Well, it happened. Trump is getting a 2nd term. There are many Americans who find this unfathomable. There are people who are deeply saddened and concerned for our country, because they care deeply about America and they find Donald Trump antithetical to the country they thought they were living in. I sympathize with this because I felt the same way the first time he won office. It shocked me to the core, but that's because I was also ignorant about America back in 2016. I thought that character mattered. I thought that we all felt a President should represent the best of our country, the highest standard, and I knew Donald Trump is none of those things. But I was wrong. I needed to reset my understanding of America, and Americans, and I've done my best to do that. Don't get me wrong, I'm still sad this 2nd time around, and I do not believe Trump will be a good president for us. I'm just not shocked at all. It was kinda predictable. So if you find yourself in a stat...
In episode #7 we talked about jobs, but what about the economy as a whole? Which party has a better history when it comes to economic growth? Let me put on my financial adviser hat. Over the five decades since John F. Kennedy was inaugurated, $1,000 invested in a hypothetical fund that tracks the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX) only when Democrats are in the White House would have been worth $10,920 in February of 2012. That’s more than nine times the dollar return an investor would have realized from following a similar strategy during Republican administrations. A $1,000 stake invested in a fund that followed the S&P 500 under Republican presidents, starting with Richard Nixon, would have grown to $2,087 on the day George W. Bush left office. So, if you like a good return on your investments, and I do, vote Obama/Biden. Or to put it in terms my GOP leaning friends might better understand "If you vote Romney/Ryan, you're anti-business!"
Today's stat is a year: 2017. That's the year Medicare will run out of money. 50,000,000 seniors depend on it, so we should probably fix it. Medicare is also a major drain on our budget - right now 21% of our federal tax dollars go to support it, making it just slightly higher than defense spending. So how to the candidates differ? Well, they both agree it's broken, and they both want to tie Medicare spending to a percentage of GDP, meaning as the national economy improves or declines, Medicare spending goes with it. The key difference is this; Obama is a critic of premium support. He would retain Medicare's defined-benefit structure, meaning that the government will pay whatever it takes to cover a specified set of services. Romney prefers a "defined contribution" approach, without actually fixing what's wrong with Medicare. This means, rather than paying whatever it takes, he'll give you a check, and you're on your own if that isn...
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