Well there is one guy who writes a book for the Presidents, or at least he used too, not sure if he does anymore.

I got it during the Bush vs Gore election.  Or Bush vs Kerry... was fun.

The best candidate in retrospect was Chris Dodd.

The Dodd Frank act is amusing when you find out he was the presidential candidate who received the most donations from Wal-Street and Big Banks on either side.  Which is espiecally telling considering he was never a real contender.

Best candidate for whom?

The fact that it's actually called Dodd-Frank is still just astonishing to me. If a satirist had written that, I'd have said it was a bridge too far.

Entertainment value.

Sorry, didn't mean to make it seem like I thought he'd actually of been the best candidate for the job.

Meant his chapter was the funniest since he was a co-author of Dodd-Frank.  No doubt his contributors did quite well in that bill.

Oh. Yeah. Any idea what the title of that book is? I may have to track down a copy.

I actually did, you just managed to ignore and or strawman

1) Again, stupid, if I wasted my time I'm sure i could find plenty of dumb australian scandals caused by various things.  Like government officials taking bribes to appoint other government officals in the jailing commission.

Doesn't point out the fact that either case is wrong. You're still missing the point here. When  something becomes privatised, it's main objective becomes profit above everything else. That in turn drives plans to generate more profit, in the case of the jailing system, it means finding ways to get more people into prison. The judges is one thing, but these groups are also lobbying for tougher sentencing on petty crimes.

2)  Again, uh... You didn't actually disprove me here,  Nowhere have I argued against anti-monopoly legislation.  It's like argueing that if someone comits malpractice it's okay because "He'd of died without surgery anyway right?  I mean if your against surgery so much!"

You're arguing that less regulation is the way to go. Less regulation leads to cases such as Standard Oil and the prime mortgage crisis. In fact, Australia came out of the GFC relatively unscathed. Want to know why? Bank regulation by the Keating government to avoid this kind of bullshit.

Nice attempt to strawman away from the fact that you were wrong here.  Just curious, how much Telecom research was being done by the Australian government when it controlled the telecom industry? 

When the government privatised Telstra, it had a top quality copper network, and one of the best GSM coverages in the world. After privatisation? No attempts at land line maintenance, and nowwe're paying top dollar to keep a degraded copper network running. GSM coverage has switched to 3G, except a lot will argue that there are a lot more black spots than there used to be. I used to be able to get 100% coverage on the main highway between Sydney and Melbourne. Now it's probably 60% of the time, when travelling close to towns.

The government has had to step in twice since Telstra's privatisation. The first relates to internet. Before government intervention, people were paying $100 for 1.5Mbit with 40GB cap. Now they're forced to provide a theoretical 20Mbit (good luck getting that over their degraded copper line) with 500GB. The second is the degraded network itself. Because of Telstra's refusal to maintain it's own infastructure on the only nationwide copper network, the government now has to build a fibre network itself. This was only 10 years after Howard promised the privatisation of Telstra would lead to a fully competitive system running on fibre network, paid for by the telcos. So where'd that go? Oh yeah! They realised they could price gouge us without having to install fibre. After all, Telstra only made $4 billion PROFIT last year!

the major breakthrough in telecommuncations to Australia in the past 10 years? Probably WiFi, used worldwide now. The inventor? The government funded CSIRO. So where are these breakthroughs that a fully privatised industry is supposed to provide us?

3)  I'd guess so, afterall in the US we don't really have that problem, sure they make a profit.... sometimes (GE actually pays no taxes because it lost so much money before.)  However in the US, we allow private companies to compete with each other, driving prices down.  US Electricity is downright cheap in comparison to Australia... and generally cheap vs the world as far as I can tell. 

We have competition in Australia. The only problem is, the companies are in agreement with each other in order to benefit the entire industry. It's the same deal with fuel here. When oil prices go up, prices immediately go up. When oil prices go down, it takes a month or two before they decide to follow suit. This isn't just one petrol company, it's all of them! Hell we'd even be price goughed by the banks if there wasn't a reulatory Reserve Bank setting the interest rates, despite the banks salivating at the mouth to raise them. Commonwealth bank commonly breaks trends and raises 1/4 - 3/4% above the reserve price. And surely it's justified that they did. I mean after all, they only made a measly $4.7 billion PROFIT in 2009.

