, of course, is the simple thing that republicans seem loathed to say: Obamacare is pretty much a national version of Romneycare, which was taken largely from suggestions form the Heritage Foundation.
Oh gods, where to start. Firstly, the fact you can't even fathom that taking a state-level concept and projected it to the federal level is a massive change in concept means I'll likely never get through to you. Secondly, Obamacare is WAY bigger with WAY more legislation than the idea that came out of the Heritage foundation. To call the two equivalent is mischaracterization at best and downright lying at worst. Thirdly, even if the plans were identical, that's a 15 year old proposal -- why the hell do you think Republicans should just automatically embrace ideas they had 15 years ago? You do realize people change their minds, right? And times change? And situations change? You realize that Senator Obama isn't the same as President Obama? (in thought or deed?) So stop using this BS talking point, as if the Republicans should be living in stasis for a decade and a half.
Not a straw man. DiamondMagic says he'll take the corporation over government ANY day.
It is a straw man. Because the OP was clearly being hyperbolic. Moreover, the context of the post was clearly focused on the federal government. Of all your example, only the EPA fits that category.
Corporations will not be paving roads or inspecting food any time soon (without government involvement).
This kind of blanket assumption is ridiculous -- why do people believe these things in the face of obvious counterexamples? Why do software companies (ala Microsoft) patch their operating systems after they've already sold them? Why do companies have hardware/software assurance or testing departments? Companies have a vested interest in keeping customers happy (and additionally, in not being sued). Whereas greed may cause them to occasionally make decisions that push for lower costs, that doesn't mean they'd be willfully negligent in the face of no government regulation. That said, I certainly believe some level of regulation is necessary to maintain things like food safety. But it's crazy to make the claim that they're not even going to try to put out or maintain a good/safe product without mother govt telling them to.
Slashdot Mirror
There's no point even trying. It should be obvious why the "billions of dollars in new infrastructure is free" argument is faulty. The only people who argue otherwise use entirely nebulous and arbitrary "externalities" to try to make an argument. Good look trying to argue against those kind of "facts".
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.
No it isn't, because GDP is a constant in that equation (namely, if you're using "revenue as % of GDP", you're also using "spending as % of GDP"). GDP hence does not matter because the end result is the same when the GDP component drops out.
If you absolutely must use GDP, you'll see the same result: higher spending and higher revenue:
2014 US GDP: 15.7 trillion
2014 federal budget: 3.8 trillion
2014 revenue projections: 3 trillion
2014 spending/GDP: 24% of GDP
2014 revenue/GDP: 19% of GDP
2002 US GDP: 10.6 trillion
2002 federal budget: 2 trillion
2002 revenue: 1.85 trillion
2002 spending/GDP: 19% of GDP
2002 revenue/GDP: 17% of GDP
GDP is irrelevant. Use inflation-adjusted dollars for both revenue and spending and compare. I covered it here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4382673&cid=45267501
In summary, in inflation adjusted dollars over the course of a decade, revenue is at +10-30% and spending is at +50%. My best guess is that this chart being off is that is probably tries to focus on income tax revenue, ignoring all other inlays. But it is wrong.
You are wrong. There are insufficient payroll tax inlays to cover the current (and future) cost of SS/Medicare. They have borrowed from the general fund to supplement the lack of funds from payroll. This is especially true during Obama's "payroll tax holiday stimulus". You lamebrains continue to treat a 12% tax on income as if it's some phantom non-existant expense rather than the major drain on our incomes that it is -- simply because it's apportioned. No wonder you think the programs are "free".
You could take all the income of the top .1% and you wouldn't address the deficit we have. We have a huge spending problem.
Half the Dems wanted it, half didn't. Obama wanted it. Basically half the Dems who didn't want it + all the Republicans who didn't want it == wasn't gonna happen.
It's not at all uncommon in American political discussions to do this kind of bullshit. Basically a failure of the party is a failure of the president in charge. This is also why you hear lots of vitriol against Bush when referring to past events, but not much against anyone else. You'd think presidents were dictators the way people behave.
No, there was no bipartisan effort. The Dems in Congress didn't want a public option (or at least not enough of them to get it passed). It's as simple as that. Bipartisanship wasn't even attempted until the Republicans regained control of the House.
But there's some truth to the claims that Obama knew there would be issues. For instance, he knew people would lose their insurance plans despite claims that "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan". There are many things he knew about ACA, but didn't broadcast to the public because it would cast the law in a negative light and give the Republicans more fuel against the bill.
This is not a matter of "they passed" -- this was a joint passage, and he was on board. Given the choice of passing the shit or going back to the drawing board to craft a smaller, less complex piece of legislation without a supermajority (namely, something bipartisan and likely less prone to complications), he opted for "passing the shit". He is every bit to blame for this as the Dems in Congress. Particularly since he has/had an enormous amount of influential power from the bully pulpit.
So in summary, that is why we have the shit we do today: because the Dems (+Obama) would rather pass partisan legislation they knew to have major flaws than sit down with Republicans and find sensible middle ground.
