epitome

I did have a good laugh last night when I read he filibustered his own bill.

Robbie

Please look up the history of this country. There are no long sustained periods of economic growth as you are trying to say that aren't part of a "bubble".

The 90's were the tech bubble. Lasted about 5 years. Not a bad run.

The 2000's were part of the housing market bubble. Lasted about 6 years.

What parts in our history were not tied to a "bubble"? And how long has any big economic growth period ever happened?

Yes, there are times with flat line economy where things just sort of sit. But even those only last about 5 or 6 years. (the mid 80's for instance).

The economy is cyclical. What goes up MUST come down. You will never have 20 years of great economic growth.
Or can you point me to a time where 20 years went by without some sort of mild recession happening every 5 or 6 or 10 years?

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Relentless

The bubbles are cyclical, the growth is not. When the tech boom happened a bubble ran up the stock market and that bubble burst. Up and down for sure. However the sustained growth of our economy from that tech boom is still felt in a massive way through every part of our economy. Cisco, Google, Apple, Microsoft, a massive increase in productivity from every other sector benefiting from their innovations. When Railroads were built there was a massive bubble that was cyclical, but there is also residual growth of our economy that is still felt to this day every time you get a product that was shipped via rail. Steel still has a profound impact on our society... so does electricity.

So tell me, what benefit long term did AIG and the Banks bring to our society with the mortgage bubble? How exactly did mortgage derivatives spur innovation or real economic growth? They were a short term wealth re-distributor in which taxpayers and defaulting mortgagees had their money shifted to banks too big to fail and the guys who made the door handles. That's great if you made the door handles, but not economic growth.

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Minte

It was fabulous....My lumber mills, my glass factories, my shingle companies,my plumbing foundries,my lighting empire,my concrete dynasty and of course my truck,heavy equipment and handtool businesses all made bank too.


Damn those were some good years.

Minte

Rochard doesn't seem to think... but he sure likes to babble on about nothing he will ever relate to or apparently understand.. NEXT

- Jesus Christ -

13 pages of people who have no say in anything rabidly defending the delusion that they do.

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Amen

Minte

Bubbles are always terrific short-term. That's why we call them bubbles. What people that understand do is build enough equity and hunt for suitable businesses that are ripe for acquisition. You ride the downslope and create new markets or expand existing ones, hopefully hitting the market at the next upswing.

Minte

Sure..Obama did lots of things. And most of it was crap. He didn't do half the things socially that he promised the first time around.

You don't have to believe me,when I say about how business does not have any confidence in his policies or agenda. Read all about it on any industry trade journal. Not some news station or outlet. The trades that the people who do have the money and do make the decisions read. They don't like Obamacare. They don't like more taxes. They don't like the robinhood mentality of this administration.

Mutt

this is true but it's good that people educate themselves and discuss/debate political and economic issues and policies. the Internet has people more engaged than ever before. public opinion does have some effect on policies.

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Minte

Not everyone likes sitting in a bar to waste time.

crockett

Actually this country has been investing in renewable energy it's just under reported as it's not so over run with lobbyist as things like Oil & coal.

Relentless

That's how to profit from a bubble... not how to create a 'roaring economy.'
A bubble changes the size of the slices... a roaring economy grows the whole pie.

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Robbie

Oh I don't know...why don't you ask the hundreds of thousands of contractors (and all the subcontractors that work for them), companies that make raw materials to build homes (and all their employees), companies that sell home building supplies (and all their employees), food and goods sales that went up from millions of people having more money to buy, new roads being built to service the new communities that were built (and all the workers who had jobs building them) and on and on and on.

You're not thinking clearly. Yes, the banks made money. And yes...so did everybody else in one way or another. People had jobs. They bought goods: cars, t.v.'s, stuff for their new homes, etc.

That is how the economy roars. And that's what will happen when the next big thing hits. Maybe it will be a new oil boom. Or something that hasn't been invented yet...but when it comes, the economy will jump.

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Relentless

And 1 guy who thought it was more important to stand on the sideline with his arms folded chirping at them while they discussed things that matter to our society.

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crockett

Serious question.. if you really care about the future of this country why is it you only focus on things Obama does wrong in your mind, but over look what the Republicans do wrong?

You really think their obstructionism attitude has helped this country for the better?

See we have a two party system, that means both sides need to work together and find a middle ground. You can blame Obama til you are blue in the face for all your problems, but until the Right starts "trying" to do something other than block everything nothing is going to get solved and you just look foolish.

