A single payer plan may be better than government subsidized insurance

I think that a government sponsored health care plan will only drive up medical and insurance costs. We really need the single payer system that UK and Canada have. It has its drawbacks but like with our Medicare system, once doctors realize that Uncle Sam is paying the bill they are going to try to squeeze out as much money as they can get. This will drive up premiums across the board. Remember doctors are smarter than you and me, that’s why they went to medical school and you didn’t. If there are angles in working the system, they are going to find them

If you are getting Uncle Sam involved for subsidized care, the industry needs to be heavily regulated with price controls. Back in 1993 when the Clintons had their proposed health care reform on the table, there was talk of price caps for health care. I remember some representative from the physicians lobby stating on television that no other industry in the United States has pricing caps and guidelines, and then why should the health care industry have them. I desperately wanted someone to say because no other industry has such a direct impact on human life. You need to have price controls to allow people to live and not be made penniless through jumbo health care bills, as many Americans are. Of course the media didn’t bother to come back with that or any other opposing statement.

The scary thing about the single payer plan is that health care can be rationed out, and that the older you get, the longer you have to wait for a medical procedure. This is where having private hospitals on top of a single payer system comes in. Even with the single payer system there will still be a health insurance industry and plenty of opportunities for doctors to make money. You will have to have insurance for when you can’t get service quickly enough from the single payer system. You will have to seek care from a private hospital when you feel it is a life or death situation and the public system is not responding quickly enough. Therefore for the people who can afford it, you will have to pay for extra insurance just in case you can’t get the care you need from a single payer system.

Although I am really for health care reform, I believe it should be done with caution and a lot of regulation. Even though the single payer plan has its drawbacks, it is a better plan than a Federal sponsored insurance program put out there to compete with private insurance. The federal insurance plan could work as well, but not without strong price controls and caps.

The way tax refunds should be given out..

Taiwan like the rest of the world is also having its own economic crisis. Their government's stimulus package gives tax rebates in the form of use-them-or-lose-them vouchers which must be spent on goods or services. They cannot horde their rebate money away, which is what most rich people do when they are given any type of tax break.

This is a much more sensible way to stimulate the economy. The money will actually get out there and do the job it's supposed to do, not sit in a bank where it will never see the light of day again.

I was thinking that the US government could even issue bonds where the quarterly interest is paid out in the form of vouchers that must be spent. This would allow money to be continuously pumped into the economy.

Tax payers should have the right to see exactly how their tax dollars are being spent.

I think anti-government people think government officials squander their tax dollars on personal matters among other things. They are afraid of government corruption. There is no doubt that government corruption does exist, but perhaps not on the level that the right wing yahoos think or say there is.

One way to combat this is to give the tax payers an open window on where their tax dollars are being spent by using the Internet. All federal, state, and local government agencies should be required publish their budgets on the World Wide Web in an easy to follow format, and perhaps with a more detailed spread sheets that accountant watchdogs can scrutinize. Tax payers should have the right to trace where there tax dollars go, and the Internet can make this all possible.

I'm surprised that no one is demanding this, at least not loudly enough for me to have heard about it. [Actually there was an act passed by Congress to sort of allows for budget posting on the web, but I don't think it has been very effective] I am sure there are many politicians who don't want this. Perhaps they fear that certain projects would never get funded if the public knew how much they cost, or perhaps the right wing yahoos are right and they are doing illicit things with our money.

No place for middle class people to save their money.

With the stock market on a downward spiral, and interest rates very low there really is no safe place for working class people to save their money and get a decent return. Even the bond market is not that safe. When Wall Street had a meltdown back in September I had several bond funds that also took a big plunge. There was such a panic that people were selling off their bond funds, even when everyone knows that bond funds are usually safe havens in troubled times. It was very scary. Luckily the bond market recovered and the funds climbed up to normal levels, but it’s impossible to find a safe investment with a return over .05 percent.

A lot of the books that help you plan your retirement ask that you put away a substantial sum of money and are expecting you to have a rate of return of 5% or higher that’s just not possible without taking risks these days.

Well there is always real estate to invest in. My parents home is worth about 20 times what they originally paid for it forty years ago, but the even real estate market is not stable, and with all of the jobs disappearing, I doubt there will be many people looking for homes anytime soon.

