The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.
You can either have a system where the majority of the population receives amazing healthcare, but the extremely poor are left to suffer. <- Capitalism
Or you can have a system where the majority of the population receives terrible healthcare, but the poor receive slightly better healthcare. <- Socialism
No. This idea of capitalism and socialism is simplistic and wrong on both fronts.
There does not exist a free market healthcare system that actually works. The one we have in America is so terrible because we had to institute some of the most ridiculous regulations because healthcare companies were screwing over their customers as much as they could. They still are. The health insurance industry is right now is basically competition on who can screw over their customers more and avoid doing their job so that they can lower premiums.
Socialized healthcare provides way better healthcare at way lower cost. That's just empirical fact.
The fact is when capitalism works, everybody wins. When socialism works, everybody wins. When they don't work, some win, some lose, maybe everyone loses.
This isn't a war between capitalism and socialism. This is about developing systems that better the general public. All that matters is that the system works.
Honest question... how old are you/what do you do?
I just have a hard time understanding why you think these are sound arguments.
20 and a college student, who is also working part-time.
It is a sound argument, you have to look at both the positives and the negatives of everything, not just the positives.
Basically, one of your European politicians (Winston Churchill) put it best:
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.
You can either have a system where the majority of the population receives amazing healthcare, but the extremely poor are left to suffer. <- Capitalism
Or you can have a system where the majority of the population receives terrible healthcare, but the poor receive slightly better healthcare. <- Socialism
this leads us to the conclusion that there could possibly be some middle-ground here though.
On October 23 2012 08:59 Souma wrote: Pro-lifers don't really care about life. If they did we'd have single-payer healthcare already.
Well since you are picking a fight...
Why is that? Are you suggesting that a single-payer system is the only system demonstrated to work well?
Because supporting personal responsibility makes you pro-death.
because funding E.R. rooms to deal with uninsured costs you more money than just helping the people to begin with, so the idea that its cheaper makes no sense.
because you privatise your health, leading to a conflict of interests, the company doesnt care about keeping you alive except so that you can pay more premiums, if your healthcare becomes too expensive they can and will cut you off.
because privatisation of healthcare increases premiums because profits dont just come from thin air.
you can try and run personal responsibility all you want, some kind of reward structure of people who dont fuck up their own lives (aka heavy taxation on alcohol or drugs) but to spite the people who have made mistakes, or hit a rough patch for no other reason than to be spiteful is idiotic. great, they havent taken responsibility, but by sticking to your principles you are just costing yourself more in taxation to fix the problem rather than the cause.
this is why americans pay twice as much per person to fund just medicare and medicaid than the british pay to fund the entire NHS. while all progressive countries are living in the real world, accepting that people will be people and working on prevention and education (because its cheaper than fixing problems after they come up) the US is happy to spite itself just so that people like you get to say 'i told you so' to the poor guy with no insurance.
Why should the poor receive ER care? Remove treating the uninsured and you have the cheapest healthcare system in the world and the best quality ever; win-win.
It's amazing how little you care for people once they've been born.
You misunderstand, I don't care about people before they've been born either.
On October 23 2012 08:59 Souma wrote: Pro-lifers don't really care about life. If they did we'd have single-payer healthcare already.
Well since you are picking a fight...
Why is that? Are you suggesting that a single-payer system is the only system demonstrated to work well?
Because supporting personal responsibility makes you pro-death.
because funding E.R. rooms to deal with uninsured costs you more money than just helping the people to begin with, so the idea that its cheaper makes no sense.
because you privatise your health, leading to a conflict of interests, the company doesnt care about keeping you alive except so that you can pay more premiums, if your healthcare becomes too expensive they can and will cut you off.
because privatisation of healthcare increases premiums because profits dont just come from thin air.
you can try and run personal responsibility all you want, some kind of reward structure of people who dont fuck up their own lives (aka heavy taxation on alcohol or drugs) but to spite the people who have made mistakes, or hit a rough patch for no other reason than to be spiteful is idiotic. great, they havent taken responsibility, but by sticking to your principles you are just costing yourself more in taxation to fix the problem rather than the cause.
this is why americans pay twice as much per person to fund just medicare and medicaid than the british pay to fund the entire NHS. while all progressive countries are living in the real world, accepting that people will be people and working on prevention and education (because its cheaper than fixing problems after they come up) the US is happy to spite itself just so that people like you get to say 'i told you so' to the poor guy with no insurance.
