patrick.net

If you don't want single payer, that's fine. Of course, nothing close to single payer is on the table. At this point, the most that could change is that a government plan could be added to cover maybe 10% of the population and use its size to drive bargains and force badly needed competition. Due to intensive lobbying, it seems doubtful this will end up happening in any meaningful form.

It does seem most of us agree we are suffering from healthcare industry manipulation of the legislative process. Unfortunately, that seems the least likely thing to change.

I will add that since single payer, at its most expensive in other countries, costs less that 2/3 what our healthcare system costs per patient, and since the government already pays almost 2/3 of our national healthcare costs, then the redistribution would not be very large (and trust me, as one who gets redistributed FROM, that does matter to me). In fact, the only major redistribution under a single payer (or German-style multiple payer) system would be from healthcare interests to the rest of the economy.

I can understand why people are scared of change, especially given all the lies being promoted out there. But if you object to single payer, it would be helpful if you stated the specific reasons and why you object and give data to support them, rather than just relying on generalizations. That way we could respond to specifics.

srla,

Yes, if the government continues to subsidize health care the government will go broke. If it quits we all may yet have a chance.

chrisborden says

Yea, it ain’t no good news for people like me who never go to the doctor because we keep ourselves healthy (I don’t have insurance now because I earn a whopping $400 a week, but if I’m forced to buy it, of course I will, unless the penalty is small enough). I don’t like the idea of being forced to pay a “tax” that will FORCE me to spend money I don’t have, for care I don’t and might not ever need. I’d be willing to bet that it’ll cost me at least $300 a month, and that’s money DOWN THE TOILET unless I get sick, and that makes me sick. A heavy tax just to “insure” my health, and of course, if I have to buy it, you can bet I’m going to make up every condition in the book to get my money’s worth, rather than have the money go to waste, and that is what it is, waste. If it’s under $200 a month, I might bite, but beyond that, it’ll suck about 12% of my yearly income, and for frickin’ what? To make corporate profiteers richer. So that’s where this American comes from.

That's exactly I was thinking too. In fact I was so confident of my good health that even when my friend said that he had fever and cough, I still agreed to take him in my car to a business meeting. It never occurred to me that I could catch it from him. And what happened next is just scary to say the least. In fact someone who always hated doctors and believed in good health ended up going to emergency room, because I could not sleep 2 nights because of sever cough and fever. I tried postponing going to hospital thinking it will recover. I did not have insurance at the time as I had quit my job for a long vacation last year. My thought process was very similar to yours. Why buy health insurance when I never go to the doctor anyways.

To cut the long story short I ended up paying (in fact some of it is still not paid) 1200 bucks for my misadventure and that was after a 75 % discount. The hospital (El Camino in MT view) wanted to make me feel indebted to them for that 75 % discount. Doctors took 1 hour and did some unnecessary tests and wrote few prescriptions. But I was in such a terrible state that had they asked me to pay 5K for my illness I would have paid....

When you are healthy and doing well...Its hard to imagine what it feels like having bronchitis or pneumonia or malaria or Tuberculosis or cancer or 100s of other such diseases....

I don't mind paying to a govt system 100 or 200 dollars per month as part of my taxes, if I can be sure I will have a hospital to go to if I fall sick...

People are so frigging brainwashed in this country by big corporations that they have lost their power to think independently.

Well we agree that the current state of government interventions is a disaster. We pay far too much, that we can agree on. A big reason I support single payer is that it has a proven track record in many other countries. No such track record exists for a modern healthcare system totally free of government intervention. It is hard to see how that would address all our problems.

I also don't agree that healthcare is in a "bubble" in the sense that real estate was or tech stocks were. Bubbles are driven by speculative frenzy. People buy in out of fear they will be priced out, and they buy in out of a desire to make a killing. The government helped inflate the housing bubble by making credit far too cheap for far too long. They could have aborted it by simply admitting there was a bubble, or by not manipulating markets in the first place.

