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Interview: How corporate socialism is crippling U.S. prosperity

Obamacare is a gift to Big Business. People who think that the Republicans are for Big Business while the Democrats are for the little guy need to get a clue. Neither of them is for the little guy.

... and one must not forget that these days, everything seems to be at the whim of Wall Street.
The most significant true growth in the USA was in a period when the Corporations served innovation, the customer, the employee, the community, and finally, the shareholder. And more or less in that order. It worked very well and all parties benefited.
Now it's the "Shareholder" / Wall Street and to hell with the rest.
See where that's gotten us .....

Would like to have information about corps that act responsibly both in paying their employees and their taxes with no govenment subsidies. Maybe Americans can choose to do business with corps that follow principles that will enhance our future rather than those that are only interested in their bottom line.
When Corporations do not pay a living wage or hire people for 39 hours a week (part time), it is the tax payer who pays for food stamps, health care, school lunch for those who work but do not earn enough to exist in this nation. When are Americans going to smarten up and realize that the Wallmarts of this world are the indirect recipients of huge government subsidies. I would like proration of benefits based on an amount of hours worked- that would prevent the circumventing of the benefit debacle by employers. We have to get fairness back into our companies and the way we think about work. By: It donned on me!

Where's the context in this article?? How much of the infrastructure of the rest of the world is subsidized by the government vs the US? How else could they get cheap and fast Internet without paying for it? I'm sure if Obama is reelected, he'll make sure to give away Obamapads using Obamainternet, in addition to the the Obamaphones.

You can add that we subsidize the worlds pharmaceutical industryas well. Not to mention the airline industry, have you ever seen the huge difference in a roundtrip tickets between the US and other countries. When will the people smarten up and vote these greedy republicans out of office.

ObamaCare, which totally subsidizes big-pharma was exclusively a Democratic creation, completely free of GOP fingerprints. What about them?

ObamaCare is modeled on RomneyCare which is based on a plan proposed by the Heritage Foundation back in the early 1990's as a counter to the Clinton health care proposal. The Democrats merely took it up as something they could get enough Republicans to support to get it through Congress.

...that the Democrats passed ObamaCare with a filibusterer-proof majority in Congress. They own it.

You're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.

And I seriously doubt you're a Romney supporter, so that argument is also rather Pyrrhic.

At a meeting of Congressional Republican leaders and other high level Republicans on the afternoon of Obama's inauguration the made a decision to oppose anything Obama proposed regardless of whether they thought it was worthwhile or not. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said his number one priority was to make Obama a one term President. That's close to treasonous if you ask me.

I'm certainly not a Romney supporter but I don't know for sure if I'm voting for Obama either.

As far as ObamaCare goes I don't like it much but it's better than what we had before. It doesn't go far enough. All of the other developed countries with universal health care spend around half as much per person on medical care while getting substantially as good or better results than we do in the US.

They get to own the stain.

Also, ObamaCare is an unworkable mess, designed specifically to destroy what is left of the private system so that they can implement what they've always wanted all along, a "single payer" system.

Personally, I'd prefer that. Then I will be able to retire in my 50s just like they do in Greece, and let the rest of you pay for my health care for a change.

I'll happily contribute to paying for your health care as long at you contribute to mine. A single payer system is the way to go.

I think it's too early to call ObamaCare a mess. It won't be fully implemented until 2014. There are many Democrats that would prefer a single payer system but there are enough who don't, Max Baucus for instance, that don't want one to make it impossible to pass.

My health care costs (insurance and care itself) has gone up over 40% since Obama took office. He promised I'd be paying $2,500/yr less by the end of his first term. Instead, I'm paying over $4,000/yr more. Where do I go to get my $6,500/year back?

How many jobs are disappearing because people like me are not spending that money elsewhere in the economy?

Yeah, it's a total success, only as long as you're clueless as to the costs, or lucky enough to have someone paying them so you can remain clueless.

Fortunately, in 2014 I can quit buying insurance altogether, since pre-existing conditions will not prevent me from re-purchasing it should someone in my family really get sick. This will make sense, because the "penalty", "tax", or whatever they are calling to today will be a small fraction of what insurance actually costs. The money I will be saving will more than cover any incidents in the meantime. It will be like getting a $10,000/yr raise, something else that hasn't happened under the Obama economy.

How well do you think that work out for what is left of the insurance industry when the remaining healthy people opt out leaving only the sick to pay for it?

Again, ObamaCare was designed to destroy the insurance industry, and it ultimately will.

The Democrats rammed ObamaCare through with no Republican support. This happened even after Scott Walker was elected in MA as a clear message that people were not in favor of it. It's OK for individual states to experiment with different models but don't try to force it on all the states.

ObamaCare is modeled after the current version of Massachusetts health care.

As implemented in 2009 when Obama tried to copy it, the Massachusetts health care law had changed significantly during the Deval Patrick administration after it was signed by Romney in 2006.

Patrick and the democrat dominated state legislature packed on dozens of mandates and provisions that Romney had opposed because the state could not afford them.

The Obama administration poured billions in stimulus money into Massachusetts to keep the health care system afloat. In 2012 the stimulus money is gone and the state health care bureaucracy is in chaos. Even with billions in federal help the state has been behind on reimbursements to care providers since 2010. The ramifications of that have been far reaching.

