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Mary Meeker’s eye-popping annual Internet Trends report hits the web

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Re: Mary Meeker’s eye-popping annual Internet Trends report hits the web

#41

Post by newbie12 »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #38
Aloisius wrote: post #27

I find most of her slides interesting, but she circled the area from around 2002 to 2011 on slide 96 as "the biggest peacetime gap between revenue and expenses in USA history." I'm not sure Ms. Meeker is aware, but we are _at war_ right now. For most of that period, we were fighting multiple wars at once. Further, she used the 2010 budget outlook report from the CBO which takes the most pessimistic view that the Bush…

Healthcare falls under entitlements.

That is correct, the two fastest growing entitlements are Medicare and Medicaid.

Re: Mary Meeker’s eye-popping annual Internet Trends report hits the web

#42

Post by newbie12 »

Aloisius wrote: post #27

I find most of her slides interesting, but she circled the area from around 2002 to 2011 on slide 96 as "the biggest peacetime gap between revenue and expenses in USA history." I'm not sure Ms. Meeker is aware, but we are _at war_ right now. For most of that period, we were fighting multiple wars at once. Further, she used the 2010 budget outlook report from the CBO which takes the most pessimistic view that the Bush…

The answer to runaway health care costs is less government, and more innovation and competition.

Re: Mary Meeker’s eye-popping annual Internet Trends report hits the web

#43

Post by Aloisius »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #38
Aloisius wrote: post #27

I find most of her slides interesting, but she circled the area from around 2002 to 2011 on slide 96 as "the biggest peacetime gap between revenue and expenses in USA history." I'm not sure Ms. Meeker is aware, but we are _at war_ right now. For most of that period, we were fighting multiple wars at once. Further, she used the 2010 budget outlook report from the CBO which takes the most pessimistic view that the Bush…

Healthcare falls under entitlements.

Yes, but people like to rally against "entitlements" when they really mean a very specific part of entitlements: healthcare. It is politically dangerous for anyone who swings conservative to use accurate terminology because they've demonized healthcare reform so much.

Re: Mary Meeker’s eye-popping annual Internet Trends report hits the web

#44

Post by Aloisius »

newbie12 wrote: post #42
Aloisius wrote: post #27

I find most of her slides interesting, but she circled the area from around 2002 to 2011 on slide 96 as "the biggest peacetime gap between revenue and expenses in USA history." I'm not sure Ms. Meeker is aware, but we are _at war_ right now. For most of that period, we were fighting multiple wars at once. Further, she used the 2010 budget outlook report from the CBO which takes the most pessimistic view that the Bush…

The answer to runaway health care costs is less government, and more innovation and competition.

Because that's worked so well in which countries?

Do you often shop around for who can give you the best deal on your hip surgery? Would you like it if your insurance agent did?

Re: Mary Meeker’s eye-popping annual Internet Trends report hits the web

#45

Post by Aloisius »

adventureful wrote: post #34
Aloisius wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A ponzi scheme requires intentional fraud. You have to believe you are investing in something real, not simply paying back someone else. Social security is very clear what is going on. It also has mandatory new participants which keeps it from collapsing as well as well understood economic increases. The same thing happens with corporate pension plans, interest on treasury bills and any number of other systems that r…

It's a partial ponzi scheme, but it has nothing to do with the system itself, it has to do with what the Fed is doing to our currency. The people paying in are not going to get all of their money back out of it. The fact that you're going to get a massively debased dollar back for each dollar you put in alone means it's a fraudulent process as it stands today (again due to our government's fiscal irresponsibility). T…

I'm sorry, but claiming inflation is fraud is complete nonsense. Inflation is a sign of a growing economy. It is neither good nor bad. It is however inevitable.

It is not related to fiscal irresponsibility. Sometimes it is due too too much demand and not enough supply driving the cost of goods up (prices are sticky) and other times it is due to underlying company costs going up and raising the prices to keep their profit margin even.

In neither case is it the government's "fault." Most governments around the world try to maintain an inflation rate of 2-3%. This is well understood. Don't keep your wealth in currency. No one sane has for over a hundred years even when we were on the broken gold standard (if you think inflation is bad, you should see what rapid deflation caused by a spike in gold demand followed by a rapid drop in demand does to an economy on the gold standard).