With healthcare, no such frenzied buying occurs. The cost goes up for completely different reasons - most prominently because of massive waste, over-testing, drug patent monopolies, insurance company inefficiencies, and malpractice issues. Therefore, the fix is far more complicated that it would be with financial markets. If the government were to withdraw altogether from involvement in healthcare, insurance companies would drop the vast majority over a certain age and everyone with health conditions. It's hard to see how that wouldn't be a disaster. Back before medicare, only 40% of seniors had coverage. If you want to see actual riots, talk about ending Medicare.

commonman2003 - man, sad to say, but you got off cheap. My insurance agent broke his little toe, waited 5 hours, switched emergency rooms, waited another 5 hours, then was treated in what he described as a supply closet by a doctor that popped his toe back into position in about 3 minutes. For that, he was billed $3,500 by UCLA. And that was after the hospital "discounted" his fees - conveniently down to the exact amount of his copay.

2ndClassCitizen says

No, the nature of a single payer system is wealth redistribution on a national scale. Add to that single payer will force me and millions of Americans to fund yet another government program the majority of us do not want. Like I said in my first post, how about ya’ll who want the program put your money together and run it. Just let the rest of us opt out.
Wow free will, what a concept.

Wealth redistribution ? You are so frigging afraid of wealth redistribution ? You think you made your fucking money in some island without anyone's help ?..What about all the people in the food chain who indirectly helped you. You think gardeners and janitors and other poor people are basically a nuisance ? God forbid if your millions somehow make it to help other people....

This extreme self centeredness has fucked this country...Everybody wants to slave away their life for a big fucking corporations and send hourly status report to their boss...Look at the life in Silicon valley..people do not have time to even chat freely for few minutes...Everybody is busy accumulating wealth...and making sure their frigging wealth is secure in some heavy locker....:-)

Fundamentally speaking, how is it not at least a little bit perverse that the insurance companies and big pharma are able to turn such massive profits from the inevitable breakdown of our biodegradable designs, a built-in feature for which no individual can be held liable? Outside of smokers, alchys and skydivers.

If you are a citizen of a nation who in some way contributes to that nation's GDP, why is it not then in the nation's best interest to insure it's own productivity? This is probably at least partially the thinking behind mass inoculations; beyond eradicating deadly/debilitating diseases, it keeps the population strong and generating the taxable incomes needed to keep the Senators and Congressmen employed and insured, among other things.

Yes, if the government continues to subsidize health care the government will go broke. If it quits we all may yet have a chance.

Chance? At what? That ship has sailed. Again, WHERE was all this outrage and debate during the bailouts of the banking industry? There wasn't one tenth of one percent of this level of concern (or rage) over the national debt and future tax burdens to lower and middle-class families in the coming decades.

commonman2003 - hahah But like I said, the really weird part is, we're already paying roughly the same amount just for Medicare that we would pay in a true single payer system, give or take 5-10%. Hard to believe, but it's true. A lot of us do pay a pretty decent amount in taxes already, especially here in CA. The trouble is, if we don't cut out all the pork in the system and just force everyone to get insured privately, either private people will go broke from premiums or the government will from subsidizing those premiums.

We need some sort of overhaul to cut prices from their current trajectory.

Wealth redistribution ? You are so frigging afraid of wealth redistribution ? You think you made your fucking money in some island without anyone’s help ?..What about all the people in the food chain who indirectly helped you. You think gardeners and janitors and other poor people are basically a nuisance ? God forbid if your millions somehow make it to help other people….

Find me one millionaire who doesn't think he *earned* his fortune.

Austinhousingbubble - I think most people here were pretty outraged by the bank bailouts. And I'd add the war debt to that total too, since I thought it was a huge waste of money.