Why should the poor receive ER care? Remove treating the uninsured and you have the cheapest healthcare system in the world and the best quality ever; win-win.
It's amazing how little you care for people once they've been born.
You misunderstand, I don't care about people before they've been born either.
On October 23 2012 09:38 turdburgler wrote: guns lead to an increased chance of being involved in gun violence? tax guns! getting too much cancer? tax cigars!
I'm sorry, but I really must point out a couple of these fallacies. Guns don't lead to violence and if anything, owning a gun decreases your chances1 of being attacked by a mugger, rapist, burglar, etc.
please show me any study that indicates guns lead to less violence?
On October 23 2012 09:30 BluePanther wrote: Had a discussion with someone today.
Flat Tax + Negative Income Tax.
Thoughts?
I still want an answer to this btw.
I posted this before:
Example? I remember Jonny mentioning something like, tax a flat rate across the board, say 30%, but also subtract like $30K afterwards for each person.
On October 23 2012 09:39 Swazi Spring wrote: Basically, one of your European politicians (Winston Churchill) put it best:
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.
You can either have a system where the majority of the population receives amazing healthcare, but the extremely poor are left to suffer. <- Capitalism
Or you can have a system where the majority of the population receives terrible healthcare, but the poor receive slightly better healthcare. <- Socialism
I think you need to learn more about the problems that plague healthcare, particularly at the lower levels. Despite the fact there is a dispute over the means of change, I think both sides recognize the need for change. Our system has serious problems.
I acknowledge a positive thing about single-payer healthcare. The poor do generally receive better treatment than they would if they were uninsured.
On October 23 2012 03:31 Swazi Spring wrote: [quote] You can't really deny how anti-American Obama has been though. He's perhaps the most anti-American and unpatriotic president we've ever had. I saw an interview with him where he was asked whether or not he supports American exceptionalism, and he used a cop-out; he claimed he "wrote a paper supporting American exceptionalism in college," yet he has refused to publicly release the paper.
I do not believe Obama views America as the greatest country ever, he doesn't even view America as a fundamentally "good" country. There's not really a word in American politics to describe the foreign policy of Obama, but I think the 2016 documentary summed it up pretty well; Obama is anti-colonialist, and he views America as an "evil" colonial power.
I think the best way to be "pro-American" in the 21st century is to be anti-American imperialism/colonialism.
How so? You do realize that America is the only thing holding the world together right? If we adopt an isolationist/non-interventionist foreign policy, then our enemies will begin expanding (even more so than they currently do).
Edit: Sorry, I seem to have double posted.
When your enemies are stateless and directly use your colonialism and imperialistic nature as propaganda to recruit followers, adopting a less aggressive foreign policy will not cause enemy expansion.
I see, well we seem to agree on something then. I am opposed to useless wars like Iraq and Libya, and if by imperialism you are referring to non-sense like that, then I am opposed to it. I do however support making sure that America remains a superpower and the leader of the world; including having military bases and naval fleets around the world. However, as I mentioned earlier, I am opposed to fighting useless wars which do create stateless enemies (terrorists) like Iraq and Libya.
I think you'd find Obama agreed with you on all those counts, so I'm not sure why you'd characterize him as "anti-American." Most of his and Biden's campaign rhetoric has revolved around not appropriating more money than the military is currently requesting, not gutting it and killing off all military bases (which is constitutionally prohibited without treaty renegotiation).
He has apologized for America's greatness on numerous occasions
I'd like a source on this so I can taste how strong that Kool-Aid your drinking is. Just one source of Obama "apologizing for America's greatness".
Apologizing for the blatant travesty that was the invasion of Iraq is completely warranted. We invaded on completely false pretenses and there was really no justification for it. The same goes for other countries that we're in/have been in recently. Our presence has caused an incredible amount of trouble.
