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livinincali
Participant[quote=SK in CV]
SS benefits and other welfare benefits are not the same. SS benefits are specifically addressed in the 14th amendment as are other federal pension programs. SNAP and WIC payments could stop. SS and other federal pensions can’t without violating the law. It is the exact same violation as not paying interest on notes and bonds or not paying treasury bills when due.I don’t think there is any logic whatsoever in arguing that the courts would see inaction by congress as a congressional act. Social Security, until changed, doesn’t need periodic appropriations. The trust fund is solvent, possibly even if interest payments stop. The way it’s funded is a permanent appropriation.[/quote]
The first burden of proof would be is social security protected by section 4 of the 14th amendment. Social security was created after the 14th amendment and I’m not aware of any SC ruling that specifically states the current SS law is guaranteed under that section. Maybe there is something in the Nelson ruling that states the courts used the second part of section 4 to arrive at that ruling. SS is protected but in this particular case the plaintiff was disqualified by the rebellion clause. It also possible they didn’t bother with the establishing the burden of proof that SS was protected because the rebellion clause applied anyways so that question didn’t need to be answered. That would be more typical of a supreme court ruling. They don’t usually bother establishing anything beyond the bare minimum.
Of course this is probably moot because congress is going to do something. It would be interesting to see what treasury actually would do if things don’t get resolved. Would they break the debt ceiling using section 4 as justification. Would they bend the rues by issuing high yield bonds with nominal face values. Would they try the trillion dollar coin idea although that also seems to be against a different congress law. Would they prioritize payment or would they actually call the bluff and default on existing debt.
Participant[quote=SK in CV][quote=livinincali][quote=SK in CV]So without any legal basis, China gets paid before SS and other federal pension recipients?[/quote]
Social security is the easiest one to cut from a legal perspective. Your social security statement says social security can be changed with an act of congress.
Work already performed probably has legal standing as a debt, but I think they can probably pay that as well. They can also say cease and desist all future work and if that order wasn’t obeyed then obviously they could withhold payment.[/quote]
Who is going to vote to cut SS benefits?[/quote]
I don’t think they’ll vote to cut SS benefits but it’s possible a court would rule that when congress shut down government and refused to raise the debt ceiling it was an act of congress. Therefore SS benefits can be cut if the treasury chooses to go down that path and it’s the easiest path from a legal perspective. There’s already some wording in the SS benefit law that demands cuts when the trust fund runs out, maybe you can make a legal argument that the trust fund already did run out as it’s nothing more than non marketable IOUs.
I’m not saying the government will do that but I am saying that when push comes to shove SS and other welfare benefits probably have the lowest standing in terms of have to be paid. Congress defunding those programs does not constitute a breach of contract in my eyes. We didn’t vote to end social security but we didn’t allocate any money to pay for it.
ParticipantWhy don’t you just figure out the interest paid from an amortization schedule. You probably know when you originally got the loan what the interest rate was and the total balance. Just plug those numbers in a amortization calculator like the one found here (http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/mortgages/mortgage-calculator.aspx) and click on the amortization schedule and figure out the interest paid for the year in question. It’s pretty simple to do the math and it will be close enough.
Participant[quote=SK in CV]So without any legal basis, China gets paid before SS and other federal pension recipients?[/quote]
Social security is the easiest one to cut from a legal perspective. Your social security statement says social security can be changed with an act of congress.
Work already performed probably has legal standing as a debt, but I think they can probably pay that as well. They can also say cease and desist all future work and if that order wasn’t obeyed then obviously they could withhold payment.
Participant[quote=joec]
I currently pay over 1k per month for me and my family. Coverage is really crappy for my spouse, but she still has maternity on her plan for now. With all the new plans, it’s included.What’s really troubling is like getting a mortgage, if you’re self employed, even if you’re willing to pay up the wazoo for say maternity, no insurance company even offered it. When I was searching for insurance (self-employed), all over California, all of 1 company had it and it was in a really crappy plan (which we use now).
