Sundog is right, secession is absurd and will never occur. If it did, Texas would likely be a 3rd world country in 30 or 40 years because our education and social services are way substandard and the costs of being a country would drag the economy way way down quite fast. Just having a currency of our own would impose costs that would be onerous for businesses, not to mention customs, immigration, defence, Treasury, etc... Why do you think Quebec never seceded? Taxes would go up and our K-12 education system is poor overall, so the quality of workers would decline over time and people would not move here very much if they had to give up their American citizenship.
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Originally Posted by sundog
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a response to a very real problem - that of some 50 million Americans not having any access to health care. My wife and I would be up the creek if pre-exisiting conditions and caps on coverage were allowed to continue
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Yes, that and if healthcare costs, both private and public, kept increasing at a rate that outpaced inflation by 2X it posed an existential threat to the US economy. That is the primary reason Obama did it I believe, but the only way to properly deal with the issue is extend the pool and make the market bigger by adding the 50 million to it and keep them from using emergency care so much and thus having worse, more expensive conditions, not working productively and dying. He may have miscalculated in not working harder on decreasing unemployment, but the Repubs were cock-blocking him at every turn so even if he had tried that, they basically wanted the economy to not improve to get him out of office. I guess enough of the electorate figured that out and decided to vote.
I get so sick of this "hispanics" and immigrants thing because exactly the same things were said about Germans, Polish, Italians, all Roman Catholics etc... in the 19th and early 20th century. Besides, what are Hispanics? They are a mix of indigenous Americans and Europeans (Spanish mainly) and Spanish are a mix of indigenous Iberians, Germanic tribes and Moors (Africans). They are assimilating quicker than the waves before them and our immigrants today are more mixed than ever so they will be "real" Americans more quickly than ever, it is just that "real Americans" won't be as Protestant and pasty white as before. That has been the trend anyways so what is the big deal?
Social problems will be dealt with when we stop funding wars and fund Pre-K education and healthcare and end the War on Drugs (not saying necessarily legalize it, but however we deal with it other than militarizing it). Obama care isn't the best law, but it ain't the worst and I'm all for improving it with ideas from whatever side actually has good ones. It is in businesses interest to have a healthy populace and in the long run will cost everyone less and result in higher productivity if we are smart about it.
