R.W.E. of the J.B.O. wrote:OHV notec wrote:However, I'm not opposed to paying a little more if it means people won't be denied for pre-existing conditions, and if students can remain covered under their parents' plans through college, etc. I truly believe this was a step in the right direction.It's not going to be a little more, it's going to be a lot more, for the reason I stated. It's going to be abused.
Cases, such as people only buying after getting sick, obviously need to be dealt with still. I can only hope that these issues are addressed by future legislation, just as I can only hope all the frivolous lawsuits will be addressed. It's not like things can't be revised in the future. Just like AZ SB1070 was severely lacking initially, things can be fixed.
As for future legislation fixing it, this is something I'm against.
R.W.E. of the J.B.O. wrote: I would like to point out that you just blew a hole in the theory of the increase in revenue being due to the population growth, though.
OHV notec wrote:Abuse shouldn't significantly affect costs for quite a while. I have yet to hear someone say "hooray, now I can drop my coverage until I get sick!" I guess I just don't expect it to be as widespread as you do?I'm sure you haven't heard that, but let's be realistic: people are already dropping their health insurance because they are having a hard time affording it. I talk to more and more people every week who tell me they dropped their health insurance. Most people are afraid to drop it if they don't have to because if they ever get a major illness, they won't be able to get coverage again. Take that fear away, and more people will drop sooner rather than trying to hold out as long. As people drop coverage, the revenues to the insurance companies drop, and the people who are receiving benefits become more of a burden. Believe me, this will happen quicker than anyone would like to think.
OHV notec wrote:It's not that they wanted to shoot down reform alltogether, it's that they wanted to shoot down everything that had been proposed so far. I can't count how many times I heard "We need to start over" from the GOP. I agree it would be nice if every little aspect could be addressed seperately, but we all know that's not how politics work in Washington, on either side of the aisle. All that would mean is that every little aspect would have pork tacked on by every senator who votes for it...Actually, they wanted to start over because the thing had gotten so large and out of hand. They didn't want to shoot down everything, but they wanted a lot of it gone. As for them dropping the public option, there were plenty in Congress that originally said they would not back a plan that didn't have it. They finally backed down from that position out of fear that they would be chastised by their own party for being part of the group that prevented health care reform from being passed. Also, like I said, it's going to come back. I said it when they took it out of the bill, and I'm sticking to that prediction. They will, at some point, try the "see, I told you so" argument when insurance premiums are skyrocketing.
I really don't think this bill was to expand Federal power. If that was the case, there is no way in hell they would have dropped the public option. I think this was just another move to show that they're actually doing something.
Take Back the Republican Party wrote:Well, for one thing, you left out half of the point I made, which pretty much falls in line with part of what you just said: Implement a reasonably executable version (which should be much smaller to start with), then fine-tune it. What I'm against is a massive overhaul legislation that needs a lot of fixing because they just screwed a bunch of things up. Smaller steps would allow for a lot less errors than a massive f&%kup all at once that will need tons of revisions.R.W.E. of the J.B.O. wrote:It's not going to be a little more, it's going to be a lot more, for the reason I stated. It's going to be abused.
As for future legislation fixing it, this is something I'm against.
I think this is idealistic beyond reason. A revision of health care this far-reaching simply cannot be completely figured out before it even hits the streets. The only way to fully understand the impact and effects of such a quantum shift is to implement some reasonably executable version, and then fine-tune it as practical experience can only then dictate. The quest for a "perfect" solution, at a time when it's humanly impossible to know what perfect would be, is one of the reasons the bill was tied up for so much longer than it needed to be.
R.W.E. of the J.B.O. wrote:OHV notec suggested it was because of the housing bubble, but that was already in play years before as well. I am curious if he had something in mind that cause a shift in 2004 in the housing bubble.That wasn't me. I believe it was bk3k.
