GM Suspends Chevy Volt Production after Poor Sales

[VMaxx]

The problem is the Volt is 55% more expensive than the Impala, which is their most expensive car besides the corvette. If it were closer in price they'd sell.

 

[Monkey God]

Scumbag GM

Sells overpriced car no one wants.
Blame politicians.

 

[Emission]

CRX HF had been outfitted to get well over 100 MPG supposedly...

The Honda N600 from the early 70s was tested at 136 mpg when driven at 30mph. With the right gearing it would easily see 100+ mpg highway mileage.

 

[Mohonri]

No. The reason why the GoM drilling permits are on hold is because the oil companies fucked up big time and tried to cover their tracks and then tried to weasel out of paying damages. Remember that huge clusterfuck of a oil spill from the Deep Horizon back in 2010? Also there are only a few thousand jobs or so associated with the oil drilling business in that area IIRC.

As someone who used to live in the Houston area and worked for an oil company, we're talking about tens of thousands of jobs. It's not just the drill rigs. It's the shipyards building the production platforms, the engineering offices designing them, the support facilities, the helicopter companies, the catering companies, etc, etc. It might be a few thousand people on the drill rigs themselves, but there are a lot of jobs onshore to support those rigs.

The economic impact of postponing or even permanently stopping the drilling and oil extraction there is probably minor even on a city much less state or national level. You're making mountains out of molehills at the very least here. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to dislike Obama without blowing small things out of proportion.

If this were the only example, you might be correct. But this is just one datapoint in a very well-supported trend of Obama's administration directly destroying jobs or preventing their creation.

We've already talked about this. Even if you fired pretty much all of the US energy sector workers tomorrow it'd hardly make a dent on the economy, and that certainly isn't happening. If anything with all the Nat. Gas drilling and fracking Obama has OK'd he has more than compensated with any jobs that have been lost due to his finally regulating some of the worst abuses we've seen in the last few years.

I would postulate that such growth is in spite of the Obama administration's best efforts. Despite such rapid growth in the mining/extration sector, we're at the worst workforce participation rate since the 70's. Again, it's like saying "I decided not to kick you in the groin! Aren't you grateful?".

The short response, I guess, is this: Can you name a single policy that the current administration has implemented that will either cause or enable a net job creation? I can't think of any. I can think of plenty that have or that will destroy or prevent jobs.

Actually they are. Not because they want to, but because they're being forced to. Some places in China are getting so polluted that they're being abandoned and the government there is finally starting to take notice of the situation. Abuses are still common but being cracked down on more and more.

Do you think the Chinese will ever have environmental regulations as stringent as ours? I don't. And that means they will always have that much of an economic advantage, while our own regulations have negligible real impact on the global environment. IOW, huge economic costs to us for no noticeable benefit.

No it doesn't. The Keystone pipeline would've created at best around 15,000 temporary jobs that would've lasted around 6 months. The pipeline would've created a massive oil disaster should a major leak occur, which BTW isn't unheard of. Happens all the time over seas in countries like Liberia that no one cares about over here in the US so you don't hear about it. You're making more mountains out of molehills.

There are currently about 55,000 miles of crude pipelines in the US today. On top of that there are many times that amount for refined product, plus a huge network of natural gas pipelines. Sure, accidents happen. But how often? Very rare. And how big are the consequences? On the aggregate, usually quite minor. The safety rate for pipelines in the US is actually quite astonishingly good.

Nope. They're padding their profits by outsourcing blue collar jobs and playing stupid financing games that will blow up in a few years long after the current execs and CFO's get to ride off into the sunset, sticking other people (read: you and me) with the bailout bill. Obamacare isn't going to do anything to increase healthcare costs more than they're already rising, which BTW is well over the rate of inflation, while wages stagnate or fall. THAT is the true failure of PPACA and is one of the main reasons why I dislike Obama.

Let's see if I can count the ways you're philosophically wrong here:
1) Why do you think businesses send jobs offshore? Because it's expensive to employ people in the US, and it's about to get a whole lot more expensive due to PPACA. Can you provide some data to back up your claim that companies are gaming the financial system?
2) Why are you assuming there will be a bailout? We've seen how well things work when the government makes loans to (preferred) businesses--Chrysler and GM went bankrupt anyway, we lost somewhere between $100-200 billion on TARP, and "too big to fail" is still a looming threat. The DoE is blowing billions on green companies that have no profitability.
3) Obamacare not increasing health care costs? What planet do you live on? When the insurance companies are required to 1) cover pre-existing conditions and 2) not charge high-risk patients according to their risk, their costs will go up. And guess who pays those costs? The rest of us. Silly mandates like covering not-medically-necessary contraception drive up the cost further. There's a simple truth here: regulation increases costs. Don't try to pretend PPACA is going to lower costs--I will argue you right under the table on this one. Oh, not to mention the estimates for the insurance subsidies have already risen 30%. Part of PPACA levies taxes on pharmaceutical companies and medical device makers. Guess who pays that bill? It's either the owners/shareholders of those companies, or it's their employees, or it's the people buying it, or it comes out of R&D for newer/better/cheaper products. If the first or the second, it's that much less money being spent voluntarily in the economy. If the third, it drives up medical costs. If the fourth, then we lose out on the critical R&D which has led to the amazing medical advances of the last century.

Because what they're doing more closely resembles legalized robbery rather than business a la the Robber Barons during the Gilded Age. Many of these big banks and mega corps aren't really doing anything to add value to the economy as a whole, they're extracting rents to further their bottom line. Or IOW, they're making themselves richer by making everyone else poorer. Healthcare is one of the most obvious cases of this but its made all the more tragic/horrible since known solutions already exist and they're literally making people's lives shorter/crappy by denying or restricting healthcare to further their bottom line.

Can you get off the OWS demagoguery and cite some facts rather than wild speculative namecalling? Please provide examples so that I may knock them down one at a time.

what refinery jobs? US Refineries have been operating at capacity for years. we need new refineries to get refinery jobs but no one wants to let them build one

There is plenty of capacity to handle the additional load from Canada. Sure, we haven't built any new refineries in decades, but the existing ones have been expanding like crazy.

 

[mesyn191]

As someone who used to live in the Houston area and worked for an oil company....It might be a few thousand people on the drill rigs themselves, but there are a lot of jobs onshore to support those rigs.

If you want to count like that there are also a lot of jobs on shore to support the fishing and tourist businesses on the coast of Louisiana, Florida, and Texas. Far more than involved with the off shore drilling rigs. It'd be foolish to put hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk to save a few thousand.

But this is just one datapoint in a very well-supported trend of Obama's administration directly destroying jobs or preventing their creation.

If this is true you're doing a very poor job of demonstrating it. So far all your only examples are the off shore drilling around the GoM and the Proposed Keystone Pipeline, which are of minor importance at very best to the national economy.

I would postulate that such growth is in spite of the Obama administration's best efforts.

So when things go wrong with the economy its all Obama's fault full stop, but when he gets things right he gets no credit? At least be consistent with your thinking. Also you might want to read this: Obama Pushes Natural-Gas Fracking to Create 600,000 U.S. Jobs Now there is all sorts of information that I wouldn't agree with Obama about in that article, personally I don't even like fracking given the horror stories of it contaminating drinking water I've read about, but you can't legitimately claim Obama had nothing to do with the job growth in the energy sector.

Despite such rapid growth in the mining/extration sector, we're at the worst workforce participation rate since the 70's.

Yes I know, but that isn't Obama's fault. He inherited that mess from Bush after that idiot blew a Housing and Credit bubble which started to fall a part in the last couple of years of his 2nd term. The problem with Obama and the economy is that his efforts to fix the mess that Bush created have limp-wristed at best so the "recovery" is a joke. He also has failed to re-regulate the banks and to establish effective regulators in office who actually want to enforce the rules.

