First, the adjusted GDP is $15.68 trillion USD (2012)
Second, the national debt is $16.97 trillion USD.
Third, the U.S. total unfunded liabilities, basically debts we've obligated ourselves to via Social Security, Medicare, etc is $126 trillion USD.
So let's look at a few things, our debt > GDP, our liabilities are are about 8x our GDP. But it doesn't stop there...because a lot of fudging has been done to increase the GDP, double accounting, accounting borrowing as GDP, etc.
So GDP is being falsely boosted by counted things like obligations, and interests. For example, if Detroit borrows money from the pensions and now owes the pension fund 3% interest. That is being counted, even though it is unfunded. Funky accounting changes result in a GDP that if accounted 3-4 decades ago would probably only measure around $12 trillion.
Funny, cause the Tea Partiers and fiscal conservatives in the GOP were doing that. Though they didn't have enough strength to, they got the spare engine program defunded. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20032313-503544.html [cbsnews.com]
The Tea Party is a libertarian movement that mostly advocates the reduction of spending and debt lest we bankrupt our nation for our children. They were the Republican element that opposed the Patriot Act. They were the element that was more likely to say, let's focus on the fiscal matters and liberty than social/moral issues. They really didn't care about race, but about your politics. And they expressed concern both about the ongoing wars, imperialism and the foolishness of the war on drugs.
Where as the moderate Republicans distract with social causes, and join with the Democrat aisle to spend this nation in oblivion while pampering their pockets.
I know, you've got a picture in your head of the racist narrowminded bigoted Tea Party. I mean, you saw that guy in the NBC news cast with an AR15 rifle slung to his back protesting at a rally outside a townhouse meeting with Obama. It was clearly racist, right? That's what NBC said repeatedly, they pointed out how this was so seemingly racist. Of course the never panned out to show the man was a black Tea Partier.
He has a death contingency. If he was smart, he has given three people copies of all the materials with explicit instructions to do NOTHING with it, unless he is killed. In which case they are to dump the entire unaltered files out for public consumption.
But, we suspected it all. But here is the issue, we had ZERO legal proof. And that's all that matters. When my mom's house was broken into and her laptop stolen. We knew exactly who did it. But we had no legal proof to prosecute. That was the state the American people were in.
Now we have legal proof, and it's acknowledged in part just by how many FOIA requests have been submitted and processed.
The real sad part is dumb !@#$% like Senator McCain rant and rail against Snowden rather than against the NSA's Constitutional violations. I really can't wait till McCain's neck just explodes. And we can be done with him in DC.
U.S. CONSTITUTION : AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION : ARTICLE IV "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
It further divided us, further pushed us on a path to civil war. Because on one side, is those deriding the Republicans for holding the government hostage. And on the other side are those who are like WTF was this shut down everything, barriers, etc. Sometimes illegally even. All to be spiteful. (Never done before btw)
The truth is, it worked very well. This incident pushed both sides about 5 degrees further arpart.
Pretty much every bill has to be at least 30 days before it is reported to the credit reporting agencies. So 16 days, even with no pay, pretty much does nothing to affect.
Perhaps there are a few late fees. The real issue is those who use auto payments without over-draft protection. And then get hit with bounced check fees.
Okay, let's call it "delayed pay leave". It was 16 days. No one who is balancing their check book will be hurt by that. Pretty much every bill has a 30 day grace period before it can be reported.
Vacation, so they didn't have money to travel, and pretty much had to stay home and spend time with their family or Xbox. But darn, how many of us would love if our employer's told us they were giving us 2 weeks leave to stay at home and get stuff done. We just couldn't pick up our check until after the leave.
I bet 95% of slashdotters here would jump on that.
Sure, the government can raise taxes, draw more wealth, but did you EVER PLAY SIMCITY????
The result is, that wealth declines. Sure the Fed could print quadrillion dollars and give them away on the city streets. But that doesn't equate to wealth, just cash. There is a difference. If I double the amount of cash in the world, I do not change the wealth. I merely have done a stock split. And unlike a stock split, whenever we do this crap. We don't get the other half of the split. We're told we should be happy. We still have our hundred shares, why are we complaining. But our hundred shares have actually been devalued in half.
Oh, and eventually you hit a point where your debt becomes unsustainable, and you can't borrow, raise your paycheck, etc. And default...or you keep your checkbook balanced.
