Forum Post: We want it all and we are willing to pay for it.
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 12, 2011, 10:42 p.m. EST by 8472ofborg
(100)
from Bruce, SD
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
I will start these all with I, as these are my thoughts but I hope we as a whole can agree on them.
I want to go to a doctor when I feel sick and not have to worry about how I will pay for it. I want to eat a filling meal and not have it be the only one I eat this week. I want to drive to and from work and not have to worry about how to afford the gas for my car. I want to have time to see my family who live far away and not worry about the bills this month. I want to get paid at my job and have it be enough to cover my expenses. I want to get out and join you all but I can't afford it.
What I think every person in this nation, on this planet wants is to see every other person on this planet taken care of. We, as a nation, can not help every other nation, but we can help each other. If I can give half of my income, a pittance of $400 a week, and see it go to every person in this nation, here is my $200. If it takes $300 of it, here it is. What I want is a system where everybody is supported and everybody contributes. We have the ability to work together and support every person in this nation. We can all make sure no person goes to bed hungry, no person dies from lack of care, and no person has to sleep in the streets. Here is my $399 a week, the last $1? I'll save it for a rainy day.
Most of the things we cant afford(within reason, i am not talking a 120 ft yacht here) we cant afford for two very different reasons:
1)Because of govt inefficiency. A lot of things that are govt funded such as defense, education, etc. are not efficient. They are full of waste and unnecessary BS.
An example of this is the immigration system. I tried to get a british g/f legal here. And the system is a nightmare. It is to costly, to complicated, and to frustrating. No wonder the illegals do not use it. The govt WAY over complicates it. The tax system is the same way. It has been WAY over complicated. I mean look at bills they put through congress. 3 or more novels worth of BS to explain something we could of done in a page or 2. Look at our constitution it isnt really that long( the one without all the govt BS in it). We dont need all this inefficiency. It is a waste of money. That would take care of the things our govt provides.
2) Credit and debt. Everyone buys everything on credit or debt. What you are doing is buying now and paying later for it. First, doing this cost a lot more money for you. This part is obvious to anyone who has had a loan( and read the loan papers) and definitely to anyone who has got furniture from a place like rent-a-center or rent one.
Second you create what we will call an artificial demand. This is what happened with the housing bubble. Everyone was buying a new house or better house or upgrading their house..... on credit. It created a demand. Prices went up. It is artificial because you havent paid for it yet and thus you do not actually own it yet. But it still causes demand to go up because you have possession of it.
Now what this does is causes the price to go up. And we keep repeating this cycle until it just collapses. And it is all due to greed. Now bankers are suppose to prevent you from buying stuff on credit you cannot afford. But then you have credit card companies that want to exploit this part of the business and start just giving people credit that really shouldnt have any. They pay for your stuff, you take possession of it. But if you default, they get nothing. So they figured out if they charge their paying customers more money it would offset people like you who default. Thus the customer who actually pays his bill is the one that really is buying that good you now own until he defaults cause his interest just went through the roof.
Health insurance is another form of this and really a scam. People get health insurance so everyone can afford to go to the doctor. Demand goes up prices go up, premiums go up. People see health insurance as a necessity now cause they just went to their doctor and the insurance and doctor says it cost $5000. Well their is no way i can afford that without insurance! So we pay the higher premium and demand goes up( because you add more people to the system through population gains,etc and demand increases) and we repeat this.
Now i went to a private "clinic" that specializes in doing MRIs, C-Scans, Xrays, etc. For an MRI this was their price list:
Insurance cost: $5400 Cash cost: $1800.
SAY WHAT? This was a list that was posted on an "easle"
So a lot of us consider health care a human right. You should not live while i die because you have more money than i do. But it is too expensive as it now. Well profiteering insurance companies and your need for health care have made it unaffordable even with insurance.
How do you fix this? It is easy. Make all health care govt health care and ban insurance from selling health insurance. The price will drop dramatically.
Our biggest problem is greed and creating artificial demand. Demand by depleting supplies that are not paid for yet. So think about that next time you buy stuff on credit.
I am 33 years old and i own my own house( and its not a great house but it keeps me dry and warm) and when i say i own it i mean i have deed in hand. Not the bank owns it and i live in it. I have the title to my vehicle and i can live on about $700 a month by myself .I wont include my g/f as she brought some debt with her. Otherwise we could live on $1000 a month for two people and not need ANY govt assistance. That doesn't include having health care coverage, so we can do that as long as we don't get sick. But if insurance didnt cause prices to go up we could get by on probably another $100-$200 a month to cover our yearly health care expenses unless something really major happened like one of us had cancer.