The Right is doing nothing to help, so far.. If the Right was going out of it's way to try and do things and were getting shut down, then I'd say yea sure Obama is the problem, but they aren't. They don't even have any "real" budget proposals, they have nothing other than obstructionism as a policy which certainly isn't helping this country.

Relentless

No. The bubble moved money from taxpayers to Banks via TARP and bankrupted mortgage holders via defaults in favor of paying contractors to build houses that are now excess inventory. Don't reply yet, take 20 seconds and compare the nation after the tech 'bubble' to the nation after the 'housing bubble' - they aren't the same thing at all.

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Robbie

I don't know what the fuck you are talking about. lol

You're talking about the bank bailout when the bubble burst. And no money was taken from ME (the taxpayer). It was given by the Federal govt. (who simply printed more) to their cronies at the banks.

What I'm talking about is new homes built in the last decade that drove the economy.

Dude, you seriously don't know what you're talking about when it comes to business. I'm not trying to be mean about it. You're just not knowledgeable about how things work in real life.

Now I gotta go.

Got some shooting to do today for our AVN Award nominated site so I can keep making money and keep my own personal "bubble" from popping. lol

I'll expect you guys to have this national debt and poor economy solved by the time the weekend is over.

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Minte

When the republicans are in charge I will be just as vocal about the things they do wrong.
I don't speak for the far-right. I barely speak for the right.

edit: Obamacare. from that point he lost me. Nothing he will do or say will change that until they make that a healthcare solution. Not the overpriced garbage piece of legislation that it is.
He lost a lot of business people with that.

Minte

You need a good old fashioned war to do that. Not all this remote-control stuff. Tanks, landing craft..c-rations..etc. You know the drill.

Relentless

When they print money they are taking money from YOU because the dollars in your pocket are worth less. The housing bubble took money from you and gave it to AIG... Even if you don't know it.

Good luck with the shoot!

Relentless

That's chump change. I'm looking for something BIG. Quantum teleportation or being able to turn mass on/off. The kind of thing that would make productivity nearly meaningless.

The world's fare promised us flying cars, jet packs, space travel, complete home automation, robotic servants. So far all I got was the communicators and tricorders from Star Trek. - I'm all done with the overture, it's time we start the show ;)

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Rochard

I don't have a flying car yet, but I do have a robot that vacuums for me. I read an article today about some company that plans on selling tickets to the moon in 2020, and I can control all of my lights and heat from my cell phone from anywhere in the world.

And here's our jet packs...



Not really but totally cool.

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crockett

Obama care is shit and it's not the best we could of had, but honestly what did the Right counter with? Really they can call it socialism all they want but the fact is this country will save money in the long run if our citizens have wide spread health insurance. It's gonna be harder up front but eventually it will pay for it's self.

It shouldn't cost a average family several hundred to a thousand or more each month, just to have health insurance while most end up going with out.. That is absurd for a first world country and that's how things work today.

crockett

This isn't something that just started.. It's been going on for years. The bulk of the money in this country changes between very few hands and it's been like this easily 100 or more years.

Minte

Obamacare will be a disastor. From a small business perspective,our accounting firm has already laid out the least painfull plan for our company. We currently pay 70% of the premium cost for our plan. We would lower our contribution to 50% or lower. For a family of 4,at current premium rate the employee will rise to nearly $700 a month.
If the employee is making $15 an hour,which is about average close to 28% of their takehome pay will go to cover it. Most of our employees would have to simply opt out and then pay a penalty at the end of the year for not having it.

Other option is I can cancel the policy all together and pay the penalty of $2000 per employee. That would save the company $6400 per employee annually from what we are paying today.

My daughter is the HR manager for a local division of a very large global corporation. Her campus has nearly 900 employees. THe company employs over 12000 worldwide. THey are considering the same options.

Obama,Pelosi and Reid think they have done something great.. A BIG FUCKING DEAL acccording to Biden. What they failed to see was that business people are smart. They weigh the options and do what is best for the entity and safety of the business. Not what is the best for the individual employee.

Wait and see next January of 2014 when it goes into effect. It won't be pretty.

epitome

Insurance companies will have to spend 80% of their income on care or reimburse members the difference. This is already happening in FL and instead of premiums going up, a lot of people received refund checks this year.

Please explain to me why you will have to cut coverage as it is clearly escaping me.

Right now if your insurance company is only spending 55% on care there is nothing you can do about it except pay the higher premium if they say so.

Minte

Less than half of the people who work for us take the healthcare insurance now. WIth the high deductibles those people realize that they are way ahead just paying for their own medical issues.

If you assuming that everyone who has a job takes the healthcare benefit you are misinformed.