Re: Mary Meeker’s eye-popping annual Internet Trends report hits the web

#46

Post by jsz0 »

adventureful wrote: post #34
Aloisius wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A ponzi scheme requires intentional fraud. You have to believe you are investing in something real, not simply paying back someone else. Social security is very clear what is going on. It also has mandatory new participants which keeps it from collapsing as well as well understood economic increases. The same thing happens with corporate pension plans, interest on treasury bills and any number of other systems that r…

It's a partial ponzi scheme, but it has nothing to do with the system itself, it has to do with what the Fed is doing to our currency. The people paying in are not going to get all of their money back out of it. The fact that you're going to get a massively debased dollar back for each dollar you put in alone means it's a fraudulent process as it stands today (again due to our government's fiscal irresponsibility). T…

A partial ponzi scheme is the same as being half pregnant. I do agree though we have to start being more critical of currency manipulations across the board. We're dangerously close to a pile of monopoly money here. When that facade breaks we're in really huge trouble. (a new dark ages type of huge trouble)

Re: Mary Meeker’s eye-popping annual Internet Trends report hits the web

#48

Post by b1daly »

adventureful wrote: post #34
Aloisius wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A ponzi scheme requires intentional fraud. You have to believe you are investing in something real, not simply paying back someone else. Social security is very clear what is going on. It also has mandatory new participants which keeps it from collapsing as well as well understood economic increases. The same thing happens with corporate pension plans, interest on treasury bills and any number of other systems that r…

It's a partial ponzi scheme, but it has nothing to do with the system itself, it has to do with what the Fed is doing to our currency. The people paying in are not going to get all of their money back out of it. The fact that you're going to get a massively debased dollar back for each dollar you put in alone means it's a fraudulent process as it stands today (again due to our government's fiscal irresponsibility). T…

Attempts to store wealth through currency or other assets are attempts to claim a future share of societies output. Since by definition you are asserting a claim into a scenario in which you might not even be present, there is an inherent tendency for such a claim to be weaker than one based in the present. That's just how it is.

Re: Mary Meeker’s eye-popping annual Internet Trends report hits the web

#49

Post by nnnnnnnn »

Aloisius wrote: post #27

I find most of her slides interesting, but she circled the area from around 2002 to 2011 on slide 96 as "the biggest peacetime gap between revenue and expenses in USA history." I'm not sure Ms. Meeker is aware, but we are _at war_ right now. For most of that period, we were fighting multiple wars at once. Further, she used the 2010 budget outlook report from the CBO which takes the most pessimistic view that the Bush…

Ms. Meeker and I must be reading a different budget (or reading the same budget very differently). Most of the spending budget and budgetary issues fall squarely in the lap of military spending -- which has consistently been the biggest-ticket item for many decades.

A full 20% of federal healthcare related spending goes towards veteran benefits. That's one dollar in five. This is military spending that used to be counted under the DoD budget, but now creates the false appearance that non-military aspects of government are to blame for much of the increased costs. We see ridiculous slides like this, which rank health care for injured soldiers, military pensions and so on as "entitlements" rather than "defense." Other items excluded from the defense/military "20%" figure include (next paragraph quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_S... ):

"Nuclear weapons research, maintenance, cleanup, and production, which is in the Department of Energy budget, Veterans Affairs, the Treasury Department's payments in pensions to military retirees and widows and their families, interest on debt incurred in past wars, or State Department financing of foreign arms sales and militarily-related development assistance. Neither does it include defense spending that is not military in nature, such as the Department of Homeland Security, counter-terrorism spending by the FBI, and intelligence-gathering spending by NASA."

I would suggest that military spending is out of control, has been out of control for a very, very long time. An honest appraisal of federal military expenditures will place it at somewhere near 50% of the entire federal budget.

Re: Mary Meeker’s eye-popping annual Internet Trends report hits the web

#50

Post by sunsu »

Aloisius wrote: post #44
newbie12 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer to runaway health care costs is less government, and more innovation and competition.

Because that's worked so well in which countries? Do you often shop around for who can give you the best deal on your hip surgery? Would you like it if your insurance agent did?

I would LOVE to have information to do that. Sadly, it's almost impossible to actually know how much a procedure will cost. Which is one of the big reasons why things cost soooo much!
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