Dropping atomic bombs on Japan was one of the most heinous and evil acts that humanity has ever committed. You deserve no respect if you think that it was OK to kill that many civilians with bombs, especially since it was intentional.
And apologizing for hate speech isn't apologizing for freedom of speech. You have the most distorted vision of reality...
I find it difficult to justify an apology when I don't think there was a better alternative.
But we're really dredging up the past with this issue.
On October 23 2012 09:30 BluePanther wrote: Had a discussion with someone today.
Flat Tax + Negative Income Tax.
Thoughts?
Example? I remember Jonny mentioning something like, tax a flat rate across the board, say 30%, but also subtract like $30K afterwards for each person.
I actually really like this plan, and I'm surprised I haven't heard it before. The numbers/ percent need to be worked out, but it seems very viable. 30%, 30K means a guy who makes 100K pays no taxes...
Example? I remember Jonny mentioning something like, tax a flat rate across the board, say 30%, but also subtract like $30K afterwards for each person.
A quote from wikipedia that should give you the gist of it:
One model was proposed by Milton Friedman, as part of his flat tax proposals. In this version, a specified proportion of unused deductions or allowances would be refunded to the taxpayer. If, for a family of four the amount of allowances came out to $10,000, and the subsidy rate was 50% (the rate recommended by Friedman), and the family earned $6,000, the family would receive $2,000, because it left $4,000 of allowances unused, and therefore qualifies for $2,000, half that amount. Friedman feared that subsidy rates as high as those would lessen the incentive to obtain employment. He also warned that the negative income tax, as an addition to the "ragbag" of welfare and assistance programs, would only worsen the problem of bureaucracy and waste. Instead, he argued, the negative income tax should immediately replace all other welfare and assistance programs on the way to a completely laissez-faire society where all welfare is privately administered. The negative income tax has come up in one form or another in Congress, but Friedman opposed it because it came packaged with other undesirable elements antithetical to the efficacy of the negative income tax. Friedman preferred to have no income tax at all, but said he did not think it was politically feasible at that time to eliminate it, so he suggested this as a less harmful income tax scheme.[4][5]
Basically you can set a floor, say the poverty line. For every dollar you earn below it, you receive 50% of that. Everything over it gets taxes at a flat (or potentially logarithmic) rate. Personally I prefer the log tax, but there is something to be said for both.
On October 23 2012 08:59 Souma wrote: Pro-lifers don't really care about life. If they did we'd have single-payer healthcare already.
Well since you are picking a fight...
Why is that? Are you suggesting that a single-payer system is the only system demonstrated to work well?
Because supporting personal responsibility makes you pro-death.
because funding E.R. rooms to deal with uninsured costs you more money than just helping the people to begin with, so the idea that its cheaper makes no sense.
because you privatise your health, leading to a conflict of interests, the company doesnt care about keeping you alive except so that you can pay more premiums, if your healthcare becomes too expensive they can and will cut you off.
because privatisation of healthcare increases premiums because profits dont just come from thin air.
you can try and run personal responsibility all you want, some kind of reward structure of people who dont fuck up their own lives (aka heavy taxation on alcohol or drugs) but to spite the people who have made mistakes, or hit a rough patch for no other reason than to be spiteful is idiotic. great, they havent taken responsibility, but by sticking to your principles you are just costing yourself more in taxation to fix the problem rather than the cause.
this is why americans pay twice as much per person to fund just medicare and medicaid than the british pay to fund the entire NHS. while all progressive countries are living in the real world, accepting that people will be people and working on prevention and education (because its cheaper than fixing problems after they come up) the US is happy to spite itself just so that people like you get to say 'i told you so' to the poor guy with no insurance.
Why should the poor receive ER care? Remove treating the uninsured and you have the cheapest healthcare system in the world and the best quality ever; win-win.
It's amazing how little you care for people once they've been born.
quoted for truth, it's really fascinating (and scary) how prevalent this perverse notion of "pro-life" is
On October 23 2012 09:30 BluePanther wrote: Had a discussion with someone today.
Flat Tax + Negative Income Tax.
Thoughts?
I still want an answer to this btw.
