The future of this country

Not reading this one again because of the labeling or name calling whichever you choose to call.

I agree with Elaine 1962. This thread has little to do with aging care and calling snowflakes doesn’t either.

Well... isn't the entire thread somewhat political?

Elaine, you are so very right. Trump is a very polarizing figure, as Obama was before him although for different reasons. I'm just so very very very tired of so many people's knee jerk reaction to every proposal based _only_ on who proposed it instead of even considering the contents.

So this is my last comment in this thread.

I fully agree with John Kennedy's position government should run a deficit in times of war and recession and a surplus in times of prosperity. I fully agree neither party as a group is acting to reduce deficit spending in any significant manner. A big part of the reason is too much government. Proposals like Andrew Yang's universal basic income to replace welfare programs have little chance of ever being enacted because it would significantly reduce government employment since with no SNAP program there's no need for bureaucrats to administrate SNAP. Government employees now make up more than 40% of the work force with many enjoying separate health and retirement plans (not SS) from "normal" taxpayers.

According to the GAO, approximately 60% of money spent on means tested welfare programs went to beneficiaries in 1998 while that number was down to 25% by 2010 and some estimates suggest it's down to 10% today when all the monies the states spend to administrate federal block grants are included. Although funds spent on welfare have been stable or increased as adjusted for inflation in the last 20 years, the amount beneficiaries received has been falling. Yet when Trump makes policy revisions to streamline procedures or reduce fraud by decreasing the time between disability status reviews or requiring everyone receiving SNAP to have been evaluated by the same SNAP criteria - changes that will neither change the funding or qualification guidelines nor eliminate a single person who meets the program's criteria - the left pushes a false narrative that Trump wants to cut venerable persons from receiving needed benefits. (Other politicians from both parties have made similar common sense proposals to reduce administrative costs, the Trump examples are just more recent.)

Is there anyone who thinks only 10% of the money actually providing a benefit is acceptable? Consider how much more Medicaid could do if we kept the same funding level and pushed that rate back to 50%.

Sorry, my memory was off on the actual numbers, but not the percentage impact.

According to the US Treasury (https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo5.htm), the last year of an Obama budget administered by Obama (PY2016) the deficit was $1,422,827,047,452.40 or 1.4b. In PY2017 when Trump began removing hindrances to the business environment, placing spending holds, and renegotiating some major government contacts has a deficit of $671,455,302,116.80 (671b) or 48% of the previous year.

Although they did have an impact on Obama spending, the recession bail out bills were mostly handled in the final Bush budgets. ACA and other new executive created programs like DACA accounted for most of Obama's increases. Increases in welfare spending during the Obama years as the recession deepened and continued under Obama's anti-business and anti-success policy implementations also accounted for a lot of the historic Obama deficits.

Trump's tax cut impacted both PY2018 with a deficit of $1,271,158,167,126.70 or 1.2b and PY2019 with a $1,203,343,570,253.50 deficit or 1.2b and 84% of the final Obama deficit. Although PY2019 shows the start of increased revenues from the tax cut, the major increases in revenue won't start showing until PY2020 and PY2021, assuming historical income tax patterns hold (every tax rate cut increases revenues within 2 years). While tax revenues as a percentage of GDP will be lower, total revenues are forecasted to rise as GDP rises in the improved economy with 50+ year historic lows in unemployment across all subgroups.

Obama's deficits over 8 years averaged $1,193,589,977,128.04 or 1.193t; Trumps in his first 3 years with tax cuts averaged $1,048,652,346,499.00 or 1.048t, 88% of Obama's - and that number will be falling.

What do snowflakes have to do with aging care?

What does this topic have to do with aging care? Politics doesn’t belong on this forum. You’re never going to change anybody’s mind about Trump. People either hate him or love him. People go crazy on Facebook over politics!!! They say I’m going to UNFRIEND you. How childish. Politics and Trump don’t belong in this site. People have been complaining lately that people pick topics that has nothing to do with aging care.

The deficit during the Obama era was high because he had to fix the destroyed economy handed to him by the previous Republican administration. You have to run high deficits to fix a broken economy. Is the economy broken right now? According to someone, it's the best economy ever. During good economies the government should be running surpluses to pay down the debt, not historic deficits.

As for your assertion that Trump halved the deficit compared to Obama. The deficit during Obama's last full year was $438 billion. Trump's last full year deficit is $1200 billion. Trump has almost tripled the deficit during his administration.

Once again, let's leave the fake news to the politicians.

