The Future of the United States

[iNow]

The president will deliver the final annual state of the union address of his first term (and potentially ever if he is not reelected) in about 30 minutes.

 

Watch live online the enhanced stream with charts, graphs, and citations:

 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/state-of-the-union-2012

 

 

 

Discuss below.

What will be the future of the US? Is the vision laid out by the president right or wrong in your view, and why?

[JustinW]

(and potentially ever if he is not reelected)

 

paronoid much?

 

Overall I thought it was a good speach and gave a positive message toward our future. It did seem like he either changed direction or changed his attitude towards a couple of issues. And there were a couple of things that were instituted in one area that should be instituted the same way in other areas. I'll give you some of my origional thoughts though I haven't had time to inform myself to any great length.

It seems that he has at least started thinking about drilling for natural gas in a new light. A couple of years ago he was sending resources to south america for exploration and development of natural gas while not allowing the same within our own country. He denied renewals on off shore rig's drilling permits during the BP spill which put a good number of workers out of a job temporarily. And the support for pipelines recently hasn't been what it should if he does support the field of natural gas development. But that being said I think it is a good thing if his actions can backup his words on this issue. Being in this particular industry for the past few years we have been up in the air on whether he supports the industries growth or not, and it would be a possitive if we had some confirmation on his stance. We have had doubts about his stance and wondered if he would pander to the environmentalists who have been protesting against these drilling and frac companies.

 

 

 

I had a slight issue (but not a big one) with the way he talked about the "American promise" as if it no longer exists and needs to be restored. He states that the defining issue of our time is how to keep that promise alive. Then goes on to say how the private sector has gained over 3 million jobs. I don't understand how this could be the defining issue of our time when the issue wasn't the "American promise", but was how to strengthen that promise. I don't believe that was the defining issue of our time when there were so many other issues that were just as relevant. So, not a big deal, it was mostly the wording that I had issue with.

 

 

 

He talks about fairness as being an American value and restoring an economy where everyone gets a fair shot. A few questions here. Why does he think that not everyone gets a fair shot? And when did fairness become an American value? If fairness is to come into play in our economy where would the line be drawn? I think he could have explained these comments and how they originated a little better.

 

 

 

He had said "We LEARNED that mortgages had been sold to people that couldn't afford or understand them". At the risk of getting into our previous debate on the subject, I will restate that the government (at least in part) mandated this sort of practice.

 

He talked about not backing down from letting health insurance charge women differently than men. I have a problem with that on a personal level. Recently I was paying a little over $500 dollars a month for my family medical insurance. Last quarter that price rose to a little under $850 dollars a month forcing me to drop my wife and find her coverage elsewhere. After dropping my wife but keeping my 3 kids on, the price dropped to a little under 300$ a month. I asked why the price was so different and the answer I got was that a part of Obama's healthcare law went into effect. Now to be fair, I just took this answer for granted and didn't check into the validity of it. But just the price difference alone argues the validity of Obama's statement in the adress.

 

He talks about instituting a Financial Crimes Unit to combat fraud. I think this is fine and somewhat necessary. This is where I think he should institute a similar practice in other areas. For example when he talks about strengthening medicade and social security. Wouldn't a similar institution to combat fraud in those programs be a big step toward strengthening, reining in cost, and insuring that these programs remain a gaurantee for those who need them?

 

As for taxes on millionairs and such, I don't see why a fair tax or flat tax wouldn't be a step toward resolving this issue of class warfare and making those pay their fair share. What do you think about it? It seems that just picking a number on income that is taxed seems as unfair as anything. And for a president to say that fairness is an American value, he could do a little more to make it fair across the entire board instead of picking one number over another.

 

He talked about his "iron clad" commitment to Isreal's security, but not too long ago was caught mocking and calling a liar of Isreal's prime minister with Russia's president. So is our commitment "iron clad", or is it "iron clad" but with reservations.

