Recruiting Agent Headaches!



  • I know morbius already answered many of your questions, but I'll try and make some different points.

    @WitherVoice said:

    Sure, I can do that. Either I can stop making money, or I can move. If I want to live here and parttake of what the tax pays for, it'd be pretty friggin' RUDE of me to stop paying my taxes, though... and I still pay less of my income for the services I require, than a US citizen on average does.

    Really?  I personally pay $14/month for my health insurence.  It covers preventative visits like checkups.  It has a high deductible for actual service.  However, since I rarely if ever get sick/go to the doctor I opted for cheaper insurence with higher deductable.  My total health expenses for the year are probably about $200 or roughly 0.25% of my income. 

    @WitherVoice said:

    I would like to underline that I'm not trolling when I ask: what's this strange, American (primarily) facination with having the freedom to make life difficult for oneself? Realistically, I don't have the option to not pay taxes and thus not recieve what it pays for, certainly. But I've done some maths on it, and it doesn't cost me more than it would to have health insurance... in fact, significantly less, and it buys me better treatment than I would get in the US for any comparable amount.
      It seems likely to me that you personally might save money under your current system.  However, The other people that are paying for you are all worse off under your system.  I believe in people taking care of themselves, not depending on the labor of others.  

    @WitherVoice said:

    VERY few of the things that are provided by my tax dime are things I WOULD opt out of. The one thing I might not want to support is the part of the tax that goes to religious organizations... but then again, through the tax-exempt status of religious organizations in the United States, the citizens of said states already DO pay that tax, same way as I do
    I'm a little confused at how you say that we are paying a tax for religious organisations.  The government does not give them money to operate their religious services (however, they do give them money sometimes to perform certain community functions).  If these organisations were taxed then it would be double taxation since the money that goes to churches has already been taxed when the people made it.  Really if you think about it, since the churches are not-for-profits, it makes no sense to tax them.  There is a big difference between receiving money from the government and not being taxed.  One envolves stealing money from other people at the point of a gun and giving it to someone else, the other involved not taking money from someone.  

    @WitherVoice said:

    So... what is it that is so great about the "freedom to choose"? I've so far not been able to see any real reason why I'd want to change the system under which I toil, with the one under which American IT personnel toil. Not ONE. Once more, this is not a troll, I'm ACTUALLY curious, and this is the first place I've seen people do anything but try to lynch me for being a communist or somesuch when I ask the question...
    This is probably one of the only online communities not overrun by socialis-America haters.  Also, if it is you world view that socialism is better than capitalism then I guess that's fine.  I just simply disagree.  Hopefully I answered all your questions.



  • In the sense I use the word, yes you toil. Unless you do not work for your money, OR if you have enough of it that you could, with no trouble, stop working now and not run out of money in your lifetime, you work for your money which you then spend, enslaved in the consumer machine as either an eager or a reluctant participant. If you work simply for the fun of it, and not because you at some level need to in order to maintain your way of living, then in the sense that I used the word, you do not "toil" in the same way I do.

    Another thing: I live in a fairly americanized country (Norway, to be precise). I've seen the US' healthcare system, and basically you guys are getting shafted royally. I've never said that I wouldn't have healthcare without my gov't, but I will say this: I would have nowhere near the quality that I do, or the extent of coverage, unless I was born to wealth or married to it.

    Frankly, I do find the assumption that I am being hindered from achieving wealth by the system under which I live quite ridiculous. I have no different and CERTAINLY no worse opportunities to do so than I did in the US; speaking from experience. If I were to, at some point, either "strike it lucky" or for some strange reason feel like putting in the extra work in order to make more money than I really need, then the tax burden will become heavier, sure. Don't care overmuch. It ain't getting prohibitive until I become rich enough to evade the taxes anyway.

    As for not paying for the services I get? I pay for them same way as you do, by means of an insurance policy. Mine is government enforced, and I can't opt out of it, but doing so would be profoundly stupid, anyway... and the government is answerable to its people as to what goes in and what comes out of that system, so noone can make off with the money, and the government is in fact prohibited from turning a profit on this, unlike the health insurance industry of the US. Which means that what goes into the healthcare system goes to paying doctors, equipment, staff and services, not shareholders of insurance companies. Sure, our system has its problems. So does yours. I see no will to admit that your system might have serious drawbacks or flaws, however, and I've SEEN them.

    As for people wanting to opt out of paying for what the taxes pay for? No problem, as I said. Move. If you want another system, move to where it exists. I could, if I wanted to, go to the airport TODAY and book a flight to the United States and be accepted in for as long as I care to stay, make a life there and work, but I do NOT want to. Pretty much every citizen of Norway can do the same, but according to national statistics, the opposite happens more often - americans come here to work, and decide to stay for extended periods of time. That's an indicator, innit? I'm not really big on solidarity myself, but I do have enough of it that I have no problem accepting that my money pays for roads in places I don't drive, and medical aid for people who can't pay for it. That's the key thing I like about it... I am a productive member of society, NOW. But there hasn't yet been developed a human organism that is impervious to disease and crippling accidents - I may not have the "freedom" to chance it, but I do have the security that should it happen to me, no matter how remote the odds, and I am left unable to pay for health coverage, unable to work... I'll still be able to have a comparatively OK life, even though my parents were not obscenely rich. I'd likely miss work, though, the constant provider of WTFs.

    I also find it interesting how many Americans are incapable, it seems, of discarding the socialism == communism attitude. I know communism didn't really work out; as long as humanity is what it is, how could it? I still say that a socialized system (which, by the way, does not in any way mean that only one provider of any given service exists... what gave you that idea?) is the way to go, and that I'm better off than most Americans are. Oh yes, and as for my earlier statements on the finality of your arguments... I believe, though studies are inconclusive, that your vaunted freedom from all safety nets propagates a system in which those who are left by the wayside (don't even pretend like they don't exist, nor that it is always all their own fault) find themselves in a situation where crime becomes the only valid option besides laying down and dying. Relative crime statistics also seem to suggest that whatever the reason is, there IS a massive difference in crime per capita.



  • @WitherVoice said:

    Another thing: I live in a fairly americanized country (Norway, to be precise). I've seen the US' healthcare system, and basically you guys are getting shafted royally. I've never said that I wouldn't have healthcare without my gov't, but I will say this: I would have nowhere near the quality that I do, or the extent of coverage, unless I was born to wealth or married to it.
    I must have been born into wealth.  I pay no premium and have a deductible of $5000 ($2.5K if I were single), after which my insurance pays 100%. Everything's covered, no matter where I go for service.

    Maximum $5K a year for my entire family seems pretty good to me.



  • @WitherVoice said:

    In the sense I use the word, yes you toil. Unless you do not work for your money, OR if you have enough of it that you could, with no trouble, stop working now and not run out of money in your lifetime, you work for your money which you then spend, enslaved in the consumer machine as either an eager or a reluctant participant. If you work simply for the fun of it, and not because you at some level need to in order to maintain your way of living, then in the sense that I used the word, you do not "toil" in the same way I do.

    If you define "toil" as "working to support oneself", then I suppose you are right, but also incredibly whiny.

     

    @WitherVoice said:

    and the government is answerable to its people as to what goes in and what comes out of that system, so noone can make off with the money

    And governments have never been slow, incompetent, evil, malicious or worthless.  Yep.

     

    @WitherVoice said:

    the government is in fact prohibited from turning a profit on this, unlike the health insurance industry of the US. Which means that what goes into the healthcare system goes to paying doctors, equipment, staff and services, not shareholders of insurance companies.

    It also means there is no incentive to improve a damn bit of it, so progress stagnates.  This is well-established economic fact.  It is why Communism failed and it is why the European countries still leave many things in the hands of private industry.  Evidently the market is good at providing food, clothing, housing, cars, entertainment, etc... at ever-lower costs, but healthcare should be managed by the government instead!

     

    @WitherVoice said:

    I see no will to admit that your system might have serious drawbacks or flaws, however, and I've SEEN them.
     

    Ha.  You say this over and over and yet don't provide a single flaw or drawback nor any evidence.  I think you are very delusional and would love to hear what you think the US healthcare system is like.  It would probably be worth a chuckle. 

     

    @WitherVoice said:

    I could, if I wanted to, go to the airport TODAY and book a flight to the United States and be accepted in for as long as I care to stay, make a life there and work, but I do NOT want to.

    By what mechanism could you become a resident of the US?

     

    @WitherVoice said:

    That's the key thing I like about it... I am a productive member of society, NOW. But there hasn't yet been developed a human organism that is impervious to disease and crippling accidents - I may not have the "freedom" to chance it, but I do have the security that should it happen to me, no matter how remote the odds, and I am left unable to pay for health coverage, unable to work...

    I have that security as well, and I guarantee I pay a hell of a lot less for it than you do. 

     

    @WitherVoice said:

    I also find it interesting how many Americans are incapable, it seems, of discarding the socialism == communism attitude.

    Socialism is just the corpse of communism lashed on the back of capitalism.  It's a failed ideology that needs a real system to prop it up. 

     

    @WitherVoice said:

    believe, though studies are inconclusive, that your vaunted freedom from all safety nets propagates a system in which those who are left by the wayside (don't even pretend like they don't exist, nor that it is always all their own fault) find themselves in a situation where crime becomes the only valid option besides laying down and dying. Relative crime statistics also seem to suggest that whatever the reason is, there IS a massive difference in crime per capita.

    Bullshit.  Criminals are not committing crimes to pay for healthcare.  And outside of murder, the US has a lower rate of crime than the UK, another socialist country.  So obviously socialized healthcare and services didn't stop people from being robbed, raped and assaulted.



  • Hehe, I'll tell you what I think the US healthcare system is like a bit later, after mandatory happytime with address from Big Brother and hypnosis or whatever I am able to convince you guys that I might be doing.

    (actually going off to see a movie)

    Oh there's one thing I wonder. Do you pay taxes? At all? ANY taxes? And what do they go towards covering? (Apart from your montaneous national deficit)



  • @WitherVoice said:

    Oh there's one thing I wonder. Do you pay taxes? At all? ANY taxes? And what do they go towards covering? (Apart from your montaneous national deficit)

    Of course I do.  They cover: roads, public transit, police, fire departments, bullets and missiles for our military to kill foreigners with, disaster recovery from things like hurricanes, healthcare and food and money and housing for people who cannot or will not work, prisons to hold criminals, public education, billions in foreign aid to countries that don't appreciate it, billions more in defense expenditures to protect Europe and the rest of the free world from being overrun by Communists and Muslims, public health initiatives like vaccinations and health information....  fuck the list goes on and on.  Anything our government does is generally funded by taxes.  That doesn't mean we all support or even want all of this stuff being done, mind you.