Take the insurance company out of the equation. What will happen has nothing to do with them. It is the affordability for the employer. That is the problem.

epitome

Alright, then if you currently pay 70% just stop coverage, put that money in everyone's check and have them go the the exchanges where they will have more choices. Those that don't opt for insurance now because it is too expensive can take that 70% contribution to pay the penalty. It wouldn't cost you anymore than if they came in during open enrollment and said they would like to participate in your group plan.

Robbie

Either you weren't paying attention the last 15 years or you are purposefully trying to weight the argument in one direction.

Many people (both Republican and Democrat) have been saying that TORT Reform needs to take place.

The cost and procedures of malpractice insurance has driven up the cost of health care. Doctors now perform lots of expensive tests that they already know the answers to. But they have to have the tests done for insurance purposes.

I spent my whole life without health insurance...and according to the media blitzkrieg and bullshit being spread by activists in the last few years...I had no "access to health care" because I didn't have insurance.

What a crock of shit.

I paid the doctor when I had to see one. I finally got health insurance for my family because once I had kids it was the responsible thing to do.

But just a few years back...people only had health insurance for a catastrophe. You didn't need health insurance to go see your doctor or get a prescription filled.

ObamaCare never addressed health costs. It is nothing more than Obama and Congress bowing down to the big insurance companies who give them money.

Now the health insurance companies can make even more money (just like the auto insurance companies).

And meanwhile...the issue of high medical costs doesn't get addressed in any way at all.

Typical political bullshit.

And for you to say it's "better" than what we had before...HOW??? By forcing people to buy health insurance when they can't afford it?

It's a fucking scam.

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Relentless

What we had before was an F. What we have now is a D+. That isn't what we want, but it is better than what we had before. Doing away with the preexisting conditions scam, not allowing caps on coverage in the fine print that brought many people to medical bankruptcy, opening up the possibility of self-employed people to obtain coverage as a 'group' rather than being at the mercy of insurers for horrible insurance at ridiculous rates, requiring insurers to spend a reasonable percentage of premiums on actually covering medical costs... those are positive steps.

The only realistic eventuality is a single payer system. As Mutt said earlier in this thread, those kinds of big changes are slow gradual moves and usually include missteps along the way unfortunately. I'd much rather have made the switch straight away, but I view this as the first step forward in what hopefully will be a worthwhile evolutionary process toward single payer basic care for all with private supplemental insurance available and cash doctors for anyone who wants to opt out.

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Relentless

Renovating Manhattan office space during the tech boom was also fabulous. There is no feeling in the world quite like sitting across the table from a twenty year old chief operating officer, who you know can't even read a blue print, discussing the importance of 'upgrading every facet of their office infrastructure on an accelerated schedule no matter what it costs.' However, even after the tech bubble popped, some of those companies went on to grow the economy tremendously.... and we never spent trillions bailing out Pets.com, WorldCom... or the people who invested in them.

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Minte

If everyone we employ opted in we would have no option but to reduce dramatically the amount we contribute. Along with that we would probably have to lose dental,death and 401k. Even with all that our accountants say we would have a tough time affording it.

As far as giving everyone the money, first off. It would be fully taxable for the employee. THen the big issue. How do you justify to single people that have worked for us over 5 years giving more to new starts if they have a family? We have looked at self insured over the years a few times and there never has been any real solution for how to be fair to all the employees.

crockett

The problem is if they would have just used the same model that Romney signed into action here in MA the country would have been just fine. The thing is when Obama tried to use that same exact model, he got shut down by the right.

We get what we have now with Obama care because it's the only thing he could push through. I may sound like a broken record on the Right, but really they didn't help things at all.

They want Obamacare to fail so they can say "told you so" in 15 years or however long it takes. Instead of accepting the fact the Obama won the election and it's probably best to work with him to perhaps get something useful done they instead just apposed everything.

When I first moved here to MA I had to get health insurance through the state because I didn't have a provider as a business owner with me being my only employee. I was able to stay on the state plan for about 6 months before I had to get my own plan.

Yea know what, I paid just over $50 a month and had pretty damn awesome coverage. I pay more now because I had to finally go with a private company and my coverage isn't half as good as what I had via the state.

My taxes aren't that much more here compared to FL with the exception in FL property taxes were a bit easier give the homestead exception you had there. Yes I pay a bit more up here but I feel it's a decent trade off knowing that if I ever needed it I would always have access to cheap health care insurance.


Something else to think about, is it's not like Obamacare can't be changed and molded into something that might be better, so it's not the end of the world. Not everything works perfect the first go around, but at least there is something finally in place.

