tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post2805516956071482012..comments2024-03-28T11:33:16.271-05:00Comments on Adventus: "Money Talks"Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-86103366529892250422019-07-31T13:31:31.955-05:002019-07-31T13:31:31.955-05:00Exactly.Exactly.Rmjhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06811456254443706479noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-66810657872356193232019-07-31T12:58:36.107-05:002019-07-31T12:58:36.107-05:00Your last line got me thinking, Sanders and Warren...Your last line got me thinking, Sanders and Warren were asked how they would deal with the problem of unaffordable rents. Warren has a plan to add 3.2 million housing units, Sanders said he would stop yuppies from gentrifying neighborhoods by building luxury condos. One is a solution, more housing should help increase the supply and reduce prices, the other is demonizing a group. As someone pointed out, yuppies aren't going to live in campers if they don't get condos, they will still drive up demand. Even luxury condos increase supply (as long as they aren't displacing anyone). It sounds good to rail against banks, insurance companies, the 1%, yuppies, and they may be right where those groups exercise political power for their own benefit at the expense of the public. But in almost all those cases, the solutions are complicated and it would be more productive to go after underlying causes. Yuppies may (or may not) be part of the housing problem, but so is zoning, transportation, how housing construction is financed, etc. <br />rustypickuphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17861692872132066016noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-53747607528212599162019-07-31T09:26:11.020-05:002019-07-31T09:26:11.020-05:00Bernie this morning, from excerpts last night, kep...Bernie this morning, from excerpts last night, kept painting drug cos. and insurance cos. as the reason we can't have nice things. It's a similar argument to oil companies being the reason we all rely on petro-chemicals in an industrialized world.<br /><br />Aliens didn't invade and force these things on us. We can join the rest of the civilized world and have universal healthcare and control drug prices and lower medical costs; but we can't do it at one stroke of the Presidential pen. Even Medicare wasn't implemented all at once as it stands now.<br /><br />And we aren't going to be there by demonizing some "other" and going after them with rhetorical torches and pitchforks.Rmjhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06811456254443706479noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-69020887054721646342019-07-31T07:58:10.074-05:002019-07-31T07:58:10.074-05:00There are also any number of related issues. What...There are also any number of related issues. What happens to the 800,000 people that currently work for insurance companies providing health coverage? Individually they, and their families will oppose a complete elimination of insurance. A big driver of medical costs are salaries. Ok, pay doctors less. How do they then pay off their med school loans? Who would go to med school and take on that debt if it can't be paid off? Same goes for nursing and other medical fields. California and Massachusetts have their uninsured rates under 5% with aggressive use of Obamacare and state actions. Making Obamacare better and targeting the last 5% seems much more doable without having to tear out root and branch 18% of the economy. Universal healthcare is within reach if we can manage to not trip over our own feet. <br />rustypickuphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17861692872132066016noreply@blogger.com