Guard Dog

We could do single payer. But they would have to drop just about every other benefit. There is savings to be had in dropping Medicare & Medicaid. There is saving to be had in eliminating the VA as a medical provider. Eliminate food assistance, welfare, etc and we could do it. There is some benefits for people who get their insurance through work. That insurance is part of their compensation. So the cost their company pays for the premium is literally part of their salary. So rather than buy insurance the company will pay them that money. More pay means more tax. Right now that salary is tax exempt. Pharmaceuticals will be negotiating with one entity so there may be some saving to be had there. However, there are a few things people re going to have to get used to. Limited availability of some services. Rationing in other words. Also people other than you will be making decisions on what care you get. The infamous "death panels". Well, the government will not literally euthanize old folks but there is a level of care that will not be available once your working days are done. The government is no stranger to cost vs value decisions. We can do it without ruining our economy or taxing our people to death. But we won't. We either won't do it at all or do it all wrong. This is the USA, there are only two options.

It's a hell of a thing really. Voting in the US has really become an act of stopping the other candidate. And the candidates themselves are promoting that very thing. All the campaign ads are appearing on TV & radio no in advance of the election in November. They are literally all the same. Candidate X is EVIL. They will kill you and enslave your children and eat your pets. Or is is eat your children and enslave your pets? But candidate Y is good and virtuous and will save you from candidate X and give you things. Vote for candidate Y. The only positive thing I can say about Donald Trump is "well, at least he isn't Hillary Clinton". Ironically had she won the only positive thing I could say about her was the opposite. I don't see any virtue in either side and no candidate from either party has ever done a THING to deserve keeping or entering the office they seek. Especially when their very presence in that office only enables dysfunction. Hell will freeze into a solid block before I ever again cast my vote for a Republican or a Democrat. Voting 3rd party may be futile (although it only is because people think it is) but at least I am not ashamed for supporting a fool.

Like the old saying goes we get the government we deserve. And we get it long and hard right where it hurts.

Who is really to blame? The "big corporations" or the government that took their campaign money and created the mess they thrive in? I'd say the latter. It does not happen without the complicity of the government. Asking the same entity that created the mess to fix it is somehow funny and heartbreaking at the same time. But what it really could be called is futile.

It's a complicated question. The whole thing s a bloody mess and it's getting worse because it's not all of any one thing. We can't do single payer. At least not on a national level. We can't afford it. Period. We can't do "socialized" because health care providers and facilities are privately owned and the US government cannot take their business nor compel them to do much of anything. It's not quite free market either because the government has shoved it's finger up the rear of both the providers and insurance companies. Competition between insurance companies has been eliminated by the ACA so it's Katie-bar-the-door on prices now. It wasn't exactly competitive before that because at the behest of those same insurance companies the government had placed restrictions on what companies can sell what products where. The providers are dealing with the high cost of regulatory compliance and insurance because we refuse to even consider tort reform. A single error gets you sued out of existence. And to top it all the absolute requirement in the ACA to have insurance means providers have no incentive not to stick it to the patents because they don't pay all the bill anyway. But they do when insurance premiums go up. Economics 101: all costs are ultimately paid by the consumer. It will come to a breaking point somewhere. Not sure what that will look like or what comes after. My advice is don't get sick. We do have one healthcare system in the US that works perfectly: Veterinary care. All of the providers are competing with each other which keeps prices manageable. The government has not screwed it up (yet) so you can see any Vet you like anywhere you like. There are even a few Vet insurance policies you can by and the companies that sell them can sell them to anyone anywhere. That is what our human healthcare system should have looked like. But, what's done is done.

Here's an idea: let's not go to war with anyone. If I were president my foreign policy could be summed up like this: Don't attack our states or territories. Don't attack our citizens abroad who are behaving lawfully wherever they are. Don't attack nations with whom we have defensive pacts. Do those three things and you will never have to hear an american shot fired in anger. If it were up to me Iraq, Panama, Vietnam, Libya, Syria, etc would have gone down totally differently.

totally agree. I'd much prefer subtitles.

