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View Poll Results: Are You Better Off Than You Were Four Years Ago?
YES 50 52.08%
NO 46 47.92%
Voters: 96. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 09-04-2012, 07:04 PM
 
1,698 posts, read 1,818,782 times
Reputation: 777

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Quote:
Originally Posted by t206 View Post
Dont take this personally, but I don't care about your opinion of me. I'll debate the issue, but I truly do not care what you think of me is all I'm saying.

The problem with comparing foreign countries and their standards is that them doing it as a country is more on par with us doing it by state when you look at the population and even geographic size. I mean France and Italy do fairly well if you look at them, but they are pretty much the equivalent of 2-3 of our largest states lumped together when it comes to size and population. The US is way too big to try and manage healthcare for everyone from the tiny confines of DC. Same goes with education.

Besides the obvious complexity of doing it for a country like Italy (population of ~60M and 116K sq miles) vs. the US (population of ~310M and 3.9M sq. miles) there are also the huge differences in health issues, with the US having a higher rate of people with heart disease and we just generally don't take care of ourselves as well as people in the other "better performing" countries. Also, I'm sure you are well aware of these same countries with great health care having significant issues with their governments financial stability...examples like Italy, France, Spain, and Greece. It does not seem sustainable.

Just because you disagree with me politically, there is no need to paint it as me being selfish, uninformed, or oblivious. We have different views on how to best address the situation, and I have not called you dumb or selfish for disagreeing with me, so I'd appreciate that you left those implications off the table as they do not add to the debate.
When did I insult you or attack you or call you dumb or selfish? I am disagreeing with you, and I am not letting you off the hook for being inconsistent. I am sure you are a perfectly nice intelligent person. First, you said that the way other countries are handling their education and healthcare is better because they are spending less. Then I pointed out that they are regulated on the federal, not local level (and you want the local level), and now you are saying, no no, they are performing better because they are smaller and less complex and their people eat more veggies and their finances are a mess anyway. What is your final answer, and where's the evidence for it?

I'll tell you MY final answer. Everyone acts like Democrats are these hippy-dippy dreamers because they believe the government should do things, but to me, it seems like the hippy-dippy dreamers are the people who think that we're going to live in a prosperous, educated, healthy country where companies will just miraculously police themselves, where over-worked, low-paid, exhausted parents will all be totally attentive to the educational needs of their children and will be sending them to magnificent private schools once the scourge of public education is gone, where old people will be able to buy insurance to cover their very expensive healthcare needs with vouchers, where insurance companies will just magnanimously insure people who have pre-existing conditions, and once President Obama is banished from the land The Confidence Fairy will sprinkle magic fairy dust on every CEO's head and they'll hire people willy-nilly and we'll all live happily ever after because the government will be out of our hair.
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Old 09-04-2012, 07:28 PM
 
12,772 posts, read 7,954,977 times
Reputation: 4332
Quote:
Originally Posted by mateo45 View Post
Miss Cleo... is that you?!!

BTW, isn't TX the state that 'wingers always like to trot out as some sort of shining example of conservative "success"?!



Really, that's uncommon where you are? Although as a landlord myself, am not real keen on the bed-sheets-and-aluminum-foil-on-the-windows look!

BTW, would agree with Finn_Jarber (quality of renters has improved) AND floridasandy (the quality of renters ain't what it used to be), both of which depend heavily on the type of clientele you're renting to and the area. Used to have lotsa hi-tech renters in the Seattle area and usually found qualified folks within the first half dozen or so applicants.

But not long ago I relocated to rural NorCal after retirement, where the wages and economy are slim pickins, even in good times. And these days I gotta inteview at least a couple dozen applicants just to find somebody with a decent job! And as far as finding folks with "good credit", fuggedabout that one anymore!

IMHO, it's the "rust belt" phenom all over again... the hi-tech places are on the rebound, and the older, less-skilled areas are gonna take awhile (if ever) to catch up.

Seriously, no drapes or window dressings provided in the places I've ever rented. Pretty common around here....ny/nj that is. I understand your point for doing it though, makes sense.
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Old 09-04-2012, 07:50 PM
 
12,772 posts, read 7,954,977 times
Reputation: 4332
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zimar View Post
When did I insult you or attack you or call you dumb or selfish? I am disagreeing with you, and I am not letting you off the hook for being inconsistent. I am sure you are a perfectly nice intelligent person. First, you said that the way other countries are handling their education and healthcare is better because they are spending less. Then I pointed out that they are regulated on the federal, not local level (and you want the local level), and now you are saying, no no, they are performing better because they are smaller and less complex and their people eat more veggies and their finances are a mess anyway. What is your final answer, and where's the evidence for it?