OHV notec wrote:LOL. Starting to lose track with all these epic posts.R.W.E. of the J.B.O. wrote:OHV notec suggested it was because of the housing bubble, but that was already in play years before as well. I am curious if he had something in mind that cause a shift in 2004 in the housing bubble.That wasn't me. I believe it was bk3k.
R.W.E. of the J.B.O. wrote:As for your tax statement, if you're feeling like being reasonable, you can't ignore the fact that the population was increasing during the years revenue was decreasing. So what do you look at? You look at what changed. The population growth didn't change, so what did?
Take Back the Republican Party wrote:Here's another theory...This is a little bit vague, but it sounds like you're saying the declining revenues in the first few years of the decade were because of the increase in mortgages out there? If this is your point, what do you attribute the turn around to significantly increasing revenues beginning in 2004?
In the years in question, the housing bubble was rocketing ahead, as was the home equity loan campaign, hugely buoyed by not only rampant overvaluation of homes, but significant relaxing of the standards as to how much equity was lendable against. So-called "Money" was flying around as if it was raining from heaven.
Suddenly, enormous sectors of taxable income were shielded from taxation as the money went into tax-exempt mortgages and HE loans.
Would this have significantly reduced revenue? Hell yes.
OHV notec wrote:Interesting article (although I don't like how it paints the defaulting borrowers in a positive light):
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/business/12debt.html?_r=2
Did the legislation "requiring" lendors to provide sub-prime mortgages extend to second mortgages/home-equity loans? If not, I'd say that the fact they were financing those hints that they would have provided the sub-primes also, even without a government "mandate"...
There's also a chart in there that shows mortgage increases beginning in '03, anyone know where we could find data from further back (I've looked, but can't find)?
Take Back the Republican Party wrote:It pains me that in my adult childrens' lifetimes (they are 18 and 22), the acquisition of home equity over time will no longer be considered the best way to gain assets. Never mind that this method had been rock-solid for generations. They've been ripped off, before they even got started...the housing collapse took from them this previously rock-solid investment opportunity.That will turn around eventually. As the prices keep falling, more people will start getting into the market as an investment again, because they see the opportunity. This will, at some point, start bringing the price index up again. We've had plenty of dips in the housing markets before, just not as bad as this one due to so many foreclosures. In spite of everything that has happened, the supply & demand system will still pull the market back in the right direction. It will be a few years, but the values will end up back where they would have been if it weren't for the bubble.
The ratio of homeowners per capita in this nation is declining for the first time ever. That's a tragedy. As more people now no longer consider a home to be the best investment they may ever make, and may even considier home ownership a dangerous potential liability should the poop hit the fan again, this trend is not expected to reverse itself soon. So another piece of the American dream falls into the abyss.
RWE of JBO wrote: It will be a few years, but the values will end up back where they would have been if it weren't for the bubble.
Take Back the Republican Party wrote:Your contention was that this will all right itself, and that my lost equity appreciation value will someday reappear:You're misunderstanding here. I am not saying you will get back the last 10 years of value, but that what you gained was inflated to begin with, so you are losing an inflated value that your house never really had. Having purchased in 95, you had barely any normal appreciation in value. It was right around that time when the housing values started rising at an abnormal rate. However, your house is probably not far below where it would be if the appreciation held a normal steady line. It will turn around, and your house will appreciate again. Trust me, I know what it feels like. I purchased in 02. I would wager that I was hit worse with this because I purchased closer to the height of the bubble. I'm still looking at it long term, though. Sure, it would have been great to have sold your house at the peak, and had the money to buy now, but you have to pretty much put that inflated value out of your head. It wasn't real value. Don't let that sour your outlook on things.
RWE of JBO wrote: It will be a few years, but the values will end up back where they would have been if it weren't for the bubble.
You are incorrect...it will not.
OHV notec wrote:There's also a chart in there that shows mortgage increases beginning in '03, anyone know where we could find data from further back (I've looked, but can't find)?I forgot to respond to this, but you can get older data from FHFA.gov. They have data that goes back to 1990, IIRC.
