It is no surprise that we are where we are today, thanks to the republican's ideology of "free enterprise", "government should keep its hands off private life".
It sounds good, but it is an open highway to rip off. During the last eight years in power, the republicans opened the highway to rip off to the widest. They deregulated all the laws that were written in the past to protect consumers and the financial disaster that we have today. There used to have laws that allowed banks to operate only regionally. There used to have laws that separated commercial banks and investment banks. The republicans with a majority in the congress during the last ten years or so abolished all those laws. That is the reason we have today's financial crisis. They also abolished all food inspections, anti-pollution inspection. They said that they let companies doing it on the "voluntary basis". During the last eight years, the US had more E coli outbreaks than ever before. The question is: We have police walking down the streets to stop the small guys from ripping each other, why we do not have police to stop the big guys from ripping off the small guys?
The republican’s philosophy is very wrong for a country, not just for the US, but any country in the world. God forbid, other countries should think carefully before adopting their way of executing capitalism.
The core theory of the republican philosophy bases on the trickle down economy theory. You start to build up from the top; the wealth will trickle down to the bottom. In the 50' there was a saying: "What's good for GM is good for the country!" As the theory goes, if you cut tax for the top, they will use the money to invest, thus jobs are created, and thus income is created. Unfortunately, the tax cuts only stay at the top and nowhere else. The rich use the tax cut money to buy stocks, the companies that get money from the investors use them to buy stocks as well, instead of expanding production and hiring more employees. The companies only want to produce up to a certain amount. When production meets the diminishing return point, they stop producing in order to keep the price at most profitable to them. As a reason, investing money will not necessary always result in more jobs.
I am all for capitalism, but the government has to have a role to keep it running properly. The republican’s philosophy is just all wrong and unacceptable. They create an environment to enrich themselves and squeeze the people below. It's like we are going back to the Medieval Europe again. Few have the privilege to live high in the castles and the rest dig potatoes underneath.
I can respect somebody's different approach for the good of the country, but the way of the republican today is just all about exploitation to the point that it is so immoral and criminal. That's what I cannot accept, and that's why I despise the republicans with passion.
Logically, I don't see how McCain can win this election. He run a lousy campaign, his knowledge of issues is limited or none, especially the ones about the economy. McCain’s running mate, Palin, must not be very smart, because McCain's campaign organization has been trying to hide her from the press as much as possible. They are afraid of her saying something stupid in public. As a matter of fact, she really did say stupid things every time she had to speak none scripted. McCain is a gambler. He gambles for his politic. Nobody in the right mind would pick Paline for running mate, adding to the fact that there were more qualified candidates. However, McCain desperately needed to fire up his base, so he gambled and picked Paline. The decision to try to cancel the presidential debate is nothing less than another political gamble. Do we want a president who has a habit of gambling for his politic? The only way that Obama could loose is the race factor. Racism is still running deep in this country. I found it hard to understand logically that some people could not relate to a guy who grew up in poverty, and yet it is easy for them to relate to a millionaire who owns 7 houses, 13 cars, and walks around in a $500 pair of shoes!
First 9/11 and now this economic crisis, both happened under republican’s clock. Both incidents happened because they had ignored all the warning signs, and they said they would be best to protect us. The terrorists could not do a better job to destroy this country than these republicans. 9/11 did not bring down our economy, neither did it brought our nation’s debt to 10 trillions of dollars. Bush, Chenney, the White House Staffs and those republican senators who sponsor the deregulations should all be locked up at the Guantanamo Bay prison and be treated as terrorists.
You all talked about the mortgage crisis, but you never talked about the fact that the republican government created it by encouraging house sales by any mean. It did not add up when two three years ago, the housing market was booming when unemployment number was high. Bush needed two set of numbers to tell the American people that the economy was strong and sound: The housing sales and the stock market. The tax cut for the rich took care of the stock market, and the house sales could be increased by easing the lending law.
McCain has a habit of changing his stand on the issue on a day to day basis; it depends on who he talked to. Nevertheless, he is a Republican; he will do whatever the republicans wanted him to do. A duck will always walk like a duck and quack like a duck.God helps this country if McCain or any other republican is in power.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Health Care Crisis
For a long time Republican politicians have been telling us that the best way to solve the health care crisis is to allow the private sector to run it. Isn’t our health care system in the hand of the private sector right now? The argument went on telling us that privatization of the health care system created competition, thus lowered the costs. We saw from our own pocket books that it was not so, otherwise we would have not been talking about this subject right now. They also told us that privatization (of the health care system) allowed us to choose our own providers which, in turn, allowed us to choose our own doctors, our own hospitals. It sounds good, if we have a lot of money. But most of us are not in the financial situation that makes those choices affordable.
We can have a universal health care system that does not require the government to be a provider. We can localize the health care system, like we used to localize the banking system, limiting the service within the boundary of the states or certain regions. A single insurance company or a group of insurance companies can pool together to get a contract with the states to write a health insurance policies to cover everybody in the state. The whole principle is that the premium for individuals in a large group insurance policy would always be a lot lower than if a policy was written for one individual or a small group of individuals. We see that vividly in our work place. The states can collect the premiums through payroll tax then pay to the insurance company (ies).