I don't see any alternative myself to eventual single payer in the long run. I can't help but have mixed feelings about that, given the immigration situation and the costs related to that. But I also can't see denying anyone access to healthcare. It's just not a remotely humane option in a country this well off.

commonman2003,

I wish it was so, most of us are just struggling to pay off our loans. Is it too much to ask that I get to choose where the fruits of my labor go? Or should I just send the fruits of my labor to you? Clearly you have better sense of where it should be spent than a 2ndClassCitizen like me. What is the address for my payments? You'll be the first to get paid after the bank is finished with me.

Come to think of it, I would have been better off doing what I guy I met a couple of months ago said he is doing. He was a school teacher in Chicago, but moved to Hawaii to live off welfare, he is "letting the system work for him." (his own words). I should have just not gone to college, not taken out any loans and let the system work for me. What was I thinking? Man am I dumb!

Yes, people are rioting in the streets for health care. No wait, they are accused of rioting against it. My mistake.

They might be if they weren't busy being laid-up in the ER or urgent care facility waiting four to five hours for a scrip.

The reason standard market rules don’t apply in healthcare is that people approach meidcal care far differently than they do buying a car or a house. They place complete trust in their doctors - in fact, they trust them with their lives. It is all but impossible to shop for prices for heart surgery or many similar treatments. The system is not set up for it, and people are simply not psychologically able to approach healthcare with the same attitude as they would shopping for a computer. And really, can you blame them? Paul Krugman made an excellent analogy when he said you wouldn’t want to comparison shop for firemen. People approach healthcare in much the same way as they do other public services. Sure, when forced to, they will comparison shop in India, but this is mainly out of desperation. It is not optimal.

if i want a open heart surgery, i want to go to the best doctor. when i do that it drives UP the income for the best doctor. it also drives down the income of bad doctor because i am not going to him. This kind of pricing pressure is needed for market to be functional. Hospitals will try to be better for the same price. A system without proper incentives generally breaks.history proves it. people if given a choice will shop for best doctor for the price they can afford. If i have $100, i'll shop for best doctor i can get for that $100. how is that not shopping for price ? A doctor will try to get a treatment to me for $100 because thats what i can afford. GET REAL GUYS, for most people health care is not affordable so they WILL shop for whats affordable, this will bring down costs.

Austinhousingbubble says

Yes, people are rioting in the streets for health care. No wait, they are accused of rioting against it. My mistake.

They might be if they weren’t busy being laid-up in the ER or urgent care facility waiting four to five hours for a scrip.

And I'm sure with single payer it will be 15 minutes or less or the next amputation is free.

Austinhousingbubble - I think most people here were pretty outraged by the bank bailouts. And I’d add the war debt to that total too, since I thought it was a huge waste of money.

There wasn't a thread two hundred posts deep, and rabble-rousers at Town Hall meets. The indifference was and is...dismaying.

I don’t see any alternative myself to eventual single payer in the long run. I can’t help but have mixed feelings about that, given the immigration situation and the costs related to that. But I also can’t see denying anyone access to healthcare. It’s just not a remotely humane option in a country this well off.

If the illegals are contributing to our GDP, then hey - better take care of them, too, right?

There's definitely a self-centered aspect to all of this; I just cannot think that anyone who is a vehement opponent of some type of reform is either a vest interested, or presently enjoys a stellar health plan (and has mistakenly assumed that they always will) I was joking around with a guy the other day after he got back from a trip to Beijing, asking him if he thought China was going to inherit the world; he laughed and said, 'hey, as long I get to keep my stuff, I don't care.'

"Wealth redistribution ? You are so frigging afraid of wealth redistribution ? You think you made your fucking money in some island without anyone’s help ?..What about all the people in the food chain who indirectly helped you. You think gardeners and janitors and other poor people are basically a nuisance ? God forbid if your millions somehow make it to help other people…."