The feasability of this system depends entirely on how much of the population you wish to give money to and how we want to go about this. Do we want only the very poor to receive gov't funding, or everyone below middle class to receive it? A negative income tax could help reduce social inequality but to make it work and maintain the current expenditures of most governments, taxes would have to be raised a fair bit in my opinion. Of course it could also work if you cut a lot of spending I geuss but I don't see that happening.
On a sidenote I generally support a progressive tax code
On October 23 2012 08:59 Souma wrote: Pro-lifers don't really care about life. If they did we'd have single-payer healthcare already.
Well since you are picking a fight...
Why is that? Are you suggesting that a single-payer system is the only system demonstrated to work well?
Because supporting personal responsibility makes you pro-death.
because funding E.R. rooms to deal with uninsured costs you more money than just helping the people to begin with, so the idea that its cheaper makes no sense.
because you privatise your health, leading to a conflict of interests, the company doesnt care about keeping you alive except so that you can pay more premiums, if your healthcare becomes too expensive they can and will cut you off.
because privatisation of healthcare increases premiums because profits dont just come from thin air.
you can try and run personal responsibility all you want, some kind of reward structure of people who dont fuck up their own lives (aka heavy taxation on alcohol or drugs) but to spite the people who have made mistakes, or hit a rough patch for no other reason than to be spiteful is idiotic. great, they havent taken responsibility, but by sticking to your principles you are just costing yourself more in taxation to fix the problem rather than the cause.
this is why americans pay twice as much per person to fund just medicare and medicaid than the british pay to fund the entire NHS. while all progressive countries are living in the real world, accepting that people will be people and working on prevention and education (because its cheaper than fixing problems after they come up) the US is happy to spite itself just so that people like you get to say 'i told you so' to the poor guy with no insurance.
Why should the poor receive ER care? Remove treating the uninsured and you have the cheapest healthcare system in the world and the best quality ever; win-win.
It's amazing how little you care for people once they've been born.
You misunderstand, I don't care about people before they've been born either.
On October 23 2012 08:59 Souma wrote: Pro-lifers don't really care about life. If they did we'd have single-payer healthcare already.
Well since you are picking a fight...
Why is that? Are you suggesting that a single-payer system is the only system demonstrated to work well?
Because supporting personal responsibility makes you pro-death.
because funding E.R. rooms to deal with uninsured costs you more money than just helping the people to begin with, so the idea that its cheaper makes no sense.
because you privatise your health, leading to a conflict of interests, the company doesnt care about keeping you alive except so that you can pay more premiums, if your healthcare becomes too expensive they can and will cut you off.
because privatisation of healthcare increases premiums because profits dont just come from thin air.
you can try and run personal responsibility all you want, some kind of reward structure of people who dont fuck up their own lives (aka heavy taxation on alcohol or drugs) but to spite the people who have made mistakes, or hit a rough patch for no other reason than to be spiteful is idiotic. great, they havent taken responsibility, but by sticking to your principles you are just costing yourself more in taxation to fix the problem rather than the cause.
this is why americans pay twice as much per person to fund just medicare and medicaid than the british pay to fund the entire NHS. while all progressive countries are living in the real world, accepting that people will be people and working on prevention and education (because its cheaper than fixing problems after they come up) the US is happy to spite itself just so that people like you get to say 'i told you so' to the poor guy with no insurance.
Why should the poor receive ER care? Remove treating the uninsured and you have the cheapest healthcare system in the world and the best quality ever; win-win.
It's amazing how little you care for people once they've been born.
You misunderstand, I don't care about people before they've been born either.
For whom do you care?
Is it wrong that I do not have an answer to this?
No, it just shows me what kind of voter you are and how much your view is worth.
On October 23 2012 08:59 Souma wrote: Pro-lifers don't really care about life. If they did we'd have single-payer healthcare already.
Well since you are picking a fight...
Why is that? Are you suggesting that a single-payer system is the only system demonstrated to work well?