As Gromnir said this conversation would derail what has been an enjoyable thread. So I'll keep this short and will not follow up any further. As Gromnir pointed out most of the nations of Europe, indeed the better part of the world are "free" to one extent or the other. When such freedoms are intruded on it is done so in a narrow way most of the time. But the ability to make the intrusion is absolute and often enough the citizens can do little about it. That is what makes the US different. The ability to intrude on certain inalienable rights is curtailed right in our founding document. I've commented before that our friends across the pond have a trust in their governments to behave with wisdom and temperance that I find strange, even alien. Generally we are mistrustful of our governments here and that has been handed down since the founding of the country and ratification of our Constitution. The governments of other nations often CAN with impunity intrude on the liberty of it;s citizens. Those citizens just hope that they won't. Here there are things our government CAN'T do. Ironically they try to do them anyway and far to often have been successful. But most of the time they are not.

I've got a new resident. A bat has taken to roosting in the gazebo I built a few years ago. It's a tiny little thing. I haven't been able to get a good pic of it yet. It's roosting in the ridge vent up top. I'd have to climb up to it to get a pic but i don't want to disturb it. It's hard to tell for sure but I think it's a Gray Bat. Pretty cool whatever it's species. Hopefully it will oblige me with a pic soon. https://www.tn.gov/twra/wildlife/mammals/mammals-bats/gray-bat-myotis-federally-endangered.html

At last... YouTube has reached the pinnacle of cool. There is nowhere to go but down from here: https://youtu.be/AJFRvkNF6Wg

Here is a little bit of good news for a change. There have been a lot of stories where the endless nattering of moral busybodies have led to police shutting down children's lemonade stands and other little ventures. Sometimes in a heavy handed way. Well, it almost happened again. Some miserable little snit with nothing better to do called the police on a 13 year old kid in Minneapolis selling hot dogs to raise money for school clothes. Rather than this story playing out like all the others the city of Minneapolis decided to go another way. Kudos to them! https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/07/23/teen-selling-hot-dogs-gets-help-minneapolis-officials/817927002/

This video made me smile https://youtu.be/LMyZETiPy3o

Exactly. Purely hypothetical story. Obviously such an irresponsible and needless waste of money would never occur in my state. And if it did I wouldn't say anything about it.

Just complaining about taxpayers money being wasted. And complaining that no one else in the hypothetical state seems to give a crap that it is.

South Florida was nearly as bad. I chose to move where I did specifically because I could afford to buy land. In SFL I had a 1400 sq house on a half acre. And that is a huge lot by SFL standards. I paid $300k for that. When I moved here I bought 24 acres and built a house on it, and then bought an additional 2.5 acre plot next to me for $220k all told. It's all about where.

So, let me tell you a hypothetical story. Hypothetically let's pretend there is a state somewhere between Alabama & Kentucky. Now, suppose that state was considering a project for river levee reinforcements on the banks of a large American river that runs north to south and was made famous by Samuel Clemens. Lets assume that river runs past a hypothetical major city in the western quarter of that hypothetical state. Still with me? Good. Now, this state is concerned about soil erosion following a series of floods of this hypothetical river over several years. So a project was proposed to reinforce the earth levee with a fiber underlayment. In fact, a hypothetical frequent poster on a small computer game forum did a materials cost analysis of this project two years ago. Nice fella. Baseball fan. Hypothetically. Anyway the proposal was completed and budgeted by the state government of this hypothetical state and then defunded, That appeared to be that. It turns out that two members of the General Assembly Agriculture and Natural Resource subcommittee of this hypothetical state, one with a degree in business, the other theology, are doing a feasibility study of the proposal. The study has a budget of, well let's say half the material cost of the original proposal. So for two years a theology major and business major are studying a proposal that took an Ecologist, Civil Engineer, and a electronics engineer (who literally fell back-asswards into the job) about three days to put together. And wasting a hell of a lot of the tax payers money while doing it. When the Baseball fan and frequent board poster pointed this out the reply was a dismissive quip "Why make a big deal about that? It's not like it's your money?" Hypothetically. In other news I am expecting my property tax bill next month. Just sayin'

a number o' folks in Gromnir's community, which is a good +30 minutes east o' sacramento, regular commute to the bay area. ... madness. HA! Good Fun! From east of Sacramento to SF? $5 says they would not recognize their houses in daylight. I haven't been out that way since '93 but that would have been a hell of a commute then. I doubt traffic has improved since.

