Republicans are out of power now because they allowed businesses
to overcharge and otherwise abuse consumers in a range of areas,
which abuses mounted up and led to the current bank crash and
recession. Many beleaguered Americans felt they had no other option
than to vote for Obama. Republicans derided Obama as the messiah,
but Republican policies are what made voters feel they needed one!
Unaffordably High Medical Costs
Did you ever wonder why there is a nationwide computerized
credit record and scoring system, and yet no nationwide computerized
medical record system? Also wonder why its hard for consumers to
file for bankruptcy, yet businesses are bailed out and their executives
get golden parachutes. You can thank the pro-business, anti-consumer
Republicans for that. Turns out the drug companies have been against the
idea and lobbied against computerized records since such a system would
allow for cost-effectiveness studies of the health care system. Even with
Obama in office, drug companies are spending huge amounts
of cash to fight drug comparison studies:
Merck, Biogen boost lobbying to defy Obama’s drug comparisons, 17 Apr 2009
The above article also mentions how the drug companies have successfully
blocked competition, too:
The companies successfully pushed a 2003 Medicare prescription law that kept the government from negotiating lower prices and blocked repeated efforts to allow the importation of less-expensive drugs from Canada.
As a result, medical costs have ballooned to "$2.5 trillion, or 18 percent of the economy"
(see above article). This made US manufacturing uncompetitive compared to countries
with socialized medical care since health care is factored into the price of each product.
This led to a trade imbalance and outflow of money from the US. Of course, no one was
ever short of credit since foreign countries were more than willing to lend to the US,
but this quickly leads to unsustainable consumer, business and government debt.
Another reason for the high medical costs is the high salaries nurses get because of the
artificial shortage of nurses. It is hard to get qualified faculty to teach nursing because
being a nurse in the field is so lucrative. So in 2008,
50,000 qualified students were
turned away from nursing school due to faculty and building shortages. Of course, if
Republicans had helped build nursing schools, there would be plenty of faculty because
there would be plenty of nurses, and working in the field would not be so lucrative as
to draw away all the nursing teachers! So this is a Republican-made shortage, and also
it drives up medical costs skyhigh.
Unaffordable Housing
The banking industry lobbied to reduce regulation, so no one in Washington really
knew what was going on in the housing market. Soon it was a huge speculative
bubble leading to predatory lending and over-valued houses. When the bubble
burst, foreclosures resulted, and the equity which allowed consumer purchases
vanished. Moreover, many mortgage companies went out of business, and the
banks were bailed out, yet consumers have gotten little to no help with their end
of the bargain.
The mortgage companies remind one of a legalized ponzi scheme where, while
the economy was good, they profited immensely, but when the economy went
bad, they flopped. Ironically, the real criminal ponzi schemes lasted longer through
the recession before they went belly up!
Unaffordable Gas
Pro-business Republicans were against regulating the stock market, and
it turns out that the tripling of the gasoline prices for a year was the result
of a manufactured shortage and panicked futures market speculation.
The unaffordable gas also lead to higher food prices.
Unaffordable Food
Pro-business Republicans thought that ethanol was a good deal even
though scientists said it didn't make environmental sense, and couldn't
survive without government subsidies of 50 cents per gallon. Moreover,
it could never supply more than a few percent of the transportation
needs. Yet more money was poured into ethanol, thereby driving up
food prices since biofuels competed against food crops for fertilizer and
land. This competition eventually did ethanol in since the higher price
of corn led to higher prices for ethanol, so the ethanol subsidy wasn't
enough to sustain the business.
Since the price of gasoline went up, natural gas prices rose in sympathy.
This made ethanol more expensive since natural gas is used to make
fertilizer and also to dry the corn.
Unaffordable Education
The cost of higher education has been rising much faster than the
rate of inflation, often due to predatory lending to students. Schools
found that they could jack up tuition and fees and they'd still have
enough students thanks in large part to federal student loans and
predatory credit card companies. In the 1990s Congress removed
most loan protections for students, and students cannot ever get out
of repaying federal student loan via bankruptcy. So some individuals
end up repaying student loans after they are eligible for Social Security,
with the government automatically deducting the payment from their
checks. Even those who are permanently disabled cannot escape
student loan debt.
Colleges often touted studies that showed college graduates could
afford to take out student loans since they would make so much
more than those who did not attend college. However, those
studies did not take into account that those who made the
astronomical salaries after college probably had no need to take
out student loans in the first place. A more accurate study would
investigate how students who had to take out huge students loans
are fairing after college. This would show that many of them are
in the poorhouse, and often default on student loans and other
forms of debt. Also, instead of showing the average income of
college graduates, only income from salaries should be considered,
and income from all other sources such as the lottery and inheritences
should be factored out. Moreover, only the mean income should be
reported.
So students would take out massive student loans convinced by
their colleges that they would make a lot of money after college.
The banks would initiate the loans to students extracting
hundreds of dollars in fees right off the top, and then turn around
and sell it to federal agencies like Sallie Mae. So the banks could
make huge loans without any risk! This is similar to how banks
made huge subprime loans to low-income debtors
knowing they could resell the mortgages to federal agencies like
Sallie Mae and Freddie Mac. Just as this created a huge housing
market bubble, i.e, incredibly high prices for houses, it creates
unbelievably high prices for college. So, as one can see, once again
the banks, colleges and credit card companies are protected by the
government, while Republicans allow consumers to be preyed upon.
Michael Collinge, or similar books.
Conclusion
After several years of Republic policies, the pigeons came home to
roost. When consumers felt they could no longer afford life, they
voted for a savior, that being Obama.
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related links:
February 26, 2009
Passing the NEED Act of 2009 Would Address Resource Concerns at Schools of Nursing and Spark Future Enrollment Growth
WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--According to new survey data released today by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), less than half of all qualified applicants to entry-level baccalaureate nursing programs were enrolled last year despite calls to increase the number of well-educated registered nurses (RNs) in the U.S. workforce. Though interest in nursing careers is high, the latest data show that almost 50,000 qualified applications to professional nursing programs were turned away in 2008, including nearly 6,000 applicants to master’s and doctoral degree programs.
