Politics

[Altitude sickness]

That's simply right-wing revisionist history. I assume you are referring to the 1995 CRA re-writes. Those lowered the downpayment amount from 20% to 3%. They didn't "force lenders to write loans for people that couldn't pay them back." There is an inherent increase in risk when one has a lower downpayment. But look at the sub-prime mortgages as a percent of total. They were historically between 5-9%. They didn't balloon to 20% until 2004, who was president then? The total value also increase by 500% from 2000 to 2005. It was the expansion of sub-prime CDOs that fueled it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis#/media/File:U.S._Home_Ownership_and_Subprime_Origination_Share.png

Let's say that I buy this as the main reason (I don't, because it was a minor contributor). But remind me again. Who was president in the year 2001? 2002? 2003? 2004? 2005? 2006? 2007? I don't recall the GW Bush administration rolling back Clinton's housing policies and re-writing the regulations. Quite the opposite. I recall Bush's "Ownership Society" and the American Dream Downpayment Initiatives...among others, pushing the idea of home ownership...hard.

Ownership society - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Fact Sheet: America's Ownership Society: Expanding Opportunities

Nobody forced lenders to do no-doc loans. No one forced them to lend on second, third, or fourth homes. If it was federal overreach, it apparently only "over-reached" in primarily 4 "sand states". 63% of these foreclosures were in only 4 states. CA, FL, NV, and AZ. 28 states had foreclosure levels at historical levels of less than 0.1%. I guess there were no poor people buying homes in those states?


Mostly caused by deregulation or lack of regulation.

Wrong again. The loosening of lending regulations actually started under the Carter administration. To fight racial inequality and red lining.

Most internet searches done now will skip a crucial step in the cause of the mortgage crisis and jump right to the final death blow of lenders. Bundling and selling off the junk as fast as they could. Blaming the lenders.

As if overnight lenders didn’t care about being repaid and took 90% more risk onto themselves.

Bigeasy. Search back around 1992 if I remember correctly. Who was forcing Freddie and Fannie to loosen lending regulations.

Barney Frank in his own words long after the crisis was over. Regretted doing what he did and said it would have been a better idea to help poor people rent housing instead of handing them loans they could not repay.

You fall victim to liberal skewed Internet searches. Google is notorious for glossing over liberal failings and burying conservative truths.

 

[Altitude sickness]

I tested Google and AI gave me a more accurate response than I expected.

At the bottom of the text below. You see Barney Franks defense is aligned exactly with yours BigEasy. He skips completely over that the fact he and his Democrat cronies caused the entire crisis and he blames the lenders for trying to save their companies. That he didn’t start the fire in the 90s. It was the lenders fault for trying to get rid of the sack of sh!! Barney forced them to hold.

 

[375 Ruger Fan]

 

[Doug3006]

Yeah, I mean what a time to be alive. Male life expectancy (USA) at birth in 1900 was 51, now it's almost 80. Globally it was 32, now it's 73. Sounds like a fantastic time to live in Doug. No insulin, no antibiotics, no polio vaccine, no heart transplants, no cancer treatment, hundred of thousands of smallpox cases every year, no MRIs, no space travel, no satellites, no internet, no airplanes, no M2 Browning Machine Gun, working 60-70 hours a week in a coal mine with no PPE.

So far the only thing I can confirm is that you guys have very short attention spans and some weird Socialism hate fetish. Also, @Brent in Az seems to have a thing for Trannies too. He post's pictures of them all the time. I could remind you that the original topic of the post was about not needing to re-learn past lessons over again. But why bother.

You’re missing the point. All of the innovations that have increased life expectancy, like insulin, antibiotics, vaccines, etc,. Etc., were developed by free-market capitalism. The men and corporations that created these wonders did so to make a profit. Government’s role was to provide the stability and basic support, like roads, infrastructure, public education and the like. No government bureaucrats cured polio or perfected surgical breakthroughs. The list of scientific breakthroughs pioneered by socialist societies is short.

I’ll tell you why we have a socialism hate fetish. Stalin killed at least 20 million people. Far more if you consider the Holodomore. Mao murdered 40-80 million of his countrymen. Castro was a piker by comparison. He only killed tens of thousands. The people these monsters didn’t kill were forced to live in abject misery.

But, these were communist dictatorships you might say. Not the enlightened socialist utopias that you’re such a fan of. The lesson of modern human history is that all socialist schemes must become dictatorships to survive. They simply can’t deliver the goods that their rhetoric promises. So, to cling to power, socialists must become dictators.

It must be aggravating to fans of socialism that they can’t cite a single example of a socialist scheme that has provided comparable results to free market capitalism. Now, before you prattle on about how wonderful things are in Sweden, Norway, Belgium and the like, please understand that every one of these is a capitalist system with more expansive social programs than we have. They are not socialist systems.

