I think that ultimately the United States will have to make some tough choices on "entitlements" and other government expenses.

This year 2010 represents the first year since "baby boomers" (those born after 1945) begin to retire. Over the next 10-20 years the American healthcare and pension sytems will face tremendous pressure to come up with the funds to continue to give people services.

As the population ages, those costs will continue to increase and the American government will have to either raise more funds or cut services. Since the funds come from taxation, it is quite likely that the US will have no choice other than raise taxes. The US already has the largest public debt in the World accounting for nearly 28% of the entire World's public debt.

Even without "Obamacare" the American healthcare and pension systems are already stretched to the maximum. The other option is to take money from somewhere else. That could mean less spending on infrastructure (e.g. tranportation infrastructure), a bad idea since that would slow down the economy too much. It could also mean a drastic reduction in military spending.

The Iraq War was payed in part through massive borrowing (never had the US borrowed so much money in its history) and in part through "reallocation of entitlements". The Bush administration took hundreds of billions of dollars that were sitting "idle" in the pension system, and through fiscal manouvering, reallocated them to the military. Alan Greenspan knew this and he was glad to be a part of it, but he warned that if something was not done the pension system would run out of money by 2017.

The only way the US will be able to restore those funds and pay for healthcare and old-age pensions will be with drastic cuts in the military. That will mean a massive recession and massive unemployment because the Cold War turned the US into a war economy. The US will have to take big steps backward in its global military presence, and scrap wasteful defense initiatives such as the ICBM Interception System, which at the research stage alone is costing over 1 trillion dollars.

So the priorities will be clear cut. Either healthcare and old age pensions, or continue to spend trillions in the military. A tough choice for a superpower!

Artful Dodger: Nobody is under the illusion that covering the whole nation with healthcare won't cost money, it will.It is simply a question of priorities.Most major nations of the world have decided it is worth the sacrifice of additional taxation,maybe Americans aren't as interested.The same goes for gays in the military, few other major nations feel it's a big deal, the USA does,you are what you are, and will make your own decisions on these issues.

Ferris Bueller: Health insurance rates have already gone up substantially nation wide. When taxes go up to pay for all these entitlements, you'll simply run out of excuses.

Jim Dandy: By getting her face seen. N' being 'blonde'

Tuesday: yes, that's her complete resume before the view

Tuesday: She's dumber than dirt generally,how she parlayed being on survivor to a career on tv mystifies

Snoopy: I can read the facts, just as I read about the reforms in the UK healthcare system re GP's and budget spending.

Snoopy: I've not said there are differences.. I've said our NHS works.

It's not down just to postcode. I've had problems with one service due to me complaining. But I got given the CEO's number...

Artful Dodger:  Re. FDR, we know what actually did happen.  Your sources can only talk about what might of happened in a reverse scenario.  Conservatives site these things as absolute fact, which they are not.

(V): stop twisting things
thats not what i meant at all

of course serious ill people get treated first geesh

im saying if you read correctly
that you seem to know an awful lot about a health care system in a country you dont even live in

(V): well there you go
exactly my point its all down to health care trusts and its a post code lottery

something ive been saying on here for months which you have always denied

Snoopy: You are saying the more seriously ill people get treated first... So?

Snoopy: NHS is decentralizing and cutting care. There is rationing and this is exactly what will happen in the US as well. The Federal government has no business getting involved in the health care business. More wasted money. Every time the government tries to fix something, they make it worse.

Snoopy: Strange... My x-ray was next day, my scan 2 weeks... bloods same day. Specialists sorted with an appointment for the next just 2 weeks after.