Our entire problem is we are all to greedy.
Agreed, we are all very greedy people. Still, that greed should not be rewarded as it is today. It should instead be discouraged at every turn.
While the average American is greedy some of it is due to be left behind and the fact we almost feel as if we can never get ahead if we try to work for it. So we try to take legal shortcuts to "move up" in status. If it was easier to move between classes, people would be a lot less greedy i think. Because hard work becomes more rewarding. It is very hard to move between classes now. It requires as much luck as hard work.
The top 1% are on a completely different level.Their greed has no end and is completely unchecked. I would not doubt if some of them could figure out how to turn a person into a pile of money physically the would do it.
Exactly, but most immediately what we need is a comprehensive strategy, and related candidate, that implements all our demands at the same time, and although I'm all in favor of taking down today's ineffective and inefficient Top 10% Management System of Business & Government, there's only one way to do it – by fighting bankers as bankers ourselves. Consequently, I have posted a 1-page Summary of the Strategic Legal Policies, Organizational Operating Structures, and Tactical Investment Procedures necessary to do this at:
http://getsatisfaction.com/americanselect/topics/on_strategic_legal_policy_organizational_operational_structures_tactical_investment_procedures
Join
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/StrategicInternationalSystems/
if you want to be 1 of 100,000 people needed to support a Presidential Candidate – such as myself – at AmericansElect.org in support of the above bank-focused platform.
Like with these yearly or by-category fees based on the true merit and need of the item or awarded monies? Maybe something controlled not only by a centralized body, but also delegated to more local governing institutes to ensure any smaller population gets a voice in how much contribution every individual puts in? We'll put it at below 50%, even - how about something like 20-40% (not including those merit based fees for certain purchases and activites - those are all based on the circumstance)?
"Read my lips - no new contributions!" grin
OK, so, I'm embellishing one concept.I think we can assume of course most decent people want everybody taken care of. It would suck a lot less around here if that happened. So yes, we should strive for a more ideal scenario than the one we have now, definitely. I can't stand seeing the pain and hardship people go through; it tears me out from the inside. I know I can't save them single-handedly by just covering it all up, though - the entire system has to be remade before good deeds will really start to stick.
Hmm, no, that's too early. Scratch that. Personally, first, I want to see no person hating a fellow human being. I want to see no person assuming that the perspective and life of another is less than their own just because of background, station, appearance, or other circumstances. I want to see true empathy from the minds of man. Foundational change. Nobody would leave someone starving on the roadside if they could empathize, could trust one another, could consider that this other person may have a reason for being who and where they are and that their perspective is equally valuable and worth saving.
Bah, I'm digressing. But yeah, sounds a lot like taxes. So on the other piece, how do you propose circumventing human greed in the distribution of the contribution tax?
I like your sentiment but think about this. Our government takes our money and then send 58 billion of it overseas in "foreign aid" which 90% of the time goes towards buying weapons. If our government wanted to do something for we the people it could stop sending just 300 million of the 58 billion overseas for one year and that would allow it to give every living person in this country 1 million each. Just once without raising taxes or anything out of the ordinary. Do you think that would make an economic difference, I do. I also think that since the money is already out there and the damage of inflation is already done that they don't do this because it would be a threat to big business. Some people would actually invest in themselves and create competition with big business and that is not what they want. There in lies the problem. Government once again.
I'm sorry, but 58 Billion would only be about $1,200 for each person in the U.S., and most would only waste that on paying credit card debt from buying junk they didn.t need anyway. Take your eighty-cents and try to buy yourself a beer.
Sorry my calculations were wrong. Math is obviously not my strong suit. None the less the premise remains the same. If all the stimulus money was instead given directly to the people instead of the wealthy it would have made a greater economic impact. People paying off a credit card would have helped put liquidity back into a failing banking system the right way instead of handing them bonus checks. Paying home loans off so people would not lose their homes would have occurred possibly averting the housing market crash. Not that I am in favor of doing this kind of mass hand out but if it's going to be done why not hand it out to the people that need it and would put it into the economy and save themselves in the process instead of handing it over to the wealthy so they can give each other bonuses.