McCain/Palin v. Obama/Biden

[Dworkk]

Originally Posted by Moontayle

Palin bans reporters from meetings with leaders - Yahoo! News

I wonder how they're going to spin this.

It's bait. Any day spent talking about Palin is a win for the repubes. Then they will talk about poor Sarah being hounded by the press like she is Lady Di.

[MrGraham]

Don't want the liberal media politicizing an event whose only purpose is to create political credentials! Duh!

[Eomer]

Originally Posted by chaos

Not everyone dude, just people who are specifically employed to make a profit off of you, those people are not your friends. That's why you have people, at the bare goddamn minimum a realtor, who is looking out for your interest.

What in the fuck? You trust a realtor more than your personal banking officer? Is the financial and real estate sector in the US really that ass backwards?

Realtors are fucking scum by and large, one rung up the ladder from car salesmen. They're making far more money off you than virtually anyone else involved in the purchase of a home (around 1-3% of the price of your home typically, but that's been coming down lately because of the internet and alternative house selling services). Your personal banking officer meanwhile probably sees virtually nothing from signing you up to a mortgage, other than a coffee mug from the bank for "employee of the month."

Your logic is seriously fucking flawed.

As far as my personal opinion on the ARM fuckup in the US goes, I'd say blame should be spread around. Yes consumers were fucking stupid to take the loans they did. Even if people were given deceptive pitches to sign on the dotted line, they should have known better. But by comparison, in Canada such mortgages are not even allowed, because the government knew damn well what would happen if they did allow them. Hell, they just changed the regulations to not allow 40 year ammortizations (there's no such thing as an "interest only" mortgage here, that shit be illegal).

People were stupid, but so was the government. Unfortunately yes, sometimes there are cases when the government needs to regulate things to protect people from themselves, and I'd say that the clusterfuck in the US housing market is a fantastic example of a situation where the government in the US abdicated it's responsibilities. This shit isn't happening anywhere else BUT the US.

Originally Posted by Arbitrary

Then it's time to move to Canada.

Heh, if the US goes down the toilet as you describe it'll take Canada with it, whether or not our own economy and monetary system is sound. Economically we really are the 51st state.

[I'm Rich Bitch]

Originally Posted by CnCGOD

Obama's voting record tells a story that I don't care for. Yes some of the McCain ads make me cringe in the propaganda feel (the towering shadow over the baby one made me go wtf) but when it comes to issues Obama's plans just don't jive with me.

I can respect your position but realize that no President is Liberal or Conservative. They are all moderate. They have to be. Even with a Democratic congress Obama would be in the center. It may be center-left as Bush is center-right but every President governs from the center.

[Sylverlokk]

Originally Posted by Jedah

Consumption taxation is incredibly regressive. The poorer you are, the greater the percent of what you earn you spend on necessities; this wouldn't address the savings issue for the vast majority of Americans.

Also, when Russia taxed hard liquor, people started drinking anti-freeze.

I agree.

[Eomer]

That's easily fixed. Canada has a national sales tax called the goods and services tax (GST). It was 7%, but it's now down to 5%. Many common neccessities are NOT taxed, like most food in the grocery store, although sometimes it can be convoluted what is taxed and what isn't. To be honest I don't pay much attention to it but typically about half my grocery bill is GST exempt.

On top of that lower income Canadians get a refund based on their income. Again I don't pay any attention to it because I'm long past getting it.

Yes a straight tax on everything would be regressive, but you can tweak it to make it less painful for the people in the lowest income brackets. And no, I don't feel bad that vice taxes on things like cigarettes and alcohol disproportionately hurt the poor as they spend a larger proportion of their income on those things. Dumbasses shouldn't be smoking and drinking if they can't pay the rent.

[MrSpitz]

Originally Posted by I'm Rich Bitch

I can respect your position but realize that no President is Liberal or Conservative. They are all moderate. They have to be. Even with a Democratic congress Obama would be in the center. It may be center-left as Bush is center-right but every President governs from the center.

No, all presidents are part of the white conspiracy and hand picked by the illuminati.

When will you open your eyes black racist?!?!?@?!#?@?#$

Edit: how can you also use the word moderate? Time and again you have demonstrated you can't even comprehend the nations' problems, let alone solutions or positions to them. Unless its the small towns out to get you again issue.

[Jedah]

Originally Posted by Eomer

And no, I don't feel bad that vice taxes on things like cigarettes and alcohol disproportionately hurt the poor as they spend a larger proportion of their income on those things. Dumbasses shouldn't be smoking and drinking if they can't pay the rent.

Problem is that you can already make an argument that cigarettes are an inferior good being taxed needlessly. They're really a poor man's prozac given the positive correlation between anxiety disorders, depression, etc. and smoking. Smoking wouldn't be nearly as cost prohibitive without taxation at the current rate.

[MrSpitz]

The cigarette tax is a great avenue for healthcare savings, wether it unfairly burdens the poor or not.