R.W.E. of the J.B.O. wrote:No, I don't misunderstand...but I fear you do. I don't care about the "bubble" value. That was unrealistic as hell, and I am not a fool. The 2001 value I am benchmarking here was well before any bubble.Take Back the Republican Party wrote:Your contention was that this will all right itself, and that my lost equity appreciation value will someday reappear:You're misunderstanding here. I am not saying you will get back the last 10 years of value, but that what you gained was inflated to begin with, so you are losing an inflated value that your house never really had.
RWE of JBO wrote: It will be a few years, but the values will end up back where they would have been if it weren't for the bubble.
You are incorrect...it will not.
R.W.E. of the J.B.O. wrote:
In the end, it was the government meddling that made it all possible, and more government meddling is not going to fix it, it is only going to keep it down.
Take Back the Republican Party wrote:Actually, that's where you've got me wrong. I've said the same thing regarding a Republican doing something I don't agree with as a Democrat doing it. You're simply getting a narrow view of it because you have only debated with me for the last 10 months or so, when the Democrats are pushing policies that I'm against, and Republicans offer ideas only to have them rejected and called "failed politics of the past". No doubt things were done during the last decade by Republicans that I didn't agree with, for example the wasteful "No Child Left Behind" bill, that didn't solve any real problems with the education system. With regards to the housing crisis, though, the picture is clear as to who is at fault, and it's not because of deregulation by the Republicans, as the Democrats have been claiming. There were warning signs a decade ago that the housing bubble would burst, and twice Republicans tried to fix the sub-prime mortgage industry, only to have people like Barney Frank screaming racism and fear mongering to get the legislation shot down.R.W.E. of the J.B.O. wrote:
In the end, it was the government meddling that made it all possible, and more government meddling is not going to fix it, it is only going to keep it down.
I could almost side with you on this if it weren't for the fact that you couple the term "government meddling" with your politics EXCLUSIVELY. Oh, if only life were that simple, that one side does everything right, and one does it all wrong. No matter what democrats do, you condemn it as "meddling" or any of many other disparaging terms you toss at them. Meanwhile, anything a republican administration has done is golden.
Aren't you smarter than that?
Take Back the Republican Party wrote:No, I don't misunderstand...but I fear you do. I don't care about the "bubble" value. That was unrealistic as hell, and I am not a fool. The 2001 value I am benchmarking here was well before any bubble.The bubble started in the early-mid 90's, as you can kind of see in the chart Notec posted. The worst of it happened in the middle of the last decade, but it didn't start there. Notice the difference in angle of the slope starting right around 95? That's where the bubble began.
Take Back the Republican Party wrote:Actually, in that chart Notec posted, I don't see a bubble "starting in the early-mid 90's." Not unless you consider the reasonable yearly appreciation from 1963 to 1988 shown to also be a "bubble", which it most certainly was not. Note that both slopes are similar (up until 2002 anyway), and the only discerning feature is that the average price of a home sold in the years 1988-1994 rather held steady (flatlined). If one takes away this flatline section, and studies just the slope, one can see that the rate of "value gain" started to be practically vertical in 2002 and up. This was the bubble, and THIS is when obscene profit-taking begain.If you look at it closely, the upward slop that began after the flatline from the late 80's to the mid 90's is steeper than the rest of the slopes. It gained speed around 2000, but most importantly, if you look at the housing price index vs. the consumer price index, inflation, or owner-equivalent rent, you will see that is in the 90's when the housing price index broke away from everything else. I'll try to dig up the databases with all of these in it, and show you what I mean (I had them once before, but due to a hard drive crash, some of the info I had was lost). All of these indices tend to stick relatively close together, up until the 90's. Because housing values actually dipped below the line for a few years, it could be argued that for a few years of the 90's it was still following a normal trend, but the slope started there and didn't stop until the crash.