In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
In the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign, from August to September, the unemployment rate fell sharply — raising eyebrows from Wall Street to Washington.
The decline — from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September — might not have been all it seemed. The numbers, according to a reliable source, were manipulated.
And the Census Bureau, which does the unemployment survey, knew it.
Just two years before the presidential election, the Census Bureau had caught an employee fabricating data that went into the unemployment report, which is one of the most closely watched measures of the economy.
And a knowledgeable source says the deception went beyond that one employee — that it escalated at the time President Obama was seeking reelection in 2012 and continues today.
“He’s not the only one,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous for now but is willing to talk with the Labor Department and Congress if asked.
The Census employee caught faking the results is Julius Buckmon, according to confidential Census documents obtained by The Post. Buckmon told me in an interview this past weekend that he was told to make up information by higher-ups at Census.
Ironically, it was Labor’s demanding standards that left the door open to manipulation.
Labor requires Census to achieve a 90 percent success rate on its interviews — meaning it needed to reach 9 out of 10 households targeted and report back on their jobs status.
Census currently has six regions from which surveys are conducted. The New York and Philadelphia regions, I’m told, had been coming up short of the 90 percent.
Philadelphia filled the gap with fake interviews.
“It was a phone conversation — I forget the exact words — but it was, ‘Go ahead and fabricate it’ to make it what it was,” Buckmon told me.
And now there's an investigation from the Commerce Department
Truth About Jobs By PAUL KRUGMAN New York Times October 8, 2012 (edition) If anyone had doubts about the madness that has spread through a large part of the American political spectrum, the reaction to Friday’s better-than expected report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics should have settled the issue. For the immediate response of many on the right — and we’re not just talking fringe figures — was to cry conspiracy.
Leading the charge of what were quickly dubbed the “B.L.S. truthers” was none other than Jack Welch, the former chairman of General Electric, who posted an assertion on Twitter that the books had been cooked to help President Obama’s re-election campaign. His claim was quickly picked up by right-wing pundits and media personalities.
It was nonsense, of course…
So how many frauds has Obama (or his administration) perpetrated so far? It's getting hard to keep count. The only one that's burning him is Obamacare, because that's the only one that the media can't ignore.
What frauds?
Why, the release of phony labor statistics, of course.
In the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign, from August to September, the unemployment rate fell sharply — raising eyebrows from Wall Street to Washington.
The decline — from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September — might not have been all it seemed. The numbers, according to a reliable source, were manipulated.
And the Census Bureau, which does the unemployment survey, knew it.
Just two years before the presidential election, the Census Bureau had caught an employee fabricating data that went into the unemployment report, which is one of the most closely watched measures of the economy.
And a knowledgeable source says the deception went beyond that one employee — that it escalated at the time President Obama was seeking reelection in 2012 and continues today.
“He’s not the only one,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous for now but is willing to talk with the Labor Department and Congress if asked.
The Census employee caught faking the results is Julius Buckmon, according to confidential Census documents obtained by The Post. Buckmon told me in an interview this past weekend that he was told to make up information by higher-ups at Census.
Ironically, it was Labor’s demanding standards that left the door open to manipulation.
Labor requires Census to achieve a 90 percent success rate on its interviews — meaning it needed to reach 9 out of 10 households targeted and report back on their jobs status.
Census currently has six regions from which surveys are conducted. The New York and Philadelphia regions, I’m told, had been coming up short of the 90 percent.
Philadelphia filled the gap with fake interviews.
“It was a phone conversation — I forget the exact words — but it was, ‘Go ahead and fabricate it’ to make it what it was,” Buckmon told me.
And now there's an investigation from the Commerce Department
Truth About Jobs By PAUL KRUGMAN New York Times October 8, 2012 (edition) If anyone had doubts about the madness that has spread through a large part of the American political spectrum, the reaction to Friday’s better-than expected report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics should have settled the issue. For the immediate response of many on the right — and we’re not just talking fringe figures — was to cry conspiracy.
Leading the charge of what were quickly dubbed the “B.L.S. truthers” was none other than Jack Welch, the former chairman of General Electric, who posted an assertion on Twitter that the books had been cooked to help President Obama’s re-election campaign. His claim was quickly picked up by right-wing pundits and media personalities.
