Frankschoenburg wrote..

I've always thought that taxing the rich and redistributing to the poor increases velocity of money & therefore taxes (on rich) would increase economic activity in the broader economy.

Actually, I believe the research shows that it increases the velocity of Lotto ticket and MD 20/20 sales.

Quote:

I've always thought that taxing the rich and redistributing to the poor increases velocity of money & therefore taxes (on rich) would increase economic activity in the broader economy.

**** savings and investment, more consumption!

There needs to be a balance, and at this point, we are so far from having enough real investment and savings that this will not work.

It's not going to work by itself. But taxing a billionaire hedge fund manager (or Mitt Romney) a 30% effective rate instead of 15% should increase broader economic activity. Given the corruption & bureaucracy, who knows?

FS: If GDP = C + G + I + NX, then the notion that increasing taxes can somehow increase economic activity is on par with the notion that filling buckets out of the deep end of the pool and dumping them into the shallow end will fill the pool with more water.

Frank, you are just trying to shift money from I to C.

Long-term health of the country does not need more C, it needs a lot less C.

Last year was the first year the boomers started collecting medicare. This should increase the medicare cost substantially for next 17 years.

What we need a lot less sucking off I and C by G. See?

There are apparently several examples of democracies actually taking control of their bloated budgets and cutting social programs--I have heard that Canada and Sweden have done these things in the recent past.

However, the American culture seems to have gotten broken somewhere along the way, and my gut instinct is that we will not be able to cut spending or reform entitlements until we actually have the crash -- i.e. dollar failure. I suspect we will continue drunken spending and racking up >$1 trillion deficits. I believe Bernanke will continue to buy treasury bonds forever and in whatever quantities are required to keep US gov't financing costs low.

I hope I am surprised. I hope we manage to elect people this year who will truly put us on the path of fiscal sustainability by cutting all categories of spending and by reforming entitlements.

As Karl constantly repeats, the solutions are there, and if implemented now, would be painful or at least tolerable. Medicare could easily continue on just by greatly increasing co-pays and by increasing premiums from $100 per month to $300 per month, etc. Or a very simply adjustment would be to allow doctors to double-bill. In other words, doctors would be able to bill the patient directly for portions of the bill that were not covered by Medicare. This is totally illegal right now.

In any case, I tend to think that these program will continue on, but they will simply be far, far less generous than was historically the case.

Entitlement spending that needs to be stopped, no more money, zero $$$...

All farm subsidies.

All research subsidies if you are a for-profit company.

Retirement pay for Congress, Senate, Presidents.

All spending allowances and perks of any and all .gov business.

The Military and all it's programs and bases. Last I heard it was a volunteer thing. Take your chances, roll the dice, get screwed like everyone else. Fighting for my freedoms??? More like fighting for corporations that are ripping me off. Waste of time and money and blood.

The UN and Nato and IMF. Parasites. Also working for the corporate masters.

The pensions of all the public workers, eg. firefighters and police. Make them pay into the SS sytem like everyone else and receive chump change like the rest of the SS retirees.

The CIA, FEMA and Homeland Security should be shut down also.

I can rant for hours on this but I won't. Funny how noone is mentioning these parasites, it's the old and poor and sick we want to cut off. It's easy to screw over the helpless. And that's why Iran thinks they need nukes. They know the score. The weak are thrown to the dogs. We wouldn't need a huge military if we stayed outta others business. Damn busybodies.

For the record, I have been a registered Libertarian since I heard about the party in the early 1980's. And I'm a military brat, grew up in that crappy culture. Wasn't impressed then and ain't now.

My mother is 91 and will be 92 in a few months. I am the only family member she has left. My father is gone and my brother is gone. She has no systemic illnesses as her heart, kidneys, liver, circulation, blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol are completely normal. She has some bladder problems caused by pelvic prolapse but nothing else. However, without going into the details, she has some form of slow moving dementia and she has pain from pelvic prolapse that is probably exaggerated by the dementia. I have no doubt that in her mind she is experiencing intense pain, however none of the test (MRIs and CAT scans) show anything that can explain the pain she describes. I don't know if the pain is driving her mad or if madness is driving the pain and neither do the doctors.

Unless she gets pneumonia or cancer, she will probably 4 years or more and cost the system several hundred thousand dollars for treatment that will only prolong a painful and miserable existence for her. If she does contract something deadly she has a Living Will and Health Care Power of Attorney and has asked to be allowed to die. I intend to honor that requests as best I can.

Yes, I have thought of physician assisted suicide and in fact, she has asked me twice, in lucid moments, to help her end her life. Of course I would never do that. Her doctors tell me that the nursing homes in this country are full of hundreds of thousands of old people in similar circumstances and it all just breaks my heart.