Rochard

I'm not sure if that is true or not.

What we had before was an utter fail. But no matter who came after Bush, it was going to be extremely difficult. You can't compare the past four years to any other presidential terms in modern times because we've never faced this before in modern times. Yeah, we had the dot com bubble and recessions, but never before in the past fifty years have we ever seen people loose houses in bulk like this.

Exactly half of the people on my street lost their houses. And suddenly we expect the new incoming president to flip a fucking switch and fix it? Like magic? This isn't a four or eight or ten year problem - This is a fifteen to twenty year problem.

Would have McCain done better?

Would Obama have done much better if he didn't have to deal the economy issues left behind by the past president?

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Minte

What kind of neighborhood do you live in? There is no one on my 20 mile one way drive to work every day that had a foreclosure sign on their homes. No one that works for us..No one I know. Is it something in your water?

So basically the rest of the country should pony up more money because people in California can't live within their means?

marlboroack

I don't even care anymore.

Sly

I moved from the Midwest to California in 2001. This was when housing prices started going crazy. The numbers that we saw were just insane. Small little boxes selling for $300k+. Few days later, you would see that house off of the market. Sold. Five months later it was back on the market again. Fixed up a little bit, for $100k more. Was totally crazy. This was not happening in the Midwest.

In 2007, when things started going south really quick, I left California back to the Midwest again. Half of the houses on my street in California were for sale. People were moving out every other weekend. And nobody was moving in. Got back into the Midwest, everything was normal. I couldn't even find a house to buy, anything decent was not available. Minimal foreclosures, minimal For Sale signs. I stayed in the Midwest up until 2011 and I cannot think of one person that lost their home.

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Robbie

Do you understand what I keep telling you over and over? The "past president" didn't have anything to do with the economy failing. IT WAS THE HOUSING MARKET COLLAPSE CAUSED BY CONGRESS PASSING LEGISLATION IN THE 1990's THAT LED TO THE HOUSING BUBBLE

Please think about that before you keep repeating the same false mantra over and over and over. It's a lie and it's bullshit.

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Relentless

If it helps, the Midwest can think of it as repayment of the massive amounts of money FDR spent helping them to recover from the dust bowl.

Part of the deal with being a nation is helping other states and their citizens. The states that take the most federal money are red Midwestern states for the most part. You don't hear New Yorkers saying 'fuck Mississippi if the cant manage their economy'... ;)

Minte

We didn't have any dust in Wisconsin. However,we do have something that will probably be the cause of the next big war.

Water...and lots of it.

Relentless

Water may be enough for the big war we need for population reduction. When that happens Colorado is going to suddenly be vital and the south west is going be lowering home prices by 50%. A friend of mine studies climate change... Ignoring the question of why it is changing and instead focusing on what to do when it changes. For what it's worth he predicts Vermont will become the new 'San Diego'

epitome

As a former REO agent I can tell you that I never used a foreclosure sign on a bank property I marketed. There is no requirement to... but that doesn't mean they don't exist. Also, I listed my fair share of mansions. It was later in the crash but they became much more common.

epitome

Many employers only cover the employee and if that employee chooses to have a family then the rest of the premium is on them. There is no reason you cannot do the same.

Yes, it would be taxable to the employee but if they buy insurance with it they get the deduction. I haven't looked into it, but couldn't you put the money into a flex spending account tax free to the employee?

With requirements that 80% of premiums go towards care the insurance companies have less opportunity to gouge on premiums. If they simply allow more care to boost their profits there will be a more efficient company that comes along who won't and eat market share. If they all get together to prevent that then it is price fixing and they will have a lot more problems on their hands.

With profits capped insurance companies will have to actually start competing with each other because if they want to make more money they need to woo more members.

Rather than just relying on accountants why not hire a company like Marsh that will provide comprehensive HR solutions for a law that isn't going to change? Their clients do not seem to be as anxious about it as you.

mafia_man

nhs......

crockett

It was the same in Texas & FL I know for a fact because I looked at houses all over the place in both those locations and there were shit-loads of foreclosures.

Even here in MA I still see houses all over the place that sit empty because they have been foreclosed on.

BFT3K

12clicks

My greatest comfort is knowing the trash that voted for Obama will one day get what they DESERVE instead of what they voted for.

NewNick

You mean free health care and a dis-armed population ?

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Minte

I agree with that 100%

The other thing I notice about these posts. All of these guys that are so rabid about Obama have been in this industry for years..yet they look at someone making $250,000 a year as a BILLIONAIRE!

12clicks

Minte, you're either a contributor or a leech. It's pretty easy to tell who's who by the posts