It was nonsense, of course…
So how many frauds has Obama (or his administration) perpetrated so far? It's getting hard to keep count. The only one that's burning him is Obamacare, because that's the only one that the media can't ignore.
LOUISVILLE, Kentucky, Nov 20 (Reuters) - After a string of setbacks and losses, the insurgent Tea Party movement is at a crossroads, between learning to live within the Republican Party or pursuing its fight against those it sees as not conservative enough.
The choice is an easy one for Tea Party activists, who vow to keep up their campaign to vote out of office those Republican politicians they say have betrayed the tenets of the conservative cause - smaller government and less federal spending and taxes.
Voters nationally blame October's partial government shutdown on Republicans, and particularly the Tea Party, which lost elections earlier this month in Virginia and Alabama.
With important mid-term congressional elections coming in November 2014, the Tea Party is under pressure from within the Republican Party to call off their insurgency and focus on the end game of defeating Democrats, rather than bruising primaries to clobber Republicans, some of whom could be in close contests to keep their seats.
Republican strategist Ford O'Connell said the Tea Party movement needs to decide its long-term strategy.
"Are they interested in toppling Republicans or winning elections? If they don't win some elections they're probably going to die on the vine," O'Connell said.
On November 19 2013 22:54 Danglars wrote: No one party gets to set minimum requirements. They're choices and open to criticism. Or perhaps you would prefer them up to the Cadillac plans offered to company CEOs and the like? Obamacare is not concerned with minimum standards, it's only concern is politically advantageous requirements. You might remember contraceptive coverage in the news for that reason. A change in requirements is a change, not an improvement. It is still a government bureaucrat sitting alongside you and the insurer telling you what you have to buy. That setup will lead to nobody's satisfaction. It's a very shortsighted policy.
I don't even think you have a working idea of what insurance is. What you're discussing is straight welfare payouts for medical care. You can't insure against future risk if the payer can simply get it once they're diagnosed with it (pre-existing condition side effects). Calling it discrimination is demagoguery at its finest. You are literally saying that treatment for sick people being more expensive than treatment for healthy people is discrimination. We insure against these things to spread the cost and incidence across a long timeframe, not to make the treatment suddenly cheaper. It's fairy tale land and you live in it.
I doubt you read my previous posts, but the solution discussed there was allowing individuals to keep their health insurance across employers. Insurance companies can correctly adjust for risks across lengths of time. Getting sick and losing your job is no longer suddenly a pre-existing condition for the next policy ... you're still on the same policy. It's a form of income and should be taxed as such. The market inefficiency must be corrected (and not by adding on more inefficiencies). Decreeing prosperity by mandate is idiotic.
So the solution to reforming health insurance is not Obamacare, but instead it's letting people keep their employer health insurance across jobs? Really? Why hasn't anyone thought of this genius idea? Oh wait, they have, it's called COBRA, and it's been around since 1985. It allows people to keep employer health insurance for up to 18 months. Why hasn't COBRA fixed the health insurance market in the almost three decades it's been law?
Or do you mean something different, when you say that people should be able to keep their insurance plans? For example, if they can keep their employer health insurance indefinitely, that would mean no employer insurance policy can be removed or changed. You claim to be concerned with "market inefficiency", but freezing the health insurance market in this way would create a massive market inefficiency and inflexibility.
But why further tie health insurance to employers? Why not tie health insurance to the brand of your car or the secondary school you attended? In fact, your idea would further increase market inefficiency, as it increases the likelihood that job search isn't entirely based on job match or suitability, but rather the ability to keep health insurance indefinitely, particularly for desperate people who can't get it any other way due to a preexisting condition. And what about these people that can't get health insurance? How does this solve the problems in the individual market, such as people with preexisting conditions unable to get affordable insurance, people being denied from renewing once they get sick, that Obamacare fixes? This idea doesn't solve anything. And what about people who aren't employed, retired, or are in a job that doesn't offer employer health insurance? Without a government decree that employers must offer insurance, like Obamacare has, they are left out in the grossly expensive individual market, without adequate protection against being dropped or running into lifetime caps that Obamacare fixes.
Then there is the central issue of insurance that your idea leaves completely unaddressed: adverse selection. People who choose to extend their employer health insurance, will tend to be sick and cost more, which drives up prices for everyone. Under your idea, will people be forced to get this insurance and can people with preexisting conditions be rejected or price discriminated against? If the answer is no and no, then this will create a price death spiral due to adverse selection.