No, I do not want to pay a $85 for a friggin happy meal for my grandkids.
The stimulus did jack....it wasted a trillion dollars.
The economy would be in a way better place if the government had simply provided a 10 year plan so that businesses knew what was going to happen, what the costs of the future would be, and what the interest rates would be.
While I agree, we are already paying those costs at hospitals.
The issue, is those costs won't go down. They're go to profit holding companies. And so we will continue to pay $20 for a single Tylenol, and now pay $9K for health insurance I used to pay $3K a year for.
I've long heard about preventative care, I must confess....I am not convinced of its benefit. Routine testing and examinations, yes, they have some benefits in way of cancer detection, etc. But these could be easily implemented and improved upon.
And I am not sure that finding out you have high blood pressure, really does much in the long run except maybe prevent you from dying of a heart attack earlier.
a) first off, hospitals are required to treat emergency medical situations.
b) second, many of the uncovered treatments are often just prolonging the arrival of death, often for one who is left non-functioning. Now, I'm not saying you kill people. But sometimes, you have to be honest with the patient and let them know they're terminal. And maybe spending $250,000 on treatment to maybe prolong life 3 months is not fair to ask society to be burdened on.
c) most of the cost of uninsured is already covered, hospitals bill uninsured patients to you and I. This is why you go in for a small treatment and it costs $5,000. This is why a Tylenol is inflated to $20 a pill. This is how they extract funds from those who can, to cover the operating costs incurred by those who cannot.
Slashdot Mirror
First, the adjusted GDP is $15.68 trillion USD (2012)
Second, the national debt is $16.97 trillion USD.
Third, the U.S. total unfunded liabilities, basically debts we've obligated ourselves to via Social Security, Medicare, etc is $126 trillion USD.
So let's look at a few things, our debt > GDP, our liabilities are are about 8x our GDP. But it doesn't stop there...because a lot of fudging has been done to increase the GDP, double accounting, accounting borrowing as GDP, etc.
So GDP is being falsely boosted by counted things like obligations, and interests. For example, if Detroit borrows money from the pensions and now owes the pension fund 3% interest. That is being counted, even though it is unfunded. Funky accounting changes result in a GDP that if accounted 3-4 decades ago would probably only measure around $12 trillion.
Yup, they are....agreed.
Funny, cause the Tea Partiers and fiscal conservatives in the GOP were doing that. Though they didn't have enough strength to, they got the spare engine program defunded.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20032313-503544.html [cbsnews.com]
Funny, cause the Tea Partiers and fiscal conservatives in the GOP were doing that. Though they didn't have enough strength to, they got the spare engine program defunded.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20032313-503544.html
The Tea Party is a libertarian movement that mostly advocates the reduction of spending and debt lest we bankrupt our nation for our children. They were the Republican element that opposed the Patriot Act. They were the element that was more likely to say, let's focus on the fiscal matters and liberty than social/moral issues. They really didn't care about race, but about your politics. And they expressed concern both about the ongoing wars, imperialism and the foolishness of the war on drugs.
Where as the moderate Republicans distract with social causes, and join with the Democrat aisle to spend this nation in oblivion while pampering their pockets.
I know, you've got a picture in your head of the racist narrowminded bigoted Tea Party. I mean, you saw that guy in the NBC news cast with an AR15 rifle slung to his back protesting at a rally outside a townhouse meeting with Obama. It was clearly racist, right? That's what NBC said repeatedly, they pointed out how this was so seemingly racist. Of course the never panned out to show the man was a black Tea Partier.
He has a death contingency. If he was smart, he has given three people copies of all the materials with explicit instructions to do NOTHING with it, unless he is killed. In which case they are to dump the entire unaltered files out for public consumption.
But, we suspected it all. But here is the issue, we had ZERO legal proof. And that's all that matters. When my mom's house was broken into and her laptop stolen. We knew exactly who did it. But we had no legal proof to prosecute. That was the state the American people were in.
Now we have legal proof, and it's acknowledged in part just by how many FOIA requests have been submitted and processed.
The real sad part is dumb !@#$% like Senator McCain rant and rail against Snowden rather than against the NSA's Constitutional violations. I really can't wait till McCain's neck just explodes. And we can be done with him in DC.
Is the people...