This, what could be described at best as incompetence and at worst as corruption, to fix the economy and corruption in the financial markets are the other main reason why I dislike Obama.

The short response, I guess, is this: Can you name a single policy that the current administration has implemented that will either cause or enable a net job creation? I can't think of any.

On a national level or sector/locale specific? On a national level no, he hasn't accomplished much at all. On a sector/locale specific level I've already posted the previous chart showing gains in the energy sector and significant gains in others like healthcare.

Do you think the Chinese will ever have environmental regulations as stringent as ours? I don't.

Well then you'd be wrong.

Some 190 million Chinese people are drinking water with fairly high levels of hazardous substances, and about one-third of the urban population are breathing polluted air, according to a report on China's environmental strategies released at a recent conference.

China has vowed to complete a revision of its environmental quality standards for air and water during the “12th Five-Year Plan” period (2011-15).

The report noted that China's environmental situation remains grim. The environment keeps deteriorating, which will put the country under increasing environmental pressure.

More detailed information here.

while our own regulations have negligible real impact on the global environment.

Really, what information are you looking at to come to this conclusion?

There are currently about 55,000 miles of crude pipelines in the US today. ...Sure, accidents happen. But how often? Very rare. And how big are the consequences? On the aggregate, usually quite minor. The safety rate for pipelines in the US is actually quite astonishingly good.

Yea and the blow out preventer on a well head is never ever evereverever gonna fail either right? The safety record is near perfect on that part, what could go wrong right?

Let's see if I can count the ways you're philosophically wrong here:
1) Why do you think businesses send jobs offshore? Because it's expensive to employ people in the US

Well that depends actually.

American made...Chinese owned
But unlike its neighbors in Spartanburg, Yuncheng is a Chinese company. It has come to South Carolina because by Chinese standards, America is darn cheap.

Yes, you read that right. The land Yuncheng purchased in Spartanburg, at $350,000 for 6.5 acres, cost one-fourth the price of land back in Shanghai or Dongguan, a gritty city near Hong Kong where the company already runs three plants. Electricity is cheaper too: Yungcheng pays up to 14¢ per kilowatt-hour in China at peak usage, and just 4¢ in South Carolina. And no brownouts either, a sporadic problem in China. It's true that American workers are much more expensive, of course, and the overall cost of making a widget in China remains lower, and perhaps always will.

But for hundreds of Chinese companies like Yuncheng, the U.S. has become a better, less expensive place to set up shop. It could be the biggest role reversal since, well ... when Nixon went to China. "The gap between manufacturing costs in the U.S. and China is shrinking," explains John Ling, a naturalized American from China who runs the South Carolina Department of Commerce's business recruitment office in Shanghai. Ling recruited Yuncheng to Spartanburg, and others too: Chinese companies have invested $280 million and created more than 1,200 jobs in South Carolina alone.

Skilled workers at American Yuncheng will earn $25 to $30 an hour, line operators $10 to $12. That's a lot more than the $2 an hour that unskilled labor costs in China, but the company can qualify for a state payroll tax credit of $1,500 per worker (for any company creating more than 10 jobs). And by being closer to companies like Coca-Cola, Yuncheng can respond more quickly when they need new labels designed to show that a product has reduced its fat content or added more flavor.

American wages are still higher than Chinese wages on average but the cost of doing business here can be so much cheaper that some manufacturing jobs are actually coming back. Also note that article is from 2010. Since then the cost gap has narrowed even further for US vs. Chinese made goods.

and it's about to get a whole lot more expensive due to PPACA.

Already refuted earlier. Costs of healthcare have been rising far in excess of the rate of inflation, as previously mentioned, for years now before Obama even became president.

The PPACA is a terrible bill and its failure to stop the rising healthcare costs is Obama's screw up but you can't blame the rising costs on him. That is the healthcare industry's fault. More specifically the drug and insurance companies.

Can you provide some data to back up your claim that companies are gaming the financial system?

I already posted the graph showing corporate profits a few pages ago. Notice how prior to 2007 or so there was a big consistent spread in between the nominal and real profits? That was them paying their taxes. Notice how after that, particularly after mid 2008 the nominal and real profits were near identical? That is them playing stupid financial games to avoid paying taxes.

Why are you assuming there will be a bailout?

Because Obama has established Too Big To Fail as a policy when dealing with financial fall out from the over sized financial institutions when they screw up. A bailout is implicit in such a policy.

This BTW is also an example of a good legitimate reason to dislike Obama. TBTF is a terrible policy and I strongly dislike Obama for legitimizing it by continuing Bush's bailout policies. Those banks and financial institutions should've been put into receivership and gradually wound down a la the S&L crisis/Great Depression Era.

We've seen how well things work when the government makes loans to (preferred) businesses--Chrysler and GM went bankrupt anyway, we lost somewhere between $100-200 billion on TARP, and "too big to fail" is still a looming threat. The DoE is blowing billions on green companies that have no profitability.

These are examples of so-called "crony capitalism" and pork projects. Handled properly the government can indeed encourage new ideas and business through lending and R&D funds. The internet was made possible due to that in the first place you know that right?

When the insurance companies are required to 1) cover pre-existing conditions and 2) not charge high-risk patients according to their risk, their costs will go up.

It should be noted that other countries that have a UHS that covers pre-existing conditions and high risk patient's, and have for decades, offer healthcare that costs half or even less of what we pay in the US. They also generally do a better job than the US healthcare system does too.

Silly mandates like covering not-medically-necessary contraception drive up the cost further.

Condoms and birth control pills are a hell of a lot cheaper than an abortion or costs associated with the state raising a child should it be abandoned. Your thinking is incredibly short sighted and narrow here.

There's a simple truth here: regulation increases costs.

No, poorly written regulation or regulation written by a corrupt government (FYI the PPACA was written by the insurance companies) will increase costs. Regulation done properly will lower costs and improve society on the whole.

Don't try to pretend PPACA is going to lower costs--I will argue you right under the table on this one.

I said in the very post you quoted, the very section you quoted in fact, that healthcare costs are rising dramatically. I didn't even vaguely hint at the PPACA lowering any costs. I simply refuted your blaming the PPACA for rising healthcare costs by pointing out that its been rising dramatically well before Obama even became president, since at least Regan was in office believe it or not.

If the fourth, then we lose out on the critical R&D which has led to the amazing medical advances of the last century.

The drug companies have very very little to do with any critical and/or amazing medical R&D anymore. Almost all of it is done by the public sector (IOW, colleges and government sponsored projects) both here in the US and abroad:

The majority of research cited in patent applications was done in academic centers. Some more was done in other non-profit or government research centers. Only 15% of the research was done by industry. That's not a very compelling argument for the indispensable contribution of industry to research.

Carroll quotes another study, this one performed by Public Citizen in 2001, which showed that "U.S. taxpayer-funded researchers conducted 55 percent of the published research projects leading to the discovery and development of these drugs (and foreign academic institutions 30 percent)." In fact, drilling down even further into the data reveals that only one in seventeen papers come from the industry itself.

Can you get off the OWS demagoguery and cite some facts rather than wild speculative namecalling? Please provide examples so that I may knock them down one at a time.

I've been posting charts and links all throughout the thread, not just in my replies to you but others as well. I haven't called you any names either. As for "OWS demagoguery" the wealth disparity/preferential tax rates for the rich and the historical associated pervasive corruption that comes with it is irrefutable:

 

[Dr. Righteous]

Shitty implementation with a disgusting price tag.

GM should have ganked the 4 cylinder to run the generator and put a 1 or 2 cylinder diesel in its place. Hell, it's a generator, so it could be spun around by a lawn tractor gas engine just fine. Would have cut fuel consumption exponentially and been a little cheaper to produce.

Hybrid vehicles are 100% a SCAM and the truth is there are OLD engine technologies that can easily hit the target gas mileage numbers but the Gub-ment keeps these out of the hands of the people via the EPAs regulations by fiat.