 

So it seems that his past actions haven't met up with his present phrasing of issues on somethings, but others I thought to be a possitive message. Points like American innovation and research, support of higher education and skill building, immigration, too although he didn't seem to go in too much detail with or I might have began to disagree. But I think the points I raised were small compared to his overall message. So I think it was a decent speach. Let's hope his actions back up his words.

 

Let me know what you think of this assessment and if I might have "jumped the gun" on my assertions.

Edited January 26, 2012 by JustinW

[D H]

The president will deliver the final annual state of the union address of his first term (and potentially ever if he is not reelected) in about 30 minutes.

 

Discuss below.

I saw this speech as pretty much a run of the mill final state of the union address by an incumbent President running for reelection with a Congress that is either divided or belongs to the other party. Presidents of both parties tend to hold back on what they think is the true state of the union until the final speech of their second term. The final speech of their first term is inevitably a campaign speech.

 

This was very much an anti-Mitt Romney kind of speech. Several of Obama's statements were direct barbs at Romney, with not much said against Gingrich or Paul. Obama and his reelection committee would love nothing better than to face Gingrich or Paul. Either one of those two as an opponent would result in very close to a clean sweep for Obama. The campaign will be a lot tougher and the election a lot closer should Romney win the Republican nod.

Edited January 26, 2012 by D H

[JustinW]

Here's another perspective I found interesting.

 

http://tinfoilhatman45.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/why-do-republicans-claim-obama-is-a-socialist-when-the-socialists-wont-claim-him/

[iNow]

The article is a little light on accuracy. For example, Bush began the auto-bailout, not Obama, and also Obama has spoken about avenues to help the economy beyond "increasing corporate profits." The author would also do well to note that health care costs have gone up faster in the private market than under government programs, that healthcare is a domain anathema to private market interests, and that global perceptions of the US have improved DRAMATICALLY since Obama took office after Bush... contrary to the inaccurate claims on which they're basing their screed.

 

Hyperbole is fun, but IMO reality is quite interesting enough without skewing it to meet an ideology or predetermined conclusion.

 

Edit to add: I really don't like how the author consistently equates the Navy Seals with a "team of trained assassins." They do quite a lot more than assassinate, and in his effort to rail against Obama the author winds up disrespecting a really incredible group of people who train and sacrifice themselves each day to protect our country and our citizens.

[JustinW]

Well said and good point. One thing though. How do we know that the world sees us better now than under Bush? It seems like there has been far more threats under Obama from places like North Korea and Iran, not to mention other conflicts like Lybia. Maybe you're right though, I'm not commenting from any information, just some thoughts.

 

Hey you started this thread, what do you think about the state of the union speach? And was there anything wrong with my origional assessment?

Edited February 16, 2012 by JustinW

[iNow]

One thing though. How do we know that the world sees us better now than under Bush? It seems like there has been far more threats under Obama from places like North Korea and Iran, not to mention other conflicts like Lybia. Maybe you're right though, I'm not commenting from any information, just some thoughts.

 

http://www.gallup.com/poll/125720/global-perceptions-leadership-improve-2009.aspx

http://www.pewglobal.org/2011/07/13/chapter-3-global-opinion-of-president-barack-obama/

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/views_on_countriesregions_bt/680.php

 

There are others, too.

 

 

what do you think about the state of the union speach?

I think there is both good and bad, just like with all others from all presidents before him these last 200 years. I agree that we need to reinvigorate our focus on education and opportunity or we're dead in the water as we try as a nation to compete against Singapore or India or China, but I also feel we need to supplement that long-term goal with immediate-term solutions to the housing crisis and unemployment rate.

 

I would like for a huge influx of funding to battery and solar technology, massive support for cars and trucks that don't require petroleum, and huge investments in broadband internet and high speed rail. I'd also like for true universal healthcare and a single payer system to be made an immediate priority... Medicare for all.

