(02-14-2010 03:45 PM)RobertN Wrote: (02-14-2010 02:34 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: Is this sign of the beast/antchrist stuff nutty? I think so.
Is it any nuttier than believing that Obamacare is truly going to be deficit neutral?
Or thinking that the "stimulus" is going to create millions of jobs? Or that it alredy did?
Or that thinking that there will be no adverse impact on people making less than $250,000 a year from various proposed new or increased taxes?
Nope.
I am glad you think that the beast/anti-christ stuff is nutty(I am sure the good Dr. Torch doesn't think it is nutty). Of course, your other comments are also quite funny. There is no such thing as Obamacare(he didn't propose any legislation-the congress did). So what is nutty is your saying Obamacare in the first place. If you are talking about the current bill, I believe that it was found to be deficit neutral. For the second part, many Republicans have said that they believe it would or actually created/saved jobs. Look it up. See how many Republicans are holding up big "Publishers Clearinghouse" type checks for projects using stimulus money. Third, sure there will be an effect. It will help balance the budget and hopefully pay down part of the debt. As for hurting those that make over 250,000, I suppose they would put less money in Swiss bank accounts.
Are you saying that Congress drafted the health care legislation out of the blue without regard to Obama's campaign promises? If not, then yes there is something called Obamacare. Both houses voted on health care bills without having read them. What they voted on is Obamacare.
As for the current bill being deficit neutral, nothing can be "found to be" anything in advance. You can only make assumptions (which may or may not be realized) and prepare projections based upon those assumptions. There are projections that have been claimed by proponents of the legislation to indicate deficit neutrality. But if you actually read the reports instead of relying on spin from highly partisan politicians, you find that the assumptions required to get us there are ludicrously flawed. That the ten year forecast breaks even by including ten years of tax revenues and six years of expenditures is well documented. That's the kind of accounting that landed Enron and Worldcom in bankruptcy and various of their executives in jail. That the projection for years 11-20 breaks even by assuming expenditure cuts that are widely agreed to be unlikely is also well documented. On the revenue side, the CBO letter to Reid regarding the senate bill, for example, makes it clear that (1) to break even they are counting on $35 billion from the tax on Cadillac plans in year eleven, increasing at 10-15% per year thereafter, or half a trillion dollars in increased revenues during years 11-20, but (2) the most likely case is that those plans will be tailored to skirt those taxes, producing virtually zero revenues. Finally, CBO has a pretty consistent track record of underestimating costs of social programs (compare, for example, Medicare to their projected costs). The idea that the currently pending heath care bills are likely to be deficit neutral is simply a lie; if you are too dumb to see that, then Obama is hoping most Americans are as dumb as you are--or take so little effort to actually read things that they can easily be fooled.
I'm not a republican, so what republicans have said means nothing to me. Per the best numbers I can find, when the "stimulus" was passed, we had about 12 million unemployed. Now that number has increased to roughly 15 million, along with about 1 million more who have abandoned the job market. Bottom line is that we are about 4 million jobs worse off. If you have different numbers, feel free to post them. I think it is very likely that maybe 700,000 short-term government make-work jobs have been created. These will all go away when the "stimulus" money runs out, very likely triggering a second dip. But the worst news is that at the same time, in order to be 4 million jobs worse off, we must have lost 4.7 million productive, long-term private sector jobs. If the "stimulus" is to accept credit for those jobs created, it must also accept at least some of the blame for the jobs lost. We are moving investment from the private sector to the federal government at an unprecedented rate. Expecting to do that without costing private sector jobs is lunacy.
I apologize for the typo in my point about impact on those making less than $250,000. Working off an iPhone sometimes sucks. I have edited the post as bolded in the quote above. Since that edit changes the meaning of my original post, I will assume your comments are not relevant to my revised statement. If you disagree with my statement as revised, feel free to post your disagreements.
/
Mark Cole has plan to foil the anti-christ