 

[Bambi]

I absolutly sure this car was the result of politics and not what people wanted. The fact that the Chevy Cruze Eco gets better gas mileage

On the highway but marginally. Why did you ignore the city driving where most people do their driving?

 

[Mohonri]

If you want to count like that there are also a lot of jobs on shore to support the fishing and tourist businesses on the coast of Louisiana, Florida, and Texas. Far more than involved with the off shore drilling rigs. It'd be foolish to put hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk to save a few thousand.

The actual damage to the tourism and fishing industries was actually quite small and temporary, with a pretty incredible rebound the following year (thanks to the government shutting down fishing for a year). Tourism suffered mostly because of media hype.

Also, we have been drilling and producing in the GoM for seventy years. Take a look:

How many Deepwater Horizon-like incidents have we had in that time? Two. That's a pretty good safety record.

If this is true you're doing a very poor job of demonstrating it. So far all your only examples are the off shore drilling around the GoM and the Proposed Keystone Pipeline, which are of minor importance at very best to the national economy.

You want more? Ok, Lilly Ledbetter, the crowning achievement for his first year in office. Obamacare. Dodd-Frank. EPA regulations (and not just the ones he recently put on hold). CAFE standards. California's Central Valley. The list goes on.

So when things go wrong with the economy its all Obama's fault full stop, but when he gets things right he gets no credit? At least be consistent with your thinking. Also you might want to read this: Obama Pushes Natural-Gas Fracking to Create 600,000 U.S. Jobs Now there is all sorts of information that I wouldn't agree with Obama about in that article, personally I don't even like fracking given the horror stories of it contaminating drinking water I've read about, but you can't legitimately claim Obama had nothing to do with the job growth in the energy sector.

Compare actions to words. Cheerleading fracking is one thing. Actually taking action to, for example, lower regulatory obstacles is another. It's easy (and politically convenient) to say certain things. But a State of the Union speech doesn't create law. Obama has done nothing to encourage (other than verbally) natgas production. He just hasn't thrown up more obstacles. And that's great. If only he'd get out of the way of the coal and oil industries as well.

As for the safety of fracking, to my knowledge there has not been a single case where fracking has been shown to cause contamination of drinking water. Not. One. There's a lot of fearmongering, but no evidence to date.

As for a president's effect on the economy, it's a pretty simple dichotomy: either insert the government and see growth decrease (and sometimes that's alright), or get out of the way. A president can either enable growth or stand in its way. I'll give Obama credit where it's due, but to date there have been precious few occasions where he's earned any kudos on the economy.

Yes I know, but that isn't Obama's fault. He inherited that mess from Bush after that idiot blew a Housing and Credit bubble which started to fall a part in the last couple of years of his 2nd term. The problem with Obama and the economy is that his efforts to fix the mess that Bush created have limp-wristed at best so the "recovery" is a joke. He also has failed to re-regulate the banks and to establish effective regulators in office who actually want to enforce the rules.

This, what could be described at best as incompetence and at worst as corruption, to fix the economy and corruption in the financial markets are the other main reason why I dislike Obama.

I'll grant that Obama inherited a recession. What actions has he taken in order to shorten it? And (seriously, I'm sincerely interested) what would you propose he and congress do in order to promote economic growth?

On a national level or sector/locale specific? On a national level no, he hasn't accomplished much at all. On a sector/locale specific level I've already posted the previous chart showing gains in the energy sector and significant gains in others like healthcare.

Healthcare and energy have been growing quickly for quite some time, even before Obama took office.

Well then you'd be wrong.
More detailed information here.

Forgive me if I'm misreading those articles, but neither of them state specifics for China's plan of environmental regulation, let alone state how the new regulations will compare with those of the US, nor do they state whether they'll be enforced. Not to mention that Five Year Plans have a history of not actually happening.

Really, what information are you looking at to come to this conclusion?

The US currently produces about 18% of global CO2 emissions, and that percentage is dropping rapidly due to economic and population growth in the BRIC countries. Sure, we are a significant contributor, but cutting our own emissions by, say 50% would only produce a 9% global drop, and would devastate our economy. And then China would make up the emissions difference within a year or two.

Yea and the blow out preventer on a well head is never ever evereverever gonna fail either right? The safety record is near perfect on that part, what could go wrong right?

I never claimed that the safety records are 100% clean. Accidents (or negligence in this case) will happen. The real question comes down to numbers: Has the economic benefit from oil production outweighed the economic and environmental cost? The answer there is a resounding yes.

Well that depends actually.

American wages are still higher than Chinese wages on average but the cost of doing business here can be so much cheaper that some manufacturing jobs are actually coming back. Also note that article is from 2010. Since then the cost gap has narrowed even further for US vs. Chinese made goods.

So wait, companies aren't outsourcing? I thought your claim was the opposite earlier.

Already refuted earlier. Costs of healthcare have been rising far in excess of the rate of inflation, as previously mentioned, for years now before Obama even became president.

The PPACA is a terrible bill and its failure to stop the rising healthcare costs is Obama's screw up but you can't blame the rising costs on him. That is the healthcare industry's fault. More specifically the drug and insurance companies.

I should have been clearer before. You are correct that healthcare costs are rising (and have been for some time) far faster than the rate of inflation. My intention was to state that PPACA will accelerate that trend. I have already explained how PPACA will drive (and in many cases, already has driven) insurance costs higher. Can you explain how the healthcare industry (pharma, hospitals, doctors) and insurance companies are driving costs higher?

I already posted the graph showing corporate profits a few pages ago. Notice how prior to 2007 or so there was a big consistent spread in between the nominal and real profits? That was them paying their taxes. Notice how after that, particularly after mid 2008 the nominal and real profits were near identical? That is them playing stupid financial games to avoid paying taxes.

There appears to be an assumption on your part that businesses are artificially boosting their nominal profits, when that is only one possibility of several. For example, inventory levels have been pretty high since the bottom of the recession, which will affect that graph without indicating actual economic growth.

Because Obama has established Too Big To Fail as a policy when dealing with financial fall out from the over sized financial institutions when they screw up. A bailout is implicit in such a policy.

This BTW is also an example of a good legitimate reason to dislike Obama. TBTF is a terrible policy and I strongly dislike Obama for legitimizing it by continuing Bush's bailout policies. Those banks and financial institutions should've been put into receivership and gradually wound down a la the S&L crisis/Great Depression Era.

Hey, we agree on something!

These are examples of so-called "crony capitalism" and pork projects. Handled properly the government can indeed encourage new ideas and business through lending and R&D funds. The internet was made possible due to that in the first place you know that right?

It should be noted that other countries that have a UHS that covers pre-existing conditions and high risk patient's, and have for decades, offer healthcare that costs half or even less of what we pay in the US. They also generally do a better job than the US healthcare system does too.

I'll grant you the internet. But statistically speaking, it's an outlier. And if the government were funding just R&D, you might have a point (I personally haven't come to a certain stance on gov't funded R&D). But in too many cases we have the government subsidizing production of existing technology which otherwise would fail, just to score political points.

That graph, while based on facts, paints a picture so incomplete as to be not much more than a few fragments. Yes, the US spends much more per capita on healthcare than other country. But comparing healthcare in the US to healthcare in other countries is apples-to-oranges. You have to ask the question "why?" without jumping to the conclusion of "insurance companies are ripping you off!" Bear in mind, for example, that the rate of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other life-threatening illnesses are far higher in the US than in other countries, probably in part due to a less healthy lifestyle. Also that with governments in charge, rationing is the rule rather than the exception. Also that here in the US, we (statistically speaking) are willing to pay a lot of money for treatments which have a low probability of extending life significantly. Keep in mind the rate of medical advancement in the US versus other countries. Availability is FAR better here in the states than almost every country with UHS. A week and a half ago my wife had a sore throat. Thought it might be strep, so she called the doctor, got an appointment that day, and had a prescription for antibiotics that afternoon. That's something you generally don't see in countries with UHS. I can go on...