 

[Altitude sickness]

You’re missing the point. All of the innovations that have increased life expectancy, like insulin, antibiotics, vaccines, etc,. Etc., were developed by free-market capitalism. The men and corporations that created these wonders did so to make a profit. Government’s role was to provide the stability and basic support, like roads, infrastructure, public education and the like. No government bureaucrats cured polio or perfected surgical breakthroughs. The list of scientific breakthroughs pioneered by socialist societies is short.

I’ll tell you why we have a socialism hate fetish. Stalin killed at least 20 million people. Far more if you consider the Holodomore. Mao murdered 40-80 million of his countrymen. Castro was a piker by comparison. He only killed tens of thousands. The people these monsters didn’t kill were forced to live in abject misery.

But, these were communist dictatorships you might say. Not the enlightened socialist utopias that you’re such a fan of. The lesson of modern human history is that all socialist schemes must become dictatorships to survive. They simply can’t deliver the goods that their rhetoric promises. So, to cling to power, socialists must become dictators.

It must be aggravating to fans of socialism that they can’t cite a single example of a socialist scheme that has provided comparable results to free market capitalism. Now, before you prattle on about how wonderful things are in Sweden, Norway, Belgium and the like, please understand that every one of these is a capitalist system with more expansive social programs than we have. They are not socialist systems.

We all have opinions on many topics.

But what Doug posted is not his opinion. They are facts of history that the enlightened choose to ignore. The enlightened elites always have a better way to enact the same disastrous schemes.

Some actually believe the utopian dream. ( I think AOC is ignorant of the facts and is a true believer). Others use the scheme to bring down the despised nation. Others for personal power.

Many of us spent 1/4, 1/3, 1/2 of our adult lives fighting the Cold War.

And believe or not. It wasn’t so cold. Many times it was a hot war and some of us lost friends to this “Cold” War. So it’s not a social experiment for many of us.

 

[Brent in Az]

Don't argue with Marxists. They will only drag you down to their level and beat you with stupidity.

 

[RLD]

You’re missing the point. All of the innovations that have increased life expectancy, like insulin, antibiotics, vaccines, etc,. Etc., were developed by free-market capitalism. The men and corporations that created these wonders did so to make a profit.

I am big on the capitalism motive. It's very important and when regulated properly it is fantastic.

However I am also big on history and fact.

Both the polio vaccine, and insulin, were never really patented and their inventors chose to forgo literally billions in profit to make sure those measures were widely available to the world. How about penicillin?

Oh...and so was the x-ray machine...which has had a tad of an impact on the world.

So lots of great men have chosen to share great inventions and rise above the profit motive.

I have a lot more respect for Banting, Best and Collip than I do Musk.

 

[Altitude sickness]

“It must be aggravating to fans of socialism that they can’t cite a single example of a socialist scheme that has provided comparable results to free market capitalism. Now, before you prattle on about how wonderful things are in Sweden, Norway, Belgium and the like, please understand that every one of these is a capitalist system with more expansive social programs than we have. They are not socialist system.”

I would add. Every time a socialist fan boy holds up the countries often cited. Norway, Sweden as an example of their template.

I remind them. The reason any nation has the luxury or fat in the system for such social programs is from the success of Capitalism providing the excess for those programs.

 

[Altitude sickness]

RLD, it could be argued Jonas Salk had the luxury to forgo the patent of the vaccine because he lived in a Capitalist system and was a very successful Virologist before the Polio Vaccine.

It’s a very simple metric to track. Inventions and improvements from Capitalism vs The human oppression systems of Socialism, Marxism and Communism.

 

[Brent in Az]

Trump talking about hitting Iran with a strike that would exceed operation epic fury.
Political rhetoric? Who knows?

 

[RLD]

“It must be aggravating to fans of socialism that they can’t cite a single example of a socialist scheme that has provided comparable results to free market capitalism. Now, before you prattle on about how wonderful things are in Sweden, Norway, Belgium and the like, please understand that every one of these is a capitalist system with more expansive social programs than we have. They are not socialist system.”

I would add. Every time a socialist fan boy holds up the countries often cited. Norway, Sweden as an example of their template.

I remind them. The reason any nation has the luxury or fat in the system for such social programs is from the success of Capitalism providing the excess for those programs.

But isn't part of the futility of this capitalism vs. socialism discussion the fact there are there virtually no more purely socialist systems and virtually no more purely capitalist systems still in existence?

Even the United States is not a purely capitalist country. Lots of services and means of production are controlled by the government and even more under Trump who seems to like the idea of the government owning and controlling private industry. Even traditionally roads, fire departments, the military, social security, utilities, and many aspects of healthcare are run on an effectively socialist basis in the United states.

