Well, it looks like the Republicans took last night's elections, and it looks like they might be getting the momentum back to retake the White House in 2012 due to a strong grass roots campaign against Obama and his policies.

     But, if anyone is looking for the Republicans to make any great changes for the better for the majority of citizens in this country once they get back in office, then I highly suspect they are wrong.  The Republicans will try to do what they've always done.  Favor the rich and not do anything much at all to help out the majority of the citizens -- those people making under $30,000 a year to become any better off than they are.  At best, they will try to get Bush's policies (that almost destroyed the country) up and running again and at worst they will actually carry a vendetta against the poorer citizens that helped to get Obama elected.

     One thing we know is that the free enterprise system might be nice in theory, but it doesn't work in reality because most businesses and companies have policies or political structures within themselves to keep most employees from reaching the top and that are heavily in favor of bootlickers, family members, and cronies of those at the top ever being the ones that make it very far in the companies.  Most company health insurance policies at low paying jobs will hardly cover the most routine surgeries and not even begin to pay for any catastrophic illnesses.

     In many ways, The Republicans get by with what they do because they almost have an ingrained sense that the masses of the poor are placid and lazy and will always go along with whatever is going on in society.

     However, this hasn't always been true.  There have been times in our country when the masses of the poor have stood up for themselves. The Union and Company Coalminer Wars.  Times when men like John Dillinger, Jesse and Frank James, Pretty Boy Floyd, and people like Bonnie and Clyde were seen as heroes by many.

      Do you think Republican victory and continuation of old practices that keep the rich rich and the poor poor will wake the poor up this time and lead to the same type of climate in the country that produced the legendary outlaws mentioned above?

America's problem is that we are too right-wing. We are so right wing, in fact, that we go back and forth between more or less right wing politicians and wonder why neither of them can fix our economy.

Its obvious that America will continue to slide as our right-wing government creates an economy that can not compete with the rest of the world. See CIA link below for GDP growth rates, specifically pay attention to the United States verse Europe since we are both developed areas.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2003rank.html

An example of this is healthcare. Not only does government provided healthcare cost less (see link below), but government healthcare is also extremely helpful for business. In Europe, a business doesnt have to worry about health benefits for employees, but in America all employers pay heavily into benefits, so much so that once flagbearers of our economy like Ford cannot compete with other country's auto industries because they pay so much in health benefits and retirement.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_hea_car_fun_tot_per_cap-care-funding-total-per-capita

The United States doesnt have much time left as the world's superpower, and we can no longer ride off of past economic success, good fortune (not having our country destroyed in World War II), and shear numbers. By the time most Americans realize what is happening it will be too late. I guess it is only fitting that since Europe and Asia carried the torch of civilization for so long that they should carry it into the future.

With the last year of policy, I am not sure how you can think this way.

Democrats rule the roost, and every choice they have made, as made the rich richer, and the poor poorer.

It's not a party thing, it's men in power are corrupt. The best way to solve the problem, is to remove the power. It does not matter if they are republican or democrat. None of them, are for you.

Could you give some data to support this claim?

Also, could you, TX, advise which Bush-era laws nearly ruined the country?

Glad to see more threads like these, I've just been reading through old political threads when I was bored.

As I see it, the Republicans are fiscally irresponsible and want to restrict personal rights.

The Democrats want the increase of personal rights, but are also incredibly fiscally irresponsible. Even more so than the Republicans. But that doesn't matter since it's just the lesser of two evils.

See the link I posted, it is a list of total healthcare funding (public and private) per country.  The United States is spending way more for healthcare than countires similar to us, like Europe.  Quality of healthcare is debatable, but no one could argue that America's healthcare is three times better than the United Kingdom (US pays three times more than they UK).

American businesses pay a large portion of their labor costs in benefits.  Ford, for example, owes around $50 billion in benefits to its employees.  Having the government provide benefits would be a simple cost cutting measure for Ford, effectively lowering its labor cost.

Yeah... both parties favor the rich and do nothing for the common man.

So uh... good luck with complaining about the republicans not doing it.

Obama should get reelected though.

The only real worry is that the Healthcare Bill WILL pass. Since it's not supposed to have too many noticeable effects until after 2012 in the optimistic view... yet still will be spending billions for structuring.

Eh.  When it comes to Personal rights it's really a split bag honestly.

I'm not sure Democrats are any more fiscally irresponsible then republicans now either.

The only way to tell the difference between a republican and democrat is where they waste money and what rights they want to take away.

There are no countries similar to us.  We are far bigger then any other country out there. 

Additionally, our government already spends something like 6% of GDP on healthcare on what few people it covers.  If you think there is much savings to be had there... your mistaken.  The US government nearly spends what the UK government does per GDP on healthcare... right now.

There is a reason why the success of government programs seems to correlate with the size of the country.  The smaller your country, the better nationalized healthcare works.