Every cigarette should be taxed more and that money put into a fund solely for the purpose of the additional, extensive, and expensive lung and heart tests and treatments that these people require later in life that everyone else pays for through health insurance.


I have no problem if you want to do whatever you want to your body, just pay for the consequences later yourself. Especially for a product with a direct causal link to cancer, but most importantly one that solely erodes lung function and then stresses the heart which causes more problems.

[Jedah]

Originally Posted by MrSpitz

The cigarette tax is a great avenue for healthcare savings, wether it unfairly burdens the poor or not.

Every cigarette should be taxed more and that money put into a fund solely for the purpose of the additional, extensive, and expensive lung and heart tests and treatments that these people require later in life that everyone else pays for through health insurance.


I have no problem if you want to do whatever you want to your body, just pay for the consequences later yourself. Especially for a product with a direct causal link to cancer, but most importantly one that solely erodes lung function and then stresses the heart which causes more problems.

But it's already been shown that good health does not reduce health care costs:

Study: Good health costlier in long run - The Boston Globe

[MrSpitz]

Good long term health is a pillar of reducing long term health care costs.


Again, you need to monitor where you get your information from.

This quote:
"Van Baal and colleagues created a model to simulate lifetime health costs for three groups of 1,000 people: the "healthy-living" group (thin and non-smoking), obese people, and smokers. The model relied on "cost of illness" data and disease prevalence in the Netherlands in 2003."

and the journal it was published in should give you an idea of the credibility or applicability of what they found.


Edit: Also this is either an outright lie or a testament to how poorly that model was designed:
"Cancer incidence, except for lung cancer, was the same in all three groups. Obese people had the most diabetes, and healthy people had the most strokes. "

Cancer incidence should have tripled or so in the 'healthy' group that lived longer, as it's incidence after 70 simply skyrockets. Which is funny because they should have included this, even if the cancers were untreated and did not further drive costs up for the 'healthly, long living' group. You can look at data from any country with longer life spans and validate this.

I do concede that that is a huge problem in science, especially the population science / epidemiologists. They love to sensationalize their findings and get them out to the media ASAP whether or not they are valid or really informative. This shit kills me on some of the nutrition stuff and cancer risk that 'scientists' would push to the papers, and was subsequently found to be total shit.

[Jedah]

Originally Posted by MrSpitz

Good long term health is a pillar of reducing long term health care costs.

On the basis on what evidence?

[Eomer]

Good long term health is a pillar of reducing long term health care costs.

That's the common sense answer, but as Jedah showed with his link, it's often not the case. Who is more expensive to the health care system over the course of their lifetime, an overweight smoker who gets lung cancer and dies at 50 or who has a heart attack/stroke and dies at 50, or someone who lives until their 90's and need numerous treatments and procedures through their later years for things like pacemakers, joint replacements, and so on?

There's been studies that argue in both directions; it's not as simple as you'd think.

[chaos]

Originally Posted by Eomer

What in the fuck? You trust a realtor more than your personal banking officer? Is the financial and real estate sector in the US really that ass backwards?

Realtors are fucking scum by and large, one rung up the ladder from car salesmen. They're making far more money off you than virtually anyone else involved in the purchase of a home (around 1-3% of the price of your home typically, but that's been coming down lately because of the internet and alternative house selling services). Your personal banking officer meanwhile probably sees virtually nothing from signing you up to a mortgage, other than a coffee mug from the bank for "employee of the month."

That may be true, but that doesn't reflect my experience. The realtor is also the easiest piece of the puzzle to replace. People can be compelled to use a particular lender for any number of reasons, but can replace their realtor with a phone call. Maybe I just got lucky and got the good realtor. I doubt that, I'm not that lucky. In fact when I was talking to friends and coworkers about buying a house, almost every one of them went to recommend their realtor to me. Not one single person recommended a lender to me. So yeah, I trust my realtor more than I do my bank. Not because the loan officer is going to personally make money off of me, but because it is his job to make the most money for his company off of me, and his job depends on it because from what I hear that is a very competitive job.

[MrSpitz]

Originally Posted by Eomer

That's the common sense answer, but as Jedah showed with his link, it's often not the case. Who is more expensive to the health care system over the course of their lifetime, an overweight smoker who gets lung cancer and dies at 50 or who has a heart attack/stroke and dies at 50, or someone who lives until their 90's and need numerous treatments and procedures through their later years for things like pacemakers, joint replacements, and so on?

There's been studies that argue in both directions; it's not as simple as you'd think.

The smoker as through his later 30s, all of his 40s, and 50s, has about as many tests and procedures as the healthy person in there 60s-90s, who is not getting a joint replacement after maybe age 65 or many of those most expensive treatments unless they can pay out of pocket.

The smoker also loses his productivity to society a lot quicker and gives less back. Do you know how much it costs for lung cancer surgery, by the way, compared to a pacemakers? Shit you could get a lot of pacemakers for the cost of 1 VATS to remove a portion of a lung.