We have to figure out a way to care for these people with compassion but be realistic about it too. Clearly we don't want to start killing off 90 year olds but we have to do something for them and also recognize that in being prudent we are doing something for the next group to grow old.

It is a philosophical, ethical, religious and economic decision and we damn well better start having serious discussions in communities, churches, schools and everywhere else about how we plan to allocate limited and expensive healthcare resources.

I think most people either don't appreciate the gravity of the healthcare crisis or they want to be an ostrich. I hope Karl keeps hammering and hammering and hammering away at this. It sure has opened my eyes.

I'm glad someone asked what $800 billion against $50 billion was in inflation and someone else put up the answer. The same damn thing has been happening to debt, point being we are looking at a factor of 5 in increasing real government spending on healthcare. It hasn't gotten any better. In fact, from what I understand, you need a referral to see about anyone who is going to tell you something besides take 2 asprin, rest in bed and call me if you don't get better.

We are being quadruple ****ed by the bankers, politicians and medical industry. Defensive medicine doesn't cost that much. Malpractice doesn't cost that much. A new hospital doesn't cost that much and the last I looked, the old ones haven't falled down. Babies have been coming out the same way for the past million years or however long people have been on the world. The whole game is set up where you either can't pay or someone besides the patient is footing the costs beyond insurance.

Here is the real fact and I think Karl has hit on it. If we don't allow the government to enslave us to the medical business, people are going to look elsewhere. I doubt less than 10% of the increase in life expectancy over the past 90 years or so, beyond pennicillian and other anti-biotics is the result of modern medicine. They have made advances in treating heart disease and transplant technology, but we are talking a minute portion of the population in the later. Living long has to do with not coming down with those diseases. Sanitation, better working conditions and other factors have had a greater impact. I still recall a guy who had a long career in a scientific field dealing with food storage telling me the home refrigerator was responsible for more of an increase in life span than anything to come out of medicine.

What can't be paid won't be. It really doesn't make a crap what it is. One thing is for certain and that is they couldn't get away with this crap if the world didn't need so many dollars. When it sinks in that all government debt around the world is defunct, this game will end.

Lastly, I brought up what I know about money yesterday and I took some shots from the other side. Whether you understand this or not, before the dollar was anchored in debt, it was anchored in gold, as was anything that circulated around the world. The link to gold is the only reason any of this crap exists, as you couldn't have given away a piece of paper that wasn't anchored in debt for your life and no one would have given you anything to borrow the paper if it wasn't redeemable. "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private". If they destroy the debt structure, the Charmin in your bathroom will be more valuable than any paper currency any government can come up with, due entirely to the fact that none of it will work in cross boundary trade. There has never been a paper currency that reated on its own. If they invented a world currency besides the dollar, they would have to set up a bank that placed us in debt to it to issue the paper. Plus they would have to have a collection agent. Otherwise, the money has to be something like gold under which they could establish debt and bank notes anchored in that debt. Just remember the history of American money. They didn't just print up a bunch of FRN's and tell everyone this was money without the units already being in the system, linked to gold. My contention for years has been debt is as strong as gold, but that is only as long as the issuers of debt currency aren't intent on destroying it by running it off electronically to let bankers steal the world. Never has any legitimate (successful) currency been issued which wasn't based on something else.

P - I watched the same thing happen with my 93 year old grandmother but it was worse - she fell, perforated her intestine - mis-diagnosed for TWO MONTHS and had a MISERABLE end of life experience funded by the taxpayers to the tune of $250,000 - for three months of agony...

P, I'm very sorry to hear about your moms situation. Can't they put her on some very strong pin killers like morphine or something? That is so sad and my heart goes out to her.....

I remember when health care was affordable. You could afford to go to the doctor's office and stay in the hospital. Now even with insurance, you can not afford to get sick. Check into it and from the stats I've seen, most bankruptcy's in the USA are for medical bills. And they HAD insurance. It's not just the poor that are getting their bills wiped out and erased and picked up by the taxpayer or hospital. And the medical bills are wiping out the middle class if they get sick. Insurance is a joke. See me laughing at the farce medical care has become.

Medical care (allopathic medical care) is not to cure you. It's to make you spend every last dime you got on being sick and STAYING sick. It's a joke...

It's all by design. The floride in your water is poison. The GMO crops are poison. The industrial farming practices are sick and lacking the nutrients you need to survive and stay healthy. Quit fighting it and die already. It's the plan. (Sorry, just old and bitter Yeah, I turn 50 this year.)

Psquared.... I watched my father-in-law go thru dementia before he died. It was horrible. He wanted to die too, when he was lucid. I can understand the feeling. I do not want to live that way myself. Horrible.

Gates.... My Dad went thru hell his last week on this Earth. Had to get a clot removed from his leg and they had him clamped for to long. His insides died slowly and painfully. No, we didn't sue. No one is perfect and I do not believe the docs did it on purpose. He was a healthy 70 something before that. It's so sad to hear stories like your grandma's. How horrible for her.