  • @WitherVoice said:

    In the sense I use the word, yes you toil. Unless you do not work for your money, OR if you have enough of it that you could, with no trouble, stop working now and not run out of money in your lifetime, you work for your money which you then spend, enslaved in the consumer machine as either an eager or a reluctant participant. If you work simply for the fun of it, and not because you at some level need to in order to maintain your way of living, then in the sense that I used the word, you do not "toil" in the same way I do.

    If you don't have to work for living, what would be a reason for the most of the population to work? In socialist Soviet Union, people worked for pittance, while government provided housing, healthcare, education. Of course, all that was funded from hidden taxes, such as excise tax on alcohol and "luxury" items (such as autos). I known that because I grew up there. There was no reason whatsoever to do things better quality, more reliable, etc. The factories only cared about meeting their production quota, often by cooking the books.

    Now, I don't idealize US healtcare system. It's too slow to adopt better approaches, and sloppy in general. Instead of following strict guidelines of hospital infection prevention, they're just trowing another antibiotics on the germs. I suspect that's because of that nurse union shit. You can't fire anyone who doesn't do it right. This is why hospital acquired MRSA and other, less dangerous infections, are on the rise. Thankfully, "antimicrobial" (with triclosane) soap seems to slowly disappear from retail. That triclosane shit was showing up in the Great Lakes, affecting the environment (and breeding resistant strains).

    Doctors that I dealt with seem stuck on past knowledge. I don't know if they ever go to refresh course. When you have a CAT or MRI, or Xray, or ultrasound, a report is prepared. Most doctors just read the report, without bothering to look at the actual images. When you ask them to look, they would actually refuse.

    I think that's caused by lack of competition among insurers, and among doctors. The patients don't have information to judge if a doctor is any good.

     



  • So how is that worse than a system where the government tells you what doctor to go to, and that doctor only has access to equipment that has been approved by and paid for the government?

    Anyway, any modern state needs to do some kind of wealth transfer from those few, super-rich, to the more numerous, not as rich, or you'd be living in a banana republic. Exactly how that transfer happens (taxes, insurance, donations, whatnot) and exactly how large those transfers are varies from country to country. Thus, every country is, to some extent, socialized.

    What I don't like about some of the socialist European countries (such as the one I grew up in) is when unions and politicians have too much say in how business does business. The job of a worker's union is not to produce the best possible products at the lowest possible price. The job of a worker's union, these days, is to try to make as many people as possible do a job that could be done by fewer people, in the name of "creating jobs." It's as if they thought that there was a finite amount of work to be done in society, and that amount of work had to be shared equitably. All that leads to is the ascendancy of mediocrity, and a loss of competetiveness. Compare US auto makers (heavily unionized) to Japanese, if you want to see a prime example.



  • @Fister said:

    So how is that worse than a system where the government tells you what doctor to go to, and that doctor only has access to equipment that has been approved by and paid for the government?

    Have you read anything here?  Being able to choose your own doctor, at your own cost and get actual modern treatment isn't better than the socialist system?

     

    @Fister said:

    Anyway, any modern state needs to do some kind of wealth transfer from those few, super-rich, to the more numerous, not as rich, or you'd be living in a banana republic. Exactly how that transfer happens (taxes, insurance, donations, whatnot) and exactly how large those transfers are varies from country to country. Thus, every country is, to some extent, socialized.

    You are a complete fool.  Wealth transfer is stupid and destructive.  You obviously have no concept of how economies or the real world function.  The US attempts to avoid such moronic "transfer" schemes because they don't fucking work.  They have never worked.  See: every shitty Communist country that collapsed in on itself.

     

    @Fister said:

    What I don't like about some of the socialist European countries (such as the one I grew up in) is when unions and politicians have too much say in how business does business. The job of a worker's union is not to produce the best possible products at the lowest possible price. The job of a worker's union, these days, is to try to make as many people as possible do a job that could be done by fewer people, in the name of "creating jobs.

    Indeed, unions are always bad.

     

    @Fister said:

    It's as if they thought that there was a finite amount of work to be done in society, and that amount of work had to be shared equitably.

    You mean like people who think there is a finite amount of wealth in a society and it must be redistributed in the name of equality?  How can you see the utter ridiculousness of unions and not see how stupid wealth "redistribution" is?  Let's have intelligence redistribution, too!  Since we can't make the stupid smarter, we'll just take the fucker with the lowest IQ and lobotomize everyone else until they have the same IQ as him!  Great!  That's the same thing Socialism/Communism seeks to do to wealth, resources, labor and ingenuity.  It has the same effect, too, of making everyone piss-poor rather than allowing the vast, vast majority of able people to achieve a quite comfortable level of wealth.  Seriously, arguing against capitalism in this day and age is the equivalent of arguing against biological evolution, suggesting that alchemy is a reasonable alternative to chemistry or insisting the Earth is flat and the sun orbits around it.



  • Without wealth redistribution, we would all be slaving away as serfs in the fields of some feudal overlord. Don't fool yourself for a minute into thinking something else.

    If you look at the US economic system, we do a lot of wealth transfer. Any country that is vaguely modern does wealth transfer. Wealth transfer means that not only the very few, very privileged manage to have some amount of free time and long-term security (that can be used to, say, invent things, which is what actually drives overall wealth).

    There is not a fixed amount of work, because people can work both smarter and harder, when incentivized. However, there is a limited amount of physical wealth, as measured in tons of steel or similar hard resources. Thus, work and raw resources are not equivalent. However, I agree that wealth can and should be grown. It's just been shown over and over again in history that it's a large middle class that drives wealth growth, not the very few, very rich at the top. They're too busy fighting to retain what they've got, and "playing the game." The growth of an urban, middle class (basically, "intellectual" although at that time, more artisanal) is what dragged us out of the middle ages.

    Oh, and by the way, I'll get this shot in early: libertarianism doesn't work, because it does not properly value societal risk. For example, I could run an unsafe underground toxic dump in my basement, which is right next door to your property, and you can't do anything about it as long as nothing bad happens. Then, I will save the money, and move to the Bahamas, and leave you to deal with the fall-out once the barrels start leaking. And even if you could get to me in the Bahamas, it doesn't save your property from already being contaminated. Preventing those kinds of problems is one of the things we have a government for. Further, libertarians want to press a big "reset button" on our current society, and then let people negotiate anew for rules for sharing roads, managing toxic waste dumps, etc. After a hundred or two hundred years, we'd probably end up with a common democracy system just like the one we have now -- libertarians just want to throw away the process we already went through to create the society we have, because they feel they will personally gain from the period of anarchy that comes right after the re-set.

    If you're not a libertarian (although you sound like one), then so much the better.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    ((large quantities of rambling))

    ... aaand THAT, boys and girls, is what we collectively call "strawman arguments".

    Seriously, morbius: while you do present your arguments fairly coherently, it is abundantly apparent that you do not, in fact, have much experience, if any, with how things work outside the States. There's precious little difference between most of the horrible socialized countries and the US.

    Right. On to my beliefs about US Healthcare. I believe...

    • that infant mortality is roughly twice as high in the United States as they are in Norway.
    • that the life expectancy of a Norwegian is longer than a United States citizen.
    • that roughly 70% of all citizens in the US have health insurance.
    • that most of those who claim to pay no premium, do not pay premiums because their employers do. Thus, the paycheck of that individual is smaller than it would be in a purely capitalistic fashion.
    • that the healthcare industry waste more than 50 billion dollars every year out of the 250 billion that goes into it. By "waste" I do, quite correctly, imply that turning a profit on healthcare is, to me, amoral to the extreme, and that the only people who should in any way profit from people's illness are the people who cure them and care for them, not shareholders.
    • that people are, on a daily basis, denied critically necessary treatment due to having the wrong healthcare plan, or not having one.
    • that others, suffering from conditions to which the only treatment is time, are subjected to expensive and unnecessary treatments up to very close to their excess (deductible), as an ingenious way of increasing the profit margin of the treating hospital.
    • that this year, I will pay approximately 8100 dollars in taxes.
    • that an estimated 20% of this will go to healthcare.
    • that as my excess (deductible) is 180 dollars, this is a far better deal if I should fall ill, and hardly horrible should I not.
    • that this is NOT more than the numbers suggested by belgariontheking above.

    If we were to look at certain other key figures... one thing that I find to be interesting is how your wonderful American way allows a vast majority to live in relatively comfortable degrees of wealth. According to US figures as neatly presented by Wikipedia and supported by several studies, this vast majority constitutes 87.4% of you, if "comfortable wealth" were read as "not below the national definition of poverty". Yet over here, a whooping 95.7% of the population enjoy that status, and amazingly, our standards for what constitutes "poverty" are higher than yours. As for UK having a higher "crime per capita" than the US, while the statistics will show that, if you check closely you will also find that the UK statistics include misdemeanor, whereas the US statistics do not.



  •  Wow! 

    I dunno what it is about talking about  the difference in economic and political systems  between the US and Europe that always end up in these protracted arguments, but they nearly always do - See : the whole of the internet ... 

    The difference between the US and Europe  is what  each society decides as important for the society, be that freedom or universal healthcare or some other touchstone that each society holds dear.

    The US from what I've acertained from discussions with its citizens is that the goverment leaves them the hell alone and let them sort their own lives out . All fine and dandy , Europeans have come to a slightly different conclusion; that the state should provide a minimum 'safety net' in terms of social welfare - things like Healthcare, unemployment benefits and other things. 

    There are benefits and drawbacks to each system , but endless to and frowing on internet forums isn't ever going to convince the other side as we have such different cultural standpoints. 

    Some countries in Europe are heavily state organised , such as France,  where so much is state owned and controlled , others like the UK far less so.

    National Healthcare in the UK for example hasn't precluded private hospitals or treatment, many companies such as the one I work for offer this as part of their benefits, so the matter isn't the simplistic  socialism vs whatever you call it in the US (sorry I really don't know what you call it - liberalism isn't the label you would use but perhaps is probably what we would in the UK ) .