The state might want to exclude from the universal health care policy those who already have health insurance through his/her work place in order to avoid competition with the health care benefits from companies which many of them use as part of their recruiting tools. It should also be flexible to allow individuals to buy their own private health insurance, if they chose to do so. By the way, not be able to buy your own private insurance is one of the many scaring points against universal insurance that Republicans often raised as an issue.
A state universal health care, not only helps those individuals who cannot afford health coverage, it also relieve pressure from small business owners, who cannot afford to buy health insurance for themselves and their families.
We can have a universal health care system that does not require the government to be a provider. We can localize the health care system, like we used to localize the banking system, limiting the service within the boundary of the states or certain regions. A single insurance company or a group of insurance companies can pool together to get a contract with the states to write a health insurance policies to cover everybody in the state. The whole principle is that the premium for individuals in a large group insurance policy would always be a lot lower than if a policy was written for one individual or a small group of individuals. We see that vividly in our work place. The states can collect the premiums through payroll tax then pay to the insurance company (ies).
The state might want to exclude from the universal health care policy those who already have health insurance through his/her work place in order to avoid competition with the health care benefits from companies which many of them use as part of their recruiting tools. It should also be flexible to allow individuals to buy their own private health insurance, if they chose to do so. By the way, not be able to buy your own private insurance is one of the many scaring points against universal insurance that Republicans often raised as an issue.
A state universal health care, not only helps those individuals who cannot afford health coverage, it also relieve pressure from small business owners, who cannot afford to buy health insurance for themselves and their families.
The Evil Side of Tax Cut
The argument for tax cuts is that they will induce the economy by encouraging investments, thus creating jobs, thus creating income. In reality, an average household would receive from the tax cuts to the amount of about a couple of pizzas a week which would not do much to the national consumption. Finally, the people who need help the most, those who have no job, would be left out in this process. The ones who benefit the most are the rich and very rich. The richer they are, the bigger the reward. These people would not increase their consumption because of the tax cuts. They all ready bought every thing they wanted, without having to wait for tax cuts. They would use the extra money to invest alright, buying more stocks. These money would pour into the treasuries of the corporations which the proponents to tax cuts told us that it would help them to expand their businesses which in turn would help the economy. Put yourself in the shoes of the CEO’s. Would you build more factories, hire more employees, when you have no sales? History told us that it is not so. Reagan tax cut in the 80’s did not help the economy any, so did Bush’s. The unemployment figures are the same today as that before the 2003 tax cut. Even the recent tax rebate had very little or no effect on consumption number.
Tax cuts never work well for the economy because it has a very short term effect, if any. In the mean time, the economy needs a long term solution. The proponents of the tax cut policy are always the opponents of government spending policy. Interestingly enough, it costs the government the same, whether 400 billions of dollars are coming from tax cuts or from government spending. Is one ton of cotton or one ton of steel heavier? However, there is a big difference between the two policies (tax cuts vs. government spending), in consequence. Tax cuts result in dead money. The money stops dead in the coiffures of the corporation. As we all know, the money is not good if it is not circulated. On the other hand, the same 400 billions of dollars of tax cuts can be use by the government to create job projects such as repairing and maintain the nation infrastructure, expand public transportation, encourage alternative energy research and production, encouraging research and production of fuel efficiency vehicles (Detroit surely would welcome this kind of government spending), and more… The government is the biggest consumer group as well as the biggest employer in the nation. When its resource is pumped into the economy, certainly it will produce strong impact. All the money that the government spends on job projects will not go to waste, as the tax cut proponents have always suggested. Since job projects create jobs, thus create incomes and consumption (and more jobs and income as a result), thus create income tax which comes back to the government. The Hoover Dam project, the National Highway project provided employment for millions of people for decades. Those were big government spending projects, but they also were the big jolts to the economy. Certainly, nobody could say the money spent in those projects went to waste.
Tax cuts never work well for the economy because it has a very short term effect, if any. In the mean time, the economy needs a long term solution. The proponents of the tax cut policy are always the opponents of government spending policy. Interestingly enough, it costs the government the same, whether 400 billions of dollars are coming from tax cuts or from government spending. Is one ton of cotton or one ton of steel heavier? However, there is a big difference between the two policies (tax cuts vs. government spending), in consequence. Tax cuts result in dead money. The money stops dead in the coiffures of the corporation. As we all know, the money is not good if it is not circulated. On the other hand, the same 400 billions of dollars of tax cuts can be use by the government to create job projects such as repairing and maintain the nation infrastructure, expand public transportation, encourage alternative energy research and production, encouraging research and production of fuel efficiency vehicles (Detroit surely would welcome this kind of government spending), and more… The government is the biggest consumer group as well as the biggest employer in the nation. When its resource is pumped into the economy, certainly it will produce strong impact. All the money that the government spends on job projects will not go to waste, as the tax cut proponents have always suggested. Since job projects create jobs, thus create incomes and consumption (and more jobs and income as a result), thus create income tax which comes back to the government. The Hoover Dam project, the National Highway project provided employment for millions of people for decades. Those were big government spending projects, but they also were the big jolts to the economy. Certainly, nobody could say the money spent in those projects went to waste.
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