Jim Dandy: thats my point
V can tell everyone on here that our NHS is bloody brilliant and waiting lists have fallen etc etc
but in reality its so different


im on a waiting list and i can only assume that what ever is causing the pain im getting is nothing to serious hence the long wait

Snoopy: but wouldn't you not even be on a 6 week waiting list if it was too expensive, and you had to pay for it/

Artful Dodger: oh dont get me started on our so called NHS
its the pits for most people
ive been waiting over 6 weeks to be called to go for a scan
ive been back to my own docs twice and each time she says have i had the scan yet

now if had the money i could get it done in secs

Snoopy: Any new 'program' is going to have teething problems. That's normal.. It'd be unreal to think it won't!!

.. I mean Microsoft can't get it right first time can they!!

Snoopy: It's already a done deal that Obamacare will end up costing more than was promised, and the deficit will boom because of it. All one needs to do is look at Britain's health care to see just how bad an idea this all is. I should not be forced to pay through my taxes, for the health care of others. I provide for my family and that is enough.

It will be reversed. It's doomed to fail as it has elsewhere.

(V): yes but isnt that just theory
has everything else in life it dosnt mean it happen that way

Artful Dodger: The legislation was signed in March this year. If you'd read it you'll know it was designed to be enacted in stages...

Within one year of enactment (2010-2011)

* Insurance companies barred from dropping people from coverage when they get sick, ending the practice of rescission. Lifetime coverage limits eliminated and annual limits restricted.
* Young adults able to stay on their parents' health plans until age 26. Many health plans currently drop dependents from coverage when they turn 19 or finish college.
* Uninsured adults with pre-existing conditions will be able to obtain health coverage through a new program that will expire once new insurance exchanges begin operating in 2014.
* Insurance companies cannot deny group or new (non-grandfathered) individual coverage to children under age 19, due to a pre-existing condition.[146]
* A temporary reinsurance program is created to help companies maintain health coverage for early retirees between the ages of 55 and 64. This also expires in 2014.
* Medicare drug beneficiaries who fall into the "doughnut hole" coverage gap will get a $250 rebate. The bill eventually closes that gap which currently begins after $2,700 is spent on drugs. Coverage starts again after $6,154 is spent.
* A tax credit becomes available for some small businesses to help provide coverage for workers.
* A 10% tax on indoor tanning services that use ultraviolet lamps goes into effect on July 1.

Click here

edited to shorten link

Ferris Bueller: You prefer to speculate in the opposite direction. Either way, you have to speculate.

Ferris Bueller: Not so. Economists know clearly that Obamacare will do the opposite as was promised. Did you not read the link? It's a left wing websiite and in it the DEMOCRATS concede that the deficit will not go down and costs will not lower. Why are you denying your own party's report?

Artful Dodger:  Nobody promised that "ObamaCare" would result in cost savings or reduce the deficit miraculously overnight.  It is too early to pronounce it a failure.

Artful Dodger: Businesses don't collude today they say.....

Yeah right.. 1000's of firms in the UK were caught out price fixing.

Guess those economists don't get out much!!

FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate

By Meg Sullivan August 10, 2004 Category: Research

Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

After scrutinizing Roosevelt's record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.

full article here: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx

New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America
http://www.amazon.com/New-Deal-Raw-Economic-Damaged/dp/1416592229

Worth the read.

Artful Dodger: He led the USA till near the end of WWII.. His management of the USA economy helped the USA have the industrial strength to win it.

He's the only USA president to be elected for over 2 terms. He must have done pretty good.

"Media Nearly Silent as ObamaCare Proponents Drop Deficit, Cost Savings Claims
from NewsBusters.org - Exposing Liberal Media Bias by Lachlan Markay

It has now been five days since Politico's Ben Smith published a powerpoint presentation created by an amalgamation of powerful left wing interest groups, conceding that two of the central arguments for passing ObamaCare - that it will lower the deficit and will reduce health care costs - have failed. "

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/41271.html

**Isn't that part of the "sell" of Obamacare? That it would reduce health care costs (they are going up in huge ways) and that the deficit will lower (it too will go up!).

Not a surprise to most of us.

