I.O.U.S.A – A Nation in Debt

Barry,

Any consideration of my proposal for you to host an Economic Crisis Dream Team Summit to actually help come up with some solutions, or should we just give up? I have posted this idea a few times and some people liked the idea…you have been very mum on it.

My Nominations again…Roubini, Volcker, Stiglitz, Bogle, Shiller, Barry as moderator.

i am a berry picker and i resent that comment Troy.

‘Jose the berry picker’s McMansion’ the 2008 remake of that 1970s classic by Rockin’ Ronnie Ray-gun ‘The Cadillac Driving Welfare Queen’

Got Fear?

“totalling $53 Billion”

$53 Trillion
(Quatrillion-Gazillion-Obamamillion!……scared yet?)

Thank you #7 I was well aware that the number was $53 trillion, but unfortunately caught the typo after I posted.

With a $13 Trillion/year GDP, that $53 trillion coming due in decades and decades will be taken out of the $500 trillion – $ 1 quadrillion economy. Taxes over the last half century plus have generally amounted to 20% of GDP.

The facts stand. Social security is in excellent shape. Out of control health care costs explain Medicare’s issues and can be contained. Military expenditures are nowhere discussed in RW talking points.

Had the 2001 tax cuts not been enacted, we would be in much better shape. This film proposes that the middle and working classes must lose their insurance so that billionaires can keep their tax cuts.

They can shove that.

Saw the movie and the follow-on discussion with Buffet, Peterson, Walker, CATO Rep, AARP Rep and moderated by Becky Quick from CNBC (go figure). The movie does a decent job of explaining the various deficits but does not offer solutions. In the follow-on discussion there was little substance with Buffet essentially saying everything will be just fine. One question on whether the dollar would drop further due to these deficits was essentially unanswered. The theme of the answers was we need to tighten our belts, work longer, means test medicare, save more, etc. Mostly platitudes and saying we have plenty of time to fix things. The one exception was David Walker (former head of GAO) who seems to get the urgency.

In the end the movie will make folks aware of the deficit issues but given the current credit crisis I don’t think the US’s current system can be saved or should be.

Saw the movie and the discussion.

Never really explained the facts, from my perspective.

The key is the 53 trillion dollar number and what it means.

10 trillion is straight up treasury debt that has to be supported at the current interest rate (4%). That’s not that scary provided interest rates don’t do what they did in the late 70s.

Most of the rest is social security and medicare. I couldn’t figure out what this is. Is it the total to paid over time or what would already have to be in a pension fund if the US had to fund these like GM funds its pension responsibilities. The difference between these two extremes is the difference between no big problem and we are freakin doomed.

At least, that’s how a software engineering looks at it whos trying hard to understand it and went to the movie and listened carefully. I also read Wiggin’s book Demise of the Dollar which was trash.

As with most things, the entirety of the content is pure pablum.

However, what is essential is that the conversational ball gets rolling regarding the importance of paying down the debt. The right-wing talking point of “lower taxes, HIGHER spending” is inane.

Social Security is fine. Health care spending would be drastically reduced with the simple regulatory enforced mandate that insurance companies PAY on 100% of actual claims.

Currently the reimbursement to hospitals is around 30% of claims submitted based on work completed. If you wonder why your hospital visit costs so much, point your finger directly at the insurance companies – not the hospital. A good hospital system has a profit margin of 1.5%. That is not a typo – 1.5%. If every stay was reimbursed, overall costs would decrease drastically to you the customer, because the large majority of hospitals are in fact nonprofit organizations.

Instead, insurance companies are permitted to simply not pay on 70% of claims, and the difference is shoveled out to executives and lobbyists.

We don’t need to “blow up the system” – what we need is for the insurance regulators to do their job.

Post by: ndd | Aug 27, 2008 6:56:05 AM
I second that post and could not bring myself to plunking down $12.50 for a ticket and most likely a fiver for popcorn and soda. I’ll wait for the public library to post it. I’ve seen all that info for free here at TBP.

With respect to Dale, MontyHigh & JGQ, thanks for supporting the film industry. Money is just paper, ya gotta turn it into an experience. But I’m sure the film is attempting to present that you gotta save it someplace for that rainy day and old age.

ps – If I was rolling in free cash and could stomach the 130 mile round-trip to a movie house I’da gone to see it.

pss – Troy that is an interesting idea “not worry about taxing capital gains and wage income, but increase the tax levels on the wealthy’s land ownership”

and freejack LOL funny :-)

“taxes negatively impact the economy”
not so – taxes take from the over compensated and recycle the cash into new plans – many families, sm business and mega corps depend on that redistribution

over compensated = profits above a globally accepted return on investment

I like the drill down on the tax types.

“Capital gains and corporate taxes are the most harmful” classic talking your book

Land ownership? Once born you are guaranteed nothing. Its a jungle baby.
To many people making to many problems.

When I read all of the above comments and look at where the US is today I think the below quote is most appropriate.

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations is 200 years.” (Alexander Fraser Tytler, 1776)

The fact that it’s from 1776 adds weight to societies doing the same thing over and over again.

There are lies, damn lies and statistics. There is no way we can continue at the pace we are going but then we won’t. The market is going to enforce change. But, I have seen some of the analysis on these future projections and they are complete lies. And, they are massive lies. But, if this scares the shit out of people and helps boot out the jackasses, that’s fine by me.

Scary stuff.

As some have pointed out this movie is bs produced by people with an agenda. It telescopes decades of future spending into a current liability and ignores both the overall size of the economy and anticipated growth rates. Rather like telling a newly married couple who are living in a rented apartment and will have three children that they are immediately liable to pay all their future accomodation costs, their childrens’s education costs, healthcare bills, etc etc tomorrow and their income will never rise. Barry: you want to watch your cred endorsing this sort of superficial nonsense which is intended for the financially unsophisticated. Does the US have a savings problem? Undoubtedly, along with many other structural problems one of which is that for some bizarre reason we are cheerfully paying twice as much for our healthcare system both as a percentage of GDP (16.3%) and per capita as any other advanced western society. This is only one of the many distortions in our budget, someone has already mentioned disproportionate allocation of resources to military expenditures, but there are many others. If we want to talk about our structural and economic problems can we please do it sans this sort of adolescent bean counting which will no doubt impress the gullible, never in short supply in the US, but totally ignores context.

I read Peterson’s book two or three years back (I’m too lazy to walk to my bookshelf and see when it was published). It was rife with data that will be discussed in IOUSA. It’s about frikkin’ time! WTF! Someone had to make a movie because the corrupt corporate media simply was not allowed to cover the story. Does anyone think the honchos at GE would allow this story on any NBC channel while they’re floating shitty debt? Ross Perot may have been nuts, but he understood that debt and NAFTA were not good for average Americans; you know, the folks govt. is supposed to look out for…A handful of people benefitted enormously during this gutting process–most did not. We are in decline, and the next generation’s living standard has been borrowed into bankruptcy. The Milton Friedman decades can be summed up as follows: I got mine so fuck the rest of you.

> A democracy cannot exist as a permanent
> form of government.

Good thing we’re a republic, instead of a simple
democracy.