    So in conclusion , the argument is relatively futile as we have such different socio-political viewpoints due to our cultures that they just end up throwing statistics and in many cases  insults at each other - although thankfully here its been pretty sane . For each society it works 'for us', although I suspect we all wish it would work cheaper and more efficiently .

     

    All the best, UriGagarin

     

     

     

     



  • Personally, I get into these discussions for a simple reason: I find them amusing. They give me a little glimpse of what other people think of the world, so I also think that in some way they are useful. And after a lot of these discussions, certain trends form, and you begin to see patterns. For instance, in my own personal experience, a US citizen is far more likely to tell you that your country's system has no merit than people from other countries, save possibly the Japanese. When it comes to healthcare system, most UK residents I spoke to unanimously agree that their healthcare system is, to use the tecknical term, "sh*t", but they are also the least likely to, when asked if they'd prefer another system, say that they would...

    Culturally, Americans (and once again, for some reason, the Japanese) are also far more likely to act like you must be brainwashed when you point out that the systems in your countries are not all that dissimilar, different only by a matter of degrees. I have also yet to face an opponent that could accurately trash Norway for its many and varied political and financial flaws, since noone has a clue as to what our country is like (PROTIP: in an overwhelming majority of our cities, polar bears do in fact NOT roam the streets).

    I'll give the great United States ONE distinction, one field in which I won't even pretend to consider them anything but superior: entertainment. It may be that we only get what passes at least rudimentary quality checks over here, but while many countries (even Iran) have made some incredible movies, the US just rules the field. Computer games? The US and Japan are the only countries in the world where they seem to make them properly. TV series? Well... Norway does produce a few. I can't actually remember a single one I'd watch voluntarily. And while the competition is far fiercer when it comes to books, you do have some really competent writers over there, too.

     I'm not making fun, this IS one field where the US system seems to outperform anything the rest of the world can put up. I am also quite confident that most Americans live reasonably happy and fulfilled lives, with much the same worries, struggles and delights as the rest of the western world. But I do not now, and will probably never, think that you have all the answers to what life should be and how everything should be organized. And I maintain that I would rather live under my "horrible, oppressive communist regime" than under the freedom-loving, apple-pie-chomping neon light of the United Malls of America.



  • Well, I find them fun to a certain degree , but they do tend to degenerate into point scoring and shouting abuse. 

    I'd agree about the Brits being 'Well the NHS is shit , but no we still want it' ; its become part of our culture  and is one of those untouchable parts of our society - despite what the goverment (past and present) try to do, but we're at least realistic about how it works and its failures.

    As for the Entertainment field : well, its just how the industry got started - if Edison hadn't forced the film makers out to California then who knows what it would have become. TV started in the UK , but as ever we never had the cash (for a supposedly rich country I wish I knew whose got all our money , I'd ask for a fiver! ) to really make the running in the field .We're probably the second best there , but mostly due to the wonderful BBC and the 'unique way its funded'. Oh and I've always avoided taking about the TV Licence fee, it just throws folks who haven't grown up with it .

     




  • @Fister said:

    Without wealth redistribution, we would all be slaving away as serfs in the fields of some feudal overlord. Don't fool yourself for a minute into thinking something else.

    That's nonsense.  Serfdom was enforced through violence and it was not ended by wealth redistribution, it was ended by a growing middle class that took advantage of the free markets to gain wealth and power and eventually throw the miserable ruling class out on its ass.   I suggest you actually study the history of Europe to see how the middle class managed to out-smart the ruling class and gain tremendous wealth and influence to the point where the monarchies were little more than figureheads.

     

    @Fister said:

    If you look at the US economic system, we do a lot of wealth transfer.

    We do a little in the form of our welfare system and it is a miserable failure.

     

    @Fister said:

    Any country that is vaguely modern does wealth transfer. Wealth transfer means that not only the very few, very privileged manage to have some amount of free time and long-term security (that can be used to, say, invent things, which is what actually drives overall wealth).

    Wrong.  The very wealthy exist because of the immense wealth and freedom of the country, not in spite of it.  The middle class was liberated because they were able to establish a market that was not controlled by the ruling class.  The nobility that gained power through violence could not understand that allowing their citizens the right of free trade was the worst thing they could do for themselves.  Ultimately, the wealth created by the free market made the middle class so confident, comfortable and powerful that the nobility had no choice but to bow their malformed, inbred heads to the capitalists.

     

    @Fister said:

    There is not a fixed amount of work, because people can work both smarter and harder, when incentivized. However, there is a limited amount of physical wealth, as measured in tons of steel or similar hard resources. Thus, work and raw resources are not equivalent. However, I agree that wealth can and should be grown.

    Wow, you are so ignorant.  There is a fixed amount of resources, except for human ingenuity.  Given sufficient incentive, people have always found ways to use their intelligence to exploit resources in ways that were previously unthinkable.  By your reasoning, we wouldn't have computers because silicon would be hoarded by the wealthy.  In reality, silicon was never highly valued until some really smart people realized what it could be used for.  Whenever a resource becomes scarce, the increasing price of it introduces a strong incentive to find better alternatives.

     

    @Fister said:

    It's just been shown over and over again in history that it's a large middle class that drives wealth growth, not the very few, very rich at the top. They're too busy fighting to retain what they've got, and "playing the game." The growth of an urban, middle class (basically, "intellectual" although at that time, more artisanal) is what dragged us out of the middle ages.

    You seem to confuse a nobility enforced through violence with people who have made their wealth through innovation.  Maybe Europe really is this bad, but in America the wealthy are only wealthy because they were able to marshall their intelligence and will to fill a vast hole in the market.  Almost always, nobody even realizes there is a hole that needs filling.  Two hundred years ago nobody could have imagined how valuable the management of information really was.  Today, it is one of the most active elements of our economy, because various people over time realized the value of having well-managed information and worked their asses off to make it a reality.  Our billionaires are wealthy because they saw an opportunity and took it.

     

    @Fister said:

    Oh, and by the way, I'll get this shot in early: libertarianism doesn't work, because it does not properly value societal risk. For example, I could run an unsafe underground toxic dump in my basement, which is right next door to your property, and you can't do anything about it as long as nothing bad happens. Then, I will save the money, and move to the Bahamas, and leave you to deal with the fall-out once the barrels start leaking. And even if you could get to me in the Bahamas, it doesn't save your property from already being contaminated. Preventing those kinds of problems is one of the things we have a government for. Further, libertarians want to press a big "reset button" on our current society, and then let people negotiate anew for rules for sharing roads, managing toxic waste dumps, etc. After a hundred or two hundred years, we'd probably end up with a common democracy system just like the one we have now -- libertarians just want to throw away the process we already went through to create the society we have, because they feel they will personally gain from the period of anarchy that comes right after the re-set.

    If you're not a libertarian (although you sound like one), then so much the better.

    You are confusing libertarianism with anarchy.  I don't advocate eliminating our government -- government is a very necessary institution.  However, I realize there is a big difference between stopping you from poisoning me or gunning down my family and micro-managing our finances.  If you simply it, government is responsible for distributing one single resource: violence.  That's because, like it or not, violence is an unfortunate necessity in the world.  When someone decides they want your car, they will use violence to take it.  You could fight back, you could make your own army, but this results in very bad things as history has shown.  That's why we have government: to hunt the thief down and imprison him.  I'm not implying people shouldn't have the right to defend themselves, but that vigilante justice ultimately results in the most physically powerful in charge.  That is what history has taught us.  We don't want to be ruled by kings who are only in charge because they are best at killing.  We want to rule ourselves and have anyone who interferes with our fundamental human right to determine our own destiny to be taken care of by the single authority we have given the right to dispense violence: our government.  Ultimately, government is great at many things, but it should not be doing the things it is no good at.  It should be punishing criminals, building roads, killing any foreigner stupid enough to try to harm our way of life, providing public education and (even) providing a very limited safety net.  The thing is, socialized healthcare is not a safety net.  In the US, poor people have access to fantastic healthcare, because we consider it an ethical obligation to help those in need.  This is a net cost for the people, of course.  It is an expense we endure for the purposes of feeling comfortable with our own ethical obligations.  However, this is no way implies that people who are capable of taking care of themselves should have their lives micro-managed by bureaucrats.



  • @Fister said:

    any modern state needs to do some kind of wealth transfer from those few, super-rich, to the more numerous, not as rich, or you'd be living in a banana republic.
    [Citation Needed]

    @Fister said:

    Without wealth redistribution, we would all be slaving away as serfs in the fields of some feudal overlord.
    [Citation Needed]

    @Fister said:

    However, there is a limited amount of physical wealth, as measured in tons of steel or similar hard resources.
    You really could not be more wrong.

    @Fister said:

    It's just been shown over and over again in history that it's a large middle class that drives wealth growth, not the very few, very rich at the top. They're too busy fighting to retain what they've got, and "playing the game." The growth of an urban, middle class (basically, "intellectual" although at that time, more artisanal) is what dragged us out of the middle ages.
    You equate the wealthy of the middle ages with the wealthy of the modern era?  HUGE-FUCK-DIFFERENCE!The wealthy of the middle age acquired and kept wealth through force.  They take and steal, and enslave others to make wealth.  This is not the case in a capitalist society.  



  • @WitherVoice said:

    that infant mortality is roughly twice as high in the United States as they are in Norway.

    Probably, we have a lot of people who don't give a shit what they do to their kids.  They abuse drugs and alcohol and generally don't care for their children.  Obviously, these people will change their tune when provided with free healthcare.  Oh, what?  They already are?  Morbius' family has several social workers whose job it was to help the poor get healthcare and a surprising amount of the time they would rather have unprotected sex, drink booze and smoke crack rather than take care of their children?

     

    @WitherVoice said:

    that the life expectancy of a Norwegian is longer than a United States citizen.

    Sure, we have a lot of fat people, alcoholics, drug users and smokers.  Shit, I am all but one of those myself!  However, I'm still sober enough to realize that my shortened life expectancy is because I like smoking, drinking and getting high and has nothing to do with the excellent medical care I am provided (at my own expense) when those things fuck me over.

     

    @WitherVoice said:

    that roughly 70% of all citizens in the US have health insurance.

    Yep.  And 37% of those make more than $50k a year and could easily afford insurance but choose not to.  Another 35% or so qualify for poverty-based government benefits, but don't even bother to apply.  So almost 3/4ths of our uninsured could be insured but don't want to.

