Inflation

Please don't make me look at that. Our president is making it worse by spending our money on stupid things like his broken insurance program, by cutting it from our defense budget and by increasing the national debt. So in this context, he is shoving potato chips in the mouth of America's economy which makes us slow and unable to defend our selves like we used to. Sure we are big in comparison to some, but it would sure feel nice to have a good defense considering there are people in our country and across the world burning our flag and chanting, "Death to America".

@TheAmericanGirl

Yeah, who needs health insurance anyway? What a waste, sick people should just pull themselves up by the bootstraps like a couple random examples of people that managed to do it. We obviously need to spend much more on the military. We aren't quite spending as much as the entire rest of the world put together yet, we only spend 45% of the worlds' military budget, if we only spent a mere $206 billion more per year, we could spend more than everyone else put together! Of course, that's only counting what we spend on our own military, considering how much we spend on our allies' militaries, we're probably much closer.

No, clearly the deficits are the fault of the ACA, spending a few billion each of the next few years is the culprit, not the hundreds of billions a year on defense, or the $1.7 billion spent on the Iraq war. Of course, there must be far fewer people in the Middle East chanting now, right? They all love us there, or is our health care spending still keeping them from the adulation that us invading them certainly must have caused? And ignore that over the next ten years that non-partisan experts believe the ACA will actually reduce the deficit, and the amount it saves will grow from there. We can't afford to save any money, that'll just tempt our government to spend more! And that will hurt the economy because war is peace, and slavery is freedom. So glad you set me straight...

@dumdristig So your saying spending more money is the answer to our debt? What about spending less overall? Is the answer to our over $18 trillion in debt spending more money? We don't even have free health care yet and we spend more on health care than defense overall. The federal government wastes so much money that we don't have. What about creating jobs and perhaps even raise minimum wage above or even at the cost of living expenses. I am not saying that free health care is a bad idea, but in no way shape or form can we afford it. If we had more jobs with better paying wages, not only would we save money from less people dependent on government money, we would also get more taxes and they would be able to pay for their own healthcare. Free health care is something we should strive for, just like free higher education. But we can't afford it right now. Less is more.

@TheAmericanGirl I didn't say it was the answer to debt, nor is it actually spending more money, at least in the longer time frames that people should be thinking, and for debt, the only ones that make any sense to think about. The short-term isn't important for the debt, it's the mid to long term that matters. The status quo before the ACA was definitely not the answer to our debt. The ACA is FAR from perfect, but at least it's a step forward, out of what was an untenable situation. We don't have free health care, yet our government spends more on health care than most countries that do. With what we spend privately, our health care costs are more than double (and it's more than 50% more than the rest) that of 3/4 of the other OECD countries (i.e. the other rich countries). And despite that, we rank below most of those other nations in health outcomes. There is a ton of room for improvement, and the ACA is a step towards that. Hopefully just the first step, but unfortunately, partisan politics have prevented any improvement (and prevented it from being nearly as good a step as it could have been). Still, it is an improvement, it will save the US government about $100 billion over the next 10 years, which, while it will hardly solve the deficit, certainly doesn't hurt. Now, we could easily improve it, and I certainly hope we do, there are many flaws in the bill, but we were in a position where we had almost nowhere to go but up, we had one of the worst health care systems, financially, that you could possibly imagine. Really, we can't afford not to have free health care. It saves so much money, because routine costs are covered, and people don't put things off until there are enormous expenses for emergency treatments which the rest of us usually wind up paying for.

Creating jobs is a good idea, but that doesn't compete with health care, they are complementary. Solving health care will only contribute to more and better jobs, as healthy people are far more productive, and our bizarre ways of paying for health care traps people in dead end jobs, stifles entrepreneurship, and even traps people on welfare (it is very difficult to jump right from unemployment to a job that will pay for health care, but if you take a job as a stepping stone, you lose publicly funded health care, which is a perverse incentive), etc.

@dumdristig @TheAmericanGirl Too many, paragraphs

@minicoopa
Too many, commas

@dumdristig @TheAmericanGirl Because the problem with the budget is totally the relatively small defense budget and not the astronomically expensive broken promise budget.