So this is actually a complete nonsolution. As I said, the only way to cover people with preexisting conditions, without allowing insurers to reject these people, or drop people when they get sick, or charge absurdly higher prices is to do health insurance reform like Obamacare, which must necessarily include an individual mandate and minimum requirements in order to work, or go to a European-style, single payer system.
You accuse me of not understanding insurance: sick people can just buy insurance and get treatment, and that's not insurance to you. But under Obamacare, everyone will be forced to buy insurance, so when they get sick, it's not welfare, it's making a claim on an insurance policy that they've been paying for. You seem to hate the idea that Obamacare disallows price discrimination against sick people. So it's you that doesn't understand insurance, because if sick people pay more and healthy people pay less, why even have insurance at all? How is that any different from paying everything out of pocket? This is like the common complaint that young people shouldn't be forced to subsidize old people under Obamacare. But once we rephrase that as: "healthy people subsidize unhealthy people", it becomes immediately obvious that it cannot be any other way. That's insurance. In car insurance, people who don't crash their car subsidize people who do crash their car. And how is it fair that sick people should be required to pay more for insurance, when most serious medical conditions, like cancer, are not the fault of the sick? Essentially, you're arguing that the price of insurance should be determined by a the roll of a dice: if you're unlucky, you're fucked.
The point of insurance is to chop off tail risk, i.e. to give moderate and mostly predictable payments and get in return protection from large and unpredictable losses. And that's exactly what Obamacare does by forcing everyone to buy health insurance through a mandate, requiring insurance to be sold at non-discriminatory prices with minimum requirements so that people cannot create a loophole around the the mandate, then paying for medical treatment is claiming the policy benefits. The previous system, where people can be rejected from renewing or buying, isn't really insurance. It doesn't chop off tail risk: it's gives no real protection from going bankrupt just because you get sick.
Lastly, the minimum requirements forced by Obamacare, listed here, are all sensible. It covers things like child birth, pediatric care, mental health care, etc. Why should women and mental people be charged higher prices for health care? Contraception (which isn't on that list, so I'm not completely sure that it is a requirement, but assume that it is) is preventive care. How is it their fault that they're a woman or mentally unwell? These minimum requirements prevents this unfair and unjustifiable price discrimination. It also prevents people from circumventing the mandate with dirt cheap policies that offer no real protection.
The differences between what I discussed and COBRA have already been starkly contrasted by you: you only get to keep your health insurance for 18 months, a limited timeframe. That runs counter to the entire aims of dependability by the insurance agency of insuring across long timeframes (defraying risk, lowering premiums) and the consumer not losing it during a period of heavy health care costs. It is not the same thing, do not pretend that it is.
The flexibility of plans is already captured enough in the current system to show its response. Roughly 1/3 of plans turn over every year. Purchasers want to adjust their co-pays, what's covered, and explore other cost changes with their insurance companies/agents. There is no freeze. Let me reiterate, the employer pays into an employee plan that stays and is controlled by the employee. Health insurance compensation has always been a form of remuneration; just look how often it figures into employment decisions.
I don't really know how much further you could go about deliberately misunderstanding me. I suggest untying the current structure including tax structure and law structure of health insurance from its existing state of being tied to the employer. You are the owner of the plan, the employer is paying into it. Switching jobs or being between jobs with pre-existing conditions is no ordeal ... you're on the same plan. The insurance company can gain stability in the period of your payments and offer lower pricing.
The problem in your understanding is you don't purchase car insurance after you crash your car and just get it paid for by the insurance. Currently, under the ACA, you're incentivizing people to wait until they're sick to get coverage ... they have guaranteed issue. Try pricing that, try subsidizing that on the back of healthy people.
I want a marketplace where you can pay premiums for mental health coverage or pediatric care ... contraceptives if you want them and desired co-pays on prescription drug coverage at estimated costs. Your plans are one-size-fits-all. Private health insurance was under 50% actuarial value and fine for normal people (otherwise, where's this large disapproval on cancelled plans and more expensive alternatives?) and now Obamacare says you pay for 60%. Washington's way or the highway. That is not the way to offer free individuals plans that meet their needs--that is a recipe for increasing burdens on the poor and middle class and decreasing their satisfaction accomplishing their goals with freedom in their finances.