He stabbed a rogue government agency acting outside the bounds of law and morality in the back, and did so to protect millions of his fellow citizens.
U.S. CONSTITUTION : AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION : ARTICLE IV
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Well, if true....this = Patriot
You think it didn't work. But it did....
It further divided us, further pushed us on a path to civil war. Because on one side, is those deriding the Republicans for holding the government hostage. And on the other side are those who are like WTF was this shut down everything, barriers, etc. Sometimes illegally even. All to be spiteful. (Never done before btw)
The truth is, it worked very well. This incident pushed both sides about 5 degrees further arpart.
You do realize most of the Tea Party wants the F-35 cut and the U.S. imperialistic military machine ended. Right?
Than why is it a shutdown...
Pretty much every bill has to be at least 30 days before it is reported to the credit reporting agencies. So 16 days, even with no pay, pretty much does nothing to affect.
Perhaps there are a few late fees. The real issue is those who use auto payments without over-draft protection. And then get hit with bounced check fees.
But other than that....zero impact.
Let's consider that....
Okay, let's call it "delayed pay leave". It was 16 days. No one who is balancing their check book will be hurt by that. Pretty much every bill has a 30 day grace period before it can be reported.
Vacation, so they didn't have money to travel, and pretty much had to stay home and spend time with their family or Xbox. But darn, how many of us would love if our employer's told us they were giving us 2 weeks leave to stay at home and get stuff done. We just couldn't pick up our check until after the leave.
I bet 95% of slashdotters here would jump on that.
YES....
Sure, the government can raise taxes, draw more wealth, but did you EVER PLAY SIMCITY????
The result is, that wealth declines. Sure the Fed could print quadrillion dollars and give them away on the city streets. But that doesn't equate to wealth, just cash. There is a difference. If I double the amount of cash in the world, I do not change the wealth. I merely have done a stock split. And unlike a stock split, whenever we do this crap. We don't get the other half of the split. We're told we should be happy. We still have our hundred shares, why are we complaining. But our hundred shares have actually been devalued in half.
Oh, and eventually you hit a point where your debt becomes unsustainable, and you can't borrow, raise your paycheck, etc. And default...or you keep your checkbook balanced.
No, I do not want to pay a $85 for a friggin happy meal for my grandkids.
The stimulus did jack....it wasted a trillion dollars.
The economy would be in a way better place if the government had simply provided a 10 year plan so that businesses knew what was going to happen, what the costs of the future would be, and what the interest rates would be.
That alone would of given us a better economy.
Except now, under Obamacare, we get to pay BOTH!!!
While I agree, we are already paying those costs at hospitals.
The issue, is those costs won't go down. They're go to profit holding companies. And so we will continue to pay $20 for a single Tylenol, and now pay $9K for health insurance I used to pay $3K a year for.
And I've got an ice palace in Aruba I'd like to sell you....
That was on a site estimated to cost $90 million.
So how much will Obamacare cost? Multiply the estimate by 7x. You have your answer.
Heck, for $635 million, they could of had 7 companies compete and picked the best two websites to go live for testing.
$17 trillion in debt....
Nothing else, even a shutdown or default is undermining the dollar worse than running $1+ trillion deficits.
And if we don't stop, the government shutdown will eventually become PERMANENT. How much will that cost the economy folks.
Oh, and might I add, that the Democrats are punks because all they do is kick the bucket down past the next election.
I've long heard about preventative care, I must confess....I am not convinced of its benefit. Routine testing and examinations, yes, they have some benefits in way of cancer detection, etc. But these could be easily implemented and improved upon.
And I am not sure that finding out you have high blood pressure, really does much in the long run except maybe prevent you from dying of a heart attack earlier.
Um, not much really...
a) first off, hospitals are required to treat emergency medical situations.
b) second, many of the uncovered treatments are often just prolonging the arrival of death, often for one who is left non-functioning. Now, I'm not saying you kill people. But sometimes, you have to be honest with the patient and let them know they're terminal. And maybe spending $250,000 on treatment to maybe prolong life 3 months is not fair to ask society to be burdened on.
c) most of the cost of uninsured is already covered, hospitals bill uninsured patients to you and I. This is why you go in for a small treatment and it costs $5,000. This is why a Tylenol is inflated to $20 a pill. This is how they extract funds from those who can, to cover the operating costs incurred by those who cannot.