Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
livinincali
Participant[quote=ltsdd]
If anything, a depression will widen the wealth gap even more. The richest will still have plenty to eat and still have plenty left to hoard up even more assets on the cheap.[/quote]It didn’t before in the 1930’s during the great depression. The wealth gap stayed pretty much flat during that period of time. Asset price destruction is the only thing that has meaningfully shrunk the wealth gap in the past 100 years. I’m not saying it’s a good solution and doesn’t come with severe consequences but for those of you advocating that’s the biggest problem with society I’ve offered a solution that is proven to work.
Alternatively you could confiscate assets via some sort of wealth tax, but the only examples of that seem to be in countries that move from capitalism to communism/socialism. I don’t know that a move like that would be any better in terms of economic consequences.
I do know that beating around the edge of the bush with minimum wage increases and financial transaction taxes isn’t going to have a meaningful impact. It might help but probably only in bending he growth curve down a bit. The wealth gap will still be getting larger just at a slower pace. Maybe you could do enough to manage to hold the wealth gap at the current levels, although at some point you may trigger asset price destruction with your policy implementation. Set a financial transaction tax too high and stock market crashes because of it.
Realistically we’re bound to have another asset price crash sometime in the future. Maybe the correct course of action when that happens is to just let it play out on it’s own. Let the bad debt be written off. Let the people that made malinvestments go bust. Don’t have the fed setting interests rate at -5% and buying all kinds of bad debt just to save the bankers millions and billions. I think if you let that scenario play out you’d have decades of strong growth after the pain is over. Unfortunately if you are in your 60’s now and have significant assets to fund your retirement now, a booming economy 10+ years from now after you lost 50% of your wealth, isn’t very appealing.
Participant[quote=FlyerInHi]The New Deal and tax policies reduced the wealrh gap and provided opportunities. Before that, the depression and lack of social safety made millions of destitutes.[/quote]
Not really. Most of the wealth gap came off in 1929-1930 before those policies came to be. Wealth gap was pretty flat as new deal policies came online. It shrunk again going into world war 2, could have been some lingering effect from new deal policies. Look at the chart below. When were the significant changes downward in the wealth gap. Not when taxes were being changed but when stock markets/asset prices collapsed. High marginal taxes rates may have stopped the wealth gap from growing during the 1940 to 1980 period, but you had a war and rebuild after the war and a bear market for 2 decades during that time so maybe it’s just a coincidence.
ParticipantI thought the liberal left wan’t extreme but apparently writing Trump’s name in chalk now constitutes offensive hate speech.
[quote]
Conservative students at Emory University are planning a free-speech event for next week, after an outcry on campus over messages supporting Donald Trump.Students woke up Monday morning to find messages written in chalk all over campus, in support of Donald Trump. That afternoon, a group of 40 to 50 students protested. According to the student newspaper, the Emory Wheel, they shouted in the quad, “You are not listening! Come speak to us, we are in pain!” and then students moved into the administration building calling out, “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.
[/quote]Participant[quote=AN]Do you think that tax policy would achieve that? Something tells me those who are in the top 10% will still continue to do well in that kind of tax environment while those depending on minimum wage would still be doing poorly. We all understand the power of compound interest, so, I think this tax proposal wouldn’t slow down the widening wealth gap. I think you’d need to be much more forceful to truly close the gap, if that’s your goal.[/quote]
Tax policy might work to a degree, but it would be a lot easier to just let asset prices crash and not do anything when the next bubble pops. Yeah that might suck for your 401K and your retirement plans but it would certainly shrink the wealth gap. Look at any wealth gap chart and it pretty much mirrors what’s going on in the stock market. When was the wealth gap so large like this? That would be 1929. What happened next that shrunk the wealth gap? When this problem started 35 years ago where was the stock market?