I'm glad you understand that insurance hopes to protect against the risk of sudden high medical bills with moderate payments. However, throwing in words like discrimination and minimum requirements in praise of Obamacare robs those words of meaning. You can't wait until you actually become sick to purchase insurance for yourself and demand a cheap plan that covers treatment, that is lunacy not a discrimination guard. You want that strategy (and got it) enshrined in law. Your so-called "minimum requirements" force people to spend their money in ways they would rather not. I want freedom for people to use that money to pay for college, to save for their first car, to get enough to put a down payment for their house. Not to be forced into purchasing 20% increase in their health insurance coverage because the government says that's your new budget plan, like it or not. Freedom of choice is lost.
[QUOTE]On November 21 2013 08:16 Danglars wrote: [QUOTE]On November 20 2013 19:11 paralleluniverse wrote: [QUOTE]On November 19 2013 22:54 Danglars wrote: ...
I'm glad you understand that insurance hopes to protect against the risk of sudden high medical bills with moderate payments. However, throwing in words like discrimination and minimum requirements in praise of Obamacare robs those words of meaning. You can't wait until you actually become sick to purchase insurance for yourself and demand a cheap plan that covers treatment, that is lunacy not a discrimination guard. You want that strategy (and got it) enshrined in law. Your so-called "minimum requirements" force people to spend their money in ways they would rather not. I want freedom for people to use that money to pay for college, to save for their first car, to get enough to put a down payment for their house. Not to be forced into purchasing 20% increase in their health insurance coverage because the government says that's your new budget plan, like it or not. Freedom of choice is lost.[/QUOTE]
You can't have that freedom and prevent pre-existing condition discrimination. If you allow people to have high deductible, low premium plans, then they will just use high deductible, low premium plans until they get expensively sick, and then use the no-pre-existing-conditions-ban to enroll in a high premium, low deductible plan. For example:
Person X buys catastrophic insurance for 30 years, paying low premiums. Person X gets ass cancer at age 50. Person X pays out the ass for 1 year. Person X uses the no-pre-existing-conditions-ban to buy a gold plan on the exchange at age 51.
This results in Person X being able to skate by, not contributing to the insurance pool for 30 years until he gets ass cancer, and then getting huge payouts on a gold plan at age 51. If you want to get rid of pre-existing condition bans, then you absolutely must require people to buy real insurance.
Fracking industry contributions to congressional campaigns spiked 231 percent between 2004 and 2012 in districts and states with fracking activity, according to a report released Wednesday.
Compiled by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and based on MapLight's collection of federal campaign contribution data, the report showed a smaller, 131-percent uptick in fracking industry contributions to candidates outside of fracking areas. The fracking industry's level of contributions increased steadily from $4.3 million to just under $12 million between 2004 and 2012, according to the report, just as fracking's importance to the U.S. energy industry grew.
“Like many industries under increasing scrutiny, the fracking industry has responded by ratcheting up campaign donations to help make new friends in Congress,” CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan said in a statement.
Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is the controversial process of injecting water, sand and chemicals into oil and gas wells to unlock fossil fuels trapped in layers of rock. The process has revolutionized oil and gas production in the U.S., but faces strong criticism from environmentalists, who worry the chemicals used in fracking could harm the environment.
Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) received the most in contributions, the report found, raking in $509,447 between the 2004 and 2012 elections. Barton is a former chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
On November 19 2013 06:25 packrat386 wrote: Where is Sam!zdat. I feel like he would have some choice words about the longevity of global capital atm.
i haven't been following the thread
i think right now we are just waiting for the chinese banking sector to collapse...? i mean, i don't know what we are going to do when the next shock comes. more QE?? it's painfully obvious that there's no monetary policy solution to unemployment, but if the Fed throws in the towel then what? we are not going to get any action on the fiscal side of things especially not with a prez with no political capital and a legislature in open revolt... we are back in greenspan put territory with another big asset bubble forming, only this time we are not even recovered from the last crash... idk man I am trying not to think about it, I am thinking about atom bombs and ancient chinese medicine instead
my relaxation reading for what little time and energy I have outside working on my papers is rajan's Fault Lines (pathetic relaxation reading, I know) - it's a good read
i'm afraid it might be game over. i'm thinking about offing my parents and using the inheritance to start a monastery in a nuclear silo to preserve a remnant of civilization through the coming dark ages. you guys are all invited if you want
On November 21 2013 08:38 CannonsNCarriers wrote:You can't have that freedom and prevent pre-existing condition discrimination. If you allow people to have high deductible, low premium plans, then they will just use high deductible, low premium plans until they get expensively sick, and then use the no-pre-existing-conditions-ban to enroll in a high premium, low deductible plan. For example:
Person X buys catastrophic insurance for 30 years, paying low premiums. Person X gets ass cancer at age 50. Person X pays out the ass for 1 year. Person X uses the no-pre-existing-conditions-ban to buy a gold plan on the exchange at age 51.