4)  So your point is to cherry pick a couple inventions?  Nice job trying to cherrypick and then also try to discount the fact that, like you said, America is improving on everything far far more then any other country... including basically every item you mentioned.

If you want to add more modern medical inventions, feel free to. And the talking point that America improves on everything well....I'm sure you have a ton of sources to back up that claim, too. I mean, to claim that America improves on everything and giving no regard to other countries providing research for more efficient means just sounds plain ignorant if you're spouting it.

Consumer Base is a poor explination when you consider the fact that the US once again, spends more and achives more in research then the rest of the world combined. 

So where's your source on that? I assume you're not just pulling that fact out of your ass like the rest of the conservatives claiming the best healthcare in the world, despite private companies having every right to discriminate against the sick, or tell them "oh bad luck. Despite the years of you giving us your money, we're going to axe you now that you have been diagnosed with cancer"

Actual on topic coming in the next post.  Though i'm done with this part, since it's off topic and I don't need to be strawmanned in offtopic arguements.

Don't be so literal. When I say a few bucks, I mean in relative terms. It's chump change to an employer, but not to anyone who's making, say, less than $30k a year. And as I've said before, the employee ends up paying the employer's share, because that's all figured into the cost of hiring someone and in making the decision as to how much you're going to pay them. But yeah, I'd be glad to save more for my retirement - unfortunately, it's just going to some fucking government boondoggle instead.

Chump change to a company that can make billions in profit each year. Ever wonder how they got to that state? They cut expenses at EVERY corner. Need I remind you the massive wage cuts experienced when WorkChoices was introduced here? They didn't hesitate to screw their employees there, did they? But I guess you'd turn a blind eye to that because itt does not highlight the benefits of your ideology. Companies DO NOT CARE about employee welfare. They care about getting the work done for as cheap as possible. If your job is repetitive, or involves only simple math, I'd be very afraid.

Both sides receive big money from business, but with the 2008 elections Democrats finally eclipsed Republicans for the first time in decades, and Wall Street has already given Obama almost as much towards his reelection as they did in during his entire first campaign. Why on Earth would they do this if they weren't benefitting from his policies? The idea that Republicans are owned by big business while the Democrats are the champions of the little guy is a stubborn piece of fiction, and apparently it doesn't limit itself to just my country.

I'm not saying the Democrats are innocent, either. In fact, this comes back to my previous argument about allowing your politicians to be bought out. Quite frankly, I think even the Democrats are too right-leaning, despite conservative media's attempts to make them look "socialist". The bar has shifted, and Democrats want a piece of the donation pie now, so now you have a centrist-right Democrats, a far-right Republican and an extreme-right Tea Party. Democrats are not a left-wing party. they concede way too much to the Republicans. How did that debt ceiling deal go again? Oh yeah, 100% of what Republicans wanted. And on note of that, does anyone there believe that if a corporation donates billions of dollars to someone, that they wouldn't be the slightest bit inclined to pass laws favouring that donor?

Do you really take Obama's demagoging about private jets at face value? He apparently thought the accelerated depreciation program for private jets was a good enough economic stimulant to include it in his stimulus bill, for which only three Republicans voted out of both houses of Congress - and one of them turned Democrat shortly thereafter. What sort of brilliant and considered economic leadership is this, extending a tax credit one day because it's apparently so critical for economic recovery and then railing against it the next?

And if it's only Republicans who are in bed with Big Oil, BP is really fucking stupid for giving more money to Obama than to anyone else. I mean, I'm opposed to all this shit myself - subsidies and scads of very specific deductions that only benefit the very rich and whatnot - but to squabble over what amounts to a rounding error in the federal budget ($21 billion for oil, I believe) when the house is burning down around us... is nonsense and a total distraction.

I'll turn your attention to my previous point. This sort of shit should be unanimous amongst both sides of politics. If corporate interest fund the people who are supposed to represent you, then they will no longer have your interests at heart. Unfortunately, it's too late for both sides. The only way I can see out of this is if a third party is formed promising to end campaign contributions.