Really socialism and capitalism are a continuum and when you end up way out on either extreme things don't tend to work.

Pure, unfettered capitalism produces really ugly, inhuman results and pure socialism tends to demotivate people and also produces ugly, inhuman results.

Marxism and it's intellectual cousins don't work, but they grew out of an environment where capitalist autocracies and rampant capitalism were crushing people materially and spiritually. They did not spring into existence unbidden. They were a product of a struggling cruel capitalist system. Part of the success of western society is based on the ability of our governments to tame and regulate capitalism; to harness it to move things forward without allowing to to consume and discard virtually everyone in its path.

Neither pure capitalism nor pure socialism work. The real question is where on the continuum any particular social or economic good or service belongs to make society function properly.

I don't want to live in a society where the government owns the breweries, but I also don't want to live in a society where some poor farmer has to watch his barn burn down because he can't afford to have the fire department come out to put out the fire.

 

[RLD]

RLD, it could be argued Jonas Salk had the luxury to forgo the patent of the vaccine because he lived in a Capitalist system and was a very successful Virologist before the Polio Vaccine.

It’s a very simple metric to track. Inventions and improvements from Capitalism vs The human oppression systems of Socialism, Marxism and Communism.

Salk made the decision not to make any money on the vaccine, so he was certainly not motivated by the "invisible hand" of greed. Many great advances come from men not remotely motivated by greed.
I think the better argument (for you) is that capitalism allowed the development of technology and the scaling up of his invention to spread it quickly and maximize the common good that comes from it.

But we cannot in honesty say "The men and corporations that created these wonders did so to make a profit." That is patently (pardon the pun) false.

Not all men are driven to be their best by greed (though many are). And in fact I think societies lionize men who do things for non-selfish reasons rather than those driven purely by greed. We think of those people as pursuing a higher calling. Like soldiers for instance. They (as far as I can tell) are not driven by greed, they do great and noble things not because they will get a big cheque at the end, rather because they believe in dedication to something higher than money.

But as I said in another post, there are pretty much no pure capitalist nor pure socialist countries around anymore. All of the functional countries are somewhere on the continuum.

 

[Tanks]

Now, before you prattle on about how wonderful things are in Sweden, Norway, Belgium and the like, please understand that every one of these is a capitalist system with more expansive social programs than we have. They are not socialist system.”

One interesting thing about Sweden, they had a wealth tax and an inheritance tax. They repealed both as they realized it was counterproductive for their economy.

 

[Brent in Az]

Another radical P.O.S

 

[Killingtime]

“It must be aggravating to fans of socialism that they can’t cite a single example of a socialist scheme that has provided comparable results to free market capitalism. Now, before you prattle on about how wonderful things are in Sweden, Norway, Belgium and the like, please understand that every one of these is a capitalist system with more expansive social programs than we have. They are not socialist system.”

I would add. Every time a socialist fan boy holds up the countries often cited. Norway, Sweden as an example of their template.

I remind them. The reason any nation has the luxury or fat in the system for such social programs is from the success of Capitalism providing the excess for those programs.

Here is a great documentary I watched years ago explaining how Sweden went from poverty to I think the four biggest economy at one time in the world because of free markets then went broke because of socialism then both sides had to come together to save the country and started getting rid of socialist programs. It is worth watching.

It’s also funny watching the some of the main socialist pushers in Sweden at the time flee when taxes got to high.

 

[Big_Easy]

I do know that even though more people have access to insurance the cost of insurance for many is getting ridiculous.

I agree the price is ridiculous. But it was also ridiculous before the ACA was passed as well. Your article describes premium increases of 74% between 2014 and 2024. But how much did they increase prior to that? That's what really matters, how quickly were premiums and total healthcare expenditures increasing before and after the ACA passed (2010), and before and after it took effect (2014). The math shows similar increases both before and after. The trend lines seem pretty consistent.

Before: 2003-2010 increase: 63% - 9.0%/year
Passed: 2010-2025 increase: 95% - 6.3%/year
Took Effect: 2014-2024 increase: 74% - 7.4%/year

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/sites/default/files/documents/___media_files_publications_issue_brief_2011_nov_state_trends_1561_schoen_state_trends_premiums_deductibles_2003_2010.pdf

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Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Medical Care in U.S. City Average

Graph and download economic data for Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Medical Care in U.S. City Average (CPIMEDSL) from Jan 1947 to Jun 2026 about medical, urban, consumer, CPI, inflation, price index, indexes, price, and USA.

fred.stlouisfed.org

Measuring total-premium inflation for health insurance in the Consumer Price Index : Monthly Labor Review : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

www.bls.gov

 

[Brent in Az]

This has to be the most cringe worthy group of Presidential hopefuls in the history of this nation.
They are really scraping the bottom of the political barrel.

