The Medicare voucher program

[Devils Horse]

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Socialism is an awfully ugly word, we have struggled for a lot of years to find a medium happy between our two forms of government and hopefully down the road we can find our way out of this mess we have gotten ourselves into... I don't believe either of these candidates can lead us down that path.

Which two forms of government are we talking about? I'm assuming you're talking about the Republican/Democrat two party system.

I'm not a learned scholar on the subject, so bear with me on this. Take a country where the national government redistributes wealth for "social justice"? That same country's government administers it's citizens' health care and forces them to buy into the system whether they want to or not? 50% of that country's people depend on the government for some form of basic need? Does the Democrat party in it's current form not openly advocate all these?

Semantics can in fact be an ugly thing, but that last paragraph sounds a lot like like socialism to me. What would you call it?

I believe step one to getting out of this mess is taking the reigns of power away from tax and spend politicians. Barack Obama is the biggest spender in history. Simple, America desperately needs him gone. We need that lying fool, Harry Reid gone just as badly.

[Hlleonard]

Which two forms of government are we talking about? I'm assuming you're talking about the Republican/Democrat two party system.

I'm not a learned scholar on the subject, so bear with me on this. Take a country where the national government redistributes wealth for "social justice"? That same country's government administers it's citizens' health care and forces them to buy into the system whether they want to or not? 50% of that country's people depend on the government for some form of basic need? Does the Democrat party in it's current form not openly advocate all these?

Semantics can in fact be an ugly thing, but that last paragraph sounds a lot like like socialism to me. What would you call it?

I believe step one to getting out of this mess is taking the reigns of power away from tax and spend politicians. Barack Obama is the biggest spender in history. Simple, America desperately needs him gone. We need that lying fool, Harry Reid gone just as badly.

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When laws are put in place by our lawmakers, they are supposedly meant for all of us and we are "forced" to abide by them whether or not we wish to, be they democratic or republican, although our lawmakers seem to find ways to exempt themselves from those laws if it is to their advantage... I'm not sure what "social justice" exactly is but I don't believe you will find many folks in our great country that actually believe the government should play robin hood, that seems to be an argument the right attempts to make by their "spread the wealth" rantings on occasion, I believe most people on either side thinks folks should earn their keep in order for us to maintain the country we have. I personally don't believe the new healthcare bill will be a boon exactly to the middle class, I believe it may do further damage to those folks but it was put in place by our politicians and therefore we all have to live with it... I don't doubt your 50% assessment of folks who get help from the system but I ask you, what should our country do for someone who has a family, earns less money than is required to feed and house them, could we be the country we are if we told them "swim or drown" ... I feel like a person who works should be able to earn a wage with which to care for his family without government help and if paying somebody a better wage is called "redistributing the wealth" then I'm all for it.
Two forms of government may not have been the correct wording for the point I was attempting to make, I believe we have had something like the two party system for most of our history, I don't think the policies of either side in themselves would be good for most of us, I believe it is in our best interest to keep them at each others throats, it has done us fairly well over the years and hopefully will continue to do so... I do believe the national debt will bite us in the backside at some point down the road if we don't manage to do something about it, what that something is might be a combination of democratic and republican ideas, we can't start starving folks to balance the budget just yet.

[Devils Horse]

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When laws are put in place by our lawmakers, they are supposedly meant for all of us and we are "forced" to abide by them whether or not we wish to, be they democratic or republican, although our lawmakers seem to find ways to exempt themselves from those laws if it is to their advantage... I'm not sure what "social justice" exactly is but I don't believe you will find many folks in our great country that actually believe the government should play robin hood, that seems to be an argument the right attempts to make by their "spread the wealth" rantings on occasion, I believe most people on either side thinks folks should earn their keep in order for us to maintain the country we have. I personally don't believe the new healthcare bill will be a boon exactly to the middle class, I believe it may do further damage to those folks but it was put in place by our politicians and therefore we all have to live with it... I don't doubt your 50% assessment of folks who get help from the system but I ask you, what should our country do for someone who has a family, earns less money than is required to feed and house them, could we be the country we are if we told them "swim or drown" ... I feel like a person who works should be able to earn a wage with which to care for his family without government help and if paying somebody a better wage is called "redistributing the wealth" then I'm all for it.
Two forms of government may not have been the correct wording for the point I was attempting to make, I believe we have had something like the two party system for most of our history, I don't think the policies of either side in themselves would be good for most of us, I believe it is in our best interest to keep them at each others throats, it has done us fairly well over the years and hopefully will continue to do so... I do believe the national debt will bite us in the backside at some point down the road if we don't manage to do something about it, what that something is might be a combination of democratic and republican ideas, we can't start starving folks to balance the budget just yet.

I agree checks and balances have done pretty well for us, that's the way our government was designed.

When you give one side or the other a super majority like the Democrats had in Mr. Obama's first 2 years in office, stupid things happen. Like a trillion dollar spending bill getting passed without even being read by all of congress, or a poorly researched and constructed trillion dollar bill to 'overhaul' health care is rammed through.

I don't think anyone from either side is for letting people starve, but look at the dramatic rise in assistance of every form since Mr. Obama became President. Maybe that has to do with the economy, maybe that has do with the Dems wanting a bigger built-in voter base. Most likely some mix of the 2.

The government through some program or set of rules cannot increase middle class pay checks. It's just not going to happen. The governemnt can either confiscate money from some and give it to others, or get the hell out of the way of private business and let the economy get momentum.

The last terrible economy like this during the wretched Jimmy Carter years, we tossed him out, elected Regan and saw huge turn-around. Maybe trickle down economics (the kind Democrats are always condemning because the government's role is minimized) aren't so bad.

I wish we had the answers. Only one thing is an absolute certainty, Mr. Obama has failed miserably, and he needs to go.

[Hlleonard]

Actually, as I understand it, the housing collapse was caused by the likes of Barney Franks and Chris Dodd who changed fannie and freddy loan terms. 5% or even 0 down, and serious relaxation of credit worthiness. Seriously under qualified buyers got into tons of toxic loans, and those loans got sold around till nobody would buy them anymore. So the housing collapse had little to do with DE regulation, and much to do with vote pandering by congresspeople.

BTW, the Obama administration is still (very quietly) pushing the lending practices that got the collapse rolling to begin with.

I didn't know trade unions were gone. Don't they make up a large portion of Democrat financial support and voter base? If they are dead, then the party they support has not done a very good job for them have they? Also, there are those who believe unions have inflated wages/benefits to the point where companies move manufacturing operations out of the country to remain competitive.

When I started at he company I'm at, there were 40+ manufacturing facilities in the US, but our competitors were already mostly off shore. Now we have maybe 10 facilities in the US, and most of those are for product distribution.

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I guess I'm not sure what government interference is, I believe the lowering of the standards for receiving home loans was what I was referring to and if the two gentlemen you mentioned did that all by themselves and they were not part of our government in control of such things, then i stand corrected... As I have stated before, I'm not a fan of our president and any of our politicians might at any time be scheming to do things we might not approve of... Mr. Horse, I doubt anybody, including you, believe unions are the force they once were and if trade unions were responsible for jobs flooding out of our country then you must believe middle class wages in general were also responsible and if middle class wages have to be reduced to levels of countries where the jobs have gone then our economy will never recover from the direction is seems to be taking... We have the country we have because of the middle class, the upper class and lower class are found all over this planet, when the masses can no longer afford the products and services they produce we might be finished as a world leader.