I don't really agree on the urban vs. regional bit, either. Someone in New York City is just as controlled by the feds as is someone in Paducah, Kentucky. They just happen to have NYC's overbearing nanny state bearing down on them as well. At any rate, it would make more sense to me to let state capitals take over before decentralizing further, wouldn't it? How can you have a local government trump the state goverment, but not the federal government?

In Australia, we are the most centralised populace in the world. In each state, the single capital city has nore population than the rest of the state combined. Even if states had the power, do you think regional areas of each state will still have representation? At least at the federal level, the government recognises regional Australia as a whole.

So why has it become like this? One major thing....lack of services thanks to privatisation. You see, private enterprise prefer to spend their money only where they get the most return, in other words, the capital cities. This creates a deadly cycle in which regional people are forced to move into the overcrowded cities, which in turn makes private enterprise even less inclined to invest out in the regional areas. When you have a telco who degrades the country lines after becoming privatised, you get reports of people in country areas dying because their phone failed when trying to call an ambulance. It's been happening more and more often here.

Now, federal government has to step back in to deal with this. A $42 billion National Broadband Network is underway, along with serious talks about a Very Fast Train service used to link regional areas to the cities, promoting decentralisation. Once again, first tackle the imbalances between region and urban within each state, before we talk about giving the states more control.

1) Actually I didn't dig myself into a hole, it's just, you don't know dick about how Social Security works.   Social security DOES take in how much you paid.  That decides how much you get paid monthly.  Until you die.  It doesn't actually matter how long you live though... so once you pass what you should be entitled to from social security you can keep collecting... and most people do.  Hence the systems impending collapse.   This isn't accounted for in FICA taxes or mentioned by the Democrats, because if it was, they would lose a ton of votes for raising taxes.

And how will the private ssytem fix this? List me one thing that cannot be implemented on social security than would be on a private scheme (besides being robbed of your money by investors).

2)  Privitization can cause the collapse to happen slower and in parts and make sure that people have retirement funds by gradually increasing the amount of Fica that can be put in private funds.

So why not allow that gradual increase on social security? Why does a new system even have to be implemented? If anything, a private system would put even more pressure on a tightened system already, especially if investors are demanding a high return. Look at the superannuation scheme here, similar to what you're proposing. People are starting to LOSE savings in their superannuation accounts, despite 9% of their income going in weekly. And, for example, who owns the big mobs who reap big profits, yet socialise the losses across superannuation funds? The banks. Colonial First State is owned by the Commonwealth Bank, which you probably saw in my previous post reaped $4.7 billion in profit in 2009.

3) Again, take note that the government bonds don't really have a 5% yield.  This isn't like Denmark where the country invests the money it gets into a pension fund full of stocks and bonds.  Quite literally all the US government does is buy government bonds from itself promising to pay back the money with 5% interest.   What do you think would happen if you took your retirement money, and used it to buy yourself "Fordy Bonds" that say "In 40 years I plan to pay back this money with 5% interest" then went out and bought a TV.  This is literally the case,  Social Security would be more effective if the law said "You must keep the same percentage of taxes in your savings account until you are 67 years old."

So instead of using that money to stick inside the treasury or fund here and now promises on a defective budget, why not put a vast amount into public investment, to a point where the interest accumulated would make up for the surge of aging population generated by the boomers for the next 30 years or so? I mean, it's been done in other places and shown it's successful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Fund

That doesn't sound like a fault of social security. It sounds more like a fault of bad finance and budget management, and using social security as the scapegoat.

4) Actually that's what he planned to do.... without the compromise.  He established the fact that the minute we can't pay our bills... america's seniors are scerewed because social secutiry is a messed up broken program that needs to be abolished.

Source, or speculation?

5) Extremely, which is why it needs to go.  It's worse then having no system.  It's no better then having a too liberal deregulation, where you loosen up buisness regs but still keep all the buisness deductions and bonuses.

So in other words, the only way to fight a too far right-leaning welfare system is to replace is with an even further far right-leaning welfare system? Please give me your logic on that? And worse than having no system? Cmon, if you were retired now, you would not pick nothing over something.

6) People can still afford to buy shit.  The US still has a higher Median per capita income PPP then the vast majority of countries in the world.    Median, being not effected much by the rich having way too much,  Per capita being per person, and PPP meaning adjusting for how much thigns cost.