 

I agree with the recent moves to withdraw troops from our various hot zones, and find the new DoD investments to be much more strategically focused and better suited for the current threat landscape (computer warfare type stuff). I like the focus on manufacturing, but feel he's missing the point a bit with the idea of insourcing. We are a global economy with customers everywhere, and IMO we in the US really don't want to compete for those assembly of cell phone type jobs... We need to be working on tomorrow's next big thing like energy, not yesterday's technology like building pagers and trying to do so at a lower cost than they can in China.

 

Overall, it was a very populist agenda, much of which I can fully support... Frankly, though... We're in a time now where another new deal is needed, or something akin to the lead up of World War II. Huge movements and investments from the government. We can borrow at historically low rates. We can practically get loans with zero interest (and even some at negative interest where people are actually willing to pay us to borrow from them) and invest in making this country better... in making the livelihoods of our loved ones more available and more sustainable... in making this a better place for our children. We can do that right now if we just have enough of our leaders pull their head's out of their asses and focus on investments with ROI instead of seeing everything as a flat cost. If only they could see that the spending results in greater returns than austerity... If only they weren't so controlled by special interests and lobbyists... If only the system weren't so broken and repugnant and full people looking out for their self-interest instead of the interest of our country and citizens.

 

Ultimately, lots of good ideas. Some about which I'm not so excited. For example, I'm not a fan of more drilling and more oil use. It's so short-sighted, and we'll be paying for it very soon. However, I can also appreciate from a practical standpoint that we're not going to be getting off oil any time in the near future and these efforts will save a lot of money... I just prioritize the health of the planet my children will inherent over saving a few bucks in the present... YMMV, though.

 

The real issue for me is that I want a much more forceful vision than the moderate and tepid one he's putting forth. We're an inflection point in our history, and I'm overall disappointed that our political quagmire is preventing us from seizing the magnificent opportunity available to us. Also, I'm a bit cynical... and frankly IMO no matter what the president proposes, and no matter how good his speech in the SOTU address, congress is going to sit on its hands and use procedural and parliamentary gimmicks to avoid doing any of it. There's nobody flying this plane, and it is infuriated and disheartening all at the same time.

 

 

And was there anything wrong with my origional assessment?

It was your opinion, so I can't say it's wrong. You're welcome to it. I disagree a bit on the comment you made about the American Promise. I see that as very clearly linked to the income inequality and widening gap between the super rich and everyone else. Just a few decades ago, hard work and effort had huge returns in this country, but now it's very aristocratic and (with very rare exception) only those from wealthy families themselves remain wealthy or powerful. There are differences in educational opportunity and in availability of jobs and all sorts of things due solely to where you're born or to which parents. Again, the data shows with immense clarity that this country is no longer rewarding strong work ethics and integrity or creativity the way it should be, and we're lagging desperately behind other countries in even the simple things like child poverty and wellness focus.

 

As for the healthcare comments you made with the fees pertaining to your wife, etc... The explanation doesn't seem to pass the stink test for me that the cost you see is due to the affordable care act... Basically, because much of that legislation doesn't kick in until 2014, so it appears to me more like the insurance company trying to reap as much profit as they can now and then scapegoat the president when people complain... I don't know, though. I imagine there are details about which I'm unaware that are relevant to your situation, so it's hard to say.

 

 

Here's my take away, really... At least he's proposing some good ideas. I may not agree with all of them, but I agree with several. They're intelligent and address some of the core problems we're facing. All the republicans seem to be doing is saying how much they hate Obama and not offering any good ideas of their own (the ideas they tend to offer rather consistently are shown to be crap the moment a few intelligent people evaluate them, and yet they recycle them over and over until they become zombies you can't kill despite repeated debunkings).

[JustinW]

I'd also like for true universal healthcare and a single payer system to be made an immediate priority... Medicare for all.

ooh, touchy subject. I think the intent is good but the program would be just as unsustainable as all the other programs we currently run. Not to mention the impact it would have on the field of medicine. It's hard to believe that a majority of doctors and nurses would want to work for the government.