     

    @WitherVoice said:

    that the healthcare industry waste more than 50 billion dollars every year out of the 250 billion that goes into it. By "waste" I do, quite correctly, imply that turning a profit on healthcare is, to me, amoral to the extreme, and that the only people who should in any way profit from people's illness are the people who cure them and care for them, not shareholders.

    Of course some of my healthcare comes out of my paycheck.  Interestingly, I can choose to opt out of the healthcare but a large portion of what would be paid for healthcare is not included in my salary.  Why?   Because my employer wants to reserve a certain amount of money that is spent on me ensuring I am taken care of medically.  Because I am employed by angels?  No.  Because I am employed by rational people who realize that if I get sick and die it will cost a shitload to replace me and will be emotionally stressful.  So they subsidize health insurance.  I'm not arguing against health insurance nor subsidies, but it should be up to the individuals involved and not some government agency.  The second part of your statement is absurd.  The shareholders provide capital, support and direction for the healthcare.  You seem to think the only benefit is provided by doctors, which is the naive belief common to Communism.  In truth, doctors do well but all act individual agents.  What the insurance companies do is take advantage of their size and efficiency to negotiate a lower price for care from the doctors and hospitals.  Some of this is passed on to the consumer, some to the shareholders.  Profiting off the illness is one of the most noble thing you can do.  We're not talking about making people ill, but about treating them in the most effective way possible.  The capitalist system allows new ideas to be tried in a small scale and if they are successful allows them to spread elsewhere.

     

    @WitherVoice said:

    that people are, on a daily basis, denied critically necessary treatment due to having the wrong healthcare plan, or not having one.

    Hmm, that's arguable.  Nobody is denied immediately necessary treatment, by law.  Hospitals have to treat anybody who comes in their doors, no matter who they are.  However, some preventative treatments don't happen because of incorrect or missing insurance.  In the case of incorrect insurance, it's simply a matter of going to the doctor that has a contract with your company (which you should have done in the first place).  In the case of no insurance, unless you are incredibly poor you have made your own choice as to buying insurance.  Many quite wealthy people choose not to purchase insurance, and it is their right to take that risk.  It might kill them, it probably won't, but it is their choice.  In the case of poor people, we pay un-fucking-believable piles of cash into a failing welfare system to make sure they have some of the best health insurance in the country.

     

    @WitherVoice said:

    that others, suffering from conditions to which the only treatment is time, are subjected to expensive and unnecessary treatments up to very close to their excess (deductible), as an ingenious way of increasing the profit margin of the treating hospital

    Sure, this probably happens.  There are assholes in the world.  The thing is, you seem to assume giving absolute control to a group of people will eliminate the assholes instead of checking them.  In a socialist system, these same abuses can happen.  In a capitalist system, the insurance companies watch treatment like hawks to make sure the hospital/doctors are following standard procedure and not wasting money.  The insurance companies have a very strong financial incentive to preserve money.  What is hilarious is that you people argue that the insurance companies are tightwads but then you also argue that hospitals just take whatever they want.  Can you not see the absurdity inherent in your claims?  Maybe you don't know what you think you do about the US healthcare system.

     

    @WitherVoice said:

    that this year, I will pay approximately 8100 dollars in taxes

    Yeah, but what percentage is that of your income?  You must make jackshit if you live in a socialist country.

     

    @WitherVoice said:

    that an estimated 20% of this will go to healthcare.

    Personally, I pay about $4800 a year through my employer for healthcare.  For this I receive approximately $15k in benefits.  Holy shit!  Yeah, well, I have some health problems but my insurance happily pays for them.  That's because every healthy person in my company is also paying for insurance in case they get ill, but aren't taking as much.  The difference between you and me, is that nobody put a gun to their head and made them do it.  And that is precisely how socialism works, before you accuse me of being overly dramatic.  Try not paying your taxes.  You will go to jail.  Try resist being imprisoned, you will be hurt.  The fact is, you have no fucking choice.  Somebody is figuratively putting a gun to your head and saying "you will give up X dollars and you can do nothing about it."  Sounds peaceful and wonderful.  Enjoy your totalitarian state.

     

    @WitherVoice said:

    that as my excess (deductible) is 180 dollars, this is a far better deal if I should fall ill, and hardly horrible should I not.

    I have no deductible, so you can kiss my American ass.  I pay $5 for a doctor's visit, $10 for a month of prescriptions, $50 for an ambulance ride and some insanely small amount for a hospital stay.

     

    @WitherVoice said:

    that this is NOT more than the numbers suggested by belgariontheking above.

    He has his own insurance and it sounds like he selected to take higher risk in exchange for lower premiums.

     

    @WitherVoice said:

    If we were to look at certain other key figures... one thing that I find to be interesting is how your wonderful American way allows a vast majority to live in relatively comfortable degrees of wealth. According to US figures as neatly presented by Wikipedia and supported by several studies, this vast majority constitutes 87.4% of you, if "comfortable wealth" were read as "not below the national definition of poverty". Yet over here, a whooping 95.7% of the population enjoy that status, and amazingly, our standards for what constitutes "poverty" are higher than yours.

    That's absolutey stupid.  Do you know what poverty is considered over here?  It means you have a place to live, plenty of food, at least one car and 500 channels of TV.  Sure, you might not be able to buy everything you want, but even poor people are exceptionally wealthy here.  Why do you think people have flooded here for 250 years to find work?  I've known many miserably poor people (and actually my family was quite poor when I grew up).  I know poverty.  I know extreme poverty that would probably shock the hell out of you.  However, I always had a house, loving parents, food, education and everything else.  Hell, it wasn't until I was older that I even realized how fucking poor my family had been.  However, my parents worked their asses off getting degrees and well-paying jobs until they had quite a bit of money.

     

    @WitherVoice said:

    As for UK having a higher "crime per capita" than the US, while the statistics will show that, if you check closely you will also find that the UK statistics include misdemeanor, whereas the US statistics do not.

    Bullshit.  The UK tries very hard to minimize crime stats while the US tries to maximize them.  It has to do with the fact that UK police forces want to appear competent whereas US forces want to  appear overwhelmed so they get more funding.  The fact is, your chances of being assaulted, robbed or having your home broken into and your family raped in front of you is far higher in the UK. 



  • @tster said:

    @Fister said:
    However, there is a limited amount of physical wealth, as measured in tons of steel or similar hard resources.
    You really could not be more wrong.
     

    Wait -- are you claiming that there could, in fact, be an infinite number of purified iron molecules on Earth?

    Wow.

    Just... wow!




  • @UriGagarin said:

    The US from what I've acertained from discussions with its citizens is that the goverment leaves them the hell alone and let them sort their own lives out . All fine and dandy , Europeans have come to a slightly different conclusion; that the state should provide a minimum 'safety net' in terms of social welfare - things like Healthcare, unemployment benefits and other things.

    Close, but wrong.  The US has a safety net too.  We believe in providing help to those who need it.  So our government takes money from us and cares for the homeless, the alcoholic, the drug addicts, the crazy, the mentally handicapped and the physically handicapped.  However, what we do not believe is that the government should control the lives of people who are doing fine on their own.

     

    @UriGagarin said:

    National Healthcare in the UK for example hasn't precluded private hospitals or treatment, many companies such as the one I work for offer this as part of their benefits, so the matter isn't the simplistic  socialism vs whatever you call it in the US (sorry I really don't know what you call it - liberalism isn't the label you would use but perhaps is probably what we would in the UK ) .

    In the US, "liberalism" has come to mean "socialism" but "classical liberalism" means freedom.  Confusing, huh?  Normally people call it "the free market" or "capitalism".  The idea isn't that the government does nothing, but that the government only cover those people who absolutely will not be able to cover themselves.  People who can care for themselves are encouraged to do so and are often happy and prosperous as a result.

     

    @UriGagarin said:

    For each society it works 'for us', although I suspect we all wish it would work cheaper and more efficiently .

    Of course, cheaper and more efficient is always preferable.  What you miss is that all the of "universal healthcare" people are happy to rely on the free market for almost every single one of their needs.  Do these people pay a "food tax" and have the government bring food to their door?  Is there a "car tax" out of their income that provides a government-issued car?  Is this starting to sound really absurd, overly-managed and unpleasant?  Then why is it that healthcare is somehow different?  Why is it that socialists trust the market economy for almost every aspect of their wealth, except for the most important parts.  If the markets of Europe failed tomorrow, the Europeans would be fucked no matter what.  Their socialism is funded by the markets.  So if their faith in the markets is that weak, their faith in socialism should be even weaker, because it is a complex system that is completely dependent on the market for its lifeblood.



  • @Fister said:

    Wait -- are you claiming that there could, in fact, be an infinite number of purified iron molecules on Earth?

    Of course not, these are just a shitload of them.  And if we get desperate enough, we know how to make more, all it takes is raw material and energy.  There is not an infinite supply of anything in our solar system.  Socialism has no effect on this.  However, capitalism provides an incentive for people to find alternative ways to achieve the same results whereas socialism does not.



  • @WitherVoice said:

    • that most of those who claim to pay no premium, do not pay premiums because their employers do. Thus, the paycheck of that individual is smaller than it would be in a purely capitalistic fashion.
    Technically that is pure capitalism.  THe employer says "I will give you x dollars AND x healthcare for you to work here."  Then the employee says, "OK" or "No"
    @WitherVoice said:

    • that the healthcare industry waste more than 50 billion dollars every year out of the 250 billion that goes into it. By "waste" I do, quite correctly, imply that turning a profit on healthcare is, to me, amoral to the extreme, and that the only people who should in any way profit from people's illness are the people who cure them and care for them, not shareholders.
    OK then.  So who is going to do the billion dollar+ research to come up with new products?  Someone has to put up money for that.  And if I put up money I would expect some kind of return on that investment.  Like it or not, the investors in biotech companies have put their money on the line and are risking losing it in the hopes of finding new drugs and technology.  I would like for you to now tell me who you expect to do the research if companies are not allowed to make any profit.  You think the government is competent enough?  You think the government has the inventive like a company?
    @WitherVoice said:

    • that people are, on a daily basis, denied critically necessary treatment due to having the wrong healthcare plan, or not having one.
    [Citation needed]  There are laws in the United States regarding this.  Also if a doctor can help a patient he is obligated under the Hippocratic Oath.  This doesn't mean that there aren't cases were a poor patient didn't receive a heart transplant and died while a rich person did.  If someone is bumped up on a list of donors for something that means that other people might die.  Hospitals go through the processes of trying to prioritize those lists.  If someone has the means of convicing the hospitals board of bumping them up, that can happen.  But it doesn't have anything to do with the health care being payed for by insurence vs. the government.
    @WitherVoice said:

    • that others, suffering from conditions to which the only treatment is time, are subjected to expensive and unnecessary treatments up to very close to their excess (deductible), as an ingenious way of increasing the profit margin of the treating hospital.
    Uhhh, I don't really understand what you are saying here.  I think you might be confused on what a deductible is.  Hospitals have no incintive to try and get as close to the deductible as possible.  If anything, what happens is that after you hit your deductible you then go and do a bunch of expensive shit because you have no further out-of-pocket expenses.
    @WitherVoice said:

    • that this year, I will pay approximately 8100 dollars in taxes.
    Congrats?  I will pay $20,000 this year.  Do I win a prize?  What matters is the percentage.  Also, does that $8,000 include the value-added-tax, sales tax, etc? 
    @WitherVoice said:

    • that an estimated 20% of this will go to healthcare.
    • that as my excess (deductible) is 180 dollars, this is a far better deal if I should fall ill, and hardly horrible should I not.