 

[Killingtime]

I

But isn't part of the futility of this capitalism vs. socialism discussion the fact there are there virtually no more purely socialist systems and virtually no more purely capitalist systems still in existence?

Even the United States is not a purely capitalist country. Lots of services and means of production are controlled by the government and even more under Trump who seems to like the idea of the government owning and controlling private industry. Even traditionally roads, fire departments, the military, social security, utilities, and many aspects of healthcare are run on an effectively socialist basis in the United states.

Really socialism and capitalism are a continuum and when you end up way out on either extreme things don't tend to work.

Pure, unfettered capitalism produces really ugly, inhuman results and pure socialism tends to demotivate people and also produces ugly, inhuman results.

Marxism and it's intellectual cousins don't work, but they grew out of an environment where capitalist autocracies and rampant capitalism were crushing people materially and spiritually. They did not spring into existence unbidden. They were a product of a struggling cruel capitalist system. Part of the success of western society is based on the ability of our governments to tame and regulate capitalism; to harness it to move things forward without allowing to to consume and discard virtually everyone in its path.

Neither pure capitalism nor pure socialism work. The real question is where on the continuum any particular social or economic good or service belongs to make society function properly.

I don't want to live in a society where the government owns the breweries, but I also don't want to live in a society where some poor farmer has to watch his barn burn down because he can't afford to have the fire department come out to put out the fire.

l’ll agree we are definitely a mixed economy as is every nation to some degree. And both philosophies have created atrocious standards at one time. Adam smiths world was atrocious and the world that Marx vision created in China or Russia I would argue was many degrees worse just from the sheer number of confinement and death caused by the government.

My favorite president was Theodore Roosevelt and he was known for two major things above all else… trust busting and preserving land. There are even stories of him coming back from Africa and allegedly threading Tafts life for selling the country out to big business. His hatred for what Taft had done was the reason he ran the bull moose party and unfortunately allowed possibly the most destructive president Woodrow Wilson to win and become president.
The thing is every nation that pushes a Marxist view has failed and always results in anguish of the people that live there. But also none are able to even exist if the nation didn’t already have a large degree of wealth or resources to begin with. With the exception of a few Scandinavian countries it’s interesting to study how bad the people had to think it had gotten to want to adopt or overthrow the existing regime in the first place to attempt communism.

Even Milton Friedman said toward the end of his life that there had to be some government control because some companies will just keep taking. I believe in a free market I’m more libertarian than anything but I also have never created a multibillion dollar corporation and I’m content living in peace and not trying to make every dollar or control every person or country. I think most business owners would align with my life values that money is a tool not the end all.
But when I see Microsoft, Amazon,meta firing American workers and rehiring h1 visa workers to save money it brings back my thoughts of teddy Roosevelt that some companies can’t be left to do as they want because they will help build a nation but turn right back around and drain it at the cost of the people of the nation.

 

[Killingtime]

I agree the price is ridiculous. But it was also ridiculous before the ACA was passed as well. Your article describes premium increases of 74% between 2014 and 2024. But how much did they increase prior to that? That's what really matters, how quickly were premiums and total healthcare expenditures increasing before and after the ACA passed (2010), and before and after it took effect (2014). The math shows similar increases both before and after. The trend lines seem pretty consistent.

Before: 2003-2010 increase: 63% - 9.0%/year
Passed: 2010-2025 increase: 95% - 6.3%/year
Took Effect: 2014-2024 increase: 74% - 7.4%/year

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/sites/default/files/documents/___media_files_publications_issue_brief_2011_nov_state_trends_1561_schoen_state_trends_premiums_deductibles_2003_2010.pdf

Checking your browser - reCAPTCHA

Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Medical Care in U.S. City Average

Graph and download economic data for Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Medical Care in U.S. City Average (CPIMEDSL) from Jan 1947 to Jun 2026 about medical, urban, consumer, CPI, inflation, price index, indexes, price, and USA.

fred.stlouisfed.org

Measuring total-premium inflation for health insurance in the Consumer Price Index : Monthly Labor Review : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

www.bls.gov

The post I had after the one you mentioned sited that. I was shocked at how much premiums had risen from the 90’s-2010

 

[meigsbucks]

This has to be the most cringe worthy group of Presidential hopefuls in the history of this nation.
They are really scraping the bottom of the political barrel.

View attachment 779112

Sends chills down my spine thinking about any of the people behind the Resolute Desk. AOC should be behind a bar. Harris, in a bar. Mayor Pete, working for the TSA. Newsome, in a grease pit.