Condoms and birth control pills are a hell of a lot cheaper than an abortion or costs associated with the state raising a child should it be abandoned. Your thinking is incredibly short sighted and narrow here.

Sure, there's an economic argument there. But in this particular instance, it's silly. What makes more sense--buying the birth control yourself, or paying your insurance company so that they pay the pharmacy (and take a cut) when you want your birth control?

No, poorly written regulation or regulation written by a corrupt government (FYI the PPACA was written by the insurance companies) will increase costs. Regulation done properly will lower costs and improve society on the whole.

"Improve society" (I'll interpret that as "have a net positive economic effect") maybe. "Lower costs" almost never. Agreed on the "poorly written regulation"--in fact, it applies to nearly all new regulation written.

I said in the very post you quoted, the very section you quoted in fact, that healthcare costs are rising dramatically. I didn't even vaguely hint at the PPACA lowering any costs. I simply refuted your blaming the PPACA for rising healthcare costs by pointing out that its been rising dramatically well before Obama even became president, since at least Regan was in office believe it or not.

Your statement was "Obamacare isn't going to do anything to increase healthcare costs more than they're already rising," to which I responded with a list of reasons why it *will* cause healthcare costs to increase even faster.

The drug companies have very very little to do with any critical and/or amazing medical R&D anymore. Almost all of it is done by the public sector (IOW, colleges and government sponsored projects) both here in the US and abroad:

That article seems to cherry-pick an awful lot of stats. For example, it ignores the fact that the pharmaceutical industry has much less elastic demand than other industries. That means it doesn't suffer as much during tough economic times and doesn't benefit as much during booms. It also fails to mention to what degree pharmaceutical companies fund university research, with or without partnership with the government. It also ignores the minor issue of competition. The first company that comes out with a cure for cancer is going to cream the rest of the industry. Unless you believe Big Pharma are in a conspiracy to keep a cure from coming to market.

I've been posting charts and links all throughout the thread, not just in my replies to you but others as well. I haven't called you any names either. As for "OWS demagoguery" the wealth disparity/preferential tax rates for the rich and the historical associated pervasive corruption that comes with it is irrefutable:

You haven't called me names, but you've certainly been throwing mud at the Big Bad Robber Barons. You also seem to be operating on the false premise of economics being a zero-sum game. Sure, the rich are getting richer. But are the poor really getting poorer in real terms as a result? No. As for the myth of rich people paying low income taxes, it's just that: a myth. Something like 47% of taxpayers paid zero or less income tax for 2010.

 

[BlueAqua]

I didn't read any of this thread but I bought a Volt and love it. I've had a lot of fun cars in the past and this one is a nerd's dream car. I'm a car enthusiast and an electrical engineer that gets to plug it in at work.

I just drove home from work for a distance of 44 miles and only used 0.1 gallons of gas. I've had boring cars, and this is definitely not one of them.

 

[beowulf7]

The Volt was overpriced and underperformed and under delivered. I predicted this a long time ago.

 

[DustMite]

...this one is a nerd's dream car...

Does that mean you've managed to overclock it?

 

[eon]

not surprised, i dont think ive seen a single Volt on the street besides Govt cars

 

[mesyn191]

The actual damage to the tourism and fishing industries was actually quite small and temporary, with a pretty incredible rebound the following year (thanks to the government shutting down fishing for a year).

Uh this is blatantly false. I'm just going to link to the oil spill wiki here because its actually quite good and detailed but they're still experiencing consequences from that event. Most of the studies saying that fishing industries and such have already recovered have been funded by BP and yet:

In July 2011 BP released a report[293] claiming that the economy had recovered and there was no reason to believe that anyone would suffer future losses from the spill, with the limited exception of oyster harvesters. However, Bruce Guerra, a crab fisherman in Louisiana for 25 years, said that since the BP oil spill crabbers are trapping 75 percent fewer crabs and that "crabs have been coming up dead, discolored, or riddled with holes since last year's spill". Others in the fishing industry say it could take years to fully realize the spill's effects. "The problem is right when they used the dispersants, that's when the tuna came to the Gulf to spawn," said Cheril Carey, a national sales representative for a Louisiana company specializing in yellow fin tuna. "It takes a tuna five to 15 years to mature. So although we may have fish now, we may not have them in five to 15 years."
,,,,,,,,
The U.S. Travel Association estimated that the economic impact of the oil spill on tourism across the Gulf Coast over a three-year period could exceed approximately $23 billion, in a region that supports over 400,000 travel industry jobs generating $34 billion in revenue annually

There is no way no how the effects of that oil spill won't be felt by the fishing industry at a minimum dramatically for over a decade.

Also, we have been drilling and producing in the GoM for seventy years. How many Deepwater Horizon-like incidents have we had in that time? Two. That's a pretty good safety record.

It wouldn't matter even if the Deepwater Horizon incident is the only one ever. The economic and ecological results of such an accident are so horrible that they can't ever be allowed to happen.

You want more? Ok, Lilly Ledbetter, the crowning achievement for his first year in office. Obamacare. Dodd-Frank. EPA regulations (and not just the ones he recently put on hold). CAFE standards. California's Central Valley. The list goes on.

You mean the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act? If anti discrimination laws are making businesses eliminate jobs then I'd say the problem is with the way the business is being ran and not the law. Obamacare I've already refuted for you. Dodd-Frank attempts to (poorly) re-regulate the financial industry along the lines of what the old Depression Era Glass-Stegall did and doesn't end TBTF. That crap bill has probably had zero net impact on jobs, and what relatively few jobs were eliminated due to it were probably offset by a creation of jobs elsewhere due to the same law, after all it needs enforcement. EPA regs I've already refuted earlier for you, if you can some ones more specifically I'll try to address what you're saying. CAFE is IMO not a very good law but I haven't read anything about it eliminating jobs, its also been around for far longer than Obama was president, so you're going to have be much specific here.

Your list still involves lots of hand waving.

Compare actions to words. Cheerleading fracking is one thing. Actually taking action to, for example, lower regulatory obstacles is another. It's easy (and politically convenient) to say certain things. But a State of the Union speech doesn't create law.

True but it can outline forward looking policy. FWIW Obama had a similar pro Nat. Gas SOTU last year and he still funds drilling oil/gas subsidies rather than defunding them or putting up more road blocks.

As for the safety of fracking, to my knowledge there has not been a single case where fracking has been shown to cause contamination of drinking water. Not. One. There's a lot of fearmongering, but no evidence to date.

EPA investigates wells in Wyoming and finds at least 3 of them have been contaminated with fracking chemicals. The government later linked the contamination in these wells to the nearby fracking in Dec. 2011. These chemicals are highly hazardous and far more of them are left in the ground (closer to 80% of fluids rather than the 30% originally thought when the fracking exemption was added to the Safe Drinking Water Act) than was believed at first.

What actions has he taken in order to shorten it? And (seriously, I'm sincerely interested) what would you propose he and congress do in order to promote economic growth?

Obama has effectively done hardly anything to fix the economy. His stimulus act was a joke, half of it was tax cuts that benefited some big corporations but otherwise accomplished almost no economic growth. The Cash for Clunkers programs was also pretty terrible too IMO since it required the vehicles that were taken in to be destroyed, but people could've used those cheaper used cars. The First Time Homeowner Tax Credit was genuinely stupid IMO. All it did was cause a bump in home prices and sales before they started trending downwards again.

