Originally Posted by
PanzerJaeger
Read the thread bro, and the couple of others we've had on the subject. I've been favorable towards T-Paw for months, and long before the video was released. I posted it because Pawlenty officially kicked off his campaign today. I liked the video because it seems to indicate that he will make entitlement reform the centerpiece of his campaign, which, imo, is the single most important issue threatening the long term viability of the nation and one which the current president has not only shown no desire to seriously address, but has made considerably worse.
He also seems to be taking the whole 'truth' theme seriously too. He called for ending ethanol subsidies in Iowa, and is scheduled to speak in front of seniors in Florida about the necessity of making changes to Medicare. Bold moves...
Another thought. The TEA Party has been relentlessly dogged for years now by the usual suspects in the media for supposed racist intentions, despite little solid evidence. Guess who the current TEA Party favorite is?
Lol doesn't matter if you have been excited for this dude for months. The video said nothing bro. I am excited about that new zombie game Dead Island but I'm not gonna get all infatuated from the trailers.
PJ, I am not trying to bash Republicans for the sake of bashing Republicans when I say this but... every single republican has been and is going to say that the debt and entitlement programs are the biggest threat to our well being today. They say it for political points, just like when Obama said he was going to close Guantanamo bay. It's pandering. He can talk about ending subsidies here and there and about restructuring and reforming bu until he gives a concrete plan, it is just a talking point. One that is expected of a Republican candidate and one that he will probably break.
The part of about little racist intentions is wrong but we have had that conversation before. I see the bigger meaning (the real meaning) behind the language that the tea party came out with during 2008, 2009 and early 2010 and you reject that there is a bigger meaning behind the word "kenyan".
If we want to be honest about what is threatening the long term viability of the country then let us be realistic here. The US is not a fragile country. The debt will not suddenly reach some unknown poisonous level. Social Security is actually fine until 2033-2045 depending on where you get your numbers, it is only medicare that is really needing a good look over right now because the possibility of it's funds exceeding its costs could happen as soon as 2019.
Our empire right now is too big. Our defense budget could be cut by a fourth and still be paying out more then the vast majority of the rest of world combined when it comes to defense spending. The crisis causing this medicare problem is high medical costs coupled with the wave of baby boomers that will slowly subside sometime over the next 30-35 years.
Let's look at this chart:
And we can see that the unsustainable reaches of Johnson's Great Society are from an unstable shift in the population birth rate, where the baby boomers created a peak that must be fulfilled by the newer generations that were not born at such high rates. However, the baby boomers will eventually die, thus making this scenario an unfortunate but ultimately temporary problem that will be gone in the long run, no matter how we tackle the situation.
The entitlement program isn't a problem of funding or spending or taxing or anything that Republicans or Democrats want to portray it as. The entitlement problem of the next 30 years is a problem of priorities. Nothing more. If we divert 1/4th of our defense budget to social security, then the social security situation will be solved given we also make some minor tweaks here or there like paying less towards high income individuals who don't even need the SS paycheck.
Medicare will not be solved by the defense budget shift, but that is because the situation with medicare is from a broken health care system in the first place not from any inherent government wastefulness or problem with the structure of medicare itself.
Our health care system is a patchwork of an HMO system that has little to not incentive to provide good coverage, laws that promote a monopoly of a few health insurance companies which accordingly jack up the price and try to kick sick people off coverage since there is little stopping them from doing so and well intentioned but ultimately hurtful laws and regulations that promote wasteful use of hospital resources.
All problems regarding entitlement stem from the health care issue and empire of defense spending, the health care issue is something that Obama has tried to tackle. Ironically, he tackled with Republican policy from the 90s and got chewed out for it, because the Republicans simply didn't care enough about the country to accept their own ideas from 20 years ago (government mandate of insurance).
All other solutions of trying to restructure the government itself is pure political ideology and not pragmatism working. It is thought candy to those small-government minded citizens who never seemed to read too closely to Adams and other pioneers of free market thinking and missed out on the part where their classical liberalism background produced statements supporting the use of government within the economy as long as it ends up serving a role that protects the benefits of a spontaneous economic interaction between individuals (citizen or corporate) without the nasty self destructive side effects that could ultimately lead to removal of such spontaneous interactions (such as natural monopolies forming).
Whoo, that was a long post. Sorry about the rambling there.
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