    Your deductible is $180?   Is that perh month or year?   As a contrast consider the numbers:

    You: 
    Good year: $1,600
    Bad year: $1,780

    Me:
    Good Year: $200
    Bad Year: $4,700

    As a comparison I have a far better deal should I not fall ill (I rarely do), and not horrible if I do.  Of course, if I wanted I could have had something more like this:

    Me:
    Good Year: $1,300
    Bad Year: $1,550

    See, pretty much the same as your numbers.  The power of choice is wonderful.

    @WitherVoice said:


    If we were to look at certain other key figures... one thing that I find to be interesting is how your wonderful American way allows a vast majority to live in relatively comfortable degrees of wealth. According to US figures as neatly presented by Wikipedia and supported by several studies, this vast majority constitutes 87.4% of you, if "comfortable wealth" were read as "not below the national definition of poverty". Yet over here, a whooping 95.7% of the population enjoy that status, and amazingly, our standards for what constitutes "poverty" are higher than yours. As for UK having a higher "crime per capita" than the US, while the statistics will show that, if you check closely you will also find that the UK statistics include misdemeanor, whereas the US statistics do not.

    You must have me confused with someone that thinks that it's a problem that lazy or stupid people live below the poverty line.  I know people that live below poverty.  They often spend all their money on entertainment instead of education or investments.  The fact that 15% of Americans are poor doesn't bother me.   Besides, If the United States was as small as Norway, and exported more oil than the United Arab Emerates (as Norway does) we probably would have as low numbers as you.  Congrats I guess living in a country rich in the most economically valuable resource in the world.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @Fister said:

    If you look at the US economic system, we do a lot of wealth transfer.

    We do a little in the form of our welfare system and it is a miserable failure.

     

     

    Last I checked, I paid 30% in federal marginal tax rate, 9% in state, 8.25% sales tax, and about 7.5% in medicare and social security. They don't quite add up to 54.75%, because of how they're calculated, and what parts they affect -- but you seem to be saying saying that an average of perhaps 35% tax burden is "a litte" wealth transfer? Because that's what all taxes are -- wealth transfers from the individual to some other part of society.

    (Actually, some Europeans have that down to an art: first tax away a bunch of money, and then give it back as all kinds of government cash subsidies for food, rent, childcare, etc. Way to make yourself seem indispensible! But I digress, and Jeff couldn't have that.)



  • @Fister said:

    @tster said:

    @Fister said:
    However, there is a limited amount of physical wealth, as measured in tons of steel or similar hard resources.
    You really could not be more wrong.
     

    Wait -- are you claiming that there could, in fact, be an infinite number of purified iron molecules on Earth?

    Wow.

    Just... wow!

     

    No, I'm claiming that you are measuring wealth in a completely wrong way.  Before claiming that I said there is infinite matter on Earth (who said that we can't find a way to mine on other planets BTW) why not actually follow the link that I provided that has a great definition of wealth.  (hint, wealth is not a material entity)



  • @Fister said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    @Fister said:

    If you look at the US economic system, we do a lot of wealth transfer.

    We do a little in the form of our welfare system and it is a miserable failure.

     

     

    Last I checked, I paid 30% in federal marginal tax rate, 9% in state, 8.25% sales tax, and about 7.5% in medicare and social security. They don't quite add up to 54.75%, because of how they're calculated, and what parts they affect -- but you seem to be saying saying that an average of perhaps 35% tax burden is "a litte" wealth transfer? Because that's what all taxes are -- wealth transfers from the individual to some other part of society.

    Right on.  The United States is fuck near socialist if you ask me.  We shouldn't have to pay more than 10% tax. 


  •  @tster said:

    why not actually follow the link that I provided that has a great definition of wealth

    Why not read my post where I explicitly made the difference clear? Or did I seem like a mercantilist to you?



  • @Fister said:

     @tster said:

    why not actually follow the link that I provided that has a great definition of wealth

    Why not read my post where I explicitly made the difference clear? Or did I seem like a mercantilist to you?

    Well, I read that post...  Then you claimed that wealth was finite.  So I assumed you didn't really mean what you claimed.  Then I posted that you were wrong.  Then you refuted me by claiming that I was wrong because iron is finite and hence wealth is finite.  Thus I concluded that you believed wealth to be material, like iron and steel.


  • @tster said:

    You must have me confused with someone that thinks that it's a problem that lazy or stupid people live below the poverty line. 
     

     

    That's the most arrogant thing I've heard since... I last listened to dubyah on the radio, I think.

    US society, like all democracies, do believe that each human being has an intrinsic worth and value, that is worth protecting and caring for. In fact, a lot of that (but not all of it) is written into the US Constitution. The question is, what does "caring for" really mean? In the US, we've defined the poverty line to be a level where an individual can reasonably expect to live free of fear from immediate economic disaster, hampering starvation, freezing to death, etc, as well as being able to raise one or more children (another human right that most democracies believe is intrinsic and worth protecting). You have just placed yourself outside the US societal norms.

    The fact that human beings are starving is deeply troubling, and should be to anyone who has any kind of human empathy. The fact that those starving people are in my own country is even worse. Maybe you lack empathy? The US medical system used to have a word for that affliction, although it's gotten more technical and fine-grained since then: "sociopathy."

     



  •  @tster said:

    Then you claimed that wealth was finite. 

     

    No, I claimed that physical  wealth was finite. That was, like, the whole point of that post. But, whatever :-)



  • @Fister said:

    @tster said:

    You must have me confused with someone that thinks that it's a problem that lazy or stupid people live below the poverty line. 
     

     

    That's the most arrogant thing I've heard since... I last listened to dubyah on the radio, I think.

    US society, like all democracies, do believe that each human being has an intrinsic worth and value, that is worth protecting and caring for. In fact, a lot of that (but not all of it) is written into the US Constitution. The question is, what does "caring for" really mean? In the US, we've defined the poverty line to be a level where an individual can reasonably expect to live free of fear from immediate economic disaster, hampering starvation, freezing to death, etc, as well as being able to raise one or more children (another human right that most democracies believe is intrinsic and worth protecting). You have just placed yourself outside the US societal norms.

    The fact that human beings are starving is deeply troubling, and should be to anyone who has any kind of human empathy. The fact that those starving people are in my own country is even worse. Maybe you lack empathy? The US medical system used to have a word for that affliction, although it's gotten more technical and fine-grained since then: "sociopathy."

     

    My mother was a teacher at a low-income school once.  As part of a program they found out that a particular family had no refrigerator.  Many of the teachers and a philanthropic organization got together and bought the family a nice new refrigerator so that they could keep perishable foods for longer than a day.  You see the kids were slightly malnourished.  A week later, in a follow up visit, it was found that the family had sold the refrigerator and had spent the money to go to the movies and go out to dinner, and then buy some booze.  Now, I would be more than happy for my tax money to go to buy 3 square meals for the children in the family.  After all, it's not their fault that they are hungry, and I believe it to be my responsibility to help them if their parents are too irresponsible to feed them.  However, I do not see it as my responsibility to provide jack shit to the adults.  It's not my duty to support the bastard factories (as a local radio host calls them) and buy them Doritos and Jack Daniels.  


    As an aside.  When was it decided that it is an inherent human right to receive the very best health care available?  It's not a human right to have the best food, or live in the best house, or drive the best car.  Yet for some reason, the best possible health care is a human right.  I don't get it.  You are entitled to precisely what you can pay for or negoriate for.



  • @Fister said:

    @tster said:
    Then you claimed that wealth was finite. 
    No, I claimed that physical  wealth was finite.
      There is no such thing.



  • @tster said:

    That's the most arrogant thing I've heard since... I last listened to dubyah on the radio, I think.
    Wait... What?  George Bush would never say anything like that.  Bush is a far more compasionate conservative than I.  To me, Bush looks practically socialist in many of the bills that he has pushed through congress.



  • @Fister said:

    Last I checked, I paid 30% in federal marginal tax rate, 9% in state, 8.25% sales tax, and about 7.5% in medicare and social security. They don't quite add up to 54.75%, because of how they're calculated, and what parts they affect -- but you seem to be saying saying that an average of perhaps 35% tax burden is "a litte" wealth transfer? Because that's what all taxes are -- wealth transfers from the individual to some other part of society.

    I agree with tster that it should be much less, but you also seem to miss the point that (at least some) of this money is spent on things that are considered essential by the vast majority of reasonable people.  We spend a fuckload on our military, for example, and although I think some politicians need to grow some balls and stand up to the military and say "do more with less", I also think it is money well-spent.  It protects this nation and it provides protection for snotty, ignorant European countries and somewhat more-grateful countries like Israel.  The fact is, though, Europeans aren't that different from Americans and they have an ethic that is very close to our own, although we may disagree on the best ways to achieve those goals.

     

    The fact is, protecting progressive countries like Israel and the European countries is in our best interests.  Yes, it pisses me off that Europeans are happy when we save them from Nazi or Soviet dictators but are critical when we save brown-skinned people or Jews from dictators.  The fact is, though, most of Europe hasn't had to provide their own defense so they have grown comfortable and are willing to question the thin red-white-and-blue line that has separated them from disaster for so long.  And you know what?  That's fine.  It sucks, but Europe can't really stop us from doing what we need to do to preserve our own security and the security of nations they deem unsuitable for protection, like Iraq and Israel.

