Um, no. The D's will never come up with these solutions until they realize why the lost. They still haven't figured it out yet.
Inflation is a cancer, and the ultimate government-created vehicle to transfer wealth from the "have nots to the have yachts" as they say.
The best way to reduce the cost of health care is to lower the price of health care. Finally, we are talking sense: about reducing the price by reducing the demand. You mentioned Sweden. What is their diet and lifestyle? Are we including murders and highway deaths in our outcomes? Do they eat the poison we eat?
To be fair to Kamala Harris, she did include some steps towards reforming the health care system (and also preventing a dismantling of the Affordable Care Act which was helpful to expand insurance coverage and eliminated the pre-existing condition threshold to obtain insurance while subsidizing private insurers to do so) - she proposed marginal changes, but that seems all Congress is able to deliver when powerful interest groups are preventing further changes): see https://kamalaharris.com/issues/
"Strengthen and Bring Down the Cost of Health Care
As Attorney General of California, Kamala Harris took on insurance companies and Big Pharma and got them to lower prices. As a Senator, she fought Donald Trump’s attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. ....."
Her Tax proposals did try to address inequality by Not extending Trump's Tax Cuts for high earners and extend the child care tax credit (even for families who do not pay taxes as happened temporarily during the pandemic, but has now been terminated). Given that many children are growing up in poverty in the US, we know that this tax credit had a major impact on child poverty.
Yes, her proposals are not necessarily revolutionary, but showed the intended direction (including restoring health care benefits for mothers needing or wanting an abortion for various reasons - another reform benefitting primarily poor mothers).
Hopefully Senators Thune and Kaine can renew their commitment, although your total overhaul of the Social Security System is a stretch to ask from a lawyer thrown into an election campaign overnight.
While it is certainly true that Ross Perot made Bill Clinton's election possible (and I understand your soft heart for a man actually endorsing the idea of generational accounting), Kamala's call for "Medicare for all" as a Presidential candidate did not help her winning her primary battle with Biden and others, when she tried to be nominated the first time. Hillary Clinton's health care proposals during her husband's first term also died under the lobbying pressure and a vicious advertising campaign by private insurance companies. Hence Obama's compromise health care reform, the Affordable Care Act which threw a sizable bone to private health insurers by having them participate and receive govt subsidies. The ACA also had steps which did reduce health care costs in it which seem to have worked despite vehement opposition. May be marginal steps is all that is possible to imagine for US voters who do not experience health care in other countries (even Canada's system is constantly pictured as pure socialism with long lines waiting for procedures forgetting about the lower cost of pharmaceuticals and the role of so-called death panels in each health care system - the gate keepers rationing health care within private health insurance and within a govt run one).
I am in support of many if not most of your proposals, but have seen the resistance generated by the most modest of reform proposals is what makes it hard to imagine their realization in the US, especially when experts (i.e. scientists giving their best estimates of the climate change mechanism, pandemic research experts in medicine) are bedeviled by mostly eloquent outside 'experts' who often are paid by the benefitting industries (i.e. fossil fuel producers like Exxon).
Yeah, I seriously doubt this would register with most Americans. Their eyes would glaze over if any of this were featured in a speech. You can’t defeat the kind of simple headed bluster that Trump spouts with ‘explanations’ and ‘policies’. And besides, I don’t think any of this explains why Harris lost and Trump won. It’s the bluster, the BS that, at least in part, won him the election. Kamala is a nice, well meaning person who would probably have been a better president by any measure, but the people who voted for Trump are a combination of people so full of hate that they can’t see straight, or else the sort who equate loud noise with ‘strength’. I also think it’s mistake to attempt to fix this many things at once. Better to get a solid short term fix or two that gives you some credibility. Imagine how people are going to react to a policy prescription that basically says “this may not do you much good today, or tomorrow, but boy will your grandchildren thank you.”
So your solution is ever-larger and more centralized federal control of the most personal areas of our lives like healthcare and education? No thanks. We’ve been trying this for a century and it only makes things worse.
Actually, I would prefer going farther back, before TR and Woodrow Wilson started convincing people that the only good solution to any problem was more federal control.
Thanks for Maxi! There is one glaring error in your list of suggested solutions--free online "education."