I completely agree that people who make lot of money some how have an illusion that they deserve the money. They fail to understand that its not a perfect world.There are so many variables involved that its not even funny to think that a guy who became an investment banker in lehman brothers deserves 10000000 times more for his time that a farmer in somalia...but thats how the imperfect world is. most of the intellegent rich people ( like buffet) who are mature enough to know the big picture are very humble about the money they make and know that they have been just lucky to be either born with the right exposure ( famil,school..etc) or born in right country or have been lucky to be smart.

BUT i still don't like wealth distribution ...not because i think rich people deserve that money but because it removes the incentive for people to earn money. wealth distribution should be done minimally and very carefully to avoid loss of productivity but still improve collective happiness.

I wish it was so, most of us are just struggling to pay off our loans. Is it too much to ask that I get to choose where the fruits of my labor go?

Yes it is. It shouldn't be, but it is. And it has always been this way. Just wait until you hit your stride in your career and watch your standard of living remain static thanks to excessive taxes -- and I'm talking without any kind of health care option -- I'm referring to the deferred debt load to help pay off the excesses of a failed attempt at unregulated, free markets.

BUT i still don’t like wealth distribution …not because i think rich people deserve that money but because it removes the incentive for people to earn money. wealth distribution should be done minimally and very carefully to avoid loss of productivity but still improve collective happiness.

But wasn't Trickle Down a sort of wealth distribution model?

Austinhousingbubble says

I wish it was so, most of us are just struggling to pay off our loans. Is it too much to ask that I get to choose where the fruits of my labor go?

Yes it is. It shouldn’t be, but it is. And it has always been this way. Just wait until you hit your stride in your career and watch your standard of living remain static thanks to excessive taxes — and I’m talking without any kind of health care option — I’m referring to the deferred debt load to help pay off the excesses of a failed attempt at unregulated, free markets.

If you are right, then perhaps I was right too, I should just retire now and let the system work for me.

renter for ever_san jose - my point was that people in the midst of a healthcare emergency hardly are able to comparison shop. Healthcare, like the fire department, often operates under different rules. It is possible that a system where doctor fees were posted online could drive down some costs, but it is hard to see how that could scale to emergency scenarios or other crisis situations.

Actually, yeah, we've had a rather massive upward redistribution of wealth since 1990. After adjusting for inflation, the upper 1% makes about twice as much in relation to the "bottom" 80% as they did in 1990. And that was BEFORE the banking bailout.

If you are right, then perhaps I was right too, I should just retire now and let the system work for me.

I would like very much not to be right.

You don't have unique ownership of that particular sense of futility. What people usually do to compensate is get up to their chins in debt and tread water the rest of their lives, affording themselves whatever standard of living they feel entitted to, rightly or not.

Austinhousingbubble - "I’m referring to the deferred debt load to help pay off the excesses of a failed attempt at unregulated, free markets" As much as the banking bailout was utterly sickening, the national debt - currently at 80% GDP - should not be disabling to a huge degree. It was at like 140% GDP after WWII, and that period spawned the most robust economic growth in our history. So who knows, it might not suck as bad as we think... unless, of course, we don't tackle our trade deficit, especially with China.

As much as the banking bailout was utterly sickening, the national debt - currently at 80% GDP - should not be disabling to a huge degree. It was at like 140% GDP after WWII, and that period spawned the most robust economic growth in our history. So who knows, it might not suck as bad as we think… unless, of course, we don’t tackle our trade deficit, especially with China.

I really want to agree with you, but the period starting with the recession of '47 on through to the booming postwar years was a much more industrious time all round for this country. There is really no comparison to today. For one thing, we actually had a vibrant production industry to fall back on. Not only that, America was responsible for inventing products that were radical in their scope, using materials harvested mined and refined here, and finally manufactured here.

We were on top of the world after WWII when it came to R&D, from Western Electric to Raytheon to GE to DOW to IBM. America was the forerunner in everything from broadcasting/communication networks to the brand new science of magnetic tape recording (which we stole from the Germans) to television, to quantum advances in automobile engineering tp residential air conditioning to indoor cinemas, to say nothing of our strides in medicine, esp. with regard to vaccinations, or our weapons development and aerospace program. In short, we had a lot of irons in the fire.