He should've been focusing on trying to make housing cheaper instead of propping up home prices, which would've boosted the over all economy more by reducing income spent on debt service which could then be put towards goods and services, not make it easier to get an expensive home with stupid tax gimmicks. Personally I would've spent lots less money on the military and ended the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. That money could've been better spent elsewhere to add more value to the economy by improving infrastructure, a surprisingly large amount of which is still from the Great Depression Era and is falling a part. I also would've pushed through a law allowing people early buy in to Medicare so that everyone could get that as insurance regardless of age at a more affordable price. To improve new home energy efficiency and reduce power usage I would've passed laws to require home builders to design homes to make better use of thermal mass and passive solar concepts and offered a money program to help people retrofit existing construction with more insulation and solar water heaters among other things. That would've done quite a bit to reduce unemployment in the construction job sector while over all saving the country as a whole large amounts of cash and reducing emissions from existing power plants. Finally I also would've pushed to have the banks wound down in receivership and/or vastly reduced in size permanently so that the TBTF issue wouldn't pop up again and I would've repealed Gramm-Leach-Bliley and reinstituted Glass-Stegall word for word.

More food for thought:

Healthcare and energy have been growing quickly for quite some time, even before Obama took office.

Yes and they continued to grow while he is office. The guy is a douche bag but you have to give credit where it is due whether you like or not, otherwise you start shading the truth.

Forgive me if I'm misreading those articles, but neither of them state specifics for China's plan of environmental regulation, let alone state how the new regulations will compare with those of the US, nor do they state whether they'll be enforced.

Exact comparisons are basically impossible to the US since they only just started to regulate pollution seriously in the last couple of years. We're going to be waiting for years to get that data, but the problems are real and they are going to be doing something about it, like I said before they literally have no choice in the matter.

Not to mention that Five Year Plans have a history of not actually happening.

Uh their current economic growth is due to a series of successful 5 year plans and policies implemented since the 1980's when they started modernizing. 5 year plans don't always work but they're not always bad either, so your observation is kind've useless.

Sure, we are a significant contributor, but cutting our own emissions by, say 50% would only produce a 9% global drop, and would devastate our economy.

If we just stupidly decided to cut the power without any changes in infrastructure and such then yes it would devastate our economy. Through a combination of infrastructure improvements, efficiency retro fits, and new plant construction (ie. nuke) we could probably reduce emissions dramatically over a few years.

I never claimed that the safety records are 100% clean. Accidents (or negligence in this case) will happen. The real question comes down to numbers: Has the economic benefit from oil production outweighed the economic and environmental cost? The answer there is a resounding yes.

But that wasn't the question implied or otherwise. Oil/coal/nat. gas certainly are beneficial to the economy, but only if we implement the use of them properly. If we can't do that then we have to start considering alternatives, like nuclear.

So wait, companies aren't outsourcing? I thought your claim was the opposite earlier.

Don't be facetious. I said earlier they're outsourcing blue collar jobs and that most new jobs being created are low paying. This is net negative for the economy as a whole but beneficial for the big corps/businesses that have the political lobbying muscle to get what they want.

I have already explained how PPACA will drive (and in many cases, already has driven) insurance costs higher.

Your explanations don't fit the evidence of what other healthcare systems are doing and have done for years and you have failed to give sufficient reasons why healthcare in the US should cost so much in general despite providing lower quality care in general for years.

Can you explain how the healthcare industry (pharma, hospitals, doctors) and insurance companies are driving costs higher?

Sure they charge more. That is it. There isn't anything else to it other than that. BTW I was singling out the drug and insurance companies. Doctors and hospitals haven't really been doing much to drive up the cost of healthcare at all.

There appears to be an assumption on your part that businesses are artificially boosting their nominal profits, when that is only one possibility of several. For example, inventory levels have been pretty high since the bottom of the recession, which will affect that graph without indicating actual economic growth.

Uh high inventory levels are bad for profits, not good. Businesses want to sell their stuff ASAP, not pay for warehousing it.

I'll grant you the internet. But statistically speaking, it's an outlier.

Based on what stats where?

But in too many cases we have the government subsidizing production of existing technology which otherwise would fail, just to score political points.

Yea that is an example of a corruption of government being bad, it isn't an example of all government subsidies being bad. The government for instance subsidizes oil and gas drilling, do you think that is bad too?

That graph, while based on facts, paints a picture so incomplete as to be not much more than a few fragments.

You're hand waving pretty badly here. What healthcare costs are there that can't be be boiled down to a per capita and GDP basis? Oh, bear this in mind too:

Bear in mind, for example, that the rate of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other life-threatening illnesses are far higher in the US than in other countries, probably in part due to a less healthy lifestyle.

Why do you believe this would raise the cost of healthcare dramatically in the US vs other countries? Do you believe healthcare is some sort of permanently restricted industry that can't be grown and/or can't respond to supply/demand to change pricing?

Also that with governments in charge, rationing is the rule rather than the exception.

Uh on the chart I linked previously the Japanese see their doctors far more often than Americans do yet their costs are much lower. They're just the most obvious one that pops out on that chart though, pretty all the countries have their people visiting their doctors more than in the US.

Keep in mind the rate of medical advancement in the US versus other countries. Availability is FAR better here in the states than almost every country with UHS.

Just what are you basing this on? In Japan's case at the very least neither of these 2 statements are even vaguely true. PBS did a great show on just this subject back in 2008. Here are the relevant parts: Part 1 and here is Part 2.

A week and a half ago my wife had a sore throat. Thought it might be strep, so she called the doctor, got an appointment that day, and had a prescription for antibiotics that afternoon. That's something you generally don't see in countries with UHS. I can go on...

I used to work in a hospital here in the US and it wasn't unusual to have patient's waiting in the ER for hours with serious injuries before they were even examined much less treated. It also wasn't unheard of patient's to wait months or weeks before they could get a hip replacement surgery done, or almost any surgery really. So you go on with your personal anecdotes if you like but I can do the same.

Sure, there's an economic argument there. But in this particular instance, it's silly.

Did you know that there are over 40 million Americans on food stamps right now? These people can't afford food why do you believe they can afford contraceptives? You could say that these people should just abstain from having sex, but be realistic, especially when it comes to 18 yr olds and 20 somethings that is not going to happen.

What makes more sense--buying the birth control yourself, or paying your insurance company so that they pay the pharmacy (and take a cut) when you want your birth control?

This is a good argument for a UHS of some sort!

Your statement was "Obamacare isn't going to do anything to increase healthcare costs more than they're already rising," to which I responded with a list of reasons why it *will* cause healthcare costs to increase even faster.

Yes and I refuted that reasoning with a chart of what healthcare in other countries costs that do A) cover pre existing conditions and B) cover high risk patients. From cradle to grave too BTW. Many Americans, particularly Americans who fall into those 2 groups, don't even have insurance right now and that has been true for decades. You did a bunch of hand waving at that chart and listed some personal anecdotes, so this point and the chart itself still stands.

That article seems to cherry-pick an awful lot of stats. For example, it ignores the fact that the pharmaceutical industry has much less elastic demand than other industries.

Attributing from whom and how many R&D papers were done is now considered cherry picking data?! Demand has nothing to do with this subject at all and it directly refutes your statement attributing all or most of the R&D in the medical field to the big drug companies. You're going to have to post some studies showing that one to be incorrect in some manner, hand waving won't even come near to cutting it, so this point still stands too.

You also seem to be operating on the false premise of economics being a zero-sum game.

Nope. I said they're acting like rentiers and getting richer by making others poorer. That has nothing to do with a zero sum economy and can indeed occur even while GDP is growing, which it ever so slightly has these last couple of years.

Sure, the rich are getting richer. But are the poor really getting poorer in real terms as a result? No.

Except I've already posted charts earlier showing wages stagnant or falling since the 70's but cost of living has risen since then, particularly in housing, healthcare, and college but energy too. By default the poor are poorer as a result of this.

As for the myth of rich people paying low income taxes, it's just that: a myth. Something like 47% of taxpayers paid zero or less income tax for 2010.