Jim Dandy: FDR was a progressive and it wasn't the NEW DEAL but the RAW DEAL. His policies were the sole reason for the depression lasting as long as it did. He didn't help America, he hurt it. It's a mystery why he is so revered by some. But likely it's because his image was manipulated by forces and they myth of his presidency being a good one persists despite the facts.

Franklin D. Roosevelt's Address to Congress January 6, 1941


In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want -- which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear -- which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor-- anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

To that new order we oppose the greater conception -- the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.

Since the beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in change -- in a perpetual peaceful revolution -- a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions -- without the concentration camp or the quick-lime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.

This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women; and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose.

To that high concept there can be no end save victory

Pedro Martínez: Yes I do mention my sources. Just not all the time.. N' most people can see when I'm C&P.. just like they can see when others are doing it.

http://www.muhammad.net/other-scriptures-mainmenu-43/26-muhammad-in-the-bible/104-muhammad-in-the-old-testament.html

Here you are.. it was in my history

Tuesday: Nahhh... Implication.

(V): The post Ferris Bueller replied to was 100% copy and paste. You can't get “better” than 100%, can you? You don't even mention your source, making others believe the words are yours.

Pedro Martínez: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oShTJ90fC34

Pedro Martínez: I'm not the only one to use C&P.. in fact I use less then many.

Ferris Bueller: I agree with most of what V has to say here.

But (V) doesn't say much here. Copy and paste are his best friends.

Ferris Bueller: Bad times for Christianity. Thankfully it didn't work. As one friend once said to a JW on the door to door convert wagon... "Who are you to tell me how to believe in God?" ... One answered truthfully.. "we can't".

The likes of the Gnostics, Origen (a must read I feel) did survive thank God.. And they could never get at the Desert Fathers.

(V): Politicians depend on short memories.It struck me when the Chinese were mentioned in the Cantor propoganda video, that they would probably be very happy to see 3 trillion in taxation back in the kitty

Jim Dandy: We had tax cuts.. then they stopped. Now to pay our debt off.. which, the previous government hid the depth of .. everyone gets to pay an extra 2.5% on VAT.

My policy.. grow more food.

(V):   I wasn't planning to enter into this "debate" because I am not a scholar on the Bible or the Qu'ran.  In fact, I don't believe they are the final canons.  I agree with most of what V has to say here.  My views are Unitarian-Universalist who do not follow the traditional or Orthodox views about the Triune God.  People with my views were general cut off from the Christian debate in the 3rd Century when Constantine convened the Council of Nicea designed to form a singular religion of his state.  They declared the Triune viiew as the only legitamate view of God and branded anyone else as a heretic.  They also tossed any books in the Bible that contridicted what they called "prophesies".  People were also branded as heretics from that time on who did not believe that everyone who did not agree with their views were sent to eternal damnation.  Some of us survived, however.  Both Muslims and Christians take the latter view about their religion being the only true one, and that their Holy books are the final word make their world ripe for war over religion.  Both of their Gods descend from the birthline of Abraham, a fact which the extremist on both sides wish to delete from their history.

(V): It was fun watching McConnell try and stay on messege, while reality kept trying to rear its ugly head.

Jim Dandy: I can understand being a Republican he's moaning about Obama... but the tax cut is only a Bush pay off. To moan about 3 trillion dollars of extra income but moan about Obama spending 300 billion... where did he study maths??

Artful Dodger:   I do think Cantor & the Republicans in this video do make some sense about the debt.  I do care about it, but no one has a crystal ball.  I believe that the Administration is making some hard decisions about the spending.  Right now, they are trying to divert desaster by using gov't funds to help people who are falling through the safety net, and plug a hole in the dyke by saving things like teacher's job in poor states.  Unlike Libertarians, I believe that gov't must intervene at times.  My hope is that the deficit will start to regress as people are able to find permanent jobs.  But, I have no Crystal Ball either, & neither do Libertarians.  Unfortunately here, I think we have to live with a lot of ambiguity now.