You are right that US education has continued to degenerate (and it's not significantly better elsewhere), with learning taking a back seat to behavioral control--and this is at the heart of all the other problems you brilliantly and knowledgeably sketch. But online "learning" is an oxymoron (and produces real morons who create chaos). If online and tech equipment is not firmly secondary to personal relationships between learners, their peers, and mentors/teachers, it backfires and creates tech dependency by killing initiative, creativity, empathy, and ethics by isolating us from the real, i.e. not constructed, environment. Thinking itself is a technology, and a dangerous one because it is so easily disconnected from reality. Machine "thinking/intelligence" is much more dangerous. Autonomous, i.e. not controlled or programed, learning can keep us resident in the only place that exists, where our responsibility to be human is accessible. The political chimeras you describe economically only exercise power on the ignorant. No easy solution here, but please reconsider recommending resources be put into tech mediated "learning." It's a chimera's chimera.
Hi, Larry -- I agree with most of what you have to say, especially the inequality part. However, I think there is a smidgin of truth in Carville's view that voter perceived the economy as being in worse shape than the usual macro data shows. I have tried to capture that in a New Index of Misery. The NIM tries to bring in behavioral and perceptional factors. The NIM does show that there is a rational basis for voters to perceive that they were better under Trump than under Biden. Take a look at the chart and explanation here: http://tiny.cc/96c2001
I don't necassarily agree with all of your suggested major policy initiatives. However, I fullly agree with you that these ideas need to be brought to the forefront of our political discussions. Our nation is in a "whale of hurt" right now, and, although the current macroeconomic picture looks "fine" there is definitely major probems on the horizon.
The general public has no idea how bad the debt situation is with the Social Security and Medicare obligations of the federal government. The data you orivde that illustrates the serious shortfall the working class - middle class Americans - have experienced is right on target. We have hollowed out the middle class which has been the backbone of America.
Larry-first, TY for Maximize Your Soc Security service. It helped my and my wife make some important decisions years ago. I continue to recommend it to people in the critical window of planning for retirement. the return on investment is 1000@ at least.
Now re Kamala-yes should could have talked about all the issues you mention. but she is too damned stupid.
Hi Ed,
I'll give you a smidgin and a half. The NIM is a valuable contribution. My best, Larry
"not in the model"? Thus, the flaw of models. First, assume a can opener.
Hi Gordon, I hear you. You may be right -- or more right than me. My best, Larry
Um, no. The D's will never come up with these solutions until they realize why the lost. They still haven't figured it out yet.
Inflation is a cancer, and the ultimate government-created vehicle to transfer wealth from the "have nots to the have yachts" as they say.
The best way to reduce the cost of health care is to lower the price of health care. Finally, we are talking sense: about reducing the price by reducing the demand. You mentioned Sweden. What is their diet and lifestyle? Are we including murders and highway deaths in our outcomes? Do they eat the poison we eat?
To be fair to Kamala Harris, she did include some steps towards reforming the health care system (and also preventing a dismantling of the Affordable Care Act which was helpful to expand insurance coverage and eliminated the pre-existing condition threshold to obtain insurance while subsidizing private insurers to do so) - she proposed marginal changes, but that seems all Congress is able to deliver when powerful interest groups are preventing further changes): see https://kamalaharris.com/issues/
"Strengthen and Bring Down the Cost of Health Care
As Attorney General of California, Kamala Harris took on insurance companies and Big Pharma and got them to lower prices. As a Senator, she fought Donald Trump’s attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. ....."
Her Tax proposals did try to address inequality by Not extending Trump's Tax Cuts for high earners and extend the child care tax credit (even for families who do not pay taxes as happened temporarily during the pandemic, but has now been terminated). Given that many children are growing up in poverty in the US, we know that this tax credit had a major impact on child poverty.
Yes, her proposals are not necessarily revolutionary, but showed the intended direction (including restoring health care benefits for mothers needing or wanting an abortion for various reasons - another reform benefitting primarily poor mothers).
Hopefully Senators Thune and Kaine can renew their commitment, although your total overhaul of the Social Security System is a stretch to ask from a lawyer thrown into an election campaign overnight.
While it is certainly true that Ross Perot made Bill Clinton's election possible (and I understand your soft heart for a man actually endorsing the idea of generational accounting), Kamala's call for "Medicare for all" as a Presidential candidate did not help her winning her primary battle with Biden and others, when she tried to be nominated the first time. Hillary Clinton's health care proposals during her husband's first term also died under the lobbying pressure and a vicious advertising campaign by private insurance companies. Hence Obama's compromise health care reform, the Affordable Care Act which threw a sizable bone to private health insurers by having them participate and receive govt subsidies. The ACA also had steps which did reduce health care costs in it which seem to have worked despite vehement opposition. May be marginal steps is all that is possible to imagine for US voters who do not experience health care in other countries (even Canada's system is constantly pictured as pure socialism with long lines waiting for procedures forgetting about the lower cost of pharmaceuticals and the role of so-called death panels in each health care system - the gate keepers rationing health care within private health insurance and within a govt run one).