 

 

I like the focus on manufacturing, but feel he's missing the point a bit with the idea of insourcing. We are a global economy with customers everywhere, and IMO we in the US really don't want to compete for those assembly of cell phone type jobs... We need to be working on tomorrow's next big thing like energy, not yesterday's technology like building pagers and trying to do so at a lower cost than they can in China.

Agree 100%

 

 

There are differences in educational opportunity and in availability of jobs and all sorts of things due solely to where you're born or to which parents. Again, the data shows with immense clarity that this country is no longer rewarding strong work ethics and integrity or creativity the way it should be, and we're lagging desperately behind other countries in even the simple things like child poverty and wellness focus.

I don't know what the statistics show. I guess you probably see more of this in the big cities and such. I'm still living in a time where hard work gets results and lazyness leads to poverty and government handouts. I think it is easier to see that result in smaller communities.

 

 

 

Basically, because much of that legislation doesn't kick in until 2014, so it appears to me more like the insurance company trying to reap as much profit as they can now and then scapegoat the president when people complain... I don't know, though. I imagine there are details about which I'm unaware that are relevant to your situation, so it's hard to say.

Yeah I think they are trying to reap the profit while they can. The major contributor, I think, is the part of the plan that just kicked in about pre-existing conditions. I'm not sure of this though. I just figured that the insurance companies are trying to cover costs of payouts through a hike in premiums. Just speculation though.

 

 

Here's my take away, really... At least he's proposing some good ideas. I may not agree with all of them, but I agree with several. They're intelligent and address some of the core problems we're facing.

Agreed.

[iNow]

ooh, touchy subject. I think the intent is good but the program would be just as unsustainable as all the other programs we currently run.

 

I find myself largely in agreement with the below.

 

 

 

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/03/yes-medicare-is-sustainable-in-its-current-form/

 

I keep seeing people say that Medicare in its current form is not sustainable, as if that were an established fact. It’s anything but.

 

What is Medicare? It’s single-payer coverage for the elderly. Other countries have single-payer systems that are much cheaper than ours — and also much cheaper than private insurance in America. So there’s nothing about the form that makes Medicare unsustainable, unless you think that health care itself is unsustainable.

 

What is true is that the U.S. Medicare is expensive compared with, say, Canadian Medicare (yes, that’s what they call their system) or the French health care system (which is complicated, but largely single-payer in its essentials); that’s because Medicare American-style is very open-ended, reluctant to say no to paying for medically dubious procedures, and also fails to make use of its pricing power over drugs and other items.

 

So Medicare will have to start saying no; it will have to provide incentives to move away from fee for service, and so on and so forth. But such changes would not mean a fundamental change in the way Medicare works.

 

Of course, what the people who say things like “Medicare is unsustainable” usually mean is that it must be privatized, converted into a voucher system, whatever. The thing is, none of those changes would make the system more efficient — on the contrary.

 

So this business about Medicare in its present form being unsustainable sounds wise but is actually a stupid slogan. The solution to the future of Medicare is Medicare — smarter, less open-ended, but recognizably the same program.

 

---

 

And I just read this five minutes ago:

 

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/entitlements-hysteria_b_1284392.html

 

One of the unshakable myths of the punditariat is that the federal government is going bankrupt because of entitlements spending, especially spending on Medicare and Medicaid. Each day we hear the drumbeat saying that either we cut entitlements now or we are finished as a nation. This is a stampede of unreason, contradicted by the facts.

<...>

So what is the source of the hysteria? Some of it is simply propaganda, by those with the political agenda to gut the country's social safety net.

 

But there is something else. Confusion! The punditocracy is repeating the results of forecasts that indeed suggest calamity, but calamity in the late 21st century, not now. These long-term forecasts are arbitrary but have been repeated as an immutable fact by those who don't read the fine print.