Because supporting personal responsibility makes you pro-death.
because funding E.R. rooms to deal with uninsured costs you more money than just helping the people to begin with, so the idea that its cheaper makes no sense.
because you privatise your health, leading to a conflict of interests, the company doesnt care about keeping you alive except so that you can pay more premiums, if your healthcare becomes too expensive they can and will cut you off.
because privatisation of healthcare increases premiums because profits dont just come from thin air.
you can try and run personal responsibility all you want, some kind of reward structure of people who dont fuck up their own lives (aka heavy taxation on alcohol or drugs) but to spite the people who have made mistakes, or hit a rough patch for no other reason than to be spiteful is idiotic. great, they havent taken responsibility, but by sticking to your principles you are just costing yourself more in taxation to fix the problem rather than the cause.
this is why americans pay twice as much per person to fund just medicare and medicaid than the british pay to fund the entire NHS. while all progressive countries are living in the real world, accepting that people will be people and working on prevention and education (because its cheaper than fixing problems after they come up) the US is happy to spite itself just so that people like you get to say 'i told you so' to the poor guy with no insurance.
Why should the poor receive ER care? Remove treating the uninsured and you have the cheapest healthcare system in the world and the best quality ever; win-win.
It's amazing how little you care for people once they've been born.
quoted for truth, it's really fascinating (and scary) how prevalent this perverse notion of "pro-life" is
I think that very soon I will make a blog called: "The Pro-Life Dilemma" where I will try to detail these objections and the pro-life perspective of them. until then, I will leave you with a simple word that it is never so simple as it seems. the pro-life position is sometimes at odds with itself, but it is not nearly so self-contradictory as it's being made out to be.
On October 23 2012 08:59 Souma wrote: Pro-lifers don't really care about life. If they did we'd have single-payer healthcare already.
Well since you are picking a fight...
Why is that? Are you suggesting that a single-payer system is the only system demonstrated to work well?
Because supporting personal responsibility makes you pro-death.
because funding E.R. rooms to deal with uninsured costs you more money than just helping the people to begin with, so the idea that its cheaper makes no sense.
because you privatise your health, leading to a conflict of interests, the company doesnt care about keeping you alive except so that you can pay more premiums, if your healthcare becomes too expensive they can and will cut you off.
because privatisation of healthcare increases premiums because profits dont just come from thin air.
you can try and run personal responsibility all you want, some kind of reward structure of people who dont fuck up their own lives (aka heavy taxation on alcohol or drugs) but to spite the people who have made mistakes, or hit a rough patch for no other reason than to be spiteful is idiotic. great, they havent taken responsibility, but by sticking to your principles you are just costing yourself more in taxation to fix the problem rather than the cause.
this is why americans pay twice as much per person to fund just medicare and medicaid than the british pay to fund the entire NHS. while all progressive countries are living in the real world, accepting that people will be people and working on prevention and education (because its cheaper than fixing problems after they come up) the US is happy to spite itself just so that people like you get to say 'i told you so' to the poor guy with no insurance.
Why should the poor receive ER care? Remove treating the uninsured and you have the cheapest healthcare system in the world and the best quality ever; win-win.
It's amazing how little you care for people once they've been born.
You misunderstand, I don't care about people before they've been born either.
On October 23 2012 09:38 turdburgler wrote: guns lead to an increased chance of being involved in gun violence? tax guns! getting too much cancer? tax cigars!
I'm sorry, but I really must point out a couple of these fallacies. Guns don't lead to violence and if anything, owning a gun decreases your chances1 of being attacked by a mugger, rapist, burglar, etc.
please show me any study that indicates guns lead to less violence?
Pretty much every study ever conducted. All of the evidence shows that gun control INCREASES violent crime rates and gun rights lower it, both in America and in other countries. Here's a good collection of various studies conducted and compiled into a single list: http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp
On October 23 2012 08:59 Souma wrote: Pro-lifers don't really care about life. If they did we'd have single-payer healthcare already.
Well since you are picking a fight...
Why is that? Are you suggesting that a single-payer system is the only system demonstrated to work well?
