American Politics during the Obama Presidency

[QUOTE=Jackson;442245]Here, let me fix that for you: No more student loans for liberal arts degrees.

In one motion we can reduce the federal budget deficit, reinvigorate academia by introducing them to the concept of competition, AND save millions of potential "Educated Idiots" from the angst of paying off student loans acquired in the pursuit of worthless degrees.[/QUOTE]Your attack on liberal arts degrees didn't fix anything.

If you can demonstrate these degrees (both undergraduate and graduate combined) are a net loss in the student loan program, I'll agree your idea would reduce the federal deficit. You have to look at both though because the undergraduate is needed to get to the graduate degree. On balance though, the federal government makes a healthy profit on student loans. In 2013 there was a projected record $50-billion profit.

Guess what, on average (folks like Dickhead aside) those "Educated Idiots" still make more $ than someone without a college degree. Average starting salaries are around $40K. Amazingly, getting even more liberal arts education (a graduate degree) earns them even more ! They'll decide the value of their degree for themselves, thank you. And also, for some people money is not the sole reason they pursue higher education.

[QUOTE=Dickhead;442237]Right, that's my point. They need to be kicked out of the nest much sooner than has been happening in the last generation or so. It's a waste. Anybody who is still in school at age 26 is either screwing the pooch or already has an advanced degree they can make money with and so they can afford to pay for their own insurance. It ain't even that expensive at that age.

Also, they are being subsidized either way. One way the parents' employers and the other people in the parents' pool subsidize them and the other way the government does. And at least the second way they have to grow up and figure out how to navigate the system, and pay their share of the bill, and so forth. The way it is now, they just think it's the Health Insurance Fairy or something like that.[/QUOTE]I'm talking about the financial modeling of the healthcare law. You seem focused on a moral issue of when young adults should become self-sufficient. That's a different debate.

The 18-26 age group is a low-income group. As you noted it's a choice between the parent (and their employer) paying premiums, or the government providing subsidies. I am sure the architects of the ACA did the math and determined the provision would provide a net lower public burden. The point is to keep the public cost down. I am searching for the CBO scoring on this provision.

[QUOTE=Esten;442263]II am sure the architects of the ACA did the math and determined the provision would provide a net lower public burden.[/QUOTE]Well, Pollyanna, I have [B]actually extensively studied the law and the entire legislative process behind it[/B], and in particular have studied the math and the assumptions behind it. Imagine that. No such math was done, and to be quite honest with you, I wouldn't put much stock in their math if they had. How great was the math that produced the approximately 5000% marginal tax rate on the 45,961st (for a single person in 2014 and depending on age) dollar of income? The same idiots who did that math would have done this other math that you imagine took place, right? Aren't those the same idiots that set up the system I am so blatantly manipulating because the math behind it is so flawed?

I am a liberal too but you are just so completely gullible it's ludicrous. And it's not a [B]moral[/B] issue as to when young people should become self-sufficient. It's an [B]economic[/B] issue. It should be obvious by now that I have no morals.

[QUOTE=Jackson;442245] save millions of potential "Educated Idiots" from the angst of paying off student loans acquired in the pursuit of worthless degrees.[/QUOTE]A truly well-educated idiot would not have any angst about paying off these loans because they would know about the "Income Contingent Repayment Plan" and the "Public Service Loan Forgiveness" program. A judicious manipulation of these two fine provisions will largely eliminate the need to pay off these annoying loans (although of course the other taxpayers will have to pay them off).

Jackson, as pissed off as you are about these student loan programs, I guarantee you that you would shit enough bricks to build an outhouse if you saw the theoretical example I put together of how to get a completely unnecessary graduate degree and never pay back a cent of the loan, completely legally, and walk away with about $50k after you "paid" for school. I think I showed that puppy to Daddy Rulz. And now that there are all these on-line programs, you could do it from the French Riviera if you wanted to.

[QUOTE=Esten;442262]Your attack on liberal arts degrees didn't fix anything.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Dickhead;442265]Jackson, as pissed off as you are about these student loan programs...[/QUOTE]Gentlemen,

I didn't attack liberal arts degrees, and I'm not pissed off about student loan programs in general.

I just believe...

1. That Academia has become fat and happy selling an over-priced product of questionable value to a group of consumers who are being sold on the payment, not the price, and...