Production, though, was the bread and butter. Quality Control was unparalleled in any of our manufactured goods when it came to other developed nations whether it be a Wurlitzer Juke Box or your basic undergarment. Some of the better tenets of Fordism were still being adhered to in those days, as well.

We sold all that up the river. It's long gone. You can blame anti-monopoly laws, bad economic policy, outsourcing, phony wars or our flagging public education system, or even a cumulative of all of the above. The fact is, it's gone.

If there's an industrial renaissance coming for America, I can honestly say that I am blind to whatever corner it is going to emerge from. I would love to live to see it.

Austinhousingbubble - all true, but it remains to be seen what would happen to our industrial base if, or rather when the dollar falls in relation to Asian currencies.

The country's greatest strength remains its university system, which is unparalleled, the minds it attracts, and the innovation it spawns. It's the one asset that is nearly impossible to replicate or ship overseas. World-class research universities take generations to build up, and we have probably 7-8 of the 10 best in the world. We're not returning to producing heavy industrial goods, but there would seem to be continuing opportunity in a wide range of emerging high tech industries. Again, actual domestic production jobs in these industries would depend on a more reasonable valuation of the dollar in relation to the Yuan, etc.

We certainly face a ton of challenges, and we need to retain more foreign nationals that graduate from our universities, along with rebuilding our science and math programs in our public schools. None of it will be easy, but I don't think the debt itself will be a major factor in suppressing growth. Healthcare could be far more damaging, if it continues to place unique stresses on domestic companies.

So I guess we are in uncharted waters, but I'm cautiously optimistic that we can pull through. We'll likely not revisit anything near post WWII levels of growth, but I feel we can be prosperous nonetheless.

Obama Health Plan's Dirty, Tyrannical, Hidden Secrets

http://www.rense.com/general87/dlead.htm

It is my contention that the lack of a national healthcare system has in fact bankrupted the USA.

Unlike other 1st world countries the USA didnt have the massive overhead of national health and therefore could devote its "excess" funds to fighting numerous other wars and other shenanigans after WW2.

Consequently the private healthcare/insurance block being the only game in town started to squeeze and now are virtual parasites on the nation and set to increase to the point of parasitoid.

Others seeing how easy it is to manipulate the US government also established lobbyists and started rampant deregulations of various other aspects of the civilized system e.g. financial, leading to the current essentially bankrupt USA situation, heavily borrowed on the future prosperity of the USA which may hence not be so prosperous.

Ergo er sum etc. etc.

But dont worry these shysters are probably working on new fiddles and bows with which to play the great American populace. Also dont worry as future bubbles will appear once everyone from this generation passes on, there will only be books and we know most dont read and those that do prefer pure fiction.

What the Government Healthcare Bill Actually Says

http://forthegrandchildren.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-government-healthcare-bill.html

Obama's deal with drug makers would make Cheney jealous

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_13046477

Internal Memo Confirms Big Giveaways In White House Deal With Big Pharma

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/13/internal-memo-confirms-bi_n_258285.html

Some Guy says

elliemae says

…and yet, there you are justifying why the govt should pay your car insurance.

I hope for you that your life continues on its perfect keel - that you never need to learn the horrors of pre-existing conditions, unemployment, and financial devastation. I hope for you that your attitude never needs to change because of personal tragedy - only that it changes because you gain compassion and understanding for others.

I hope he gets cancer and loses his job. Smug bastards like that need to learn a lesson.

Spoken like a true humanitarian. Perhaps Obama could hire you to be in charge of the claims denial department.