You're joking right? Look at the way much of the top republican leadership speaks. I'll make it easy for you. Look at the way Trump speaks. That's exactly the way right wing shock radio has spoken for decades. Have you ever heard any leader of any stature, left or right, speak like that before? Did Clinton speak like that? Did Bush speak like that? Did Reagan speak like that? Would you want your kids to speak like that?

Remember back when Obama dared to be so disrespectful as to wear a tan suit. The right went crazy over that. It seems so quaint now. The same people that felt such umbrage over a tan suit now cheer foul, insulting, mocking, bullying school yard language. They embrace it.

As for your assertion that the US murder rate is the same as European countries. Let's leave the fake news to the politicians.

The murder rate in the US is several times higher than most European countries. In fact, only 2 European countries have a higher murder rate than the US. That's Russia and the Ukraine. The major European countries, our contemporaries, have much lower murder rates. Much lower.

United States Americas Northern America 5.30
France Europe Western Europe 1.30
Germany Europe Western Europe 1.00
United Kingdom Europe Northern Europe 1.20

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

The language of the left is sexist, racist, homophobic, misogynistic, etc. What "extremist shock jock language of the right" has become center stage? Fake? Crooked? Lying?

Where and who made or published a statement for the NRA stating all mass shootings are by the mentally ill? Some leftist publication pushing out another falsehood? The NRA issued a statement supporting President Trump's call for increased funding for treatment of mental illness and to develop better screenings for and reporting of mental illness (particularly in school settings) since the medical establishment and FBI profilers have determined mental illness is a major factor in non-political shootings of peer groups and targeting of religious groups in churches and alternative/minority lifestyle groups in clubs.

I suppose you want to decrease funding for mental health care and not try to identify the high school kids that need help before they start killing their classmates? Cause you could never support anything both President Trump and the NRA endorse, right? As an independent libertarian who is tied to neither the right or the left, I just don't see how anyone on either side can object to increasing mental health care funding and developing better screening tools for teens.

The US has a larger population than most places so we have by count more of just about everything; however, the murder _rate_ in the US is very similar to many European countries and far better than most other nations on the American continent. If we excluded just 12 counties where citizens have been disarmed by gun control, the US murder rate from all causes would be nearly the lowest in the industrial world. I do not think it matters to the murdered or their family whether they were killed with a firearm or a knife or a truck or a pressure cooker bomb; they are just as dead.

Yes, Trump has managed to reduce the annual deficit by half despite dealing with professional politicians. The historic level of 2.5t was reached during the Obama administration.

Matthew 7:5

First, remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother’s eye.

I completely agree that the national debt is a huge problem. That's why I find it so ironic that the party who made it out to be such big problem when they weren't in power, are now making it out to be no problem at all now that they are in power. Due to their economic policies, the deficit is now 1.2 trillion dollars a year. I remember when that was the entire national debt. The party of "fiscal responsibility" has pushed the deficit to historic levels. It's one thing to do it while the economy is in shambles to try to save it, it's another to do it while the economy is supposedly better than it's ever been. It's during the good times that we should be paying down the national debt, not adding to it at historic levels.

NoTryDoYoda, to go alone with what you are saying, I don't think there are any private non-profit hospitals in the US. Hospitals are big profit centers. They make a lot of money. The reason some private hospitals can claim to be "non-profit" is that they are associated with an organization like a church or university. While that organization overall maybe a non-profit, the hospital is very profitable. It's just that their profits are handed over to the rest of the organization. IMO, it's a scam.

Here's an article on how profitable "non-profit" hospitals are.

https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-05-02/study-nonprofit-hospitals-generate-the-most-profit

I find it quite adorable that the people who like to categorize others as snowflakes are simply just demonstrating how much of a snowflake they themselves are. Much of the loss of civility that we have in our country is that the extremist shock jock language of the right has become the mainstream language of the right. The extremist have become the right wing's center.

As for the bogus NRA talking point that gun violence in the US is due solely to mental illness, mental illness is no more prevalent in the US than anywhere else. Shootings, mass or otherwise, are far more prevalent in the US than in most places. Even if all mental illness was eliminated, there would still be mass shootings in the US. Since it's a fallacy that all mass shooters are mentally ill. That claim is just a cop out.

So much of our medical service and even non profits are actually for profit. That's why non profit leaders often make so much money; hospitals don't keep people long or have enough CNAs or Nurses; and the same is true of Rehabs and nursing homes. And yet, us baby boomers are getting older looking at retirement and our care as the older generation.

