patrick.net

kentm says

or it could be done like every other industrialized country that has a modern healthcare system; factor it into the base taxes.

deadbeats who wait to apply until they get a serious illness

dunno - how does that theory play out with other forms of insurance, like car insurance? do you see the same thing?

Car insurance is mandatory in all states so I don't see how it can compare.

I don't see any sticky wicket. The court had no trouble in the recent past ruling that a citizen who was doing nothing wrong and was under no suspicion of any kind has to produce his papers for the police and that the state has the right to take your land for another private individual to use. As someone who grew up in a very different America 60 years ago both of these rulings stunned me. I would have never dreamed it to be possible. The idea of police roadblocks with police asking for your papers without being part of a serious criminal manhunt was unthinkable back then. So why can't the SC rule that the government can force you to buy health care.

Yet another reason to hold multiple citizenships.

kentm says

or it could be done like every other industrialized country that has a modern healthcare system; factor it into the base taxes.

THAT'S OBAMO-MARXI-SOCIALISM!

shrekgrinch says

Go back and read. Try getting an education first…especially in the realm of ‘reading comprehension’.

bob2356 says

Not that 19.5% was collected every single year.

I said that, moron.

Ok so I'm a moron. Considering your blind devotion to the silliness of Hauser I'll consider that a compliment of the highest order.

So you don't see any problems with Hauser's "theory". I'll give you a hint. The words "top tax rate" for a start. You don't see any problems with using that single tax data point to compare to the whole of government revenue. Gee I wonder what happened to social program collections and corporate income tax part of government revenue. Talk about comparing apples to nuclear bombs.

Oh, by the way what happened Hausers extensive analysis into the changes to the rest of the tax structure? Oops. Maybe you have no clue (Hauser correctly decided to ignore it since the reality conflicts very heavily with his theory) about this but the top tax rate has been lowered while increasing the lower tax brackets. That's the beauty of the whole Reagan tax reform. The top people got dramatically less taxes, everyone else got screwed.

The only thing Hauser has provided is a meaningless sound bite perfect cover to the devotee's of the laffler curve. I read a great quote about laffler and Hauser several years ago and am delighted to be able to find it again:

Hauser's Law joins the Laffer Curve* in the dustbin of right-wing voodoo economic theory. The only people who promote either are the people who, one way or another, benefit by doing so. Like those paragons of objective, scientific analysis at the WSJ editorial page.

*My favorite quote about the Laffer Curve came from my econ professor, who said "The Laffer Curve is relevant to policy in exactly the same way that the melting point of steel is relevant to washing the dishes."

Are you Kidding? Why would anyone buy in the next 10 -15 years? at least not in Ca. Oil will shortly be 200 plus a barrel and fuel costs will be yet another giant cost to living, and working. I also seem to sense that the Aging Baby boomers are going to eat up resources for health care, and while many homes will be needed for assisted living, and all. I don't see how with China, and India coming in to their own, and all you need to do is LISTEN to the Large Auto-manufactures they all expect to sell more and more until the majority of cars sold will be in China. (thusly causing oil at 200-300 a BBL.) That is but some of the scenario I see heading this way, I am not looking forward to it. I can say that. I am 51 and know I will never buy again.

kentm says

dunno - how does that theory play out with other forms of insurance, like car insurance? do you see the same thing?

No, car insurance companies aren't forced to issue policies to people who just had an accident yesterday, while uninsured, and want to have the insurance pick up the tab after the fact.

3/10

I am not the only one who understands the basic math involved that many of you can’t quite seem to grasp

This is not a good faith argument, and is why I have you on ignore.

Laffer Curve exists, but not at 30-40% marginal taxation.

Why are you comparing a 3 bedroom rent with a 4 bed 2.5 ? Just curious

tatupu70 says

It proves nothing of the sort. You really need some remedial math. It proves only that the average was 19.5% over the time period in question. You are making a HUGE leap that is not founded.

Let's see,... if the government taxed at 0%, they would have revenue of zero.

If the government taxed at 100%, they would also get close to zero.

But apparently, at any level of taxation that allows the economy to function, revenues will be close to 19.5%of GDP. Assuming that this absurd idea is true, we would still need optimize how progressive the tax code is. Even most of the wealthy (if they aren't idiots) know that taking the tax on income above 250K (that is, just the part of the income that is over 250K) from 35 to 39 does no harm to the economy, but does boost revenues by an extremely predictable amount.