2ndClassCitizen says

commonman2003,
I wish it was so, most of us are just struggling to pay off our loans. Is it too much to ask that I get to choose where the fruits of my labor go? Or should I just send the fruits of my labor to you? Clearly you have better sense of where it should be spent than a 2ndClassCitizen like me. What is the address for my payments? You’ll be the first to get paid after the bank is finished with me.
Come to think of it, I would have been better off doing what I guy I met a couple of months ago said he is doing. He was a school teacher in Chicago, but moved to Hawaii to live off welfare, he is “letting the system work for him.” (his own words). I should have just not gone to college, not taken out any loans and let the system work for me. What was I thinking? Man am I dumb!

No I don't need your money. You could say I have been fortunate to not want other people's money. I worked hard, but I know I would not have been where I am without the help of lot of good souls on the way. We are all interdependent. I know here in the US the system is set up in a very different way. You need to take hundreds of thousands of dollars in loan to just pursue decent higher education. Fortunately my higher education was heavily subsidized and hence I grew up thinking things differently. When you get helped you want to help others. May be nobody helped you :-)....

People say Linus Torvalds could create Linux operating system because his higher education in college was all subsidized. When your mind is free of fear and insecurity you tend to be more creative. So Linus Torvalds too shared his creation with other people. Which is a good thing or else we would still be enslaved to Microsoft....Capitalism and incentive based system is good. But in this country it has been taken to the extreme. Mostly because of vested interests. The same people who did not mind airport security being handed over to the govt do mind health care insurance (mind you not the health care itself) being taken care by govt. Why ? May we know from where Sarah Palin speaks ? Who knows how much money is coming to these politicians from health insurance companies and Pharma lobby ? We will never know. But in the mean while Sarah Palins of the world will continue to scare away people from sensible plans...

2ndClassCitizen says

No, the nature of a single payer system is wealth redistribution on a national scale. Add to that single payer will force me and millions of Americans to fund yet another government program the majority of us do not want. Like I said in my first post, how about ya’ll who want the program put your money together and run it. Just let the rest of us opt out.
Wow free will, what a concept.

Ok, as long as when you get hit by a car and are lying half dead in the road we can leave you there since we won't know whether or not you can pay for your own treatment.

In other words, Obama's big deal with Big Pharma saves $80 billion out of a total $3.6 trillion. That's 2%.

Hey thanks, Barack! You really stuck it to the big boys. You saved America from these drug lords robbing us blind. Two percent. Cool!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-palast/obama-on-drugs-98-cheney_b_258209.html

To believe that the lack of Universal Healthcare has bankrupted the United States is at odds with reality. The first world countries with Universal Healthcare (England, France, Spain, etc.) are all just as bankrupt if not more so than the United States. England is so bad that they will be unable to service their debt by 2020. Any reform that increases the number of patients without increasing the amount of doctors, nurses, and hospitals is destined to reduce the consumption of healthcare by the current patients. For example, if in a given area (like the one where I live) there is only one proctologist, but you suddenly offer his services to 20 percent more people, than my current six week wait for a colonoscopy is certainly not going to decrease. Reform doesn't create new doctors, the AMA would have to allow for the opening of new medical schools, which they have successfully fought for decades. Making healthcare cheaper is not in and of itself enough to increase the quality of healthcare; the only way to increase the quality is either increase the quality of doctors, medicines, or the quantity of doctors or medicines. Reform is unlikely to do any of these, though if reform can successfully reduce the amount of insurance doctors need to carry by limiting punitive damages, that could increase the number of doctors. I suppose what I want to see is actual solutions to problems that aren't so broad as to be unusable. For example, single payer may cut costs (it may not) and Universal Healthcare will increase the number of people with insurance, but will either improve outcomes for patients? I'd like to see aspects of the reform presented that would, and stay away from generalities.

Also, sorry to run on and on, but I'd like to see the economic outcomes of cost reduction. One of the benefits of single payer is supposed to be to reduce red tape and paperwork, but won't this cost jobs. If currently doctors have to hire a person each to process claims, wouldn't eliminating the paperwork eliminate those 550,000 jobs? Will the savings be deployed in such a way to make up for those jobs? And what of ancillary jobs?