I'll tell you MY final answer. Everyone acts like Democrats are these hippy-dippy dreamers because they believe the government should do things, but to me, it seems like the hippy-dippy dreamers are the people who think that we're going to live in a prosperous, educated, healthy country where companies will just miraculously police themselves, where over-worked, low-paid, exhausted parents will all be totally attentive to the educational needs of their children and will be sending them to magnificent private schools once the scourge of public education is gone, where old people will be able to buy insurance to cover their very expensive healthcare needs with vouchers, where insurance companies will just magnanimously insure people who have pre-existing conditions, and once President Obama is banished from the land The Confidence Fairy will sprinkle magic fairy dust on every CEO's head and they'll hire people willy-nilly and we'll all live happily ever after because the government will be out of our hair.
Maybe I'm wrong but this sounds like you are calling me selfish for my opinions:

Quote:
I think these are all red herring issues from people who would like to keep the status quo, or who would like to tweak the status quo to their advantage.
I think I'm very consistent with my answer. I never said that they are better BECAUSE they are spending less money, I'm saying that the fact that they are spending less money and getting better results is a problem for us. We should be able to find a way to solve these issues while spending less money, meanwhile it sounds to me like many people think we need to throw more money at the problems by taxing people more.

I see no inconsistency in what I am saying about how other countries handle things. France handling something as a country is no different to me than if (assuming this made geographic sense, but its just and easy example) Texas and California got together and handled their own education/health care independent from the Federal government. My point is that it is easier for other countries to do it at their Federal level because they have many fewer people to deal with, and are less geographically diverse. There is plenty of evidence to show that France and Italy are a fraction of the size of this country and instead compare better to a small handful of our states. It is also not an illogical position to take that by sending our tax money through several levels of government before anything is done with it, diminishes the value of the initial investment, you are basically adding unnecessary overhead costs by not keeping it local.

While the eating/exercising thing is not a major driver in my actual argument, I did throw it in there because its just a simple fact...we are a very unhealthy nation that doesn't like to exercise and eat well, and that drives up medical expenses.

As for your hippy-dippy world, you express frustration that you think that people view you that way and then you present an argument that casts "the other side" in the same light, its not productive. To address part of your scenario though, I think we lack any kind of serious enforcement for lots of financial issues and that leads to some of the major problems. We have regulations that need to be put back in place and some removed. Our regulatory system focuses too much on adding regulations and not enforcing them. I mean the SEC enforcement was literally too busy surfing the web for porn when they were repeatedly warned about Madoff, yet somehow the vast majority of people think we need MORE regulations to catch things like that? I honestly believe that the major reason our elected officials want to add regulation is because it serves the purpose of adding more government employees and improving the employment situation, and you get little to no value out of that spend of money if thats the case.

Also, the government getting involved in the creation of the HMO and essentially linking health insurance to your job is another cause to some of our problems. We seem to be conditioned to expect the federal government to "fix things" when in reality it seems that they tinker in the natural supply/demand/innovation process and it works short term so it creates an misconception that it was working at some point and then someone (ie. "the other party") came along and broke it, so we better put more of it in place.
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Old 09-04-2012, 08:13 PM
 
1,698 posts, read 1,818,782 times
Reputation: 777
Quote:
Originally Posted by t206 View Post
Maybe I'm wrong but this sounds like you are calling me selfish for my opinions:



I think I'm very consistent with my answer. I never said that they are better BECAUSE they are spending less money, I'm saying that the fact that they are spending less money and getting better results is a problem for us. We should be able to find a way to solve these issues while spending less money, meanwhile it sounds to me like many people think we need to throw more money at the problems by taxing people more.

I see no inconsistency in what I am saying about how other countries handle things. France handling something as a country is no different to me than if (assuming this made geographic sense, but its just and easy example) Texas and California got together and handled their own education/health care independent from the Federal government. My point is that it is easier for other countries to do it at their Federal level because they have many fewer people to deal with, and are less geographically diverse. There is plenty of evidence to show that France and Italy are a fraction of the size of this country and instead compare better to a small handful of our states. It is also not an illogical position to take that by sending our tax money through several levels of government before anything is done with it, diminishes the value of the initial investment, you are basically adding unnecessary overhead costs by not keeping it local.

While the eating/exercising thing is not a major driver in my actual argument, I did throw it in there because its just a simple fact...we are a very unhealthy nation that doesn't like to exercise and eat well, and that drives up medical expenses.