[/quote]So you paid $12K/year for a plan with maternity because you had an addition to family. I assume you were worried that the hospital was going to charge 10s of thousands of dollars to have that child even if it was a standard delivery. Why does it cost 20, 30, 40, 50K for a relatively standard baby delivery procedure. 50 years ago it cost a couple hundred dollars that pretty much anybody could come up with out of pocket. Even with inflation it might cost a couple thousand dollars in today’s money. Why do you need to pay $12K year to cover something that should cost a couple grand. We know that is doesn’t because the hospital is probably billing north of $20K.
But I will agree that for some individuals Obamacare is going to be good. For others it’s going to not be so good. Your particular circumstances landed you on the good side of Obamacare. There will be others on the bad side of Obamacare. Some single male somewhere is helping you pay for your affordable maternity coverage.
Participant[quote=FlyerInHi]
The evidence is that single payer universal health care works very well. It’s no impediment to patients to seek fee for service care, outside the system, if they are willing and able to pay.[/quote]Would it work well in those other countries if the American for profit system hadn’t developed a bunch of new drugs and medical technologies that they were able to access without paying the R&D costs. We don’t really know.
Socialistic policies tend to lack innovation and creativity. They tend to be able to deliver a service but not the best service. Obviously you’d probably rather be treated in a US hospital than a Cuban one even though Cuba has one of the highest ratios of doctors per patients in the world.
America has a public education system that is highly socialized and it performs pretty poorly. It provides education but most would agree it doesn’t exactly do it as well as many other countries. At the same time we have private College education that is the best in the world.
Pure capitalism means some people get left behind. Pure socialism means nobody gets ahead. Finding the right balance is difficult but it seems to me that leaning more capitalist tends to be better for society as a whole. See Germany vs France or the UK vs Italy. See the US vs Russia 30 years ago.
Participant[quote=FlyerInHi]
Single payer is not socialist. For socialism to take hold, we.d have to nationalize major industries. I don’t see that happening anytime soon.[/quote]How is it not more socialistic then what we have right now. You would replace all private insurance providers with a single government run and controlled insurance provider. Granted that doesn’t mean the government will or won’t take the next step and socialize the providers of medical services. Socialism is something that is done slowly over time with increasing socialistic policies.
Eventually a socialistic policy will come a long and take your assets. Maybe it will be rental properties. Government will dictate how much you can charge for rent or that you have to sell your property to the tenant at a government set rate. If I take your rental properties and give them to the tenants is that socialism? Are you ok with that because it’s for the greater good?
Participant[quote=SK in CV]
Who is it that would drive us towards socialism if the republican party died? There’s one socialist in congress. Would you expect a party of one to be able to control both houses and the administration?[/quote]An unchecked democratic party would certainly go down a more socialistic path then we are currently on. Redistribution in the name of fairness would be the primary policy and people would likely support them until they got to your assets.
One of the first things they’d probably do is implement a socialistic policy of single payer health care. Are you going to argue that a single payer health system isn’t a socialistic type policy?
October 10, 2013 at 9:27 AM in reply to: OT: And you thought public employee unions were out of hand #766654Participant[quote=CA renter]
A neutral government represents neither capital or labor; but it can represent one side more strongly if the govt has been taken over. Who do you think is controlling the government? Take a look at the following material and tell me, with a straight face, that labor is controlling the government:
[/quote]Public sector employees and big capital are both using government to take resources from everybody else. I don’t like it when capital uses government to take resources. I also don’t like it when public sector employee union use government to take resources.
My point being is the public sector employee union relationship with government is exactly the same as capital’s relationship with government. Both are looking to use the power of the government to take resources from everybody else.
Participant[quote=FlyerInHi]
I think that the democratic process is at stake here. Keep in mind that, in the future, that same kind of shutdown tactic could be employed against a Republican president.[/quote]I actually hope the republican party dies at this point. The resulting socialist utopia should be an interesting place to live. I figured we were going to go down that path anyways, might as well do it sooner than later. Let’s experience our socialist utopia so we can see how great is really is or isn’t.