Hey... I have a farm. Where can I get some subsidies???

US health care is high quality and high priced. Very high priced in some places and fields.

One of the things that hurts CA is commuting is expensive. That plus the state's pops are really concentrated. SF is completely surrounded by either water, Oakland (not cheap), San Jose (definitely not cheap), or Santa Rosa/ Vallejo/ and other stuff (not cheap). If you go east of of Oakland towards Modesto it gets rural pretty quick IIRC. Same if you go north towards Sacremento. But if you work in SF that is not a realistic commute. LA would probably easier to live outside of an commute to than anything in the Bay area.

There is a good chance the Dems will retake the House and the Repubs retain the Senate by 1 vote. I will sleep much more soundly if they do. Same as when the Dems lost the house in 2010. Grmonir is right on the money on this one. Divided government is far preferable one side or the other holding all the cards.

Nice strawman. We go from high housing prices in general and housing not really being optional to "I don't have to subsidize your downtown apartment". Which I agree with, but is not the point. Looking elsewhere may be a solution short-term for some people but it doesn't address the root cause. People start moving en masse to nowhereville that currently has great rent, and thanks to houses being just another commodity as you so keenly noted, "investors" will simply start gobbling up real estate there and start another bubble. I'm not defending it, but subsidizing rent is one of the few things that the state can do towards ensuring affordable housing, without going full commie and infringing on your muh property rights. Public housing is another, but then that's unfair competition and the state meddling with muh free markets. Do you have a better alternative? And by the way, it appears you are wrong about rent. A cursory search reveals that median rent prices in Bartlett TN are actually higher than in Memphis. The problem with subsidizing rent is it does not solve the root problem: it costs too much to rent property X. Helping the tenant pay does not change the cost. It also does not incentivize the property owner to lower the rent. Quite the opposite actually. Like I said in the example the property owner figures they we making the payment when the price was $100 a month, they are getting a tax credit that makes it $85 a month, therefore they can afford it if I raise the rent to $115 a month. Do we subsidize some more then? At what point do we run out of everyone else's money? Of course rents cannot be raised like that (generally). I have a one year contract with my tenant. They agree to the price and terms and I agree to the price and terms. At the end of the year we sign a new agreement or part ways. Actually I'm hoping the current tenant might be interested i buying the place but that's another story. The only thing that will bring down the prices is a lack of interest from tenants. When supply is high and demand is low the price drops. Property owners don't charge rent rates in an arbitrary way generally. My townhouse is mortgaged and insured and comes with an annual tax bill and quarterly association dues. I pay all of that myself. So I need to charge a tenant as close to that number as I can get. Over would be ideal but it just hasn't worked out that way. So every month owning a house I don't live in costs me money. But it's better to have something coming in rather than nothing so if I have to lower the price to attract a tenant that's what I do. And did. My first tenant it was a break even deal. This one I had to lower it to attract them. Property owners are competing for tenants. That controls prices better than subsidies ever will. If the tenants start looking elsewhere prices drop. If an area has more interest than properties the prices go up. Subsidizing does not offer relief other than temporary. What might help is extending the homestead tax exemption to property owners who own say 3 rental properties rental properties or less. Lowering my costs allows my to lower my rate. I'd love to offer a 800 sq' townhouse for less than a 2B apartment in the complex next door. BTW, don't go by median prices in Memphis. There is not a whole lot of median to be found in that city. There is nice, not so nice and not a lot in between.

US Politics summed up in one cartoon strip

There is one thing I wish I could make Canadians understand: This.... this is.... an ABOMINATION! This is WRONG! Also there are FOUR downs. Got it???? FOUR!

I'd be curious to hear what Icelanders think of their home as well.