@Rioluman
Relatively small defense budget? How can consistently spending more than what 2/3 of every other country on the planet spend put together on defense, be a small budget? Compared to what, the Empire's defense budget (I gotta imagine the death star might even be more than we spend on military gadgets). It's a majority of all the discretionary spending in the Federal budget, so in no way is it small...

The broken promises are problematic, but actually, most of the promises that are broken would be more expensive if kept than broken. Many of the promises made are literally impossible, and even more would be disastrous if kept. It is actually fortunate that more promises that have been made weren't kept. It is very unfortunate that the electorate demands such unrealistic or untenable promises. Reelection rates are generally about 90%, and when held accountable, it's generally for under-promising, not over-promising.

@dumdristig Hey, I think @Rioluman is being sarcastic lol. ( I agree with you BTW)

@dumdristig Bingo. Now ACA, insurance, and health care delivery are things I happen to know a thing or two about. In my case, RN doesn't mean Royal Navy. People without insurance would go to the ER for their primary care, basically waiting until they are ill: no wellness visits, no physicals, no vaccinations. If they can't afford to pay, they still get treated, courtesy of the Hill-Burton Act. This is why health care can be so expensive for everyone else. It costs a lot less to prevent illnesses than it does to treat them. Clinic visits with a primary care physician doing wellness care, vaccinations, annual physicals to track patients' health over time and catch conditions before the patients are in a severe state costs a lot less.

When someone gets laid off, they could continue the insurance from their job through COBRA, but that is so horrifically expensive as to be a damned joke. Until the ACA, it was go broke spending your savings on COBRA or go on Medicaid if you can qualify. That coverage and the timeliness of approvals leaves a lot to be desired. With the ACA, it's easier to get coverage similar to what you had at your job but at a premium that's easily doable. It does cover pre-existing conditions, but before this, insurance would cover pre-existing conditions if there has been continuous insurance coverage. So, change from the job's insurance in a timely fashion, and everything stays covered. With the ACA, that panic isn't necessary (but do it anyway to be sure because who knows what Trump will do with the ACA).

I was a case manager in a home health agency having to fight Medicaid to get some of my patients the proper level of coverage for their care. We got it, but government bureaucracy made me go home and swear every night I had to fight. My family has also been on Medicaid when I was in high school and college. It took rather too long in my professional opinion for my stepdad to get his insulin pump.

As for the ACA example? We're living it now. Hubby got laid off. I'm grateful for the ACA.

America looks like hes a kid again <3

Every dog has their day. The American century was LAST century. The British century was the one before that.

@Danelaw and mate , when you are talking about a bit of history , we chinks have had our days all before both of you two :P

@melvyn215 And now its Australias turn!

@Koshee
I doubt it, a more likely candidate is China. But it's possible, and would fit the pattern of global hegemonic power tending to move west (although China would fit that pattern at least as well). How consistent that pattern is, depends on exactly how you define hegemony..

@melvyn215
Yes, indeed, China had great ups, and downs, during its long history, and often was the greatest world power.

@melvyn215 Zheng He's fleet of Mega-Ships managed to extort half of The Pacific AND could have easily have colonized The Americas. If China didn't try to isolate itself then it could have taken over the world ...

@Danelaw
What centuary is this? Turkey, or Russia maybe?

@Danelaw This si the bankers' centuary.

@Danelaw Wonder when the Australian century is

Deflating, surely?

Aww, he's really cute like this c:

@Kyasarin _(:зゝ∠)_

child america best america

@MikoMae Sir, that ain't a child. France, Brother England, or Sister England isn't in this comic.

@PizaTest i mean as in when he is AS SMALL AS a child. i should have specified.

America looks so cute like this ^^

america looks like he's only thirteen

@StevenU He is pretty young. only 238 years old

@SirKibbz i would be lucky to live that old :p

It's so weird seeing America so small.

@AwesomeNorseAmerica But at the expense of China looking less natural.