The latter part of this statement doesn't prove the former and in fact has nothing to do with it. The rich pay most of their taxes through capital gains which are taxed at a lower rate than income, so effectively the pay less taxes then most everyone else. Also 47% of taxpayers paying zero income tax is direct indicator of just how poor most Americans are: this means their income is so low they've into the poverty brackets that aren't subject to income tax. Do note however these people will still pay a sales tax, gas tax, various cell phone taxes, etc.

 

[Mohonri]

I didn't read any of this thread but I bought a Volt and love it. I've had a lot of fun cars in the past and this one is a nerd's dream car. I'm a car enthusiast and an electrical engineer that gets to plug it in at work.

I just drove home from work for a distance of 44 miles and only used 0.1 gallons of gas. I've had boring cars, and this is definitely not one of them.

I'm happy the car works for you! I just wish I hadn't been part of subsidizing it....

Uh this is blatantly false. I'm just going to link to the oil spill wiki here because its actually quite good and detailed but they're still experiencing consequences from that event. Most of the studies saying that fishing industries and such have already recovered have been funded by BP and yet:
There is no way no how the effects of that oil spill won't be felt by the fishing industry at a minimum dramatically for over a decade.

It wouldn't matter even if the Deepwater Horizon incident is the only one ever. The economic and ecological results of such an accident are so horrible that they can't ever be allowed to happen.

Thanks for linking the wiki. I read that section, and I saw an awful lot of "could"s and "would"s rather than "did"s. Even so, your insistence that there be absolutely zero accidents is unreasonable, and only achievable if we don't allow any drilling at all. You also ignore the incredible economic benefits that oil production in the GoM has enabled over the last three quarters of a century. I do not mean to state that the fishing industry is not affected negatively, only that the effects are smaller than is often claimed and shorter-lived than feared. And while I am saddened by the environmental damage, I am also amazed at how well Mother Nature overcomes it.

You mean the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act? If anti discrimination laws are making businesses eliminate jobs then I'd say the problem is with the way the business is being ran and not the law. Obamacare I've already refuted for you. Dodd-Frank attempts to (poorly) re-regulate the financial industry along the lines of what the old Depression Era Glass-Stegall did and doesn't end TBTF. That crap bill has probably had zero net impact on jobs, and what relatively few jobs were eliminated due to it were probably offset by a creation of jobs elsewhere due to the same law, after all it needs enforcement. EPA regs I've already refuted earlier for you, if you can some ones more specifically I'll try to address what you're saying. CAFE is IMO not a very good law but I haven't read anything about it eliminating jobs, its also been around for far longer than Obama was president, so you're going to have be much specific here.

1) Lily Ledbetter - while I strongly oppose discrimination in the workplace, this law creates a huge amount of uncertainty for a business. Even if a business owner is fair, there is still the potential of a female employee (because, let's face it, gender discrimination only counts if the victim is a woman) filing a frivolous yet costly suit many years later. Uncertainty kills growth. Period. Sure, 6 months might be too short for a statute of limitations, but Lily Ledbetter went too far.
2) Obamacare--you have done nothing to refute my claims of how PPACA will drive health care costs higher. Nice try.
3) Dodd-Frank--did nothing to prevent too-big-to-fail or future bank bailouts, and tried to "correct" certain aspects of the financial industry that play well to poorly educated voters.
4) You have said nothing specific to refute my claims about EPA regs.
5) CAFE--artificially driving up fuel standards to levels that defy the laws of physics. I think high-gas-mileage cars are great--I drive one myself. But forcing fleet average economy is a distortion of the worst kind. Case in point: The Chevy Aveo. Let car companies produce whatever kinds of cars they want, and let the consumers pick the best ones.

True but it can outline forward looking policy. FWIW Obama had a similar pro Nat. Gas SOTU last year and he still funds drilling oil/gas subsidies rather than defunding them or putting up more road blocks.

It *can* outline forward looking policy, but for this president, it's "just words." As for those "subsidies," those tax breaks are analogous the deductions every business gets to take. It's a business expense, and not some super-special treatment that industry gets. You're also (once again!) pretending that not putting up road blocks somehow represents a positive action.

EPA investigates wells in Wyoming and finds at least 3 of them have been contaminated with fracking chemicals. The government later linked the contamination in these wells to the nearby fracking in Dec. 2011. These chemicals are highly hazardous and far more of them are left in the ground (closer to 80% of fluids rather than the 30% originally thought when the fracking exemption was added to the Safe Drinking Water Act) than was believed at first.

The first link tells about investigations into the possibility of fracking contaminating water wells. The second one is all about how contamination MIGHT be from fracking. Only the third contains a report of a "confirmed" case of fracking contaminating drinking water--certainly a serious situation if true. Bear in mind, though, that 1) this is the first known case (and a HUGE thanks for bringing it to my attention!), 2) it's specific to this region, and 3) it's specific to these particular wells, which were drilled at far shallower depths than is typical for gas wells.

As an aside, fracking is a one-time procedure, after which no more fracking fluid is pumped down the well. In fact, you get almost all that fracking fluid coming back up the well once you let up on the pressure, since the natural gas pushes it back up.

Obama has effectively done hardly anything to fix the economy. His stimulus act was a joke, half of it was tax cuts that benefited some big corporations but otherwise accomplished almost no economic growth. The Cash for Clunkers programs was also pretty terrible too IMO since it required the vehicles that were taken in to be destroyed, but people could've used those cheaper used cars. The First Time Homeowner Tax Credit was genuinely stupid IMO. All it did was cause a bump in home prices and sales before they started trending downwards again.

Hey, we found something else we agree on! Woohoo! C4C and FTHTC were gimmicks that only accelerated sales that would've happened anyway. The same goes for the short-term tax break you mention for corporations, which allowed the companies to deduct the full cost of capital expenditures the first year rather than depreciating it. That's also why we're seeing durable goods orders drop off a cliff in Q1 this year.

He should've been focusing on trying to make housing cheaper instead of propping up home prices, which would've boosted the over all economy more by reducing income spent on debt service which could then be put towards goods and services, not make it easier to get an expensive home with stupid tax gimmicks. Personally I would've spent lots less money on the military and ended the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. That money could've been better spent elsewhere to add more value to the economy by improving infrastructure, a surprisingly large amount of which is still from the Great Depression Era and is falling a part. I also would've pushed through a law allowing people early buy in to Medicare so that everyone could get that as insurance regardless of age at a more affordable price. To improve new home energy efficiency and reduce power usage I would've passed laws to require home builders to design homes to make better use of thermal mass and passive solar concepts and offered a money program to help people retrofit existing construction with more insulation and solar water heaters among other things. That would've done quite a bit to reduce unemployment in the construction job sector while over all saving the country as a whole large amounts of cash and reducing emissions from existing power plants. Finally I also would've pushed to have the banks wound down in receivership and/or vastly reduced in size permanently so that the TBTF issue wouldn't pop up again and I would've repealed Gramm-Leach-Bliley and reinstituted Glass-Stegall word for word.

