The sky has finally fallen...

I see another bubble....

 

more like a balloon to me...

 

which all lead to one ending, implosion, like a supernova

 

This is what will happen.
The smart people will let the insurance expire.
Pay the dumb fine to obama which is only < 1/5th the costs of insurance.
Save $$$ in paying only the healthcare u really need, which can be negotiated with the doctors. If by chance of bad luck u get HIV, cancer or suffer big injury from auto accident, just buy insurance at that point Obamacare can't deny u on the pre-existing condition. Insurance companies go bankrupt. Don't worry, Obamacare will backstop these

If you have any belief whatsoever in the efficient market hypothesis this is exactly what people will do as the effective dates for these provisions approach, as it will save them ten thousand dollars a year or more - each. The insurance companies will instantaneously lose the "pool" of healthy people who buy against risk - rather, they will have a pool of all sick people who buy against known costs.

meanwhile, continue to enjoy these foods
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-24/the-40-deadliest-fast-food-meals/#

 

I agree with Master Cooler's post #104. 1 Additional point. Initially, only smart and unethical people will do so. Give it a year or 2, all the smart and ethical people will do so. After 3 years, most of the regular people will figure out and start to do so. Give and take about 5 years, only people who is in the program is either sick and need a lot of care or just too ethical and decided not to do it. After 7 years, the truly ethical people will be all bankrupted and only people in the plan is the sick and dying...
I give it 8 years before this bad bill to fail.

 

PS, let's make fun of the GOP's latest SM (s)trip...

 

Follow the money???

 

Anyway, here is our Robbing Hood VP on the subject of money. That is a lot of incentive for people to work hard...
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/joe-biden-on-taxes-you-call-it-%22redistribution-of-wealth%22-i-call-it-%22just-being-fair%22-455245.html?tickers=^DJI,^GSPC,HRB,INTU,^IXIC,XHB,XLE

 

Yoppy, Epak and Cheung:
Firstly, I ain't American, I am Canadian and we have universal healthcare. Read my posts, I did not say no to healthcare and I did say I am glad Canada got it but it is not sustainable. I did say the less fortunate should have it too.
I did say with the current record US deficit and debt (I did say will never pay off with consecutive 30+ years deficit with nobody has any plan to even stop the bleeding, you can forget paying down), adding more spending (healthcare or any other wish list) without cutting from the current budget is fool's dream. Deficit financing, that is what BO is doing to finance health care is not sustainable unless BO cut something big from the budget, otherwise, the debt will balloon kill everything including healthcare.
The right to live, wealth without health, helping the less fortunate, I could not agree with you trio any less, I wholeheartedly agree and if I got free Medicare why not others, but what BO is doing in increasing the deficit and debt for the whole 4 year term is not going to sustain healthcare and if the debt past the point of no return, the debt will sucked up everything in its wake, nothing left unless Epak is looking forward to the economic demise of USA. So, agree healthcare stays (it got passed and majority/democracy rule anyway), now what to cut (withdraw from the war???) to produce a balance act and BO is not doing that. That is what I am saying...read slowly
Yoppy, US does not need to wait 100 years (see your post above), just 10 more years of record US$1.6T deficit (BO projects deficit throughout his 1st term) and USA will follow Greece but unlike Greece which may have Germany to back her up, nobody will be there for USA. I did say I worry for Canada..as for the USA, I did say I am like Epak, I give a flying leap.

 

Is any work better than no work? Not for unemployment benefits.
By Ron Scherer Ron Scherer Mon Mar 29, 6:28 pm ET
New York – Roberta Hanson of North Haven, Conn., had been searching for work for 22 months when she landed a part-time job weekend afternoons and nights for a nearby municipal parks and recreation department.

But now Ms. Hanson rues the day she took that work. Why? The Connecticut Department of Labor used her negligible earnings in her part-time job as the new baseline for Hanson's unemployment benefits. She went from receiving $483 a week to getting nothing.

"Afterwards, unofficially, they said I shouldn’t have taken the job," Hanson says.

It's a twist in the law that may affect thousands of other workers, given that the ranks of the long-term unemployed are now so high. Many people who have been out of work for a year are picking up work as temps or part-timers, unaware that state agencies will recalculate their unemployment benefits after a year – and use their most recent work history and pay level to do it.

"What is going on for these workers is that because their most recent wages are much lower than the wages they earned in their prior full-time job, they are facing substantial cuts in their weekly unemployment benefits," says George Wentworth, a consultant at the National Employment Law Project (NELP) in New York.

Benefits recalculated after a year

Most of the people caught in this snag are on Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC), a federal program to help those who have exhausted their state benefits. However, after workers have been jobless for 52 weeks, states are required to check to see if a worker has requalified for state benefits. If someone is eligible for state benefits – no matter how small – federal law requires that he or she stop collecting EUC and go back onto state benefits. The states, many with unemployment pools that are borrowing from the federal government, are dramatically reducing the amount paid out to individuals.

Mr. Wentworth cites the example of a Massachusetts woman who had been getting $540 a week in unemployment benefits and, when returned to state benefits, saw her weekly benefit cut to $103. To make matters worse, her husband, also unemployed, saw his benefit drop from $600 a week to $199 a week. Each cut came as a result of having taken a short-term job.