Putting a floor on a market forces the minimum plan premium higher -- "Cadillac plans" (which already have a definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_insurance_plan) are effectively being mandated. Namely, you won't be able to get a "low premium" plan, unless you're being partially subsidized due to low income.
I liked my cheap insurance. It performed the exact function it was meant for, namely insurance for unforeseen catastrophes. instead, I'm now forced to pay for maternity and a whole host of other things, whether I'm going to use them or not -- perhaps you should look up the definition of "insurance".
Sigh, I'm not even going to try. You're an idiot. That is all.
The "public option" was "single payer". What happened to it is that is didn't have enough support to become law, even among the Democrat party (particularly among the Blue Dogs). That's why the idea was shelved fairly early in the design process.
Forcing everyone to participate in a gamed system with a price floor is not a "Free market". The fact some 90 million people are losing their current insurance plans is proof of this.
I'm willing to bet large amounts of money that you couldn't explain to me the "how" or "why" of this statement. You'd fall back on some fallacy of "but everyone else does it and they pay less than us!", knowing absolutely nothing about market dynamics, cost controls, or consumer choice.
What is that supposed to prove? That Republicans are the only ones intelligent enough to watch something play out poorly on a state level and make the connection that maybe doing the same thing on a federal level is a bad idea? http://dailycaller.com/2013/11/03/romney-obama-failed-to-learn-the-lessons-from-romneycare-video/
Isn't it obvious why it's an embarrassment? Obama said "the government can do this better than the free market" while the Republicans said the govt would be far more ineffective and even more costly, particularly in regard to this particular healthcare implementation. What's happening is proof of the latter. What's happening lends credence to the claims that leaving something in the hands of big govt is more likely to fuck things up than fix things. On top of that, this is supposed to be the "big achievement" of this administration, and besides from it's terrible rollout, it's done a great deal of harm already (people losing their insurance, premiums spiking, etc).
No, a fraction of the Democrat party wanted single-payer. They didn't have enough support to pass it, otherwise we would have it. The bill passed with a supermajority after all.
Oh? Cite? Last I heard, the Heritage plan was a 15+ year old idea that went out of style long before Obama entered office. And it's way different than what was actually passed (for one, the Heritage plan wasn't a federal plan -- for two, it wasn't thousands of pages long with all kinds of bells and whistles).
You people and your echo chambers...
False, it shifts from one exclusionary model to another. So instead of insurance companies selectively dropping people because of conditions (which ACA fixed), now insurance companies are forced to offer Cadillac plans by law (which excludes "true insurance plans" that are intended only for catastrophic events). Basically, ACA forces everyone to pay for the kitchen sink, whether they need/want it or not, even if they'll never need it (such as people who will never have kids being forced to pay for maternity care).
Obama extended the Patriot Act in both 2006 and 2011. The fact you still continue to try to assign blame to Bush some 5 years later is both sad and telling for the Obama shill that you must be.
Pre or post reform? Because the Clinton reforms are largely viewed as a success in reducing dependence on the system by reducing the false positive rate: http://www.fordschool.umich.edu/research/poverty/pdf/Isrconference.pdf. Studies on welfare outside of the US seem to concur with a similar view on dependence as well, such as this study from Canada:
You also seem to ignore the other entitlements as well, since welfare is not the end all of dependency syndrome. It is in fact one of our best designed safety nets since its reform in '92.
You misunderstand. I concur that safety nets in general serve a societal benefit. However, the statement I made is that Demcorats generally believe that any spending on any implementation of a "safety net" is a net win for society, regardless of effectiveness or design. And I'm saying that the effect is a net loss for society. Safety net programs require careful design, limits, and milestones -- they must be designed to fight the human predisposition to take advantage, as well as designed to teach people to be "fishermen" rather than just "giving out fish". Democrats are very poor at this, generally (and naively) viewing that any opportunity to yank money out of a rich man's pockets and give it to a poorer person is a "win". It's also largely what fuels the "taxes as theft" argument amongst Repbulicans. If Democrats truly cared about an effective program, they'd be far more judicial with their handouts, requiring more accountability in the programs.
Except they haven't figured it out either. The fact they're beating us handily is merely proof of how fucked up our system is, not of how good theirs is. Healthcare costs over there have been rising substantially as well, and many of those systems are making alot of hard choices. NHS comes to mind as a system that appears to be struggling heavily:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10162848/NHS-is-about-to-run-out-of-cash-top-official-warns.html
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/the-hot-button/britains-rx-to-fix-health-care-a-pen-and-paper/article15120806/
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/08/opinion/la-oe-dalrymple-british-health-system-20120808
Single payer isn't a silver bullet. I wish people would stop thinking it is. It comes with its own host of problems.
You speak of this like it's a bad thing. If our choices are:
1) have everyone pay exorbitant healthcare costs their entire life so everyone can live an extra week at the end of their lifespan
--or--
2) have everyone pay reasonable healthcare costs their entire life and then decide if they want to break the bank to live an extra week.