Your fallacy here is that you're taking the MEDIAN income per capita, without regard to the proportions of where that income is situated. In the past 2 years, more and more of the percentage of total income has been going towards the top 10% of income earners. This imbalance produces a skew in which ultimately, the poor are worse off once inflation is taken into account. The problem that conservatives miss is, once welfare services are cut to these people, that gives them even LESS to spend in an already stagnant economy. Sure the rich have more, but they're not game to invest it in an economy that does not guarantee a return without a higher-than-normal risk of losing the lot.

This is true even when you consider Median Disposable household income... so no, government healthcare and the like doesn't help other countries cases enough.  The people in the US can afford more shit then the people in Australia can for example.

But I'd be willing to bet that a higher percentage of the Australian population has enough income to be useful, spending consumers than America does. For starters, you have 10% unemployment to our 4%. Second, our rich:middle:poor ratio is a lot more balanced, and despite having expenses more than the US, our GDP per capita is roughly the same, which already puts the poor and middle income earners on a better foothold thanks to the ratio. A healthy economy is when the entire populace can partake in spending, not just the high-middle and the rich. After all, the spending NEEDS are what can ensure economic safety. Put pressure on the spending needs on the poor and that's a fraction of your economy not running efficiently.

EDIT: On the note of more affordability, yes we pay more in expenses, in order to ensure a general well being throughout the community. It's the australian idea of a true "fair go", "not leaving your mates behind", and coincides with our thoughts of mateship. From what I can gather on your ideology, it seems more like an "every man for themselves" setup.

1) All of it can't be implemented in the current system because of how Social Security is built.  Social Security has zero saved funds.  If you want to kill it, then replace it with a better system, that would make sense, but there is no point in reforming a car into a boat.

If you own a car, yet use it to transport heavy loads around, truc weights and such, does that mean the car is broken? No, it means it's being used for the wrong purposes. Social security has no problem with collecting, but the problem with the paying stems from the middle part which is broken, and that's spending what should be saved.

2)  Again, there is no saved funds to make this work and the US government democrats included does not want to be in the buisness of being involved in real investments.

They want to be involved in the here and now with little regard to the future, because the here and now is where votes are. That includes both sides of politics.

3)  That more or less is what they do with the money... and it hasn't work.  Infrastructure funds largely get wasted on roads that go to nowhere because every congressmen is making proposals and to get road money you have to have a plan.

No. Your previous two answers just stated that has zero savings. You cannot have it both ways. So which is it?

While Education is screwed due to an oversimplified focus on passing standardized tests to make sure you keep public funding leading to teaching of only what's on the test and nothing useful, and in other cases outright fraud.

Which is why you keep the criteria broad so they cannot focus on small parts. In fact, make the questions realte to knowledge on the field, not just a carbon copy of a question from a textbook. I'm not sure how corruption can take place with this, since our side requires independent adjudicators to be present on site when testing is performed, and only they are able to handle such documents for relay.

4) Exact Quote "No, I can not promise that social security checks will go out in August if we don't reach a deal". 

Taken out of context, considering it was said during questions about the effects of the Republicans holding the government hostage, and whether government services will be able to resume as normal. Let's not stoop to Fox News level of quoting here....

5)  If I were retired now and extremly selfish i would.  Of course, if I was Greek and retired I'd be for running their government into the gutters some more so I could live comfortably too.  Well actually I take that back.  If I were retired now, i'd want social security to end, while taking care of those who paid into it their entire lives.  Which is what I want now actually.

I've already stated before that no matter what the outcome is, if social security goes or not, the American people better not lose their money over it, the money they spent their lives putting into it. I'm still in disagreeance of what needs to happen, whether fixed or replaced, but I will agree that if government suddenly say that social security has ended and all money put in has dried up, there will be riots that make London's look like a Sunday picnic.

6)  Actually I'm not commiting a falacy... as the whole point of a Median income is that it isn't much effected by the rich getting more and more money.

Basic math. If you increase the maximum in a series, the median will rise. That just gives the false impression that the numbers in the series that didn't change (middle and lower values) are better off than before.