While this is changing slowly, churches have not been known for having helpful outlooks and ministries for those with a mental illness plus their families and that is harder to get going than help for the physically disabled. It doesn't stop there, even on a denominational level clergy who have become disabled because of mental or physical health problems are treated as second class burdens who I have heard even one bishop say in his opinion they were all fakes and just lazy. Well, he was a classic narcissist.

Basically we have a culture of narcissism in which we lack the ability to have civil discourse along with a lack of being able to think critically instead of being brainwashed.

Ok, that's enough of that for the moment.

And blaming the NRA & denying there is a health health crisis in this country is nothing but ignorance on the part of socialist snowflakes.

The politic correctness is really getting out of hand. People need to grow a thicker skin. Someone in my local Facebook crime watch group just asked if there was an update on a dead body found over the weekend. The day before, someone else had seen the sheriff & coroner out in the county area and asked if anyone knew what happened. Someone said a dead body was found. No one knew anything else. Next day, someone made a new post asking “is there an update on the dead body that was found” and got kicked in to the middle of next week for using the term “dead body”. You can’t make this stuff up. Bunch of people were offended and saddened by the poor choice of words because it is so disrespectful and heartless to use the term “dead body” and there lectures on how everyone should be compassionate and how this is someone’s loved one and it was just ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. Not a thing was said about the person other than they are dead. The dead body was that of a female overdose victim.

If you go online and see the comments - it's along the lines of not wanting anyone to get any help from the government. Its anger for elderly getting 'breaks' that these people claim they are getting. They attack disabled people and say that they are all lazy or scamming the government. Of course, if THEY were in the situation it would be different. If someone is poor, well it must be their fault. Even in church, it seems like they are not welcoming to newcomers or care about those in the congregation who need help because of their advancing age or disability.
People are not being brought up to be thoughtful and care about other people. Instead it's all about me, me, me and what's in it for me. Very self centered and absorbed in themselves without care about others.
Of course some of the people who hang off of bridges to take selfies - fall off of them.

Concerning wealth...

In our society where more and more people attend college using student loans and then purchase a house on credit... most people have a negative net worth (owe more than the value of the property they own) to around age 40 when student loans have been paid off and a house (or other investments) gains significant equity. The under 40 crowd accounts for a little over 52% of adults. So when someone like Barry Sanders says the top 1% own more wealth than all the bottom half, that means they own more wealth than anyone with a net worth of $1. In addition to the top 1%, the other 47% also own more wealth than the bottom half too. Aren't statistics wonderful in the hands of a professional politician?

In my opinion the biggest dangers in America are:

1) deficit spending and the increasing national debt which if not corrected will eventually result in the TOTAL failure of the federal government and then many state governments as they lose federal subsidies;

2) professional politicians who are instrumental in (1) above as they become multi-millionaires at the public trough and act for their personal benefit instead of the good of their constituents and our nation;

3) under-education of the America public, particularly in civics, basic economics and world history with 95% of people under 40 and 80+% overall not even knowing 100+ million people died under the rule of socialist governments in the twentieth century or understanding how separation of powers in the US Constitution is suppose to prevent a descent into tyranny or how taxing success leads to lower revenues and even greater poverty in households with lower incomes;

4) loss of civility because a republic requires an educated citizenry capable of public discourse to resolve issues;

5) drug addiction which is destroying families and creating dysfunctional and mentally ill people from the adults frying their own brains and the children exposed to toxins while physically and emotionally neglected during childhood;

6) illegal immigrants who are a subgroup almost in virtual slavery, targeted for abuse and crime, not vaccinated and reducing the herd immunity to measles, whooping couch, polio, and other serious illnesses, and a drain on welfare resources in a county running a massive deficit;

7) Islamic terrorists who have already killed thousands of Americans and would like to kill hundreds of thousands more - if the next attack on NYC is a dirty bomb they may kill a million or more; and,

8) laziness of the voting public who prefer to be fed propaganda without any named sources rather than question BS that doesn't even logically hold together or spend a little time looking up multiple sources or even raw data.

There is no extremist organization in the US, right or left, threatening as many people as any one of the 8 causes listed above. In the US, we're not suppose to care whether there are white supremacists or black supremacists or yellow supremacists or little green supremacists so long as all they do is talk and assemble with other similar wrong thinking people (anyone remember free speech or freedom to assemble or freedom of religion?). It does become a problem when they start targeting people for violence. If organizations like Black Lives Matter can motivate enough killings of law enforcement officers to cause a break down of basic law and order then extremist organizations may become a more significant problem. Since the left wing extremists are the ones who have been killing people lately, not sure how the right wing extremists can be viewed as the more dangerous ones just now.