The latter seems far more optimal for society. Instead, with ACA, we've apparently chosen #1, or at least left that decision in the hands of the government.
Like me. The HDHP I was on increased 91% in premium cost, so I had to shift to a different HDHP which offered less benefits than the one I was on.
Umm, is not the point of the programs to be to accomplish those positive things? If not, it's a poorly designed program.
Public school is already free. I guess this once again points to poorly designed programs.
My ultimate takeaway from all this is the same takeaway I've always had: Democrats are fools who are more interested in throwing money at any cause that claims to benefit the poor, regardless of effectiveness or cost. The end result normally fosters dependence and entitlement complexes rather than societal benefit.
Actually, you did -- you said that corporation "will not be doing" those things without government involvement. Basically, your statement was just as hyperbolic as the OP you jumped on. So how about we give people some slack before building up these ridiculous straw men next time? We're not anarchists, you're not a socialist. Middle ground.
What cuts??? Seriously, I quoted you the budget -- no cuts have occurred. Simply reducing one program while increasing another is not a cut. I'm talking about a cut in total spending. I might also add that the "cuts" that have occurred (such as the Sequester) are largely irrelevant, because they're a drop in the bucket of total spending. What Obama has done is largely lip service.
There are more taxes embedded into ACA than you acknowledge. It's not just the "fine as a tax". That's not even the biggest: http://jeffduncan.house.gov/full-list-obamacare-tax-hikes
The investment income surtax is the largest tax hike in that bill.
And my counter-point is that we already did the latter, but not the former. I've yet to see you prove otherwise.
Without. The supplemental spending has ended, check the budget. All annual war spending currently amounts to somewhere between ~60 billion and ~120 billion:
http://nation.time.com/2013/01/07/the-cost-of-a-post-2014-u-s-force/
http://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/security-military/us-military-casualty-statistics-costs-war-iraq-afghanistan-post-911
And that number is trending downward.
That's fantastic thinking -- let's start that conversation. Republicans have tried to put entitlement reform on the table many times (since the bulk of our spending is Mandatory spending), but the Dems won't even approach that debate in earnest.
Whoa whoa whoa, huge difference. This isn't just "you guys were mean, so we'll be mean too". It's not "you obstructed our bills, so we'll obstruct your bills". They actually passed an entire program on their watch. "Tit-for-tat" would be repeal of the program. At a minimum, the Democrats should find reasonable middle territory and be the ones to give ground by saying "while we won't repeal, but we're willing to reform" -- they haven't even done that though (remember, the Republicans second and third budget proposals during the standoff weren't even asking for repeal, they were asking for changes or delays in the program -- none of that got traction either). So until the Dems stop continuing to be childish, I'm afraid I don't see a 1-to-1 comparison here. The only thing I agree on is that the demand for straight-up repeal was stupid. But they backed off of that demand relatively quickly.
They did. 34 Democrat congressmen voted against it. It barely squeaked through the House.
Like I said, that's the exact question the government should be spending money + brainpower solving. I know it's not impossible, but I acknowledge that's it's not trivial either. What I'm saying is that no one is even trying to address this problem, seemingly more content to let insurance companies run the show.
Emergency care is a very small portion of our total healthcare bill (around 2%): http://newsroom.acep.org/download/ACEP+2%25+booklet.pdf
If we could turn 98% of the healthcare system into a true competitive market, that would be plenty sufficient for me. The 2% we could deal with through other means.
Do you know when the "balance" was good? The Clinton era. Do you know what government spending (and therefore government size) is relative to then? +50%, in inflation adjusted dollars.
Oh gods, where to start. Firstly, the fact you can't even fathom that taking a state-level concept and projected it to the federal level is a massive change in concept means I'll likely never get through to you. Secondly, Obamacare is WAY bigger with WAY more legislation than the idea that came out of the Heritage foundation. To call the two equivalent is mischaracterization at best and downright lying at worst. Thirdly, even if the plans were identical, that's a 15 year old proposal -- why the hell do you think Republicans should just automatically embrace ideas they had 15 years ago? You do realize people change their minds, right? And times change? And situations change? You realize that Senator Obama isn't the same as President Obama? (in thought or deed?) So stop using this BS talking point, as if the Republicans should be living in stasis for a decade and a half.
It is a straw man. Because the OP was clearly being hyperbolic. Moreover, the context of the post was clearly focused on the federal government. Of all your example, only the EPA fits that category.
This kind of blanket assumption is ridiculous -- why do people believe these things in the face of obvious counterexamples? Why do software companies (ala Microsoft) patch their operating systems after they've already sold them? Why do companies have hardware/software assurance or testing departments? Companies have a vested interest in keeping customers happy (and additionally, in not being sued). Whereas greed may cause them to occasionally make decisions that push for lower costs, that doesn't mean they'd be willfully negligent in the face of no government regulation. That said, I certainly believe some level of regulation is necessary to maintain things like food safety. But it's crazy to make the claim that they're not even going to try to put out or maintain a good/safe product without mother govt telling them to.