This results in Person X being able to skate by, not contributing to the insurance pool for 30 years until he gets ass cancer, and then getting huge payouts on a gold plan at age 51. If you want to get rid of pre-existing condition bans, then you absolutely must require people to buy real insurance.
I wrote specifically in my last two large posts to go over the primary causes of pre-existing conditions and how my proposed reforms address them. Since you only quoted in part, I would suggest a re-read. If you fully gathered how that's accounted for in a freer system, and still are unconvinced, I must assume you take a priori that no system exists besides a heavily socialized one that ends what you would call the discrimination.
If I may be permitted to go all sam!dzat on this and look past the concrete, maybe others also found revolting you can't have that freedom and if you allow people to [buy] high deductible, low premium plans. The spirit of this is that the State only allows freedoms to the masses because it knows best what health plan you want. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting, as Tocqueville might say. Now endowed by their State with certain alienable rights, should they not exercise these rights as the State deems proper ... That to secure these Men, Governments institute amongst them rights.
On November 19 2013 06:25 packrat386 wrote: Where is Sam!zdat. I feel like he would have some choice words about the longevity of global capital atm.
i haven't been following the thread
i think right now we are just waiting for the chinese banking sector to collapse...? i mean, i don't know what we are going to do when the next shock comes. more QE?? it's painfully obvious that there's no monetary policy solution to unemployment, but if the Fed throws in the towel then what? we are not going to get any action on the fiscal side of things especially not with a prez with no political capital and a legislature in open revolt... we are back in greenspan put territory with another big asset bubble forming, only this time we are not even recovered from the last crash... idk man I am trying not to think about it, I am thinking about atom bombs and ancient chinese medicine instead
my relaxation reading for what little time and energy I have outside working on my papers is rajan's Fault Lines (pathetic relaxation reading, I know) - it's a good read
i'm afraid it might be game over. i'm thinking about offing my parents and using the inheritance to start a monastery in a nuclear silo to preserve a remnant of civilization through the coming dark ages. you guys are all invited if you want
That sounds like so much fun!!! I hope you bring some boardgames for the financial apocalypse. My recommendation is Puerto Rico, which is ironically a trading game about building an industry lol
On November 19 2013 06:25 packrat386 wrote: Where is Sam!zdat. I feel like he would have some choice words about the longevity of global capital atm.
i haven't been following the thread
i think right now we are just waiting for the chinese banking sector to collapse...? i mean, i don't know what we are going to do when the next shock comes. more QE?? it's painfully obvious that there's no monetary policy solution to unemployment, but if the Fed throws in the towel then what? we are not going to get any action on the fiscal side of things especially not with a prez with no political capital and a legislature in open revolt... we are back in greenspan put territory with another big asset bubble forming, only this time we are not even recovered from the last crash... idk man I am trying not to think about it, I am thinking about atom bombs and ancient chinese medicine instead
my relaxation reading for what little time and energy I have outside working on my papers is rajan's Fault Lines (pathetic relaxation reading, I know) - it's a good read
i'm afraid it might be game over. i'm thinking about offing my parents and using the inheritance to start a monastery in a nuclear silo to preserve a remnant of civilization through the coming dark ages. you guys are all invited if you want
That sounds like so much fun!!! I hope you bring some boardgames for the financial apocalypse. My recommendation is Puerto Rico, which is ironically a trading game about building an industry lol
All told, health care costs have been growing more slowly over the last three years than any other time period since 1965. More recently, yearly health cost growth slowed from an average rate of 3.9 percent between 2000 and 2007 to 1.3 percent between 2011 and 2013.
Found that rather interesting, the ACA/Obamacare website disaster aside.