     

    Regardless, whatever I pay in taxes is still far lower than most socialist countries, even if I wish it was far lower. 



  • @tster said:

    To me, Bush looks practically socialist in many of the bills that he has pushed through congress.

    Sorry to burst your bubble, but Bush is textbook socialist.  He has more than doubled the national budget during his tenure.  He has not tried to reduce the amount we pour into failing systems like welfare and he has vastly increased the amount of corporate welfare this country hands out.  He has sunk the country in massive debt to pay for this.  "Compassionate conservative" means a strict nanny who can't say no to buying things for the kids. 



  • @tster said:

    My mother was a teacher at a low-income school once.  As part of a program they found out that a particular family had no refrigerator.  Many of the teachers and a philanthropic organization got together and bought the family a nice new refrigerator so that they could keep perishable foods for longer than a day.  You see the kids were slightly malnourished.  A week later, in a follow up visit, it was found that the family had sold the refrigerator and had spent the money to go to the movies and go out to dinner, and then buy some booze.  Now, I would be more than happy for my tax money to go to buy 3 square meals for the children in the family.  After all, it's not their fault that they are hungry, and I believe it to be my responsibility to help them if their parents are too irresponsible to feed them.  However, I do not see it as my responsibility to provide jack shit to the adults.  It's not my duty to support the bastard factories (as a local radio host calls them) and buy them Doritos and Jack Daniels.  


    As an aside.  When was it decided that it is an inherent human right to receive the very best health care available?  It's not a human right to have the best food, or live in the best house, or drive the best car.  Yet for some reason, the best possible health care is a human right.  I don't get it.  You are entitled to precisely what you can pay for or negoriate for.

    As mentioned above, my mother is a social worker.  She dealt mostly with poor, pregnant women.  The things she saw amazed me.  Some of her clients were just very good people who were in a bad spot and needed help.  They read what she gave them, they showed up when they were supposed to and they were very grateful.  What is amazing is that many of these "good clients" were students from foreign nations studying in the US.  They would bring her cards and write her poems thanking her for the help and caring she had provided them in having and raising their child as best as they could manage. 

     

    She also saw a lot of parents who intentionally abused drugs because they knew that if they had a mentally retarded child they would receive a higher government benefit.

     

    She saw families who had massive houses, 4 new cars and an expensive home entertainment system who had only managed to get on welfare by taking advantage of loopholes that let millionaires collect benefits.

     

    She saw teenage mothers who would rather smoke weed than feed their baby and who maintained a series of fathers who pay the cable bill before they would make sure there was money for formula.

     

    Eventually these situations broke her heart (she is a very caring liberal Democrat) and she had to quit the job.  She came to realize (as did I) that many people will gladly abuse whatever help is given to them and that the system in place now helps 1 person who needs it for every 20 people who don't.  And I don't care what political persuasion you are, if you met some of these people who needed it you would gladly pay whatever taxes necessary to help them.  They were usually caught in a bad situation and desperately wanted to improve it.  Maybe their father was an abusive alcoholic they ran away from, maybe they had a boyfriend who stole everything they owned, but they were determined to get their life back on track and they were thankful for everything that was provided to them.

     

    My family (as I said) was fairly poor growing up.  We tried very hard to save money.  My parents worked hard and at times we ended up on unemployment, but my dad never came home and drank beer during those times -- he was out applying for every job he could find.  I believe there needs to be a safety net, because I know first-hand that sometimes no matter how hard you try you need help.  However, my family never wasted money on shit like cable TV or superfluous expenses when money was tight.  I grew up helping out around home and even working full-time at 15 to bring in money when my father was injured and unable to work.

     

    However, we were always comfortable.  As I said, I didn't even realize we were poor at the time.  It wasn't until I found out that there were many years that my parents supported themselves and myself and my younger sister on less than $10k a year that it hit me.  I learned the value of working, though, and secured my own residence and employment as soon as I turned 18.  I received a little financial help from my parents, but mostly love, encouragement and advice.  Today I make far more money than my parents ever made combined and I realize that much of that is due to the fact that I had to learn the hard way what back-breaking labor meant.

     

    My father was a factory worker who spent every free moment working on our farm.  He would work 50 hour weeks and then farm for another 30 to make extra money for the family.  My grandfather worked the same farm while walking 5 miles to and from his 16-hour job at a local factory.  The fact is, I don't mention this for sympathy or to impress anyone, but simply to point out that I come from a line of farmers who put every ounce of their heart into working that hateful land and making it bear wealth.  If there's anything that I know, it is how poor people live.  Not only was my family poor, but we were surrounded by poverty.  Some of the families worked hard and made something of themselves.  Some of the families always had trashcans in front of their houses full of beer bottles, a satellite dish on their mobile home and a brand new pickup truck.  You can believe whatever the fuck you want, but I can tell you from experience that there is a difference between people who stumble and need a little help and people who would rather spend their time watching TV and getting drunk. 



  • @tster said:

    My mother was a teacher at a low-income school once. 
     

    I've heard that story before. Are you perchance a talk radio show host?

    Anyway, the story as told has at least three failings:

    1) The context it's told in assumes that a single observation about a single family has any bearing whatsoever on the specifics of macro-economic policies. Any single sample, or any sample collection less than, say, 1,000 samples, can't tell you much if anything about overall policies. And that's what we're talking about here.

    2) The story violates the sovereignty principle, because it assumes that everybody should share the view of the teller, that it's better to have a fridge than to have a good time. Clearly, the family in the story thought differently. If you're for a country of choice, then how come you're suggesting that the family shouldn't have made theirs?

    3) You apparently attempt to use this story to justify your sociopathic lack of empathy with starving people. Not having empathy with starving people, no matter how lazy, is the real problem; not the choices of the people in the story. Unless you believe that humans do not have an inherent value, and thus can be treated as trash in some cases.




  • wow, this post takes me back to when I was starting out in IT.

    The first recruiting agency I dealt with decided to doctor my resume - I had (foolishly) listed VMS as an OS with which I had experience; they turned my resume into that of a VMS/CMS guru. They then kept using it for *years*. I didn't actually see it until something like three years later, but they'd majorly hacked at it (including taking out my main actual experience at that point.) Being a believer in 'grapeshot', their shenanigan didn't slow me down much, but I probably received several hundred calls in all from companies wanting to hire me for VMS or CMS systems - especially as Y2K approached.

    Another notable experience was encountering a job whose requirements included '10 years of perl experience', back in 1996. Having 0 professional years of perl programming, and less than 1 year of academic perl experience, I applied anyway (although I submitted a resume with no years of experience listed for anything). When he got to his 10 years requirement, I responded, "Oh. Let me make this quick for you. You want Larry. That'll cost many times what your recruiter indicated you were willing to pay." "Larry?" he responded. "Yeah, the author - perl wasn't released to the world until 1987[1]. Oh, he had some help, but it's still a pool of less than 20 people - and they're all out of your price range." Rather surprised, he then tried to explain why they needed a *very* experienced perl programmer. I gave him three ways to solve his problem, and wrote it out on a piece of paper. He left the room, taking the paper with him. He returned a few minutes later, and continued the interview; perl wasn't mentioned again. About a week later, I got a letter in the mail, indicating that I was "overqualified" for their position, but they were very thankful that I had taken the time to interview them. (Yeah, I thought they should've been thankful that I had taken the time to interview *with* them, or something like that, but... oh well.)

    About four years later, the small world effect kicked in - someone on that guy's team came to work for the company who eventually hired me. And, that person *did*, in fact, recognize my name as the guy who "solved all of their problems" in under four minutes during an interview. This, btw, is not me boasting. It's me saying WTF, as it was a fairly trivial issue. (If I recall correctly, it was a case of them trying too hard, but it's been too long for me to be at all certain.) It turned out that I [b]really[/b] hadn't wanted that job, as it was WTF central. Admittedly, I didn't get to hear all that much about it, as the FNG apparently suspected that I thought he was lacking in the mental arts. Not sure why. ;>

    [1] This may have not been entirely accurate, but it is what I said. It was, at least, true in essence, as perl 1.0 wasn't released until 1987, and very few people used it before 1.0.



  • @Fister said:

    @tster said:

    My mother was a teacher at a low-income school once. 
     

    I've heard that story before. Are you perchance a talk radio show host?

    I don't lie.  However, if you don't believe me, I don't really have the means to prove this story true, or the urge to do so, so I guess you can take it or leave it

    @Fister said:

    1) The context it's told in assumes that a single observation about a single family has any bearing whatsoever on the specifics of macro-economic policies. Any single sample, or any sample collection less than, say, 1,000 samples, can't tell you much if anything about overall policies. And that's what we're talking about here.

    OK, I agree.  My story is statistically irrelevant.  However, similar stories play out in the tens of thousands and cost me and you billions every year.

    @Fister said:


    2) The story violates the sovereignty principle, because it assumes that everybody should share the view of the teller, that it's better to have a fridge than to have a good time. Clearly, the family in the story thought differently. If you're for a country of choice, then how come you're suggesting that the family shouldn't have made theirs?

    Ironically this is exactly the point that I was trying to make.  The family valued having a fun night out more than being able to feed their children in the long run.  After learning this I promptly decided that it was a wasted effort trying to help them provide food for their children.  At that point the only option, if you actually want to feed the children, is to feed them yourself, directly.  And I do assert that they should value feeding their children higher than having a fun night and getting drunk.  If you for some reason think that this is an invalid assertion, then I really don't see how you could think I am a sociopath for not caring about the starving, alcoholic, abusive parents.

    @Fister said:

     

    3) You apparently attempt to use this story to justify your sociopathic lack of empathy with starving people. Not having empathy with starving people, no matter how lazy, is the real problem; not the choices of the people in the story. Unless you believe that humans do not have an inherent value, and thus can be treated as trash in some cases.

    I always love it when people on the left claim that I do not value human life.  It's true that I don't have sympathy for adults that have used up their unemployment or welfare and then sit at home and spend all their money on Doritos and Budweiser.  However, I at least have sympathy for the people in Iraq who were tortured and gased by the tens of thousands under Saddam.  I vote to protect the lives of the unborn humans growing in the wombs of soon-to-be mothers in high schools across the country.  I vote for politicians that will appoint judges that actually care about protecting the public and will sentence dangerous rapists and thugs to longer sentences.  If there is an issue, there is a good chance I'm on the side of the humans.  But in the end there is a limited amount of good that I can do, and I'm certainly not going to waste my time or my resources buying more Corn Nuts for the dumb fuck who spend last month's welfare check paying for his Hustler magazine subscription and Satellite TV.