Psquared, your mom would likely benefit from acupuncture. It is worth having her try, even if you have to pay for it yourself. We have had our elderly dogs treated with it, and have seen a huge difference (I use that example because I don't think they were influenced by the placebo effect): greater mobility, better sleep, better mood, much greater range of motion. We took in an ancient corgi mix, and had him for six months before having him treated (it wasn't apparent that he needed it, so we put it off). After two treatments he sat down for the first time; before that his only positions were standing and lying down.

Acupuncture can increase the number of opioid receptors in the brain, and of course it is basically risk free.

Said Frankschoenberg:

"Is this true? I've always thought that taxing the rich and redistributing to the poor increases velocity of money & therefore taxes (on rich) would increase economic activity in the broader economy."

You couldn't increase economic activity by gutting the very source of business expansion-CAPITAL-when the businesses ARE the engine of economic activity!

Bill Whittle-Afterburner: Eat The Rich
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=661pi6K-8....

@Gates - no falls yet, but she wanders around her house at night and I worry that will happen. This is a very slow death caused by decreased blood supply to the brain and atrophy. It can take years to take someone's life. Some people are not aware of what is going on and are spared the worst of it. Others feel every moment.

@Duc888 - if the pain is made worse by her decaying mind morphine and other opiate based pain relievers will only increase her mental confusion and cause addiction. Doctor's are not going to do that until the very end and she is no where close to the end.

@Sybdragon - thanks; my dad developed dementia at 83 and was put into a nursing home. Mercifully, he had a fall the first morning he was there and died 5 days later from a brain hemorrhage and really felt no pain at all. The last year with dementia was hell for him and my mother and he had multiple physical diseases any one of which could have killed him at any moment. My mother has no physical disease.

@Kareninca - I would not know how to go about finding an acupuncturist that knew what they were doing (how do you avoid quacks and charlatans?) and even if I did I doubt she would sit through it.

Thank you all for you well-wishes. I think she will be going for a psych evaluation this week to determine if she has Alzheimer's or some other form of senile psychosis. Her doctor suspects that a medicine she used last summer to treat skin cancer (imiquimod) may have induced some sort of psychosis, but she has been off the medicine for months and her condition is getting worse.

Psquared, here is how to find a *medical acupunturist*; that is, a physician (an actual M.D.) who practices acupuncture: http://altmedicine.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi....

from that link: "Most physicians who practice acupuncture, regardless of their specialty, are likely to be of assistance regarding your symptom. We suggest you find an AAMA member near you and call their office. If they do not treat patients with your condition their office is still a wonderful resource for a referral to someone they would recommend in your area."

This is the most conservative approach - that is, to hire a physician who also practices acupuncture. Or, to hire someone who has been recommended by such a physician. I would definitely go that route for your mom, given her age and difficulties (some acupuncture things are easy enough to be DIY, but not this!!!!). I suppose it is possible that someone with an M.D. who does this could be a quack or a charlatan, but the odds are strong against it.

Your mom would likely sit through it. The needles are so thin and fine that you can't really feel them. And they are very soothing, at least with dogs - once a few are stuck in they get calm and snoozy. My husband (who has had it done) tells me that it makes one want to nap.

I hope you have a chance to give this a try for her pelvic pain. As a female I feel great empathy!! Unfortunately it wouldn't help with the dementia, but it might reduce the stress of the dementia.

Thank you Karen. Will look into it.

Quote:

Yes, I have thought of physician assisted suicide and in fact, she has asked me twice, in lucid moments, to help her end her life.

Really, really tough terrain, here, and personal values and decisions are largely trumped by law and tradition. Here in Oregon, physician-assisted suicide has been legal for some time. In most other states it is practiced quietly, by Doctors and relatives who are making tough decisions (often with the consent of the patient).

It is not a LOT different than having a medical power of attorney, and having to decide without the patient's active participation when to order the DNR. My parents preferred me to have that authority when Dad went into the hospital for what turned out to be the last time. Making that judgment was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. At what point are the resuscitative measures buying only days, or hours, and at what cost in pain and suffering?

In the end, I was glad only that my mother hadn't had to decide when "enough was enough". Good luck to you. I hope the coming months and years are manageable for you both.

Thank you Truthseeker. I hope so too.

I've read that in England physician assisted suicide used to be commonplace and accepted. No formal or legal requirements but just a request by a family or the patient and it was done. At the time England was a strongly Christian country but there were no moral dilemmas or wringing of hands. It was just done to prevent pain and suffering. That practice ended after WWII with the advent of modern medicine.

I know this is cynical, but who would the pharmaceutical companies have to sell their drugs to if old and sick people were allowed to die or assisted to take their own life?