Ah, finally! Some concrete proposals! On some of them, I heartily agree. However, I disagree with you on a few of these points. Here's how:
1) making housing cheaper. Well, there are two sides to this, and Obama is failing at both. First of all, housing will get cheaper all on its own, but, as you say, only if we let it, specifically by not trying to prop up prices via poorly-conceived legislation like the first-time homebuyers tax credit. The other side to this is employment--the more people we have working, the more people we'll have in a position to buy a home. However, as I have explained earlier, Obama has only implemented policies that will hurt job growth.
2) I'd love it if we could pull all our forces out of the middle east. After the most recent happenings in Afghanistan, I'm tempted to say "heck with you guys, go ahead and have your civil war." However, it's unwise from a practical standpoint--the impact to our economy from the resulting oil price spike would be devastating to our economy.
3) Medicare--I very passionately disagree with you here. The only reason why medicare is cheaper is because it is subsidized by all the people not on medicare. It's already functionally bankrupt, and loading it with more people will only make it worse. Proponents say that it it has a lower overhead than traditional insurance, but that's because its administrative costs are externalized--paid for out of a separate budget. Also, its rate of denied claims is well above industry average.
4) Legislation to enforce higher efficiency in homes--I also strongly disagree with you here. I agree that efficient homes are awesome, and I'm actually working on sealing up our house and insulating it better right now. But I don't need the government forcing me (or my hypothetical builder if/when I build a house) to meet some arbitrary standard set by a bureaucrat who doesn't have to pay for my house nor its utility bills. The answer here IMO is not regulation but education. Provide information to the public that helps them to understand the long- and short-term benefits and costs of various construction methods and materials, and then let them make the decision for themselves.
4a) Tax credits and straight-up subsidies for home efficiency improvements was actually a part of the "Stimulus" bill. And as a job-creating (or -saving) vehicle it was a complete and utter flop. Not a good idea. As for creating jobs in the construction sector, stricter mandatory efficiency standards might in theory produce more construction jobs, but only at the cost of jobs elsewhere in the economy, since you're forcing builders/buyers to spend their money a certain way.
5) Gramm-Leach-Bliley, Glass-Stegall, and TBTF. I'll confess I don't know enough about Glass-Steagal to render an opinion, but as for TBTF, I wholeheartedly agree--let them fail, rip off the bandaid, and pick up the pieces.

More food for thought:

I actually disagree with this graphic, because it ignores a lot of economic context. It ignores the effect of inflation, the cost of debt service, and the unintended consequences. For example, take extension of unemployment benefits, which Nancy Pelosi infamously proclaimed as being the best way to grow the economy. One corollary of The Law of Supply and Demand is (and forgive me for paraphrasing) "throw money at something and you'll get more of it." More unemployment benefits decreases the marginal benefit of going out and getting a new job, and by so doing encourages people to stay on unemployment insurance. (It also has the side effect of artificially propping up wages, but that's a whole other can of worms for another day) The same goes for food stamps and a lot of other things in that graphic. There's an implicit assumption that the government can invest these funds so as to produce a greater economic return than the free market can (or more accurately could have, since it's about 40% borrowed anyway).

Exact comparisons are basically impossible to the US since they only just started to regulate pollution seriously in the last couple of years. We're going to be waiting for years to get that data, but the problems are real and they are going to be doing something about it, like I said before they literally have no choice in the matter.

Uh their current economic growth is due to a series of successful 5 year plans and policies implemented since the 1980's when they started modernizing. 5 year plans don't always work but they're not always bad either, so your observation is kind've useless.

I would argue that their growth is from opening up their economy to some degree of capitalism, combined with an artificially-devalued currency, combined with a ridiculously low cost of labor. Certainly the Chinese government *has* made some important investments in infrastructure. But that only makes up a portion of why their economy has grown so quickly recently.

If we just stupidly decided to cut the power without any changes in infrastructure and such then yes it would devastate our economy. Through a combination of infrastructure improvements, efficiency retro fits, and new plant construction (ie. nuke) we could probably reduce emissions dramatically over a few years.

But that wasn't the question implied or otherwise. Oil/coal/nat. gas certainly are beneficial to the economy, but only if we implement the use of them properly. If we can't do that then we have to start considering alternatives, like nuclear.

It would seem from your earlier statement (that we can't let disasters like Deepwater Horizon ever happen) that the only way to avoid such disasters is to never take any risks at all, i.e. never drill.

As has already been shown, the existing regulations are so stringent as to force the closure of power plants. This article, though bitterly biased, gives a good explanation of how terrible the EPA's MACT rules are, and how disconnected from reality that agency has become.

While I love the idea of higher efficiency (and, as it turns out, the US has only seen about a 6% increase in per-capita emissions over the last 50 years despite a 28% increase in energy consumption--that means we're about 25% more efficient now than we were 50 years ago), the question remains: who pays for the efficiency gains? I love nuclear power more than most people (and I cheered when two new ones were finally approved!), but someone has to pay for it. How about, instead of making coal-fired plants artificially too expensive to build and operate, we cut some of the red tape preventing the building of more nuclear power plants? That, I think, we could agree on, but the current administration has gone in precisely the opposite direction. Credit where credit is due--Obama *did* promise this during his election campaign.

My original point stands--I'm not proposing that we go black. I'm just saying that in the most extreme example, we wouldn't be able to make a sizable difference in global emissions. Therefore, instituting regulations which harm our economy for negligible effects on domestic emissions would have a minuscule effect on global emissions, while handicapping us economically.

Don't be facetious. I said earlier they're outsourcing blue collar jobs and that most new jobs being created are low paying. This is net negative for the economy as a whole but beneficial for the big corps/businesses that have the political lobbying muscle to get what they want.

Sorry, I needed a laugh. So what are you proposing? That companies hire (or be forced to hire) more expensive labor in the states? You're missing an important law of economics: costs always get passed to the customer. Businesses exist to make a profit. Take away the profit, and the businesses will go away. For most companies, labor is the biggest expense. If a company can save money on labor, it can then sell its products to more people at a lower cost. That brings more money to the company, and more people get the product. That last point is key, and often overlooked by people who decry outsourcing. The benefits of outsourcing are not restricted to the executives and shareholders of the company. Consumers benefit as well.

Your explanations don't fit the evidence of what other healthcare systems are doing and have done for years and you have failed to give sufficient reasons why healthcare in the US should cost so much in general despite providing lower quality care in general for years.

Sure they charge more. That is it. There isn't anything else to it other than that. BTW I was singling out the drug and insurance companies. Doctors and hospitals haven't really been doing much to drive up the cost of healthcare at all.

We may be talking past each other. Rather than trying to respond without enough background, let me try to establish a common basis for this argument. Can you explain to me how you define "quality health care," which you (personally) see more in countries with UHS and less in the US? Then I'll have a better idea of your premises.

Uh high inventory levels are bad for profits, not good. Businesses want to sell their stuff ASAP, not pay for warehousing it.

We're looking at opposite sides of the same stat . I meant that sales and profits are high for the companies selling the inventory. Also, worker productivity has been increasing the last couple years (people making up for laid-off coworkers, or afraid of losing their jobs ), which will also play a significant role in boosting profits. There are many many factors which affect aggregate profits. To jump to the conclusion that executives are cooking the books is an awful rash judgment.

Based on what stats where?

Ok, start naming things the government has invented outside the military which have made their way into the mass market. Go!

Yea that is an example of a corruption of government being bad, it isn't an example of all government subsidies being bad. The government for instance subsidizes oil and gas drilling, do you think that is bad too?

That's a mighty poor talking point you got there. Those "subsidies" are the same kind of deductions offered to every other industry. They're nothing like the home efficiency tax credits, or cash for clunkers, or the Chevy volt subsidy (hey, we're back on topic!).

You're hand waving pretty badly here. What healthcare costs are there that can't be be boiled down to a per capita and GDP basis? Oh, bear this in mind too:
http://i.imgur.com/xvBUwl.jpg

Why do you believe this would raise the cost of healthcare dramatically in the US vs other countries? Do you believe healthcare is some sort of permanently restricted industry that can't be grown and/or can't respond to supply/demand to change pricing?

Ah, another infographic with cherry-picked stats. Let's take the worst examples from the US and compare them to the best examples from among six other countries!

The reason why those reasons increase the cost of healthcare is this:
1) Americans in general lead less healthy lifestyles than other countries. So Americans have a higher incidence of heart disease, diabetes, etc. That means more spending on treatment per person.
2) Americans value health and long life more than people in other countries. So we're willing to spend money on treatments that other cultures would deem a waste. That means more spending per capita.
3) Countries with UHS generally place controls on what treatments are covered and in what situations. They also often control compensation. That drives costs down comparatively.

Again, I ask the question: On what basis is the US health care system rated as having the worst quality among those seven?