Participant[quote=joec]In CA, I think United Healthcare has the smallest share of customers out of all the exchange insurance companies…
If they left, maybe they lose 1% of customers? It could also be a cost cutting move since they aren’t really playing in the state anyways…
That said, I think Blue Shield made the most in 2014 from a latimes article I read…so some companies were able to make money, of course, Blue Shield and Blue Cross/Anthem are bad IMO.[/quote]
There’s been other defections. Blue Cross left New Mexico this year and they had half of the enrolled population. There’s no longer any PPO plans in the Houston area. There’s less offerings in the Platinum and Gold plans. I think it’s too early to say how things shake out but it wouldn’t surprise me if you end up with one provider/plan choices in some markets, and possibly no provider at all. Or options so limited than they are kinda worthless.
Right now you have the most experienced insurance companies operating in the space, if they leave because they can’t make enough money, then you might be left with no providers or inexperienced providers that fail anyways. It’s certainly the biggest risk for the the law. It’s more of a risk than the republicans winning the white house.
Participant[quote=SK in CV]
Every plan was grandfathered. No plan had to be cancelled because of Obamacare. Not a single one. Fact is, almost no insurance plans ever survived more than 2 years. Insurance companies constantly change them. And that goes for both the individual market and the employer market.
[/quote]While technically true no plan had to be canceled, the authors of the bill knew they would be. Insurance providers typically treat their plans as 12 month contracts and make changes every year. If the insurance companies keep a grandfathered plan they couldn’t make any changes to out of pocket costs, deductibles, what was covered, etc. Their new plans were required to insure people with pre-existing conditions and those people were obviously going to be net beneficiaries, so they needed to get as many healthy people into those plans that they could. It made financial sense to cancel those old plans. The government and CA insurance regulators wanted those plans canceled. It was obviously the goal of the law to get everybody on full coverage type plans. By definition they were going to cost more because they included coverage for more things, and they were required to include people with pre-existing conditions.
Participant[quote=SK in CV]
Unlikely to happen. Under the ACA, insurance companies have no incentive to get costs under control, except to remain competitive with other insurance companies. There are no limits as to what they can charge, so long as they use the statutory percentage for health care.There are no new sudden cost increases under the ACA. There is a continuation of cost increases that dates back decades. And that includes both costs of medical care and premium costs. There were safeguards in place under the original law, to allow small insurance co-ops to succeed during the first few years, in case of catastrophic losses. Those safeguards were removed, guaranteeing failure of some of these coops. But the large insurance companies are doing just fine in most states. In states they’re not doing fine, they’ll figure it out. Their business is medical insurance. They’re unlikely to abandon controlled markets for their products.[/quote]
Of course there are costs increases under the ACA. Having to insure people with pre-existing conditions and having to create plans that insure things beyond what their previous plans insured both increased costs. There were a variety of people that were forced to change their health insurance plan because it did not meet the requirements specified in the law. For many of those people health insurance became more expensive rather than less expensive. I’m sure BG can write a novel about it.
In addition they cannot just raise premiums to whatever they want. They have to get approval from regulatory bodies. Even if they could raise the prices to whatever they’d like eventually it becomes too expensive and healthy people stop signing up. Why is United Health considering leaving the exchanges if everything is fine and they’ll just figure it out. I think they are figuring it out. It might be more profitable to stick to corporate health plans and ditch offering plans on the exchanges.
Participant[quote=FlyerInHi]
Gay marriage, and abortion and Obamacare are here to stay with no chance of going back… Maybe a little on abortion in some states. On economics, some deficit spending, and not a balanced budget, is the consensus. A debt level at a portion of the economy is healthy. Nobody, not even Trump will deport unauthorized residents.
Those are all dead end issues that will lead to disappointment on the right.For progressives, however, there is a path forward. Universal health care with some form of single payer, combined with private health insurance choices, will happen. It’s just a matter of time. Gay marriage will become part of the fabric of American life, etc… On social issues, public opinion is progressive. We will move ahead sooner or later.
[/quote]Aren’t you contradicting yourself in these 2 paragraphs.