2. Most liberal arts degrees represent a notoriously bad return on investment., and...

3. That the American taxpayer should stop enabling these economically bad decisions by providing 100% financing.

Nevertheless, if a consumer of education services wants to pay for their own economically worthless liberal degree, then I say let them do it.

Thanks,

Jax.

PS: Yes, there should be an exception for individuals who aspire to become public school teachers.

[QUOTE=Esten;442262]Guess what, on average (folks like Dickhead aside) those "Educated Idiots" still make more $ than someone without a college degree.[/QUOTE]Or maybe the degree didn't have anything to do with it, and instead it's just that the kind of person who can manage to overcome the awesome intellectual challenges of a liberal arts degree is also the kind of person who can perform a $40k per year job.

Get it?

[QUOTE=Esten;442262]And also, for some people money is not the sole reason they pursue higher education.[/QUOTE]Then let them pay for their own fucking higher [STRIKE]entertainment[/STRIKE] education.

Since I have both liberal arts degrees and non liberal arts degrees, and since I've done some research in that regard, I'll say a few things. We took a look at return on investment on various degrees when I was in a course called Social Stratification (I minored in Sociology because I admired Reagan so much). One of the things we found was that there were significant socioeconomic differences among the student pools across these majors. That is a fancy way of saying that the students who tended to major in the most lucrative subjects tended to also be from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. So what that does is make it hard to conclude that the major, rather than class distinctions, was the reason for the lower eventual wages earned by some of the liberal arts, social science, education, etc. majors as compared to business or STEM fields. My guess is it's some of both.

All the joking aside about the taxpayers paying for my degrees (the first three anyway), I never really tried to make money with the liberal arts degree but the business grad schools loved the fact I had it, so I got into a better school and got a better financial aid package and assistantship than I would have if I'd had a business undergrad. If I'd moved forward with just the liberal arts bachelor's, I doubt I would have been better off than I was before, job-wise, but then again, I already had an overpaid government job when I started the educational process.

I will also say that when I taught grad school, my students who had liberal arts or humanities undergraduates were more successful than the ones who had both undergrad and grad business degrees. That was measured objectively by our surveys that followed our MBA graduates at 5 and 10 year intervals. We also measured the GPA performance of our students by undergrad majors and while I don't remember the whole distribution, I do remember that the philosophy majors were the highest.

And boy are there a lot of worthless MBA programs out there! Loans are harder to get for grad school now, but if it's a state school it's being subsidized anyway, so it's still a waste. One place I taught at had an entire MBA program where it was just sitting side by side with the undergrads and writing an extra paper or some such. It wasn't accredited by the AACSB so no one took it seriously, but it was regionally accredited so the students could get financial aid through the state.

Here is another deep-seated political inequity in the US financial aid system: Students are expected to contribute 50% of their available[I] income[/I] towards higher education expenses, but only 20% of their available [I]assets[/I]. That right there tilts the playing field very sharply towards the ruling class, since asset inequality is much more pronounced (and pernicious) than income inequality. That's on top of what I said earlier about houses and retirement assets allegedly not being "available." There are way fewer loopholes regarding income. Almost none, in fact.

[QUOTE=Dickhead;442264]Well, Pollyanna, I have [B]actually extensively studied the law and the entire legislative process behind it[/B], and in particular have studied the math and the assumptions behind it. Imagine that. No such math was done, and to be quite honest with you, I wouldn't put much stock in their math if they had. How great was the math that produced the approximately 5000% marginal tax rate on the 45,961st (for a single person in 2014 and depending on age) dollar of income? The same idiots who did that math would have done this other math that you imagine took place, right? Aren't those the same idiots that set up the system I am so blatantly manipulating because the math behind it is so flawed?[/QUOTE]Hey Dickhead, posting in bold letters that you have extensive knowledge, and that other people are idiots, does not constitute an intelligent argument.

The ACA provision allowing dependents up to age 26 to stay on their parents plan is good economic policy for a couple reasons. The first I've mentioned, is that it shifts the cost of insuring this low-income demographic away from the government subsidies. Second, it adds a large group of generally healthy young adults to insurance pools, making those pools better able to support the sick people in the pools and/or keep premiums lower. In fact this was one of several Republican ideas in the Affordable Care Act. It was in the Republican health reform bill in 2009, and again in the Hatch/Coburn/Burr proposal in January 2014. Pretty much every healthcare reform proposal out there contained this provision.