<...>

Let's therefore fight the right-wing hysteria demanding immediate and harsh cuts in Medicaid and other health outlays. We do not need to cut off the lifeline of the poor and elderly. We simply need to keep up the pressure against the healthcare lobbies, and resist the panic of the punditariat.

[JustinW]

Actually medicaid was what I was thinking of more than medicare. The projections seem fine with the rate of growth compared to expenditures, but at the state level they still seem to have problems due to mismanagement of funds, constraints on deficit financing and new taxes, and seceptability to unseen systemic risks.(as stated by Harold Pollack- University of Chicago) Pollack argues to make this a federal program instead of state based program. I tend to agree if for no other reason than it would be easier to establish a system to weed out the fraud enveloping the current programs.

As to health care in general I tend to disagree with making it universal for a couple of reasons. The first is that sustainability just doesn't come from the money put into run a program. It's more of a systemic sustainability that I would worry about. Doctors and nurses will no longer have a say in how they are paid and ultimately be subjected to other restrictions. Just look back over the last several years. Doctors were dropping medicare patients by the truck load and medicaid patients at an even larger rate because the government wasn't paying the tab like they were supposed to. I believe with as smart as those in the profession are, that once they are not given a choice, a lot will more than likely find another way to make their money creating a shortage of doctors. With a shortage of doctors we will start running into long waiting periods that begins to have an effect on peoples recovery and level of treatment. I'll admit these scenarios are speculative, but instead of overturning the whole medical system to provide better availability... Why doesn't it sound more reasonable to federalise the current programs, crack down on the fraud and abuse, and provide a structure that promotes the growth and availability of such a program?

[iNow]

My views have become a bit more refined in the last three years, but I did lay them out in some detail at the two threads below:

 

 

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/39753-opponents-of-us-healthcare-reform-lose-battle-on-merits%3B-resort-to-tantrumstheatrics/

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/36691-should-the-us-start-with-the-premise-that-it-will-provide-universal-healthcare/

[JohnStu]

They know nothing about managing a small town, let alone continental union made up of provinces made up of towns, villages, cities made up of people and infranstructure and land made up of cells made up of molecules made up of atoms made up of....., ok I will stop.

[iNow]

Who is "they," and how on earth do YOU know what THEY know?

[JohnStu]

Who is "they," and how on earth do YOU know what THEY know?

 

 

It's classified info I cannot tell sorry.

[Anders Hoveland]

I believe that the biggest change affecting the future of the United States will be changing demographics.

Significant racial differences do indeed exist, and this will have a big impact on the country.

Poverty and crime will increase, and the country will sink further down in world educational rankings.

 

Someone sent me this response in another forum:

 

Has anyone ever wondered why the top 3 in education is always south korea, japan and finland? What could possibly be the link between these countries? It cant possibly be the fact that these 3 countries are the developed nations with the least amount of immigration?

 

 

Im Finnish myself... The finnish education system is copied from sweden Just like everything else in Finland. Because everything we do has its roots in sweden.

 

And yet sweden fails, why? Because of immigration. Its that simple.

 

the fact is that nobody would be talking about the finnish education system if Finland had swedish immigration policies.

 

But hey, keep following the left wing media. In 20 years we can all wonder what magical social policies the japanese are implementing that makes them so much better at everything.

[JustinW]

I believe that the biggest change affecting the future of the United States will be changing demographics.

Significant racial differences do indeed exist, and this will have a big impact on the country.

Poverty and crime will increase, and the country will sink further down in world educational rankings.

Why the change in demographics? Do you see a growth in immigration to the US more than there has been over the past decade or two? I know that some of the liberal dems are talking about amnesty, but I doubt they will get anything passed that is that dramatic. It seems to me that any racial differences that exist in the US have always existed. So why do you feel such a big change in demographic?