Federal Reserve must go for broke and gradually raise interest rates to a more reasonable level. The interest rate was lowered to keep the stock market going, but that’s just one aspect of the economy. We need to adopt a new interest rate philosophy that includes the middle class American that needs to save for his or her retirement.

Population control: The ultimate way to go green!

From Al Gore to your local school children the pressure to conserve resources, recycle, and preserve life on this planet is coming at us from many directions. I think Mother Earth is shouting at us herself with the depleted ozone layer and the melting ice caps; scary stuff.

What no one ever calls for anymore is population control. This seemed to be a concern in the late sixties and early seventies, but it has vanished completely from the media and pop culture. Does anyone remember the movie "Soylent Green"? This seems to be a taboo topic, perhaps because it goes against God's command in the bible, to be fruitful and multiply. The Catholoic Church and Right-to-Life conservative Christians are not really helping things either these days.

And while some countries like Japan and Italy are reporting population shirnkage, coutries like the good old USA are picking up their slack.

I realize that it is moraly wrong to take away peoples' reproductive rights (but don' t tell that to the mainland Chinese with their great "one child" policy). But you can give them incentives not to have children. For example let's take away the income tax deduction we give to people with children. Let's stop giving welfare moms more money with each child they have.

I would go as far as giving school tax refund and other government sanctioned incentives to people who are voluntarily steralized and have no children. It's a radical idea that will surely be faced with great oposition, but not really for the reasons that you might think.

You see the upper class, the wealthy people of the world, understand the basic laws of supply and demand, if the supply of laborers goes down then the cost of employing them will go up. This will then cause inflation to go up which means that rich people will have to pay more for their yatchs, mansions, and luxury cars among other things.

However it is a much greater cost if the earth is destroyed and man, more than any other force on this Earth, has proven to be its great destroyer. We must listen to Al Gore and other green proponents, but we must also consider the fact that the best way to preseve this world's resources is to use less of them, and the best way to do this is to have fewer people.

Death: The great equalizer

Death and the Miser by Hieronymus Bosch

Benjamin Franklin said "Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes."

Well, we all know conservative rich people all hate taxes and they will do their darnedest not pay them. But try as they might, and no matter how much money they have, the truth is that they are going to die, just like you and me. They might live longer or more fulfilling lives than you or me, but there is no guarantee of that.

The thing that rich people don't want you to realize is that in reality because of death, in the end, when it comes right down to it, they are no better than you, and no one is really better than anyone else. Perhaps there will be rewards in an afterlife if you lived a good life and you did God's will, but I don't think many rich people believe that. Some religions and cultures don't even believe in an afterlife.

And I don't think many wealthy conservative Christians really believe in an afterlife. If they did they would be much more in to sharing their wealth for the common good. I believe they are just going through the motions. They probably see Christianity as a tool to control other people, so they can make sure their lives stay under control.

In John Dean's book "Conservatives without Conscience" he tells of sociopaths called "Double High Authoritarians" who hold everyone to a high standards of behavior, while they themselves often misbehave and consider themselves to be a above the law. Tele-Evangelists Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker were two examples of this.

Well, now you now why rich people are so selfish, and why government must force them to share through taxes.

Obama may not increase taxes on the rich.

President-Elect Obama's administration is already planning an economic stimulus package that will give the middle class additional tax cuts and leave the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans alone through 2010.

Why do people still think that trickle-down economics theory works? If you let wealthy people hang on to their money that's exactly what they will do. They hoard it, that's what they love to do. They won't spend it, and it definitely won't trickle down to the poor and middle class.

I think the government should start taxing wealthy individuals' net worth, that's all the assets that you have after you factor in your liabilities. And how much money do you think you need to live comfortably? I think the government should start adding on taxes on individuals with a net worth of over 5 million dollars. Income tax just taxes what we make each year
While we're at it, let's make it illegal for Americans to keep money offshore. This is how rich people avoid paying taxes on interest.

Also there is controversy over raising corporate taxes in such bad economic times. I think corporations have to be given breaks only when they show that they are creating jobs for Americans and not cutting them. There should also be tax penalties for companies that have CEOs and other high-ranking employees that make an inappropriately large salary as compared to other employees of their company. Let's force corporate America to spread the wealth around within their own ranks.