Uh on the chart I linked previously the Japanese see their doctors far more often than Americans do yet their costs are much lower. They're just the most obvious one that pops out on that chart though, pretty all the countries have their people visiting their doctors more than in the US.

Just what are you basing this on? In Japan's case at the very least neither of these 2 statements are even vaguely true. PBS did a great show on just this subject back in 2008. Here are the relevant parts: Part 1 and here is Part 2.

I also listened to an NPR segment around the same time--the system is floundering economically, and they were (at the time, I haven't kept up with it) having to send people out to discourage people from going to the doctor so frequently. Also, you have to question why Americans go less frequently to the doctor. You also have to ask how much benefit there is to going to the doctor four times per year. Frequency of doctor visits is by itself a poor indicator of the quality of a health care system.

I used to work in a hospital here in the US and it wasn't unusual to have patient's waiting in the ER for hours with serious injuries before they were even examined much less treated. It also wasn't unheard of patient's to wait months or weeks before they could get a hip replacement surgery done, or almost any surgery really. So you go on with your personal anecdotes if you like but I can do the same.

Why do you think there's such a bad wait? It boils down to a matter of Supply and Demand. There's an apparent shortage of supply for emergency medical services. Shall we dive down the rabbit hole of why that might be? I'll tell you where it leads-- straight to the government's doorstep.

Did you know that there are over 40 million Americans on food stamps right now? These people can't afford food why do you believe they can afford contraceptives? You could say that these people should just abstain from having sex, but be realistic, especially when it comes to 18 yr olds and 20 somethings that is not going to happen.

Oh, boy, did you just pick the wrong argument. How much does a condom cost? $0.50? That's what, five minutes' work at a minimum-wage job. If you can't afford that, or aren't willing to work for that, then I don't know what to tell you.

Since when is consequence-free sex a human right? Why should *I* be forced to pay for the consequences *your* conscious decisions? It's a little thing called personal responsibility.

Following your reasoning, one could make (and some politicians already are making) the same argument about food. Do you really want to follow that logical argument?

This is a good argument for a UHS of some sort!

If it truly makes economic sense and would result in net savings, then why aren't the insurance companies doing it? It would, after all, be in their best interest to prevent pregnancies, if indeed the assumption is valid (assumption being free contraceptives = fewer babies).

Yes and I refuted that reasoning with a chart of what healthcare in other countries costs that do A) cover pre existing conditions and B) cover high risk patients. From cradle to grave too BTW. Many Americans, particularly Americans who fall into those 2 groups, don't even have insurance right now and that has been true for decades. You did a bunch of hand waving at that chart and listed some personal anecdotes, so this point and the chart itself still stands.

My point was that PPACA will cause an increase in insurance costs beyond what we've already seen, and you've done nothing to refute that. Please explain to me how the combination of "guaranteed issue" (which forces costs up for insurers) and "community rating" (which prevents insurers to charge risky patients according to their actual risk) will *not* cause costs to go up. My argument was aimed at PPACA, not UHS. Your response was a non-sequitur(sp?).

Attributing from whom and how many R&D papers were done is now considered cherry picking data?! Demand has nothing to do with this subject at all and it directly refutes your statement attributing all or most of the R&D in the medical field to the big drug companies. You're going to have to post some studies showing that one to be incorrect in some manner, hand waving won't even come near to cutting it, so this point still stands too.

I don't recall attributing most pharmaceutical research funding (it's funding we're talking about, right?) to the pharmaceutical companies, although that may well be the case. When I talk about cherry-picking, I mean that the statistics cited in that article are laid out with no context. For example, the article:
1) states that 11% of new drugs are "actually new drugs," but doesn't state whether that statistic is more or less than the historical norm. Besides, what's the big deal? If company A comes up with a new drug, that gives companies B,C,D,E,F,G.... a good idea of where to start in order to come up with similar drugs. So it should be no wonder that there are a lot of copycat drugs.
2) states that the companies made $49B in profit and spent $41B on R&D, but fails to mention profit margin (which would have been more to their case, since pharmaceutical companies typically have quite high margins), nor how much the companies pay in taxes. Sure, it annoys me to heck to see TV commercials for prescription drugs on TV. Again, though, if you take away the profit, the companies will disappear.
3) ignores the 11% of genuinely-new drugs as if they don't matter
4) doesn't put the profit numbers or R&D numbers in any sort of context
5) pretends that R&D only counts if it's done by company personnel, and ignores the reality that pharmaceutical companies spend a lot of their R&D dollars on research grants to ....academic institutions. On that same note, I'll repeat what I said earlier--the article:
6) fails to mention how many of the published research projects had funding from pharmaceutical companies, and only counts research done by the pharmas' own employees, while at the same time counting in the government's corner all research funded in whole or in part by the gov't.

Nope. I said they're acting like rentiers and getting richer by making others poorer. That has nothing to do with a zero sum economy and can indeed occur even while GDP is growing, which it ever so slightly has these last couple of years.

Except I've already posted charts earlier showing wages stagnant or falling since the 70's but cost of living has risen since then, particularly in housing, healthcare, and college but energy too. By default the poor are poorer as a result of this.

How, exactly are the rich getting richer by making people poor? Are the poor forced to make detrimental transactions with them of some sort? Also, your second (full) sentence seems to contradict your first. One person getting rich at another's expense is the very definition of zero-sum.

As for wages vs. cost of living, I'll answer thus: are the poor worse off today than they were 30 or 40 years ago? Compare lifestyles, and the answer will be clear.

The latter part of this statement doesn't prove the former and in fact has nothing to do with it. The rich pay most of their taxes through capital gains which are taxed at a lower rate than income, so effectively the pay less taxes then most everyone else. Also 47% of taxpayers paying zero income tax is direct indicator of just how poor most Americans are: this means their income is so low they've into the poverty brackets that aren't subject to income tax. Do note however these people will still pay a sales tax, gas tax, various cell phone taxes, etc.

Put it in real numbers, and you'll see why you're wrong. Let's compare Daddy Warbucks, who gets all his income from dividends and capital gains, to Joe the Janitor, who gets 100% of his income as earned income. Warbucks pays 15% under current law. How much does Joe the Janitor have to make before his actual income tax is 15% of his income? Thanks to the progressive nature of the US income tax, about $80,000. And that $80k is the taxable income. Add back in the exemptions ($3700 each for Joe and his wife) and the standard deduction ($11,900), and Joe would have to make close to $100k to hit the same rate as Daddy Warbucks. And that's assuming has no kids. What if he has two kids? That's $2k in child tax credit, plus another $3700 exemption for each kid, so now Joe up to about $120k/year before he hits the same effective rate as Daddy Warbucks. That's top 10% of income territory. So to state that the rich "pay less taxes than most everybody else" is false both from a number-of-dollars standpoint and from a percentage-of-income point of view. Like I said, a myth.

BTW, Warren Buffet is *not* representative of most rich people.

47% paying no income tax is not an indication of poverty. It's an indication of a broken tax system. Your argument about various other taxes is also moot. You think Daddy Warbucks doesn't pay sales tax on his superyacht? Well, I guess John Kerry doesn't, but still...

 

[mesyn191]

Mohonri: I go through a lot of trouble to find information for you and you shift goal posts and ignore studies and data, claiming bias and cherry picking without hardly presenting any data of your own to refute it, usually just hand waving. That is not rational or honest debate. This makes replying to you near totally pointless and a waste of time. Also your posting style is tiring just to read much less reply to, so I'm done here.

 

[beowulf7]

 

[NoNRG]

Mohonri: I go through a lot of trouble to find information for you and you shift goal posts and ignore studies and data, claiming bias and cherry picking without hardly presenting any data of your own to refute it, usually just hand waving. That is not rational or honest debate. This makes replying to you near totally pointless and a waste of time. Also your posting style is tiring just to read much less reply to, so I'm done here.

I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did.