Because supporting personal responsibility makes you pro-death.
because funding E.R. rooms to deal with uninsured costs you more money than just helping the people to begin with, so the idea that its cheaper makes no sense.
because you privatise your health, leading to a conflict of interests, the company doesnt care about keeping you alive except so that you can pay more premiums, if your healthcare becomes too expensive they can and will cut you off.
because privatisation of healthcare increases premiums because profits dont just come from thin air.
you can try and run personal responsibility all you want, some kind of reward structure of people who dont fuck up their own lives (aka heavy taxation on alcohol or drugs) but to spite the people who have made mistakes, or hit a rough patch for no other reason than to be spiteful is idiotic. great, they havent taken responsibility, but by sticking to your principles you are just costing yourself more in taxation to fix the problem rather than the cause.
this is why americans pay twice as much per person to fund just medicare and medicaid than the british pay to fund the entire NHS. while all progressive countries are living in the real world, accepting that people will be people and working on prevention and education (because its cheaper than fixing problems after they come up) the US is happy to spite itself just so that people like you get to say 'i told you so' to the poor guy with no insurance.
Why should the poor receive ER care? Remove treating the uninsured and you have the cheapest healthcare system in the world and the best quality ever; win-win.
It's amazing how little you care for people once they've been born.
You misunderstand, I don't care about people before they've been born either.
On October 23 2012 09:38 turdburgler wrote: guns lead to an increased chance of being involved in gun violence? tax guns! getting too much cancer? tax cigars!
I'm sorry, but I really must point out a couple of these fallacies. Guns don't lead to violence and if anything, owning a gun decreases your chances1 of being attacked by a mugger, rapist, burglar, etc.
Also, cigars do not cause cancer. It is theoretically possible to get mouth cancer from a cigar, but it is extremely unlikely. Cigarettes would have been a much better example.
"Overall, Branas's study found that people who carried guns were 4.5 times as likely to be shot and 4.2 times as likely to get killed compared with unarmed citizens. When the team looked at shootings in which victims had a chance to defend themselves, their odds of getting shot were even higher."
On October 23 2012 08:59 Souma wrote: Pro-lifers don't really care about life. If they did we'd have single-payer healthcare already.
Well since you are picking a fight...
Why is that? Are you suggesting that a single-payer system is the only system demonstrated to work well?
Because supporting personal responsibility makes you pro-death.
because funding E.R. rooms to deal with uninsured costs you more money than just helping the people to begin with, so the idea that its cheaper makes no sense.
because you privatise your health, leading to a conflict of interests, the company doesnt care about keeping you alive except so that you can pay more premiums, if your healthcare becomes too expensive they can and will cut you off.
because privatisation of healthcare increases premiums because profits dont just come from thin air.
you can try and run personal responsibility all you want, some kind of reward structure of people who dont fuck up their own lives (aka heavy taxation on alcohol or drugs) but to spite the people who have made mistakes, or hit a rough patch for no other reason than to be spiteful is idiotic. great, they havent taken responsibility, but by sticking to your principles you are just costing yourself more in taxation to fix the problem rather than the cause.
this is why americans pay twice as much per person to fund just medicare and medicaid than the british pay to fund the entire NHS. while all progressive countries are living in the real world, accepting that people will be people and working on prevention and education (because its cheaper than fixing problems after they come up) the US is happy to spite itself just so that people like you get to say 'i told you so' to the poor guy with no insurance.
Why should the poor receive ER care? Remove treating the uninsured and you have the cheapest healthcare system in the world and the best quality ever; win-win.
It's amazing how little you care for people once they've been born.
You misunderstand, I don't care about people before they've been born either.
On October 23 2012 09:38 turdburgler wrote: guns lead to an increased chance of being involved in gun violence? tax guns! getting too much cancer? tax cigars!
I'm sorry, but I really must point out a couple of these fallacies. Guns don't lead to violence and if anything, owning a gun decreases your chances1 of being attacked by a mugger, rapist, burglar, etc.
please show me any study that indicates guns lead to less violence?
Pretty much every study ever conducted. All of the evidence shows that gun control INCREASES violent crime rates and gun rights lower it, both in America and in other countries. Here's a good collection of various studies conducted and compiled into a single list: http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp
2 minutes on that site shows you that they have no idea what they are talking about.
EPT