This is not even disputed in most intelligent conservative circles. The deal was a gift to the rich, and everyone knows it. Sure if they were going from 50% to 70% you might make and argument about it. But 35 to 39 ? Give me a fucking break.

bob2356 says

*My favorite quote about the Laffer Curve came from my econ professor, who said “The Laffer Curve is relevant to policy in exactly the same way that the melting point of steel is relevant to washing the dishes.”

Good one.

shrekgrinch says

marcus says

I enjoy this site a lot more when I have them both on ignore.

Then why don’t you? Hell, if you did you wouldn’t even see this forum posting at all because I submitted it. You liberals are so full of shit.

If one uses the ignore feature, there is also a "show all posts feature" I can use if say, maybe I am feeling, "I wonder what the dim bulb is spouting today ?"

shrekgrinch says

Let me summarize all that for you since you can’t quite grasp all of this:

Since the government can NEVER collect enough in income tax revenues from the rich (or all of us in total) to balance the budget at etc, etc, ....

I have tried to explain to you several times, and this is really just for others because I know either you can't or won't consider it.

Higher taxes on the rich, are not just about increasing govt revenues (which they will). It's about paying our bills, which is obviously the only way that the rich members congress and their benefactors will be forced to make the tough choices on spending.

Do you really want lower spending ?

It would work. But maybe the rich and corporations don't like the idea because it might ultimately also cause compromises on spending priorities ( eg social services versus war spending for one).

Not enough facts given to determine the choice.

price, local rent and size are not the only 3 variables. There are other items like, regulation, structural integrity, location, number of floors, floor plan, etc...

shrekgrinch says

ideological programming about taxes

Bingo.

People probably bring up Laffer because if it were true that tax revenues are always 19.5% of GDP, and if the Laffer curve is also real (that is the simple concept that there is a tax level that will maximize tax revenues), then there must therefore be a level of taxation that will allow for a maximal GDP.

(By the way I am for now only supposing your inference about Hausers law is correct - although almost by definition it is nothing more than a weak rationalization)

The argument you make, is based on the faulty logic that increased taxes MUST cause lower GDP, because of less investment. But if that were true, then marginal taxes on high income could never be too low.

I do agree with Troy, that if calling me uneducated is your best argument, then this more than any argument I can make refutes your point. And the reason I think you are Ray, is that people have brought up several legitimate critiques in this thread that you ignore or respond to with name calling.

. . . on the ol' troll-o-meter

shrekgrinch says

Nope, they did not:

shrekgrinch says

Hudson ruled that Congress does not have authority to impose such a

in the opinion of one hack GWB-appointed judge, yes.

http://volokh.com/2010/12/13/the-significant-error-in-judge-hudsons-opinion/

As for getting politicians to support single payer, not gonna happen in this corrupted system we've got.

Clinton got utterly creamed thinking he could take that bridge in '93. Waay too much money opposing that.

Plus half the country has been conditioned to oppose more government involvement in this area.

shrekgrinch says

Laffer Curve has NOTHING to do with Hauser’s Law. So I didn’t make the argument that you are ignoring. Therefore what you are really ignoring is the harsh realities I am mentioning that you just don’t want to hear/see.

Hauser based his work on the Laffer curve. It's cited in his writing. Did you actually read Hauser (I did about 15 years ago or whenever it was he first wrote about this) or just the clip notes from fox news? Do YOU know anything from whence you speak.

The harsh realities are that Hauser's magical average is based on a range of total tax revenues from 14.4% to 20.9% of gdp since 1946. That's a really large range considering how big the gdp is compared to income tax revenues which are currently 6% of gdp. At the current 14.9% total tax revenue point you could DOUBLE the income tax revenues to 12% of gdp and still stay inside the range Hauser used to calculate his average. (14.9+6=20.9) Not the tax rate, the actual taxes collected (do you understand the difference by any chance?). If we could somehow (without a revolution) double the income tax revenues from 2 trillion to 4 trillion not only would the budget be balanced but we would have leftover funds to pay down the debt. Bonus points, we would magically stay within the range used to formulate Hauser's law. Amazing math don't you think? Do you understand any of this or should I type it again very slowly?

Here's a chart of revenue sources in case you think I'm making this up.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=205

Shrek--

You keep citing Hauser's law as being "proven". That is complete bullshit. All he did was observe that over a certain period in history, tax revenues varied within a large range. It is wholly invalid to extend his work to claim that any tax rates under any situation will follow the same trend. That is very basic logic.