I am in support of many if not most of your proposals, but have seen the resistance generated by the most modest of reform proposals is what makes it hard to imagine their realization in the US, especially when experts (i.e. scientists giving their best estimates of the climate change mechanism, pandemic research experts in medicine) are bedeviled by mostly eloquent outside 'experts' who often are paid by the benefitting industries (i.e. fossil fuel producers like Exxon).
Yeah, I seriously doubt this would register with most Americans. Their eyes would glaze over if any of this were featured in a speech. You can’t defeat the kind of simple headed bluster that Trump spouts with ‘explanations’ and ‘policies’. And besides, I don’t think any of this explains why Harris lost and Trump won. It’s the bluster, the BS that, at least in part, won him the election. Kamala is a nice, well meaning person who would probably have been a better president by any measure, but the people who voted for Trump are a combination of people so full of hate that they can’t see straight, or else the sort who equate loud noise with ‘strength’. I also think it’s mistake to attempt to fix this many things at once. Better to get a solid short term fix or two that gives you some credibility. Imagine how people are going to react to a policy prescription that basically says “this may not do you much good today, or tomorrow, but boy will your grandchildren thank you.”
So your solution is ever-larger and more centralized federal control of the most personal areas of our lives like healthcare and education? No thanks. We’ve been trying this for a century and it only makes things worse.
in what sense are things now "worse" since 1925? Shortly after the roaring twenties with 'free markets' and little centralized federal control:
Quoting from https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/great-depression-history
"Oct 29, 2009 — The Great Depression was the worst economic crisis in modern history, lasting from 1929 until the beginning of World War II in 1939."
Should we go back to the Roaring 1920 in terms of our federal government - no New Deal and so on ?
Actually, I would prefer going farther back, before TR and Woodrow Wilson started convincing people that the only good solution to any problem was more federal control.
Thanks for Maxi! There is one glaring error in your list of suggested solutions--free online "education."
You are right that US education has continued to degenerate (and it's not significantly better elsewhere), with learning taking a back seat to behavioral control--and this is at the heart of all the other problems you brilliantly and knowledgeably sketch. But online "learning" is an oxymoron (and produces real morons who create chaos). If online and tech equipment is not firmly secondary to personal relationships between learners, their peers, and mentors/teachers, it backfires and creates tech dependency by killing initiative, creativity, empathy, and ethics by isolating us from the real, i.e. not constructed, environment. Thinking itself is a technology, and a dangerous one because it is so easily disconnected from reality. Machine "thinking/intelligence" is much more dangerous. Autonomous, i.e. not controlled or programed, learning can keep us resident in the only place that exists, where our responsibility to be human is accessible. The political chimeras you describe economically only exercise power on the ignorant. No easy solution here, but please reconsider recommending resources be put into tech mediated "learning." It's a chimera's chimera.
Hi, Larry -- I agree with most of what you have to say, especially the inequality part. However, I think there is a smidgin of truth in Carville's view that voter perceived the economy as being in worse shape than the usual macro data shows. I have tried to capture that in a New Index of Misery. The NIM tries to bring in behavioral and perceptional factors. The NIM does show that there is a rational basis for voters to perceive that they were better under Trump than under Biden. Take a look at the chart and explanation here: http://tiny.cc/96c2001
Kaine and Thune were in the Senate in 1993?? I think you're off by 20 years.
I don't necassarily agree with all of your suggested major policy initiatives. However, I fullly agree with you that these ideas need to be brought to the forefront of our political discussions. Our nation is in a "whale of hurt" right now, and, although the current macroeconomic picture looks "fine" there is definitely major probems on the horizon.
The general public has no idea how bad the debt situation is with the Social Security and Medicare obligations of the federal government. The data you orivde that illustrates the serious shortfall the working class - middle class Americans - have experienced is right on target. We have hollowed out the middle class which has been the backbone of America.
Ross Perot ran in 1992. He passed in 2019.
You might want to clarify more the difference in HR 5340 from the more recent INFORM Consumers Act
Good points.
"I’m particularly nostalgic toward Perot who passed in 1992"
Huh? I don't think Ross Perot died in 1992...
Larry-first, TY for Maximize Your Soc Security service. It helped my and my wife make some important decisions years ago. I continue to recommend it to people in the critical window of planning for retirement. the return on investment is 1000@ at least.
Now re Kamala-yes should could have talked about all the issues you mention. but she is too damned stupid.