  • @tster said:

    @Fister said:

    @tster said:

    My mother was a teacher at a low-income school once. 
     

    I've heard that story before. Are you perchance a talk radio show host?

    I don't lie.  However, if you don't believe me, I don't really have the means to prove this story true, or the urge to do so, so I guess you can take it or leave it

    Upon re-reading this, I realized that you might not be accusing me of lying.  If you were asking me a serious question, then no, I'm not a talk radio host.  There is a chance I've told this story before on a forum (perhaps this one), but I don't remember.


  • @tster said:

    Upon re-reading this, I realized that you might not be accusing me of lying.  If you were asking me a serious question, then no, I'm not a talk radio host.  There is a chance I've told this story before on a forum (perhaps this one), but I don't remember.
     

    I read it as an actual question the first time... so at least it might have been. Anyway, the story you told is something that'd be liable to happen more than once, and when it did happen more than one person would pretty much be guaranteed to be involved, and thus able to walk away from it knowing the events and thus be able to truthfully tell the story. So even if some radio talk show host somewhere uses that story as his favourite anecdote, I see no reason to doubt that you are telling the truth :-)

    Heck, in a thousand years, it's not unlikely that a significant percentage of the world's population is descended from someone involved in that story ;-)



  •  OK, well re-reading old threads has kept me up far past my bedtime.  However, if anyone wants to read lots more good arguments from boths sides of this issue this is an excellent thread: http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/t/7708.aspx?PageIndex=1.


    I personally think some of the arguments made on the other side in that thread were particularly compelling.  If anyone actually does go back and read it, I just want you to know that I still stand behind my statement that the economy is fundamentally strong then and now. 



  • @Fister said:

    The context it's told in assumes that a single observation about a single family has any bearing whatsoever on the specifics of macro-economic policies. Any single sample, or any sample collection less than, say, 1,000 samples, can't tell you much if anything about overall policies. And that's what we're talking about here.

    It is obviously an anecdote and not a statistical survey.  He was personalizing his political views.  Statistically speaking, there are many examples of this happening across the US.  I can already conclude that you are the type of liberal who has never actually tried to work with the poor you venerate.  It is often a painful, heart-breaking experience.  Mothers who would rather drink, smoke crack and watch TV than watch their own children.  A steady stream of boyfriends who are unemployed and latching onto a sugar momma just to drain her welfare benefits.  The shocking neglect of children and the depressing cycle of addiction, poverty, domestic violence and pregnancy.

     

    @Fister said:

    The story violates the sovereignty principle, because it assumes that everybody should share the view of the teller, that it's better to have a fridge than to have a good time. Clearly, the family in the story thought differently. If you're for a country of choice, then how come you're suggesting that the family shouldn't have made theirs?

    People are free to make their own choices when they are capable of doing that.  When people get together to provide a poor family with a fridge there is an expectation that they will use this to better their life.  When they don't, it is completely reasonable to be angry about this.  Expand it to a nation-wide epidemic of poverty where we are handing out the equivalent of millions of free fridges per month only to have millions of adults trade them for booze, drugs, TV and junk food and maybe you understand why I consider the system to be an epic failure.  You also make a fundamental error in your assumptions about freedom.  Just because I believe someone should have the right to do something, that does not mean I cannot hold my own beliefs on the morality or intelligence of their decisions.  I think people should be free to do as much heroin as they want, but I'm certainly not going to think they are making the right decision for themselves.

     

    @Fister said:

    You apparently attempt to use this story to justify your sociopathic lack of empathy with starving people. Not having empathy with starving people, no matter how lazy, is the real problem; not the choices of the people in the story. Unless you believe that humans do not have an inherent value, and thus can be treated as trash in some cases.

    If anything he was showing immense sympathy for the children who had no control of the situation they were in.  I would consider having sympathy for the worthless parents to be almost a form of sociopathic behavior.  Well, that's not 100% true, as I will elaborate on ahead.  I do not believe that humans have an inherent value, but instead that the value of a human comes from their actions.  I consider most of us starting with a blank slate and I am sympathetic enough to realize that some people had harder childhoods and will not start nearly as far ahead as others.  However, when speaking of parents who neglect and abuse their kids, I consider these people to be a drain on society that needs to be corrected.  Actually, taking the issue of human value further, I believe any human who consciously decides to end the life of another innocent human to be worse than trash and deserving of a quick, painless death at taxpayer expense.

     

    Back to the sympathy thing, though.  Yes, many of the people on welfare are lazy, ignorant, neglect their children, abuse drugs and are all around fairly worthless parents and human beings.  However, I do have some sympathy for them, because our welfare system enables a vicious cycle of economic dependence, emotional depression, drug abuse and child neglect.  Hell, it actually unintentionally encourages these things by offering better benefits the more poor and drug-addicted you are, not to mention having more children and having handicapped children.  What the welfare system of the United States has ultimately accomplished is the creation of a permanent underclass.  Once again, social work runs in my family so I know this stuff first-hand.  Children are raised by their neglectful parents to believe their only option in life is collecting welfare benefits.  There is no hope their children will break out of poverty and the children simply learn that this is how life works.

     

    My mother used to bring young (7-12) girls over to our house so they could swim in our pool and ride horses and have the kind of carefree fun that their single mothers would never provide for them.  Talking to these kids was depressing.  They were still young enough to be sweet and kind, but their perspective was warped.  They had no concept of what a stable father figure meant.  Despite their youthful friendliness, they were unfamiliar with concepts like sharing and discipline.  When my mother would tell them not to do some dangerous behavior they simply ignored her and when she would attempt to enforce any kind of rules it became clear that rules and structure were foreign to them.  The concept of a mother who wasn't bombed out of her mind on drugs and alcohol all day was bizarre as well.  The children would frequently ask my mom if she had bought the refreshments with food stamps and wanted to know how we could buy a pool and house and so much land on our social security and welfare checks.  These kids weren't even teenagers yet and they already thought of their future in terms of welfare benefits.  College, a career, a family and sometimes even finishing high school were alien.  So, yes, I do have some sympathy for them.  Many people have been on the system so long that they cannot conceive of taking care of themselves and they raise their children in the same dependency mindset.  We have generations growing up completely within the welfare system, not even aware that another way of life exists.



  •  @WitherVoice said:

    • that this year, I will pay approximately 8100 dollars in taxes.
    • that an estimated 20% of this will go to healthcare.

     

    So you'll make a whopping 16,200 dollars this year?  Wow, I'm impressed...



  •  Hmm, I guess I will earn only about 38,000 this year... but when the year is up, I will only have worked 8 of the 12 months of the year, so it's a little lower than it would be.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

     So, Morbius, your point is that socialism is bad because Americans are stupid? I'm failing to see the logic.

    How many of you bragging about your coverage have actually tried to get anything back OUT of the system? The insurance I have through my stepmother's job isn't accepted anywhere I can actually get to, and I can't afford my own policy. The number one difficulty for me is getting birth control - if I was a little more daring and stupid I'd probably end up with a spawn I can't care for, instead of saving up for dildos and calling it a day. 

     What IS the poverty line anyway? And what counts? Almost all the money I personally bring in is in the form of student loans and gifts from my father; my man has a job but it's barely above minimum wage. Half my rent, all my tuition, and a good deal for groceries are paid for me by my father, and I still can't afford enough clothes that fit me. If I get sick, I have to pray that my insurance will be accepted at the hospital. If my man gets sick, he's SOL. But of course, we have a mercedes (that his parents gave to him years ago, and that needs a lot of repairs we can't afford), and a washer/dryer (a gift from my mother), and cable TV (included in our rent), and an xbox, so obviously we're just idiots who fail to take advantage of the Wonders of Capitalism. 

     I believe that the vast majority of social issues in the US exist because we're taught from a young age that other people don't matter, that at best they're pathetic losers if they don't have as much stuff as we do, that the only thing that matters is taking all we can get. If we would grow up and stop acting like spoiled children, a lot of issues would vanish. Money is not important - survival is. If we cared enough about our kids not to abuse them, if we cared enough about other people's kids to help them out despite disapproving of their lifestyles or whatever else...



  • @yamikuronue said:

     So, Morbius, your point is that socialism is bad because Americans are stupid? I'm failing to see the logic.

    You're failing to see many things.  Socialism is bad because it is stupid.

     

    @yamikuronue said:

    How many of you bragging about your coverage have actually tried to get anything back OUT of the system?

    Um, what would I be bragging about if not the benefits?  Obviously I have fantastic coverage and I am very happy with it.

     

    @yamikuronue said:

    The insurance I have through my stepmother's job isn't accepted anywhere I can actually get to, and I can't afford my own policy. The number one difficulty for me is getting birth control - if I was a little more daring and stupid I'd probably end up with a spawn I can't care for...

    It just sounds like you have a really cheap plan.  My recommendation for birth control is to go to your local public health department or Planned Parenthood.  Low-income individuals can get free or significantly reduced birth control.

     

    @yamikuronue said:

    ...instead of saving up for dildos and calling it a day.

    This is relevent to my interests.  You can private message me if you like, darling.

     

    @yamikuronue said:

    What IS the poverty line anyway? And what counts? Almost all the money I personally bring in is in the form of student loans and gifts from my father; my man has a job but it's barely above minimum wage. Half my rent, all my tuition, and a good deal for groceries are paid for me by my father, and I still can't afford enough clothes that fit me. If I get sick, I have to pray that my insurance will be accepted at the hospital. If my man gets sick, he's SOL. But of course, we have a mercedes (that his parents gave to him years ago, and that needs a lot of repairs we can't afford), and a washer/dryer (a gift from my mother), and cable TV (included in our rent), and an xbox, so obviously we're just idiots who fail to take advantage of the Wonders of Capitalism.