It should have been called Hauser's observation.

shrekgrinch says

If Hauser’s Law proves that the feds can’t get more than 20% of GDP (in 2000, the largest grab of GDP from income tax revenue since the history of income taxation) yet we are spending more than 20% plus consistently now and in the foreseeable future, no amount of raising TAX RATES on the rich or anyone else will matter, because the absolute max of what we can get out of income tax revenues is pretty set.

Therefore, any notion of clinging to some belief that raising income tax rates on the rich will actually yield more revenue is illogical. Yet, that is what you all are doing.

You keep repeating this. Here I will try to make my point simpler.

This is one of the things you are missing. If tax revenues are alway 19.5% of GDP, then lowering taxes to zero would lower GDP down to zero (which actually makes sense we don't exist without any government)

Now let's raise taxes a little to zero on everyone, but .0001% on income over one billion dollars.
(silly, because the US doesn't exist yet with such low tax revenue)

But continue this, and eventually theoretical tax revenues get to where we exist, and yet the services and laws provided still aren't enough to support huge GDP.

So increase, and so on.

Even Hausers observation, that revenues of 19.5% of GDP are expected, implies that taxes can be too low. Okay, so you can't see it. That's fine.

shrekgrinch says

You are uneducated on this topic. Sorry, but that is yet another empirical observation that you can’t refute…in fact, you keep reinforcing that observation with more evidence as I keep pointing out.

Well, I have a masters degree in Math, which should make me qualified to make the observation that you never respond to good logical points that several have made here. You repeat the same erroneous bs.

Here again, maybe you will consider -

A: Raising marginal rates on high income does not cause increase in fed tax revenue

B: Hauser's observation that we should always expect tax revenue of 19.5% of GDP.

The only way that both A and B can simultaneously be true, is if raising tax rates could never happen concurrently with increasing GDP. And we know that (even as thought experiment - but also by history) can happen.

Also, the only way that both A and B can simultaneously be true is if raising marginal taxes on high incomes were somehow guaranteed to lower GDP. This is logically implied (without Laffer). This is impossible because then rates being too low would be impossible.

But the other argument people have made about Hauser's law being an average are also true.

Being educated is about being able to do critical thinking on your own, not regurgitating some have baked wishful rationalization of the wealthy who of course want low taxes.

I'll hand you this, you got me (trolling that is). I shouldn't have looked to see your response.

Gas prices have nothing to do with it. We all we be telecommuting.

I guess the point was to keeping uninsured people from being a burden to the system. I feel anyone should be able to go without medical coverage, but they need to understand if they need medical treatment they have to pay out of pocket. And if they can't afford to pay, then were going to drop you off on the curb of the hospital to die. There's WAY too many people that are uninsured and being a burden to the system. While thousand die every year cause they can't afford cancer treatments, hospitals never turn away a gun shot victim cause he don't have health insurance.

shrekgrinch says

Why don’t you just quit while you are behind. Enjoy your holidays.

Same to you.

shrekgrinch says

bob2356 says

If we could somehow (without a revolution) double the income tax revenues from 2 trillion to 4 trillion not only would the budget be balanced but we would have leftover funds to pay down the debt.

That is what has been proven to be impossible to do. That is Hauser’s point. We had tax rates as high as 91% and as low as 28% during that period. Yet the same range of revenues wasn’t broken…which is Hauser’s entire point and the one I keep repeating over and over again at least five times now.

To think otherwise is complete and total fantasy. Other sources of tax revenue need to be found. Consumption or wealth are the two biggest money pots worth considering, as far as taxes go.

bob2356 says

Bonus points, we would magically stay within the range used to formulate Hauser’s law. Amazing math don’t you think? Do you understand any of this or should I type it again very slowly?

Uh…look on your chart . That chart seems to break down what are all defacto income taxes into subcategories, which you confuse the terms used there when Hauser looked at the total collected by all taxes on income — as is clearly stated on the left column, where it says Total Receipts.

Are you being dense just to bust everyone's balls? Of course the chart breaks out taxes by subcatagories, that's the whole meat of Hauser's contention. He cites the TOP TAX RATE on INCOME TAXES as the basis for his theory. That is the only place the term TOP TAX RATE applies. NOT corporate taxes or Social security. What don't you understand about this? He says the total is within a range ( a damn big range with lots of slack) no matter what the top tax rate is. He totally ignores any tax rate changes other than the top tax rate on income taxes only.