So again, please explain to us why this provision is bad economic policy. Let's see if you can provide a substantive economic argument.

[QUOTE]Third, the composition of an insurance pool is one of the key determinants of its cost. If a pool has a lot of healthy members, its costs will be lower. The Republican plan requires insurers to keep dependents up to age 26 on their parents' insurance. Young people who have recently graduated are the largest single population of uninsured, and they are generally healthy. Keeping them in the insurance pools does likely drive the cost down, so this is the one element of the Republican plan that actually works. [/QUOTE][URL]http://weiwentg.blogspot.com/2009/11/cbo-score-of-republican-reform-bill.html[/URL]

[QUOTE]Under the plan, insurances companies would not be able to impose lifetime limits on patients and would be required to allow dependent coverage up to the age of 26, as ObamaCare currently does. [/QUOTE][URL]http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/01/27/senate-republicans-pitch-obamacare-alternative-on-eve-presidential-address/[/URL]

[QUOTE=Dickhead;442264]Well, Pollyanna, I have [B]actually extensively studied the law and the entire legislative process behind it[/B], and in particular have studied the math and the assumptions behind it. Imagine that. No such math was done, and to be quite honest with you, I wouldn't put much stock in their math if they had. How great was the math that produced the approximately 5000% marginal tax rate on the 45,961st (for a single person in 2014 and depending on age) dollar of income? The same idiots who did that math would have done this other math that you imagine took place, right? Aren't those the same idiots that set up the system I am so blatantly manipulating because the math behind it is so flawed?
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Esten;442286]Hey Dickhead, posting in bold letters that you have extensive knowledge, and that other people are idiots, does not constitute an intelligent argument.[/QUOTE]Read his posts Esten, he does have extensive knowledge of the math and assumptions behind it. He is a living, breathing example of how the Obama administration screwed up big time when it crammed the ACA down Congress' throat. The feds should pay Dickhead about $3 million a year to find loopholes in proposed legislation that people and companies will take advantage of. That would save taxpayers orders of magnitude more than his salary. And avoid more Nancy Pelosi "we have to pass the bill so you can find out what's in it" bull shit.

Here is Mike Enzi s speech to the Heritage foundation a couple of months before the gang of six stopped negotiating on health care. Tell me if you guys see anything that looks familiar. Fitting it was at heritage.

[URL]http://www.heritage.org/research/lecture/conservative-principles-of-health-care-reform-the-road-ahead[/URL]

One, it shows that most republican complaints about the law are bullshit. The thing is largely structured around ideas from heritage, CATO, and MIT. On the other hand, if the democrats couldn't get a deal done because of tort reform and dropping the employer tax exception, then that is equally as full of shit. The employer tax exemption is regressive anyway, why the fuck they wouldn't go along with getting rid of that baffles me. But still... I think there are 6 bullet points in that speech, and the law reflect 5 of them.

But the republicans... With all there new found power, what are they going to do. They are going to repeal the medical device tax (with plenty of eager democratic help), one of the only measures to control cost in the bill. And really it should be higher, we have a huge degree of over investment in medical technology, because the system is driven by profit. Thats great for the system in many ways, but taxes are the only way to correct that mal-investment without going to a public system.

The numbers don't lie, we were paying more and getting less out than other industrialized nation. Sure MD Anderson is awesome if my balls are falling off from Cancer, but generally, we were (and mostly still are) shitting the bed.

Obamacare has a bunch of flaws, how about selling insurance across state lines? Seems to work for cars. But the idea that it is what created this dumpster fire of a system is just wrong. And healthcare inflation has come down... Still way above CPI.... But its better.

Your points are well taken though Dickhead, especially some of the ways the subsidies are structured. But what do you think about taking that level analysis and applying it to hospitals (and to a lesser extent doctors). They are sucking up money like a vacuum. Im not saying your other points are incorrect (at least not a lot of them) but Id be interested to hear what you think.


To me it alot of it comes back to the food, the fucking shit we eat kills us. And until we get that under control (stop subsidizing corn to start with) its not going to make a damn bit of difference how many young healthy people buy insurance.

[QUOTE=Jhskiier;442288]
To me it all comes back to the food, the fucking shit we eat kills us. And until we get that under control (stop subsidizing corn to start with) its not going to make a damn bit of difference how many young healthy people buy insurance.
[/QUOTE]Corn. Now I understand. It's the mother fucking corn that's killing us. And it's everywhere. Fucking pinko commie liberals refine the shit and put it in their gas tanks. The fucking Mexicans even put it in their tortillas. We've got to get rid of the corn.