Eliminating health insurance companies will do away with tens of thousands of jobs and that's just fine with me.
I have spent the past week arguing with my employer-provided health insurance company to
get them to pay for very expensive medical tests that they authorized and then tried to make me pay for out of my own pocket.
I don't see how a government run program could possibly be any worse than that.
They finally admitted that their fancy electronic records system did not work and they are now going to pay for everything which they should have done in the first place.
I literally has to fax them a copy of their own paperwork to prove that I was not required to pay anything.
This clearly shows that "private health insurers" can be just as inefficient and messed-up as government
health insurers.

You think the standard of living is going to remain static? With outsourcing, misuse of H1B visas, and illegal immigration (or reformed immigration involving 'guest workers', aka 'imported cheap labor'), etc, the standard of living for most Americans will decrease. The tax hikes that will eventually show up, be it through hyperinflation, cuts to services while taxes remain the same, or direct increases in taxes will be the straw that breaks the camels back. This is why it is imperative that we rebuild the social safety net now, starting with healthcare. My personal hope for my country is a long deflation, at least another 4 or 5 years. This will give us time to decrease our overall debt loads, cut waste from our budgets, and give us time to reassess priorities and clean house, while at the same time keeping countries like China focused on reassessing their proiorities and cleaning their own house, instead of using our current low state to gain advantage.

While I have no intention of letting reckless free marketers off he hook, part of the reason they were able to dig such a massive pit of global economic catastrophe is the emergence of new technologies and products far faster than governments and financial systems could digest them and their implications. I'm not a ludite or a technophobe, but I do believe that human governments and global financial systems need to better monitor how technology is being used in regards to the global marketplace. After all, those credit default swaps couldn't have existed in such great numbers if they had to be put together in paper ledgers, right?

For this reason, the world desperately needs some form of overarching financial monitoring bodies (and maybe a little regulation), and individual governments have to police their own Wall Streets. If we have the technology to create new products, we have it to monitor those same products. China is now building a market bubble to protect itself from the consequences of the world wide crisis. Mexico and Central America are awash in international criminal gangs, which not only costs lives but destorts their economic activities. The EU is breaking apart from all the things that were overlooked and pushed aside in its formation and expansion. Nuclear-capable Pakistan is unstable, which threatens India and the Middle East, mitigating their productive copasities and national agendas. The list goes on and on. The whole world is in economic and social crisis. A few years of reflection will do the world a boatload of good, or eliminate every life on Earth, one or the other.

Slow, but unrelenting deflation or stagnation in America will merely keep the rest of the world from gaining too fast on America while we're down, and motivate us to figure out how to climb out of it with our neighbors. We are still rich enough and have enough credit-worthiness to keep our society from crumbling to dust (despite what Fox News claims).

Globalization needs to continue. There should be no going back, but slowing down, stopping temporarily, or even backtracking a small amount, in order to figure out how to get where you're going, doesn't mean you're canceling your trip. Continuing to drive aimlessly, with a vague goal but no directions, can only get you more lost.

Austinhousingbubble says

I wish it was so, most of us are just struggling to pay off our loans. Is it too much to ask that I get to choose where the fruits of my labor go?

Yes it is. It shouldn’t be, but it is. And it has always been this way. Just wait until you hit your stride in your career and watch your standard of living remain static thanks to excessive taxes — and I’m talking without any kind of health care option — I’m referring to the deferred debt load to help pay off the excesses of a failed attempt at unregulated, free markets.

Breaking news update from Associated press and Fox news:

Sarah Palin found prostituting herself in Amsterdam. She was complaining about excessive morality brigade in USA, which forced her to do it in Netherland. She said besides having fun, she is also saving money for the health insurance. She is so sure of Obama plan failing...She said she would rather fuck with a stranger than take government's help in health insurance ...She hates socialism..