All told, health care costs have been growing more slowly over the last three years than any other time period since 1965. More recently, yearly health cost growth slowed from an average rate of 3.9 percent between 2000 and 2007 to 1.3 percent between 2011 and 2013.
Found that rather interesting, the ACA/Obamacare website disaster aside.
The Department of Health and Human Services revealed on Wednesday a plan to spend up to $7 billion to find ways to reduce spending under the Affordable Care Act while maintaining or improving the quality of health care. The solicitation for bids for this wide-ranging project appeared today on the Federal Business Opportunities website:
The purpose is to develop a Research, Measurement, Assessment, Design, and Analysis (RMADA) IDIQ [Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity] to respond to expanded needs of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care ACT (ACA) and Health Care reform ACT (HCERA). The work awarded under the RMADA will involve the design, implementation and evaluation of a broad range of research and/or payment and service delivery models to test their potential for reducing expenditures for Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and uninsured beneficiaries while maintaining or improving quality of care.
All told, health care costs have been growing more slowly over the last three years than any other time period since 1965. More recently, yearly health cost growth slowed from an average rate of 3.9 percent between 2000 and 2007 to 1.3 percent between 2011 and 2013.
Found that rather interesting, the ACA/Obamacare website disaster aside.
The Department of Health and Human Services revealed on Wednesday a plan to spend up to $7 billion to find ways to reduce spending under the Affordable Care Act while maintaining or improving the quality of health care. The solicitation for bids for this wide-ranging project appeared today on the Federal Business Opportunities website:
The purpose is to develop a Research, Measurement, Assessment, Design, and Analysis (RMADA) IDIQ [Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity] to respond to expanded needs of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care ACT (ACA) and Health Care reform ACT (HCERA). The work awarded under the RMADA will involve the design, implementation and evaluation of a broad range of research and/or payment and service delivery models to test their potential for reducing expenditures for Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and uninsured beneficiaries while maintaining or improving quality of care.
The website has problems because the company that was contracted to build it is incompetent. Whoever hired them should have checked their track record, but so it goes. Obama was also overly optimistic when he promised everyone they could keep their plans, but didn't realize that a lot of people had absolute junk insurance plans.
Also, the state-run exchanges are doing pretty well. Source
I'm fairly confident that after a few months everything will be running smoothly, and since collective memory is short and the Tea Party/ someone else will shoot themselves in the foot that this is far from the end of the world.
On November 19 2013 06:25 packrat386 wrote: Where is Sam!zdat. I feel like he would have some choice words about the longevity of global capital atm.
i haven't been following the thread
i think right now we are just waiting for the chinese banking sector to collapse...? i mean, i don't know what we are going to do when the next shock comes. more QE?? it's painfully obvious that there's no monetary policy solution to unemployment, but if the Fed throws in the towel then what? we are not going to get any action on the fiscal side of things especially not with a prez with no political capital and a legislature in open revolt... we are back in greenspan put territory with another big asset bubble forming, only this time we are not even recovered from the last crash... idk man I am trying not to think about it, I am thinking about atom bombs and ancient chinese medicine instead
my relaxation reading for what little time and energy I have outside working on my papers is rajan's Fault Lines (pathetic relaxation reading, I know) - it's a good read
i'm afraid it might be game over. i'm thinking about offing my parents and using the inheritance to start a monastery in a nuclear silo to preserve a remnant of civilization through the coming dark ages. you guys are all invited if you want
There are solutions imo. It's still interesting to see people like Larry Summers or Paul Krugman, smart economists certainly, but orthodoxes "neokeynesians" with a rather traditionnal view on capitalism and free market, saying that the solution might be in old theories like "secular stagnation" or in Minsky's work (like Krugman said some years ago) especially if you consider how much Marx's work influenced both secular stagnation theory and Minsky.
Things are changing, for the worst or for the best, who knows, but from an intellectual standpoint it is refreshing.
Time magazine has been trending downward in quality for some time now. :D But seriously, their journalism is the worst sort of tawdry excitism these days, too lukewarm to hold hands with either side of the aisle nor objective journalism but perfectly happy to play the part of slighted print. Just check out some of their Internet articles and you'll see what I mean.
So yes, sir xDaunt, I still want to defend Obamacare. But you already knew that methinks
EPT![[image loading]](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2013/11/enrollee_growth_whitehouse.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2013/1311/360_cover_1202.jpg)