As for your hippy-dippy world, you express frustration that you think that people view you that way and then you present an argument that casts "the other side" in the same light, its not productive. To address part of your scenario though, I think we lack any kind of serious enforcement for lots of financial issues and that leads to some of the major problems. We have regulations that need to be put back in place and some removed. Our regulatory system focuses too much on adding regulations and not enforcing them. I mean the SEC enforcement was literally too busy surfing the web for porn when they were repeatedly warned about Madoff, yet somehow the vast majority of people think we need MORE regulations to catch things like that? I honestly believe that the major reason our elected officials want to add regulation is because it serves the purpose of adding more government employees and improving the employment situation, and you get little to no value out of that spend of money if thats the case.

Also, the government getting involved in the creation of the HMO and essentially linking health insurance to your job is another cause to some of our problems. We seem to be conditioned to expect the federal government to "fix things" when in reality it seems that they tinker in the natural supply/demand/innovation process and it works short term so it creates an misconception that it was working at some point and then someone (ie. "the other party") came along and broke it, so we better put more of it in place.
No, I was definitely NOT referring to you in the quoted text, I was referring to leaders in the Republican party who I believe are using the gridlock and delay to benefit their supporters. We're little fish here, our only power is our votes.

I don't understand what geographic diversity has to do with healthcare and education. Europe is not one big mega-state because there are huge differences between the countries, in language, in culture, etc. I've lived in several places in the U.S., and in most important facets, everything is sort of uniform, even between cities and rural places. Maybe in education there are some parts of the country that are under additional strain because they have more children who are not fluent in English, but that's all I can think of. Geographic diversity makes a difference in infrastructure, like the Northeast has far different needs from other places in the country as far as developing transit, etc. Otherwise, best practices are best practices. Part of the reason is government involvement in certain areas, for example, you can argue that the American diet is so crappy because of corn subsidies. I wouldn't mind stopping that. However, you still haven't provided proof that localized education and healthcare would be better or more efficient. I think that this idea is another fallacy. All I think would happen is that you'd have wildly uneven standards throughout the country, and that's what we already have. It would also be sort of horrible for people in medical professions to have to deal with localized systems of healthcare, they go through enough aggravation just moving from state to state and getting licensing, much less dealing with a brand new system. That's just replicating a lot of bureaucracy, I don't understand why you think that would be so efficient. Or teachers, they have to deal with something different in every state too. They must love that.

THE POINT IS, I guess, that I think that the federal government can and should do more, and that things that aren't working should be aggressively addressed and dealt with, and you think that the feds should do less, and that things that aren't working should be aggressively addressed and dealt with. The powers that be want us to argue about the first part forever and ever so that they never have to do actual work and get to the second part.
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Old 09-04-2012, 08:49 PM
 
Location: On the "Left Coast", somewhere in "the Land of Fruits & Nuts"
8,854 posts, read 10,430,759 times
Reputation: 6670
Quote:
Originally Posted by A&M_Indie_08 View Post
I don't know, Nancy Pelosi? Is that you?

Texas was pretty good to me and everyone else I know....... and I know many people of many different races and ethnicities......

I do enjoy your amusing anecdotes and fairy tales though
Then what are you complaining about (aside from having a POTUS of a "different race and ethnicity")...?
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Old 09-04-2012, 09:56 PM
 
Location: Montgomery Village
4,112 posts, read 4,466,434 times
Reputation: 1711
Quote:
Originally Posted by A&M_Indie_08 View Post
No, I can see through certain posters..... there are some that are doing better, but as any poll has shown..... many more are worse off

With that extra cash from doing better, you might want to purchase something to help with comprehension..

I do fine regardless of who is in power as well by the way....... just hate to see so man people suffering
Um sure? I guess you have the foresight to see through the internet...ok. As for any poll, it shows that more people are doing better than worse. And that is right here with people you actually converse with across the country. Yet, you dismissed them as fake democrat accounts. If Obama wins in November are you gonna blame imaginary voters too? Just because reality and facts stack up against your beliefs doesn't make them the wrong ones.
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Old 09-05-2012, 12:03 AM
 
12,772 posts, read 7,954,977 times
Reputation: 4332
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zimar View Post
No, I was definitely NOT referring to you in the quoted text, I was referring to leaders in the Republican party who I believe are using the gridlock and delay to benefit their supporters. We're little fish here, our only power is our votes.