Hanson’s situation is even worse. Connecticut's formula for parttime workers is to take two-thirds of their gross salary (in her case $130 a week, which is $87) and subtract that amount from $39, which would be her weekly benefit based on the parttime job. This gives her a negative $48, or no benefit at all.

“Something is wrong,” Hanson says. “I am allowed to get nothing!”

Temp jobs on the rise

The potential reduction in benefits for parttimers and temps comes as temp services are starting to hire more workers because businesses don’t want to add fulltimers until they're sure the economic recovery is permanent. In February, temporary help services added 48,000 jobs, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. Since September, jobs at temp services have risen by 284,000.

In the 1990s, the last time America saw high long-term unemployment among a sizable share of its work force, Congress changed the law to prevent the unemployed from being penalized for taking up parttime work. However, that change expired.

Now, Sen. Jack Reed (D) of Rhode Island is sponsoring legislation to accomplish the same thing today. Senator Reed attached his proposal to a bill that extended several tax provisions, plus farm disaster assistance, unemployment benefits, and COBRA health benefits.

“We need to incentivize people to find work, not unfairly punish folks who were able to find short-term, temporary employment,” said Reed in a statement.

However, the legislative package, which passed the Senate on March 10, is in limbo because the House version is different.

Reed argues that his change could potentially help states, because the long-term unemployed would receive benefits from the US Treasury. Many state unemployment funds are now insolvent and have had to borrow from the US government.

It could also help people like Hanson, who worked for 28 years for a Connecticut social services program that was eliminated. She is trying to support her elderly father as well as herself on her parttime job, credit cards, and Social Security. “I have written everyone from President Obama – from whom I [have] heard nothing back – to my local representative [in Congress], Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D), who is very supportive,” she says.

 

It is good that some Americans wake up to what the rest of the world thinks about the controversy about the health care bill. French president Sarkozy says it well : www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_03/023111.php
It seems that some powerful Americans are quite heartless. We are beginning to see early signs of the coming collapse of an empire.

 

I don't think anyone here is not agreeing with you on passing this bill. Just how to pay for this bill and to sustain it from hereon without consecutive 30+ years of deficit financing i.e. in case you or Sarkozy pretend not to know or being hypocritical, borrow money to pay for it and not cutting any other programs, that is the problem. For every $1 borrow this year, this $1 incur interest which in turn eat into next year's budget. But the problem is USA has a trillion $ deficit. You just want to play your health card and blindside this deficit cos' you know there is no way this bill can be sustained. As you honestly admit, you glee over the economic demise of the US.
You and Yoppy have been playing this health card but you should ask your hero BO to show the Americans the money to pay for it. Deficit financing is a fantasy, fools dream and there is no way for any country in this world to pay for ANYTHING when their current revenues cannot support it. In case you conveniently forget, there is 30+ years of deficit pile up and you don't have to predict and glee over USA collapse, it will happen. Just that BO has a vision without a plan, that expediates the collapse. You and that Yoppy guy never talk about financing and how to pay, just spend. On the record, I support universal healthcare, just show us the money path. Very simple

 

i wouldn't jump to that extreme. If US is going to the toilet, china gets the flush with it too coz they hold so many US's IOUs. You see, if i owe china $10k, i'm in trouble, if i owe china trillions, china is in trouble LOL. Yes, sky is falling but most of us still survive coz we will just stay indoor(cocooning)

 

Of course the shift from the West to the East has already started. It is a process and will take a few decades, just like the slow decay of the British Empire. BTW, let me remind you that America was a colony of the British.
The turning point will come when China's total GDP overtakes the US's. At that point it will be meaningless for the US to keep printing their dollars and ask the world to use it as a global currency. Once the US dollar is no longer a global currency then the fall will be sharp. Hopefully, long before that something is worked out for a soft landing.
China is compelled to pump money into the US economy for its own survival too. It doesn't want a world economic power like the US to go under and bring everyone down.
The world has changed now. At the bottom rung we now worry about failed states among the many poor countries. At the top the most powerful countries are so interdependent that each will come to the aid of the other to prevent a global collapse.

 

I presume when you talk about deficit financing you are talking about the US budget. Deficit budgets can be either good or bad, depending on the circumstances and a country's economic power.
Countries like Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Italy have never been known to be good economic performers but good in spending beyond their means for political reason. Such countries are not good candidates for deficit financing.
However, if a country like a businessman or entrepreneur, has a negative cash flow, meaning its expenditures are higher than its income/receipts, we need to find out the components of the deficit. For an entrepreuner he may have incurred a bank loan for a business venture that will bring in a stream of good income over the future years, and the loan is substantial enough to cause the deficit, then this is not a problem. The same with states that are good economic performers. Such highly rated states can and do go into deficit financing to reflate an economy and bring it back to health.
It will be a crime if America did not take such huge steps reflating the ailing economy that nearly tanked America last year.
BTW, only foot soldiers earn their monthly salary and spend within the limits of their salary. Such foot soldiers make up the majority of the population. The entrepreuners are the movers and shakers who take risks in borrowings and loans to start up enterprises that drive an economy. To such movers and shakers deficit financing is necessary. Do you know why there are banks and stock markets? Without them, we will be still in the barter trade days of old.

 

We should hear more from the Europeans, they are the pioneer on this issue.