Apparently YOU don't understand the difference between tax rates and tax collections. You keep citing the 91% tax RATE, but don't bother to find out what the actual rate PAID was at the time. Less than 50%. The current top tax bracket of 35% collects over 30%. IF you insist on lumping in SS then realize that SS has ramped up from 1% to 7.5% in that time so there is actually less than 15% difference between the actual collections of individual taxes at the highest TOP TAX RATE rate in history vs today's top rate. That's a 15% difference on 6% of the gdp. You do understand the significance of percentages of percentages don't you?

I don't see how corporate tax's is applicable in any way shape or form to Hauser's assertions about TOP TAX RATES but for some reason he lumps them into collections. Pretty shoddy methodology. But you seem to somehow think it's relevant. It's a mystery to me.

That is the whole problem with Hauser. He cites a tax rate without taking into account that the 91% tax rate in 1951 was totally different animal from the 39% tax rate in 1993. You could deduct almost everything against the 91% rate and people did. It applied only to the very wealthy where the 39% tax rate was much much broader. He totally ignores the rises in SS when he talks about the reduction in tax rates. If someone takes more money out of my left pocket and less out of my right pocket I still look at the total. Hauser doesn't.

Hauser's contention that tax collections work within a range is obvious and self evident. Of course they work within a range. If you take any period in history they will be within a range. It's his analysis of the relevance to the top tax rate that is useless. As is your contention that taxes could never break out of this range. They certainly could, but it is unlikely that they will. That's a political question, not an economic one. Collections are very near the bottom of the range right now and it is highly likely they will go up to the top of the range in the future. Plus some type of consumption tax on top of that. The US cannot borrow more and more money forever.

shrekgrinch says

And I really loved how you couldn’t tell which column of data on your own provided chart Hauser was looking at and then you proceeded on some rant about doubling 6% to 12% but staying within Hauser’s Law as a result.

You don't even remember who you are talking to.

shrekgrinch says

Also, I don’t respond to every boneheaded thing written on here…

just because you are under the false impression that it is ‘logical’ doesn’t mean that is so.

I can tell you think you are intelligent. And I can tell you make no effort EVER to understand what anyone else is saying. The fact that I respond to you, or unignore you to read your responses to me, is proof that I am indeed sometimes an idiot.

shrekgrinch says

just because you are under the false impression that it is ‘logical’ doesn’t mean that is so.

Exactly.

Add this to the list of what you misinterpret and or misunderstand.

A possible sequence of events:

Year one - Spending 21% of GDP, and marginal rates on high income (for future) raised

Year two - GDP goes up by 10%, govt spending held close to year one level, and higher tax rates still in effect

Spending is now 19% of GDP and tax revenues are WAY more than 10% higher than previous year.

Time to get indignant, challenge my reading comprehension, and make your other usual "logical" arguments. Oh wait, this is so stupid it doesn't even deserve a well thought out answer.

TechGromit says

I feel anyone should be able to go without medical coverage, but they need to understand if they need medical treatment they have to pay out of pocket. And if they can’t afford to pay, then were going to drop you off on the curb of the hospital to die.

Paying out of pocket right now for medical care is by far the cheapest way to go for over 90% of the population. i.e. that aren't falling over sick with festering boules.

But make no mistake my friend, if you get a catastrophic illness, or get stricken down mangled and maimed, even those with the BEST insurance. Will only be taken care of so far and so long, after that if you don't get back to work buddy. You're just a ward of the State, the very one you swore to turn those away that can't afford it.

Insurance is NOT your friend, it's a multi hundred Trillion dollar industry that wants nothing more out of you, than your premiums. And investment dollars will help too.

robertoaribas says

technical analysis is voodoo bull$hit, stamped as “thought” by the cnbc witchdoctors in suits..

A trend is your friend. till it isn’t…

Amen. How come we never see any back-testing of "technical analysis" on real data. I'd just loooove to see one of these chartist voodoo-makers extrapolate a few carefully selected anonymous historical charts and see the look on their face when they realize they really stepped in the $hit when it is revealed what actually happened.

Off-topic but I have a friend who is getting very well-known for his specialty which he dishes out from a food cart once or twice a week. His margins are low and the food is very labor intensive. He is barely scraping by. Not sure what motivates him though he did once say he hopes his culinary talents will eventually get him laid (no progress there, as far as I know).