CarlaCB, growing secularism is definitely not the root of any ills in the US as some other poster argued. As I said, just look at the stats. The correlation is clear. The more secular a country is the more safe, caring, happy and polite it tends to be.

In terms of Western Developed Democracies, the US is an outlier. We are the exact opposite of the other Western nations in terms of religion. We are roughly 75% religious and 25% atheist. Many Western European countries are 75% atheist and 25% religious.

The world as a whole is majority atheist. Atheism is the fastest growing belief in the US. Which is what's led to the current societal friction in the US. All those people that want to "Make American Great Again" can feel what's happening. They are diminishing. They are striking back blindly.

But this is how societies change. People don't change. For example, very few people stop being racist. They may learn to hide it for their own good but that doesn't change the way they feel. What happens is that the later generations are not racist. Overtime the older people die and are replaced by their children. That's how societies change. People don't change. Societies do.

We are in the middle of one of those transistions. While it seemed like we were post race for a few years, I firmly believed that. I was wrong. We aren't. Trump made it OK to be racist again. What happened? Many stopped pretending they weren't. We still have a long way to go.

I'm using racism only as an example of one of the issues of our time. It's not the only one.

TNTechie, you talk about FBI statistics but you ignore the big one. What's the biggest danger in America today? Is it Islamic terrorism? No. Is it immigrants? No. What is it then? Right wing extremists are the biggest threat to domestic national security. That's the threat in America.

Mass shootings aren't just done by mentally ill people. That's just a right wing NRA talking point. Many mass shooters are perfectly competent.

As long as corporation and the 1% don’t pay taxes, there will not be enough to take care of people.

look back to the 60s....yes, the tax burden on them was much higher than today...that is because they were paying a fair share.

the Uber rich are amassing such a pile of wealth...by transferring the burden onto everyone else. We have more income disparity today than at any time in our history...including the 1880s (the time of the robber baron and laze fair economics)

part of that massive wealth comes from medical care for profit (thank you Ronald Regan). People getting rich by soaking the elderly and the poor.

but, in honesty, I don’t think we as a species has much longer on this planet.

FBI statistics show violent crime of all types in down to the lowest level in more than 35 years.

Twelve (12) times as many people die from knife wounds than firearms and twenty (20) times as many people die from beatings delivered by hands and fists. These ratios also hold true for assaults.

If you think violence is actually increasing in America, then you have drunk the kool-aid, otherwise known as LIES or FALSEHOODS being portrayed by main stream media and certain politicians. Instead of taking some reporter or politician's word for it, how about looking at the actual crime statistics in your city, county, and state. So sorry, but if you live in a big democratic party controlled city with strict gun control then you may see violence in your area is actually increasing. Something like 71% of all counties in the USA had ZERO murders in the last reporting year. Over 92% of counties have less than 5 murders. Violence and murder are problems largely reserved to the large cities and among those large cities, the more gun control the more crime. As a data analyst, the actual cold hard data supports repealing _all_ gun control laws and eliminating all gun free zones without adequate provided security to increase safety. States which have expanded concealed and open carry are universally seeing their firearm violence rates _fall_.

Progressive liberal social justice warriors and main stream media are more responsible for encouraging targeted violence than anyone else, although democratic party officials who not only condone but actually call on people to harness anyone who doesn't share their ideals at restaurants or their private homes and use vial name calling have a big share too. It's okay to assault a 17 year old high school kid because he's wearing a MAGA hat. Really? If you think it's okay to assault anyone because of their ideas or their skin color or who they want to hold hands with then you are the part of the problem.

Tolerance, civility, and respect MUST be for everyone or they are not really there for anyone.

I can't agree that the growing secularization of our country is at fault for the violence and hate. It would seem that way superficially, but followers of organized religion don't seem to be any less hateful or violent than anybody else, at least in this country. If anything, people use religion to justify their inhumanity towards their fellow human beings.

I know a large number of atheists and agnostics. As a whole, we're peaceful, compassionate, humane, honorable people. We don't look to God or the Bible to keep us in line - we use our own internal moral compasses to guide us.

This country is moving in the direction of greater religious influence on government and on our daily lives. I don't think that's a good thing at all. I think the separation of church and state is one of the necessary underpinning of a free and fair society.

The future of this country could be positive.

actually most mass Shootings are done by mentally ill people

Proverbs 18:15

The heart of the discerning acquires knowledge, for the ears of the wise seek it out.

Send,

Love Louis Armstrong. He’s from my city! New Orleans is very proud of his music!