    I think poverty is something like $15k per year for an individual, $20k for a family of 2.  It varies by location.  It sounds like you are a college student, which means you're most likely going to be poor.  I'm surprised your university doesn't have an insurance plan and their own clinic, most do.  A 6-month major-medical plan for a young, healthy person is something like $40 a month.  With that your "man" would be insured against catastrophe.  And if you have a Mercedes that you don't sell for something cheaper and an Xbox then you have disposable income and you have no room to complain about a goddamn thing.  Christ, you aren't living in the third world, you whiny little brat.  You are complaining that you can't afford to repair your luxury car because your only source of income is free money you get for going to college, all paid for on my dime.  Personally, I say STFU, get a job and take care of yourself.  If you can't afford college, too bad, learn to be self-sufficient instead of whining because you aren't responsible enough to budget money for health insurance because the world is unfair and you can't even get brand new clothes and you only have an Xbox, not a wii.  Grow up.

     

    @yamikuronue said:

    I believe that the vast majority of social issues in the US exist because we're taught from a young age that other people don't matter, that at best they're pathetic losers if they don't have as much stuff as we do, that the only thing that matters is taking all we can get.

    No, I think a lot of the problems come from people like you thinking this way.  Guess what, most people don't act like this.  You're the one whining about how you don't have enough free stuff given to you by people who actually work.  So what about the millions of people who actually work and have to pay to support your privileged, onoxious ass?  You are reducing their livelihood due to your own greed and laziness and then you accuse me of not caring about people?  Pfft.

     

    @yamikuronue said:

    If we I would grow up and stop acting like a spoiled children, a lot of issues would vanish.

    FTFY.

     

    @yamikuronue said:

    Money is not important - survival is.

    Money is survival, you twit.  It's also comfort, opportunity, peace, self-sufficiency and the fulfillment of desire.


    @yamikuronue said:

    If we cared enough about our kids not to abuse them, if we cared enough about other people's kids to help them out despite disapproving of their lifestyles or whatever else...

    What in the fuck are you talking about here?  Yeah, some people abuse their children.  It's illegal, it's wrong.  Guess where the vast majority of this abuse happens?  In impoverished welfare houses.  I'm not even sure what the fuck you mean by "disapproving of their lifestyles" but when child abuse is uncovered the children are taken to safety, the parents are charged with a crime and the child services agencies do their best to care for the child and integrate them back into the home.  There are a lot of people who do this as their job, who have to deal with sickening neglect and child abuse committed by lazy, selfish, drug-addicted, welfare-sucking assholes.  I think those people would be quite offended at the suggestion they don't do whatever they can to help the children out, even long after they've lost the ability to feel much of anything from seeing so much of the same shit over and over again.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    A few points:

     Have you asked people outside of the social worker and welfare system what they think about welfare? The implication that welfare mothers are stupid, lazy, and basically worthless is the stereotype I was referring to, and that's without getting into teen mothers. 

     The mercedes is rather broken; if I thougt we could get enough for it to get a car that'd be safe to drive I'd do it in a heartbeat. 

     Free money? I take out loans, WTF are you talking about? The only "free" money I get is from my father. I'm not taking anything from your pocket. 

     I've been to the school clinic. It's shit. The doctor looked at me blankly and asked what I wanted him to do about my killer headaches. Um, I'm not the one who went to med school. And they still would charge for BC, just like the PP, because it's not subsidised in this state - and wasn't that your point, that nobody should get things like that free?

     I'm not on welfare, or asking for it. I'm not asking anyone for money. I work when I can and muddle through when I can't. I was simply musing about the fact that I have very little cash on hand, and am actually deep in debt when you consider my loans and my man's credit card. And yet the minute I point this out, you get hostile and defensive and insist I'm asking for free things because I wish I could be on birth control and go to the doc when I get sick. The minute I point out that I'm poor you take that as an attack on your wallet. So go ahead on your high-and-mighty "I care about poor people" kick; it's no more accurate than it would be to call me homeless. I can only hope that someday when I do have enough to share that I'm not so arrogant and defensive about it as you are. 



  • @yamikuronue said:

    Have you asked people outside of the social worker and welfare system what they think about welfare? The implication that welfare mothers are stupid, lazy, and basically worthless is the stereotype I was referring to, and that's without getting into teen mothers.

    Having seen enough of the welfare system first-hand and hearing from multiple social workers how broken it is, I believe I know what I'm talking about.  Why would the opinion of someone who doesn't even know how the system works matter?  And nobody said they were all stupid and lazy, but many are.  They have emotional problems, abusive relationships, make very poor choices for themselves and their children, don't work or even bother raising their kids and are often alcoholics or drug addicts.  My problem isn't that they are inherently worthless, but that they act worthless like there is nothing that they can or should contribute to the world.  It's a horrible cycle and it needs to be rectified.

     

    @yamikuronue said:

    The mercedes is rather broken; if I thougt we could get enough for it to get a car that'd be safe to drive I'd do it in a heartbeat.

    That sucks, but it doesn't change the fact that you are hardly all that poor, especially since you are in college and are nowhere near your peak earning potential.

     

    @yamikuronue said:

    Free money? I take out loans, WTF are you talking about? The only "free" money I get is from my father. I'm not taking anything from your pocket.

    I assumed you received grants or other financial aid.  If you are going to a state college, some of the taxes in that state probably fund the school so you're taking money from the taxpayers.  If the loans are federally-subsidized loans, the interest is being paid as part of the fed budget, funded by my tax dollars.

     

    @yamikuronue said:

    I've been to the school clinic. It's shit. The doctor looked at me blankly and asked what I wanted him to do about my killer headaches. Um, I'm not the one who went to med school.

    That sucks as well.  Why don't you try to push for improvements to the healthcare you (and the taxpayers) are funding instead of just complaining on an Internet message board?

     

    @yamikuronue said:

    And they still would charge for BC, just like the PP, because it's not subsidised in this state - and wasn't that your point, that nobody should get things like that free?

    So I gave you advice on how to get taxpayer-subsidized birth control because I don't think people should get it?  Yeah, that makes sense.  There's a big difference between universal healthcare, failed welfare programs that promote poverty, hopelessness, the destruction of the family unit, child abuse and drug addiction and subsidized birth control.  It's a small cost to pay and it is the type of proactive action we should be taking to reduce the number of abortions and unwanted babies.  I don't want you (or any other woman) to be stuck with a child she is not emotionally or financially capable of supporting.  It very well can wreck your life and dreams and can royally fuck up the kid.  It also leads to the expansion of the welfare state.  I took advantage of the free birth control when I was poor as well.

     

    Also, you didn't respond to the public health department.  I'm not sure how it is in your state, but I know most places have federal grants to give out free condoms and significantly reduced ortho and depo.  I would try looking it up in the phone book or visiting your campus health clinic and asking them where the nearest provider of subsidized birth control is.

     

    @yamikuronue said:

    I'm not on welfare, or asking for it. I'm not asking anyone for money. I work when I can and muddle through when I can't. I was simply musing about the fact that I have very little cash on hand, and am actually deep in debt when you consider my loans and my man's credit card. And yet the minute I point this out, you get hostile and defensive and insist I'm asking for free things because I wish I could be on birth control and go to the doc when I get sick. The minute I point out that I'm poor you take that as an attack on your wallet. So go ahead on your high-and-mighty "I care about poor people" kick; it's no more accurate than it would be to call me homeless. I can only hope that someday when I do have enough to share that I'm not so arrogant and defensive about it as you are.

    I never said you were on welfare or asking for it.  My point wasn't that you were poor or bad or anything but that your whining is pretty ridiculous.  You are going to college, you are not starving, you have a fucking Xbox and TV.  In my book, that is not poor.  You are also pursuing a degree that will end up raising your earning potential when you graduate.  Seriously, stop acting like you are underprivileged.  Like I said, I've known really poor people and I can guarantee you I actually was poor when I was in college, unlike yourself.  I'm not saying you have it great, but give me a break.  It's irritating to listen to someone who has a comfortable life complain and then try to draw parallels between herself and the perpetual underclass.  Quite frankly, you are the arrogant one and it is sickening.

    What's more, I am defensive of my money because I am lucky enough to no longer be poor and I have to protect myself from ignorant people like yourself who will gladly use violence to steal my money and turn around and use it to create a welfare state that breeds hopelessness and pain.  I'm defensive because the loony ideas you promote have already damaged this country greatly and your solution seems to be pushing ahead with twice the reckless idealism.  If nobody stands up to this nonsense, we're all going to end up mired in poverty, and I don't mean the kind where you have to make-do with last generation's video game system.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    So I gave you advice on how to get taxpayer-subsidized birth control because I don't think people should get it?  Yeah, that makes sense.  There's a big difference between universal healthcare, failed welfare programs that promote poverty, hopelessness, the destruction of the family unit, child abuse and drug addiction and subsidized birth control.  It's a small cost to pay and it is the type of proactive action we should be taking to reduce the number of abortions and unwanted babies.

    Well, for those who despise contraception, there is always Texas approach to family planning. Andrea Yates used it with 100% success.



  • @alegr said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    So I gave you advice on how to get taxpayer-subsidized birth control because I don't think people should get it?  Yeah, that makes sense.  There's a big difference between universal healthcare, failed welfare programs that promote poverty, hopelessness, the destruction of the family unit, child abuse and drug addiction and subsidized birth control.  It's a small cost to pay and it is the type of proactive action we should be taking to reduce the number of abortions and unwanted babies.

    Well, for those who despise contraception, there is always Texas approach to family planning. Andrea Yates used it with 100% success.

    Who despises contraception in this day and age, other than the Pope?  I mean, hell, if I never got laid I'd also want to suck all the joy out of it for people who did.  I don't quite understand why this is the "Texas approach" (was Yates from TX?), but I prefer the Darwinian approach.  Just don't use contraception and get my lady preggers as many times as possible.  Then pit the children against one another in a series of challenges to eliminate the genetic deadwood and purify my seed.  I don't want my name on just any set of genes out there, I want my label to be a mark of genetic perfection.  Of course, the challenges would have to be carefully handicapped based on age to give the younger ones a chance.  Winners are rewarded with fatherly love and food and are permitted to advance to the next round.  Losers will either be liquidated or chained up in the basement and made into hideous monsters to be utilized as beasts of burden by the winning children, all the while hiding the terrible secret of their unholy conception.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Who despises contraception in this day and age, other than the Pope?

    As one guy said about pope and contraception: "You don't play the game, you don't set the rules".

    @morbiuswilters said:

    I don't quite understand why this is the "Texas approach" (was Yates from TX?),

    All TX. Born, lived, and did that in TX. And this is not the only recent case in TX.

     


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