In any event, he has not one, but two different affluent people who have expressed a serious desire to open a restaurant with him. If this ever comes to fruition I pity the investor as I know my friend well and find him to be quite lazy yet arrogant and, at the same time, very indecisive. The restaurant surely will fail.

I worked in restaurants for about 10 years. The ones that made it had great food and great managers. I believe someone already mentioned these factors as among the most important.

Malkovich says

Off-topic

Very interesting that you chose to bump this thread. Being John Malkovich? Interesting, yet highly bizarre movie. Malkovich proved to make very horrible investments (fact). Hope you are luckier.

Malkovich? Malkovich, malkovich malkovich malkovich, malkovich malkovich, malkovich malkovich.

Malkovich malkovich.

Malkovich,
Malkovich

Charting isn't about finding the winners, it's about finding the more LIKELY winners. You invest with a tight stop loss. If your chart says it's likely to go up, you buy it. If it goes down you sell it quickly, and try again elsewhere. You don't have to hit that many winners to offset all of the losers and make a decent return. The essence of charting shows you what people are thinking of a stock, whether they're buying it or selling it. They've ingested the news and they've decided to do X or Y or Z and you can see what they're doing essentially.

If you want a chartist to call 100% wins, that isn't going to happen. No one calls a perfect game, it's simply about calling more winners than losers and finding good turning points.

I don't think anyone demanded that chartists be right ALL the time.

I would like to see scientific evidence that it will generate buy and sell signals that provide a larger return (or smaller loss) than

(a) simple indexing

(b) picking random stock symbols from the same stock list considered when making charts, followed by daily die tossing to decide whether to buy, sell, or do nothing.

Perhaps someone has done it already ...

Oh, and I forgot one thing: Among the dozens of "technical indicators" that people have concocted over the years, which particular one should be chosen to make the buy/sell decision on any given day for any given stock symbol?

Well hindsight works pretty well in these cases. Picking "known" stocks vs unknowns or picking known vs duds and having people chart them. There are people making a lot of money from charts. There are people making a lot of money from a variety of systems. There is also likely a breaking point which keeps these systems from making you trillions. If you've got millions to invest, you might move systems with your buys vs buying into them. Warren Buffet even said he could make 50%+ gains a year if he only had a small pool of money to invest today. His sheer size requires a different style of investing.

There are lots of indicators as far as I can tell. And I'm sure if you played with them long enough almost every system would yield some decent results. The idea is to stick with your system and not change the rules on the fly to suite your current needs. "It went down, the chart says sell, my system says I should sell, but I think this one will turn around..." It's like gambling, if you're playing blackjack and you hit on an 19 because you FEEL there is a 2 next, you're just asking for it. If you've been counting the cards, you've got a slightly better chance than following the generic rules of backjack, but if you ignore all the work you've done and just go with the flow... You're going to lose for sure. Counting cards gives you something like a .2% better advantage, so over hundreds of hands you need to play it exactly right every time, one mistake and you destroy that .2% advantage.

The idea is that you're getting your information from the people who are buying, vs from the papers. News says one thing, and people are doing something else. You're just watching what people are doing vs the news. Some people combined charts with news. Or charts with general market trends. Or charts with a multitude of other pieces of information. It's a helper to show what is going on with the stock and perhaps point out changes in direction to the stock.

I've been discussing some stocks with E-man for a few months now, and his chart stock picks so far have been about right about 80% of the time. He doesn't buy on all his expectations as it's about picking the best of the lot, and sometimes he's just viewing a stock and making comments about them. It's an interesting method of adding additional information to picking stocks.

"General purpose" and "$5000" is a stretch of the imagination. We're 10-20 years away from robots that can do the kind of high dexterity work needed for assembling small electronics and children's toys for less than the cost of a chinese laborer.

Yes, it will happen, and when it does the wealthy must accept higher taxation. Otherwise, rebellion far worse than what the luddites tried will be widespread.

I suspect we will wind up with a situation where the cost of goods approaches the cost of raw materials, energy, and shipping, and tax rates will be roughly double what we have in the US today. A national basic income isn't unrealistic.

I'm all for it, of course. Human beings work far too much today, and we should be spending more time actually enjoying life. That's not to say that work can't be enjoyable, but for the kind of factory labor that we're talking about here, it won't be.

That's heresy.