Massachusetts now has 40,000 less doctors than it did in 2006. Some have left the state. Many, like mine, retired after being fed up with losing money trying to run a small practice.

A 6 facility non-profit hospital chain in the state nearly closed its doors in 2010 because of late state reimbursements. With state regulators approval it was finally bought out by a for profit investment group. The state immediately started making payments to the hospitals because the investment group had the pockets deep enough the sue the state for payment.

4 community hospitals are owed a combined $150 million in late payments since 2010. They have been on the brink of closure while the Patrick administration fights their class action suit.

Before Patrick took over my health insurance rates had gone up about 5% a year. Since 2007 my rates increases have averaged 25% per year.

I have seen your health care future and it is ugly.

Aren't you sick and tired of being left in the dust by these backward socialistic European countries? After world war 2, the US (yes that US) insisted on 50% of the corporate boards of directors to be actual workers from the corporation; that is, in Europe, to prevent fascist reemergence. How prescient. But not here in the land of Godfull Capitialism. Any corporate or any business leader/representative who praises competition or legislation that "promotes" competition should be immediately suspected - as a liar.
Regards.

I was reminded of the recent story about how the Feds are now concerned over a Chinese State-supported firm, Huawei being allowed to build a 4G network within the U.S.. What was tacitly being said, was that due to this same greedy and corrupt corporate philosophy to make money 'by any means necessary', telecoms and the technology industry shipped American jobs, along with said technologies to China to be built or made cheaply. In other words, they outsourced the entire cow; endangering not only American jobs in general and resources, but national security as well.

What was/is worse was that the reason this company was even being considered was because all the U.S. companies who used to build the components to build a network no longer existed. So now only Huawei, a French company, and a Swedish firm have the capability and resources.

Paradigm Shift: We Should Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way
Its a good thing that the world has become economically interdependent.
Its another element in the reduction of the power of the few to foment discord among the many, to the benefit of the few. There are now tens of thousands of cargo ships and aircraft perpetually moving goods in all directions across the oceans of our new economic world. It is no longer to any large populations advantage to make war (economic or literal) on others. Those others are either providing services or products to us, or buying our products and services. Worldwide democratization of communication, education, individual contact via sport, the internet, and economic interdependence have made it more difficult manipulate the general population (as to war) than in the past. Straw men (persons?) such as "the communists", "the non-whites", "the russians", "the chinese"...pick your favorite label

This new paradigm has produced an unprecedented opportunity to use our many gifts and resources to deal with naturally occurring detrimental events in the future, instead of squandering them on artificially created conflict.

I can't eat internet. Telephone does not keep my house warm. Investment banks have an interest in keeping savings rates low robbing the saver. The Fed is in collusion with them. The solution to the lack of prosperity in this country is to give incentive to true saving and lower prices through higher interest rates. What good is money when it won't buy anything and the only way to earn anything on it is to gamble? That one earner from the 1970's made 4-8% on bank CD's. I remember from my elementary lessons that one cause of the great depression of the 1930's was unbridled speculation by too many people. They told me cabbies were flipping stocks (no offense to cabbies) and buying on margin. Something very similar happened in the last decade- the margin was home equity and the "investment" was in the stock market via 401k's. If the margin was home equity loaned to homeowners as mortgages a crash would likely not have occurred. Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul is dangerous. Borrowing from yourself to pay yourself is generally safer.

and how his almost $1 Trillion stimulus package sent billions to his donors who then filed for bankrupcy, or paid workers with taxpayer dollars to sit idle, or how he bailed out GM and Chrysler, stealing from the secured stakeholder and left them holding the bag, and gave the companies to his supporters.

To discount the Community Reinvestment Act, and the direct actions of Barney Frank (and Chris Dodd) to the housing market meltdown is ridiculous. Banks were all but forced to lend money without income verification. When the GW Bush administration warned Congress that Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac were in danger of failing, Barney Frank was the loudest voice proclaiming that they were fine. Of course, he as intimately involved with one of their directors... and the head of Fannie Mae retired with a fat bonus. Oh, well, he's a hero to some.

Journalists are disappearing because the only thing they know how to report is the "BUSH LIED" mantra of their leftwing liberal editors thus mainstream newspapers and media are going bankrupt. The first to get laid off are the journalists.

The people who run the corporations should be held accountable, they should be targeted, and have to feel the pressure of their actions every day. Instead they are rewarded for their actions and all of us, and our children's children have to pay for their actions.

I'm not a violent man, but if I were I'd start with this list.

http://www.wealthdaily.com/report/culprits-of-the-financial-crisis/375

let's start by breaking up wal-mart....then the banks...then communication....then utilities....before the mega rich bankrupt the u.s. like russia so they can carve it all up for themselves....i think it's time for a revolution............

...break up the institutions that actually provide the goods and services we want and need?

No, I suggest breaking up the rent-seeking monopolies that produce little, and yet consume vastly first.

...but it always bothers me when people compare our telecommunications structure to Europe. Their population density is much higher and the amount of ground to cover to reach a high percentage of citizens is much less. That stuff is just naturally more expensive in the U.S. just because of the way the country is put together.

Wonderful.

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