First you say Obamacare is here to stay then you say we’re going to have universal health coverage. Wouldn’t that mean Obamacare is getting replaced. As I see it Obamacare will likely cease to function if they can’t get costs under control. There’s nothing that forces an insurance company to operate in the exchanges and if costs continue to rise and healthy individuals drop plans then the insurance companies will just stop offering plans in various markets. It might end up worse than before. People used to be able to buy some sort of stripped down/catastrophic plan. That could be replaced by a situation where they can’t buy any plan at all because no insurance company offers any in their market.Participant[quote=FlyerInHi]
In the recent context of history, it’s really hard to see democratic positions as “extreme”. Would going back to Clinton years tax rates be considered extreme?
[/quote]The issue with measuring extremism is it’s relative to your own personal beliefs. If you’re pretty far left you won’t view any left leaning policies as extreme. In addition you will find more conservative policies to be extreme in contrast to your own views.
Take for example a wedding photographer that finds two men kissing offensive or something worse. In some people’s minds it’s perfectly fine for a gay couple to force that photographer to photograph that wedding under threat of discrimination lawsuit. It would be pretty extreme if I could force that photographer to take nude pics of a fat ugly chick. The photographer might find both things equally offensive but in one case we can probably agree that it would be pretty extreme and in the other we might not. It’s all relative to your own point of view.
If somebody suggested that all private property held as rentals should be taken over by the government so they could set the prices at affordable levels some of you might not view that as being extreme. The reality of such a proposal would be a significant step to outright communism, which most people would find extreme.
ParticipantI don’t see anything like that right now. Average rate for a 30 year is just under 4 and lowest rates are bunched up around 3.625. I don’t know how you get 2.86 unless it’s not really a 30 year fixed. 15 year fixed would be around 2.8. Some sort of ARM product might be around those levels too, but I don’t see 30 year fixed at those levels.
ParticipantDid you know St. Patrick’s was a dry holiday in Ireland until 1970.
Aside from the color green, the activity most associated with St. Patrick’s Day is drinking. However, Irish law, from 1903 to 1970, declared St. Patrick’s Day a religious observance for the entire country meaning that all pubs were shut down for the day. That meant no beer, not even the green kind, for public celebrants. The law was overturned in 1970, when St. Patrick’s was reclassified as a national holiday – allowing the taps to flow freely once again.
ParticipantOne of the problems with racism is it can often be used as an excuse for failing to win some opportunity. For example three people interview for the same job and one person gets the job. Two others lose out but they aren’t told why in any particular detail. Just that they chose to hire someone else. It could be because they had a better resume, it could be they were a better fit for the company, it could be communication skill, it could nearly be anything but those that lose out on that job always have the convenient excuse of discrimination. It was because I was Asian/Black/Hispanic. It was because I was too old. This Asian landlord wouldn’t rent to me because I have crap credit, but I think it’s because he hates white people.
People don’t know the rational or thought process of another person’s decisions, but they can always blame it on racism or discrimination. A lot of people get ahead by their social relationships to people that are already ahead. They get selected over somebody else for a favorable opportunity because they know somebody rather than their qualification. People consciously or subconsciously will favor their friends/family/acquaintances or even people that look and act like them versus people that don’t. I don’t know that you can really change that dynamic, even if you had a computer algorithm that was objective based purely on ability, you could end up with a team of employees that doesn’t work well together.
Participant[quote=enron_by_the_sea]If I were a Trump supporter, I will worry that his first deal after the election would be to sell me out ..[/quote]
Trump might sell me out. I know Hillary will.
As for a running mate probably someone moderate and safe that’s well known in a purple state. Maybe governor John Hickenlooper of Colorado or Tom Wolf of Pennslyvania. I can’t think of a household name unless you go with somebody like Bloomberg but he’s gone from democrat to republican to independent so that would probably piss off the democratic party.
Participant[quote=zk]
I agree with you on this.The problem is that they’ll need help. And who’s going to help them? I think the government should, but they won’t. The government would have to say, “your culture is fucked up.” And the government won’t say that.[/quote]
Only problem with saying that is you get labeled a racist. If Trump said something like that, the main stream media and people on this board would be saying, see that proves he’s a racist.
-
AuthorPosts
