My Ess Event Blog

You are so, so right. Taking Medicare, for example, which is much in the news lately. Medicare was begun in 1965 as a program to finance the medical expenses of retirees once they reached the age of 65. Today, there are millions of people on Medicare who are well below that age; many have come from overseas and never worked a single day in their lives in this country or paid a penny in taxes here. Millions more young, able-bodied individuals have been declared ‘disabled’ by Social Security and are collecting Medicare among many other free advice goodies paid for by the dwindling number of taxpayers. Over the next two years, people making as much as $40,000 a year will become eligible for totally free (to them, the taxpayers will still eat the costs) medical and dental care under Medicaid. And what’s going to happen to all of those Americans whose unemployment exceeds the 99-week limit? Unemployment insurance, that free government check in the mailbox every two weeks, will become another permanent entitlement for these people, courtesy of Barack Obama, the Food Stamp President.

sadly, not a word about the incredible damage to the engines of growth being wrought by Obama’s people at NLRB, EPA and Health and Human Services. The debt deal will be out of first date advice before Christmas if the economy does not accelerate soon–a very improbable event. Obama and his minions may well have ruined the economy before the campaign gets underway in earnest next year. and what about the Justice department’s gun running fiasco,? that’s a real confidence builder. Dumping on Israel, frittering away resources in Libya while Syria burns and thousands are killed hundreds . we are talking ineptitude and misguidedness of colossal proportions.

Why is Japan-China advice on relationships not better? OK. Let me count a few. Japan changed the school history books to whitewash its crimes against China (it’s like Germany denying the Holocaust). Japan continues to worship war criminals (it’s like Germany worshiping Adolf Hitler). Japan continues to occupy Chinese territories like Diaoyu. One can argue that today’s Japanese are not responsible for the country’s past. But it is a democracy. They elected officials to do all these stupid things. So, the Japanese people are responsible for the current situation. Japanese should realize that Chinese hold a deep grudge against them. It was no big deal when China was weak. But things changed now. Japan can continue on its current path at its own peril. Germany was willing to owe up to its past and today it has a good relationship with both France and Israel.

Thanks, Jack, I’ll check out the site. This was meant as a reply to someone who took the position that everything that happens is God’s will, a view that I believe contradicts both the scriptures and our common moral sense.

I just finished teaching my class about the problem of evil and we had a very lively discussion. One point that came out was that nobody REALLY wants God to destroy all evil, because then we and everyone we love advice would be destroyed! Jesus talked about similar issues in the parable of the wheat and tares — Matthew 13, I think.

Tan,

Your comments would be more moving if the math was there to back them up. If you are over 55, then it is fair to say you have been working full-time for the past thirty years. Assuming a bare minimum savings of $2500 per year at a very modest 4% interest rate, over 30 years those savings would have grown to over $150,000. Take into account the stock advice market turbulence of the past several years and cut this amount in half, and you have a retirement savings of $75k, or close to the amount the average boomer has saved for retirement. In reality the markets made, on average, well over 4% over the past three decades, and the stock market readjustment didn’t wipe out half of the earnings one would have made over the past three decades. That means then that the average boomer saved less than $2500 a year toward their retirement. How does this make them a victim?

Uh–just a point the article didn’t mention which may or may not be relevant to this discussion: how does the pay scale at Olin compare to that of other engineering schools/departments? Even professors need money to live. Are the 140 candidates for each position (how does that compare to the rest of academe, by the way?) looking at the same salary, at a pay cut, at opportunities to earn more in exchange for surrendering lifetime job security? Are a lot of them untenured and giving up on the prospect of a tenured job? Or are they being offered incentives in exchange? Before we get all starry-eyed, it might be useful to know a bit about the economics of the situation!

Recommended: advice goddess.

Regina, you misunderstood me, with cleaned up balance sheets, you can increase your spending (because you are no longer paying on debt management advice), which will eventually lead to full employment. One of the reasons unemployment is lagging is because those who have jobs are paying down debts instead of spending on goods and services. Millions of people like me, will be debt free in a few short years, when we have no debt, we can increase our spending. Right now I have payments totalling $1,641 per month, but I am paying over $3,200 per month on that debt. Our family income is around $5,600 per month. That means discretionary spending is around $1,500 per month after church giving and savings. When the debt is paid off, I will have $4,700 per month for discretionary spending. An increase of 200%. Could you imagine what would happen if consumer discretionary spending increased at even 10% per year?

But the country already has a process for dealing with failing companies while insulating the people from being affected. It’s bankruptcy advice. A handful of tweaks to bankruptcy law would have allowed courts to wind down failing companies (I’m thinking of AIG, and dare I say Fannie and Freddie, too) overly exposed to credit default swaps and other side-bets on US mortgages. The implication that the US government would prop up these entities was one of the factors that led them to take higher risks. Goldman, for the most part, was just a party to the trade.

Listen, where there is fraud, they should prosecute. I make no apologies for people who lie to sell a product. I am skeptical that GS is guilty of that in this case, frankly. The data was available to all the parties involved in these trades. That data is what led Paulson, among others, to seek the short side of the trade in the first place.

I would like others to pay advice for newlyweds my coffee habit. It would save me a ton of money!

To Thomas Campbell: We could kill the babies of the poor at birth. It would save a lot of money, and it would be even cheaper than abortion. While we’re at it, let’s reduce the crime rate and save money on incarceration by killing criminals as soon as they are convicted. (Better yet, shoot them as soon as they are arrested.) Let’s save health care money by euthanizing everyone over the age of 50, or anyone who is using a lot of health care. We could give them a choice between assisted suicide or euthanasia, and we could make exceptions for important and/or wealthy people.

The idea that we should save money by aborting the children of the poor is disgusting and immoral.

The Princess Diaries was sucessful not because of Anne Hathaway, particularly but because of a great supporting cast led by the one and only Julie Andrews. Among adults that is a name which still packs ‘em in.

Chick flicks? Teenage love stories? 20 something sex-romps? I couldn’t care less. There are a lot of great books out there about war and adventure and plenty of documentaries and shows like THE DEADLIEST WARRIOR. And I tell you something else. If I want good looks and charm I will look for an old Julie Andrew movie or an old Maureen O’Hara flick. Not a dame in Hollywood can match their star power. We live in an age of midgets who never learned that modesty and charm are the true beauty advice of womankind. Who wants to see foul mouthed tramps most of whom could not act their way into or out of a George Bernard Shaw play let alone Shakespeare or even John Ford. People will flock to story and good acting and even sweet romance -remember MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING? But films like that are few and far between. So I am switching off my computer to read.