Just kidding. I agree, but I have questions and doubts. I would like to imagine a future with as you say, some basic income floor. But (and I know this gets radical), I don't see how you could do it, without promoting overpopulation. So, either the cost of having and raising kids needs to be prohibitive (relative to that basic income) which doesn't really work, because if anything welfare is paid more to those with kids, or you institute some laws about who gets to have kids. One possibility would be having minimal education and child rearing competence requirements.

I know this idea is way too radical, and goes against many peoples ideas about basic freedoms. But it is a fact that too much free income encourages people who are not well qualified for parenting to have children. I guess I do believe at least somewhat in social Darwinism. That is, I am conflicted. On the one hand, I believe in the state providng some support for those who can not support themselves. But economically encouraging these people to reproduce while they have no skills or before they have skills is a mistake.

Put another way, I hope that one day it is more attractive, as it already is in some cultures, to mate with someone with prospects for making a good living. It seems to me that this is natural and should somehow be supported by government policy (but not in cruel ways as many right wingers would argue).

Bloomberg's got a very good piece on the folks who brought us the Gold ETFs. On the whole, balanced reporting, but you do have to love this quote:
“Our primary mission was to find every button we could push to stimulate demand,” Burton, 59, said in an interview in London. “We also knew that we had launched something that we could not control.”
Their timing was impeccable.

shrekgrinch says

Kevin says

Yes, it will happen, and when it does the wealthy must accept higher taxation.

Why? The jobs it will replace will be in China. We already got rid of those jobs.

Not even close. Unemployment will be in the 30-40% range with our current model.

Kevin says

We’re 10-20 years away from robots that can do the kind of high dexterity work needed for assembling small electronics and children’s toys for less than the cost of a chinese laborer.

Sooner than that. Change is happening exponentially. We are just at the bottom of the hockey stick graph currently.

Yes, change is happening exponentially, but the machines are still very, very primitive. If they weren't growing exponentially, we'd be looking at 100+ years.

These things can even be programmed w/o software:

The arm and gripper can be quickly trained to do a repetitive task just by moving them, no software code required.

That's what "general purpose" means. There is software here, it just has a primitive AI. AI needs to be much much better before it will be good enough to be used for this stuff.

Kevin says

I suspect we will wind up with a situation where the cost of goods approaches the cost of raw materials, energy, and shipping, and tax rates will be roughly double what we have in the US today. A national basic income isn’t unrealistic.

Nice fantasy. Akin to what the physicists have regarding ‘nuclear fusion is just around the corner’ only for socialists. They have been predicting that for over a hundred years now.

I don't understand what you're saying. The cost of goods is already approaching the cost of materials in many industries. There is no reason to think that won't continue.

Services will not be cheap, though. Productivity in that field has not kept pace yet wages have risen likewise, which is causing problems. We’re going to have a bad case of Baumol’s Cost Disease: http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/taxes/americas-economic-illness-baumols-dis/19752285/?source=patrick.net#articleHeader
There will be two groups of people: Those who invested in production and will hence reap the dividends and those who didn’t. A very harsh Grasshopper & the Ants story, to be sure.

No, that won't happen, because the people who don't "have" will murder those that do and take it. This happens every time there is gross inequality.

TechGromit says

I guess the point was to keeping uninsured people from being a burden to the system. I feel anyone should be able to go without medical coverage, but they need to

Whats the resistance to tacking costs into taxes, exactly?... Why does this discussion seem to focus on complicating something that many other countries have solved quite simply? Canada, for example: "In general, costs are paid through funding from income taxes, although three provinces also impose a fixed monthly premium which may be waived or reduced for those on low incomes. There are no deductibles on basic health care and co-pays are extremely low or non-existent (supplemental insurance such as Fair Pharmacare may have deductibles, depending on income)."source

and here's a silly pic. not entirely apropos of the discussion at the moment, but funny:
http://cosmicnavellint.blogspot.com/2010/12/tea-partys-vision-of-healthcare.html

I was just telling my daughter that I refer to masturbation in nearly every stoopid thread (or at least, that's what makes it stoopid). Now, like an automatron, Nomo does it.

I've been replaced by a robot!

How long have people been predicting this?

Obligatory animated gif:

I 'm going to start marketing a new technical indicator:

It's called The Reverse Fu-Manchu with a Triple Axel.

If anyone donates 100k to patrick.net I will forgo the riches and just post how it works right here. Or it may get Wiki-leaked if someone hacks my computer.