Participant[quote=SK in CV]
Who was it that lied and created those expectations that it would be free or very cheap? I would argue that it was never proponents of the legislation. Though I would also argue that $100 a month IS very cheap.[/quote]Does it matter. I think pretty much everyone would admit we didn’t really know what it was going to cost until the exchanges came out. What it actually costs for each individual varies quite a bit so it’s difficult to know how affordable it is or isn’t for each individual. One thing we do know is that many uninsured are due to a preexisting condition where this law will certainly help make insurance affordable for them.
Based on Kaiser it looks like the typical 28 year old waitress would be expected to pay about $200/month out of pocket after subsides. Looks like they assume people have 5-10% of their annual budget available to pay for premiums before even factoring in max out of pocket expenses. For somebody living paycheck to paycheck 8% of their gross seems pretty high to me.
Participant[quote=FlyerInHi]
ACA less popular with whom? The website problems only affect those who want to sign up. Notwithstanding the sign up problems, people who now qualify are still better off since they will eventually be able to sign up.
[/quote]Well potentially less popular with a 29 year healthy waitress that wasn’t expecting to see a brand new out of pocket expense of $100/month for a health care service they haven’t had to use. Affordable is somewhat subjective. Because it’s often is comparison to something else. Say you never shopped for health insurance or don’t think you need it. You might get sticker shock when you see it costs 100 or 200 or whatever amount of money per month depending on your circumstances. What if you where lead to believe it would be free or very cheap? What do you say when if isn’t anywhere close to your expectations?
Obviously one of the admitted issues is that in order to make health insurance affordable for those with pre-existing conditions you have to get a bunch of healthy people that will in effect be subsidizing them. The net benefit for one particular class of people is a net loss for another group of people. How cheap could young healthy people get coverage if they were only included in the risk pool of other young healthy people.
[quote]
So why don’t Republicans run on the reforms they want and let voters decide the next election cycle?
[/quote]The tea party republicans did that in 2010 and won on a platform of fiscal conservatism. They seem to be the primary reason the shutdown continues. Attempting to honor that pledge to the people that elected them. Granted they are a minority, but a lot of people think the government should reduce it’s deficit and eventually start paying down the debt. Of course one you start talking about lines items to cut or taxes to increase nobody likes what it would take to actually balance a budget.
October 9, 2013 at 7:48 AM in reply to: OT: And you thought public employee unions were out of hand #766559Participant[quote=CA renter]
The links show how capital will band together to gain more money/power, and this money/power is being siphoned directly from labor. It is imperative that labor band together as a counterbalance to the power of capital.
[/quote]Public sector unions are often deemed to be the most powerful labor unions so when they square off against government are they really fighting against capital. Does the government equate to capital? Do public sector labor unions demand that pay increases come directly from increased taxes on capital or do they not really care where government gets the money.
Participant[quote=FlyerInHi]Livin, the Republicans said it would be a disaster, but then they said they needed to stop obamacare before the population became addicted to it. Addicted to a disaster.
So was the defund movement good or bad politics?[/quote]
The republicans are morons for sayings that. It doesn’t make any sense. There’s things that people really like in the ACA, stuff like pre-existing condition coverage, young adults being able to stay on their parents policies, etc. The thing they don’t like is how much it’s going to cost them. A lot of people thought it was going to be free or super cheap and it just isn’t by most measures.
I was listening to NPR this morning and they had the CEO from Scripps Hospital on this morning and he said the number one question their call center was receiving was how to I sign up for my “Free” Obamacare coverage.
Until just recently we didn’t know what the costs were and now that we know the ACA is becoming a lot less popular. The publicans probably should have passed a 6 week bill and waited for the public to become discontent with the costs of the ACA and then pushed for defunding. It would have been a much more popular move 6 weeks down the road.
That said the republicans had a piss poor strategy and it will likely cost them. I’m still waiting for the day I can vote for a fiscally responsible candidate that isn’t looking to garner my vote on some emotional charged issue like gay marriage, abortion, legalizing drugs, immigration. That stuff should be the last of our worries right now.
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