I don't understand what geographic diversity has to do with healthcare and education. Europe is not one big mega-state because there are huge differences between the countries, in language, in culture, etc. I've lived in several places in the U.S., and in most important facets, everything is sort of uniform, even between cities and rural places. Maybe in education there are some parts of the country that are under additional strain because they have more children who are not fluent in English, but that's all I can think of. Geographic diversity makes a difference in infrastructure, like the Northeast has far different needs from other places in the country as far as developing transit, etc. Otherwise, best practices are best practices. Part of the reason is government involvement in certain areas, for example, you can argue that the American diet is so crappy because of corn subsidies. I wouldn't mind stopping that. However, you still haven't provided proof that localized education and healthcare would be better or more efficient. I think that this idea is another fallacy. All I think would happen is that you'd have wildly uneven standards throughout the country, and that's what we already have. It would also be sort of horrible for people in medical professions to have to deal with localized systems of healthcare, they go through enough aggravation just moving from state to state and getting licensing, much less dealing with a brand new system. That's just replicating a lot of bureaucracy, I don't understand why you think that would be so efficient. Or teachers, they have to deal with something different in every state too. They must love that.

THE POINT IS, I guess, that I think that the federal government can and should do more, and that things that aren't working should be aggressively addressed and dealt with, and you think that the feds should do less, and that things that aren't working should be aggressively addressed and dealt with. The powers that be want us to argue about the first part forever and ever so that they never have to do actual work and get to the second part.
We have very opposite philosophies, and I respect your view. I will say that the above bolded thing we probably can both agree 100% on....which is one of the reasons that I will probably be voting for Gary Johnson.
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Old 09-05-2012, 06:10 AM
 
Location: Florida
77,012 posts, read 47,481,489 times
Reputation: 14806
Quote:
Originally Posted by floridasandy View Post
i live in florida and i know that what they are saving in property taxes they are paying out in insurance.

i just wish that we had people who would actually enforce the laws that are on the books and, if they don't like them, then change them-not just ignore the rules that don't work for them personally.

i know people who drained all the equity out of their homes, using their house as an ATM to fund their lifestyle, and now those same people are whining about getting evicted-and i find that interesting.

recently, i was bidding on a house (with me offering cash) and the other person getting a mortgage. the lot was terrific, but the house (which had been a beautiful house) now had mold issues from sitting vacant so long and from the previous owner being a jackass when he got foreclosed on and tearing the house up out of spite.

anyhow, the homeowner who purchased it with no money down just happened to have a surprise fire within 2 days of purchase and now has a beautiful lot and will probably be getting some insurance money to build another house on the property.

some of us still try and play by the rules, but it is getting increasingly difficult anymore.
Walking away from a house is not exactly breaking the rules, since there is no law against it. If you worry about the debt, then I suggest you stop looking to Mitt Romney, or Obama or some other politician to solve such problems. Buying real estate actually puts you in a very good position to survive such issues. I do not worry about it all that much, but at the same time I know it could become a problem, and I do what I can to put myself in a situation to survive anything.

Just so that you know, thanks to the interest rates, servicing our 16T debt today is no more difficult than servicing 9T in 2007. And the balance it not a problem, but the debt to GDP ratio could become a problem, and the only realistic way to combat that problem is to increase the GDP and thus reduce the ratio.
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Old 09-05-2012, 07:20 AM
 
1,176 posts, read 1,816,528 times
Reputation: 260
Quote:
Originally Posted by Finn_Jarber View Post
If you are a homeowner, you should be happy with these rates, and if you own multiple properties, you should be VERY happy renting out the others. This is the best time in memory to be hunting for bargains and many people will stike it rich during times like this. Investing your money on a savings account to accumulate interest is probably the worst thing you can do.
I saw somewhere that 40% of homeowners have no mortgage, so yes, the majority have a mortgage but 40% is a sizable proportion who have taken a major haircut and many people believe that it will be many years before their losses are regained. Add to that the people who are unable to refinance because they are so far underwater. A relative has a home that is in one of the most hard hit areas; can't refinance because house is only worth half of original mortgage. They are still hanging in there with no intention of bailing because feel an obligation to honor their word.
On the subject of drapes. it reminded me of when I provided non- custom drapes in a rental. The renter complained to my husband that she didn't like the drapes. I told him to tell her to buy her own if she didn't like what we provided!
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Old 09-05-2012, 07:34 AM
 
Location: Florida
77,012 posts, read 47,481,489 times
Reputation: 14806
Quote:
Originally Posted by VMH2507 View Post
I saw somewhere that 40% of homeowners have no mortgage, so yes, the majority have a mortgage but 40% is a sizable proportion who have taken a major haircut and many people believe that it will be many years before their losses are regained.
Most people who have paid off their mortgage, bought their houses a long time ago, for a lot less than what they are worth now, so there is no "loss".
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