"Not needing a job for healthcare and looking at the possibility of 3 years of unemployment insurance, it seems attractive to me to be unemployed for some time."

Assuming the healthcare is sufficient to keep you in your current state of health and the unemployment insurance is sufficient to keep you in your current fiancial position. - then yes, your point is well taken.

"The key is to lower expectations (even without socialist nonsense this is wise in the US), and hedge bets. Don't just hold the swiss franc (FXF); hold the aussie $ (FXA), and euro (FXE). Buy FAX to get debt exposure to the more dynamic far east."

In other words, lower your standard of living and weather the economic turmoil until things get better. Sound advice.

"Nothing's easy, but no one said it would be. Smart, flexible people will do fine and will decline to have their pockets picked by self-righteous do-gooders."

Assuming they don't create sufficint draconian requirements which pick your pockets no matter what you do...or in point of fact turn completely communistic, at which point, they will take your funds whether you like it or not. However, I may in fact be too pessimistic after all.

We'll see.

But the bipartisanship is on the side AGAINST the healthcare bill! There's 50 Democrats in the House who say they will vote against this stupid bill...and ANOTHER bipartisan group in the Senate who will do the same.

There's not going to BE any reform. The bill in question is economically unsound, per the CBO, and when Pelsoi allowed it to be read (because of the circus from the previous bill), everyone saw what was in it and were horrified. Case in point was page 16 which caused all kinds of heartburn!

Bottom line is, it looks like this bill has a snowball's chance in H@ll and I for one am THANKFUL!

Obama doesn't WANT to tell you what he's selling...he just wants you to buy it, sight unseen. After all, you trust him don't you?

Sorry but we did that with the first stimulus and haven't seen squat. NOT going to happen this time. THIS time, we are going to KNOW what's in the bill BEFORE it's voted on! OR we are going to have a lot of unhappy citizenry extremely angry at their representatives!!

GROW UP people! Your state has for YEARS been living on borrowed time because you've become so spoiled! You don't want to drill for oil or make your own power plants - better to let someone ELSE have that in their state and we'll buy it from them...except that the cost got too high and you had brownouts and blackouts. And what did you do? Instead of addressing the problem you complained the government wasn't doing it's job!

Worse, you increase your taxes over and over again, driving businesses AWAY from your state and adding to your financial woes.

NOW, your state is essentially bankrupt and you whine that the federal government isn't bailing you out and that the rich in your state aren't paying their fair share.

Stop whining, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, MAKE your government be more fiscally responsible, and cut taxes to lure businesses BACK to your state, and you'll be fine. It'll take a few years, but you'll make it back...IF you're willing to work for it!

I have a better question for you.

You don't like how inefficiently we "spend enormous amounts of money of military systems and unnecessary wars" --- so WHY are you so willing to let the SAME people run the healthcare system in our country???

bernbart,

"California needs to dramatically readjust how they collect taxes and spread it over 1/3 property taxes, 1/3 sales tax and 1/3 income. Right now income is the biggest tax revenue, and incomes are down. I saw no cuts to our prisons. Prison guards make even more than many college professors in the CSU system.

Or problem is the NO TAX republicans. Cutting basic Social programs, and education just leads to future costs elsewhere."

Sounds like your fishing for a reason for this problem. The problem is overtaxation and businesses leaving. Haven't you noticed a mass-exodus of businesses and wealthier people lately? California's tax base is dwindling while their taxes and spending increases. It was almost inevitable that California would go bankrupt.

It's people don't want an increase in taxes because they already pay far more than most now. The only way to get out of this is to reduce the costs by cutting expenditures wherever you can and to make the state government be fiscally responsible. Cutting taxes would probably intice businesses to return as well, which would increase the tax base again.

"It pretty stupid to expect immediate results from the stimulus plan. It's long term, and designed to suppose to work over several years."

Indeed - yet it was Obama who said it would take effect immediately. Oh and he also said he misread the economy...another error on his part, yes?

"I also think it is stupid to rush a health care plan through until it is clearly thought out. I would expect them to pass a plan that has a 3-5 year transitional componets to a national health plan."

Oh now I would agree with this, except that most things the government tries to handle cost more, is less efficient and is generally not adequate a majority of the time. I personally like the plan to make health care accounts for people. It at least gives the people control over their health care.

"Citizens of the U.S lack a collective conscience, it's all about "me" and selfihsness."

Point taken, but if people would take responsibility for themselves, we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. It's not a lack of collective conscience, it's a nanny-government conscience that seems to be prevalent now.