Its a little tongue and cheek.... But read the omnivores dilemna.

[URL]http://www.amazon.com/The-Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History/dp/0143038583[/URL]

25% of medicare costs go to heart disease, and it is the largest killer in the country. So its a real thing. Im not going to hijack the discussion going into it.

But seriously... You put bad gas in your car your going to fuck up the engine.

And the repair bill is just going to keep going up.

[QUOTE=Jhskiier;442288]Here is Mike Enzi s speech to the Heritage foundation a couple of months before the gang of six stopped negotiating on health care. Tell me if you guys see anything that looks familiar. Fitting it was at heritage.

[URL]http://www.heritage.org/research/lecture/conservative-principles-of-health-care-reform-the-road-ahead[/URL]

One, it shows that most republican complaints about the law are bullshit. The thing is largely structured around ideas from heritage, CATO, and MIT. On the other hand, if the democrats couldn't get a deal done because of tort reform and dropping the employer tax exception, then that is equally as full of shit. The employer tax exemption is regressive anyway, why the fuck they wouldn't go along with getting rid of that baffles me. But still... I think there are 6 bullet points in that speech, and the law reflect 5 of them.

But the republicans... With all there new found power, what are they going to do. They are going to repeal the medical device tax (with plenty of eager democratic help), one of the only measures to control cost in the bill. And really it should be higher, we have a huge degree of over investment in medical technology, because the system is driven by profit. Thats great for the system in many ways, but taxes are the only way to correct that mal-investment without going to a public system.

The numbers don't lie, we were paying more and getting less out than other industrialized nation. Sure MD Anderson is awesome if my balls are falling off from Cancer, but generally, we were (and mostly still are) shitting the bed.

Obamacare has a bunch of flaws, how about selling insurance across state lines? Seems to work for cars. But the idea that it is what created this dumpster fire of a system is just wrong. And healthcare inflation has come down... Still way above CPI.... But its better.

Your points are well taken though Dickhead, especially some of the ways the subsidies are structured. But what do you think about taking that level analysis and applying it to hospitals (and to a lesser extent doctors). They are sucking up money like a vacuum. Im not saying your other points are incorrect (at least not a lot of them) but Id be interested to hear what you think.


To me it alot of it comes back to the food, the fucking shit we eat kills us. And until we get that under control (stop subsidizing corn to start with) its not going to make a damn bit of difference how many young healthy people buy insurance.[/QUOTE]You are what you eat!

Highest standard of living in the world means that on the AP forum, we cannot criticize our American lifestyle. It is traitorous, it is blasphemy. Carbohydrates equals sugar, processed food equals preservatives and chemicals. Gigantic portions equals gluttony. America equals sumo wrestlers.

Eating everything in sight in actually good, variety is good. But Moderation is the key. And eat more vegetables & fruits than meat & bread, pasta, potatoes, etc. But for many, that is Un -American. And drink lots of water, of course. Also Un-American.

[QUOTE=RevBS;442292]You are what you eat![/QUOTE]I must be a real pussy then.

Allowing children to stay on their parents' policies up to age 26 is discriminatory against those who don't have parents with health insurance. One large class that could be used as an example is kids aging out of the foster care system. Adding more healthy people to the Obamacare pool makes way more sense than adding them to employer health plans. That is just more people to be covered under those plans so they will be subsidized by the employees who don't have children. That is less fair than an overall government subsidy. The difference is that the current measure increases a previously finite pool by adding a new class to it, whereas covering these "semi-adults" under Obamacare would decrease the morbidity of non-finite (though not infinite) pool. This is a consideration in designing a tax, and the route of covering that class under employers' plans is less effective of a tax (subsidies are just taxes).

Esten seems to think this decision was analyzed. Go back and look at the committee history, Esten. They never did any economic analysis on this. Ever. At all. This idea was put in at the very beginning to draw bi-partisan support. Of course, you are just talking out your ass and I've actually read all that stuff. I'm surprised you can't see that this provision of the ACA is just a "rich daddy" provision. I don't see why Sturdevant von Noseinair IV should have more health insurance options just cuz his daddy's got a job and LeRon Moseley's daddy's doing a nickel upstate. Get the picture?