Thanks, Obama.

[Deacon923]

I know what socialism, Marxism, communism all mean. I shy away from rhetoric, but the more government is involved in the distribution of goods and services the further left we move. I'm not a fan of fanatical right-wing talk shows, but arguing over narrow definitions of words is ridiculous. More government involvement is more government. What you choose to call it is up to you. From my wiki readings today I still feel confident using the word "socialism," not arguing we are on the brink of become Red China, but a movement to the left is a movement to the left. The healthcare law is not equivalent to the Bolshevik Revolution, but it is a major move to the left.

I would like to hear more about the opportunity part. Seems to me that high income taxes would stand in the way of wealth building.

Government is much less involved in the distribution of goods and services than it was in the middle of the last century. At most you see a minor reaction to the worst excesses of financial deregulation in the form of Dodd Frank (a hot reactionary mess of a poorly designed law). The healthcare law is another hot mess, but the fact is it was largely written by huge privately owned insurance companies and will put billions more into their pockets. President Reagan was in favor of greater gun control (because the Black Panthers realized they had a right to bear arms, but nonetheless). Congress passed, and Obama signed, a significant liberalization (by which I mean, deregulation) of the private capital raising rules in 2011.

This "movement to the left" is a false narrative packaged and sold with hysterical fear tactics.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

I was referring to dollars, not %. % of GDP we are slightly lower right now. Not historically low, but lower by a couple of percentage points. But do not fret, projections based on current laws will have us back up to historically high numbers (19% of GDP) by Obama's last year in office.

 

[Ball State Deac]

 

[Turd Ferguson]

Government is much less involved in the distribution of goods and services than it was in the middle of the last century. At most you see a minor reaction to the worst excesses of financial deregulation in the form of Dodd Frank (a hot reactionary mess of a poorly designed law). The healthcare law is another hot mess, but the fact is it was largely written by huge privately owned insurance companies and will put billions more into their pockets. President Reagan was in favor of greater gun control (because the Black Panthers realized they had a right to bear arms, but nonetheless). Congress passed, and Obama signed, a significant liberalization (by which I mean, deregulation) of the private capital raising rules in 2011.

This "movement to the left" is a false narrative packaged and sold with hysterical fear tactics.

I agree the Health Care is a hot mess, and exactly because it brings together the worst of business and the worst of government. As I would say on the other board, good fire bad hire. We have a problem, don't think the solution will make it better. One of the reasons I'm reluctant towards big government legislation is exactly because it often leads to companies fucking us over. Seldom is there one without the other.

I think the false narrative you speak of is overblown, but not without merit. Like most things, it's just more complicated than most are willing to admit. Alot of the imagined leftward movement is on social issues, which I really don't give much of a shit about.

 

[Deacon923]

I was referring to dollars, not %. % of GDP we are slightly lower right now. Not historically low, but lower by a couple of percentage points. But do not fret, projections based on current laws will have us back up to historically high numbers (19% of GDP) by Obama's last year in office.

Actually the historical high of receipts was over 30% of GDP, in George Bush's term. Expenditures are certainly historically high. Historically high expenditures coupled with historical lows in receipts is not good. The dispute of course is how to make them match up, given the oncoming demographic freight train of the baby boomers getting old while we simultaneously continue to subsidize the rest of the world by playing global cop.

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?DocID=612&Topic2id=20&Topic3id=21

 

[WakeandBake]

Again Turd, we have distilled these numbers ad nauseum on this board for years. You are just late to the party.

Damn its fun to address someone as Turd.

Our expenditures are at an all-time high, but that is skewed by our exceedingly high defense and war spending - and as 923 pointed out, our demographic situation.

Still, how do you square that with the top 10%'s historical, record-breaking surge in wealth accumulation over the same period?

 

[Wrangor]

The real issue that should be up for debate is this:

Do we believe that healthcare is a right? If it is, then we have to establish a system in which everyone is provided for. If it is not, then we have to be comfortable with the idea of people who could receive care, not getting care because they cannot afford it. I am not sure if it is a right, but I certainly think that in practice there is no other alternative. The key then is to now devise a system that best cares for everyone since we have established that we will treat all who need treatment.

Preventative care is the most cost effective, and the best for the individuals quality of life. Preventative care should be our goal. Our current setup encourages just the opposite (and so what a completely free market). People do not invest their health at the expense of other life desires or needs. It is a proven fact. We are not going to spend $25 to go to a preventative bi-yearly checkup when we can go to a movie. If it ain't broke, don't fix it is the motto (for me as well). So we wait until we break, and then we go find someone to fix it. It is the most expensive possible method of healthcare, and it costs this country $$$$$$$ because the poorest people are often the least healthy. So we wait for the unhealthy poor people to break, then we admit them into ER's (because they have zero relationship with a family practice doctor - because we don't pay for that currently) and then they spend a bunch of government money on a condition that in a lot of cases could have been prevented.

I look at healthcare a lot like road at this point. It is not necessarily something that government HAS to provide. Some communities could provide themselves an infrastructure, but we have an agreed upon philosophy in this country that a solid infrastructure is good for everyone, and cost effective for everyone so we pay taxes and let the government do it. Unless we are comfortable with not allowing sick people to be treated, then we have to come to grips with the fact that we are already a government run healthcare system. Might as well go all the way and stop playing footsie with the problem.

 

[Wakeforest22890]

Healthcare is almost assuredly a human right IMO. I agree with your analysis Wrangor.

 

[jhmd2000]

Healthcare is almost assuredly a human right IMO. I agree with your analysis Wrangor.

What is the source of these rights? Who is to pay for them? If you don't agree to pay for my share of my health care, are you violating my rights? Please explain.

 

[BeachBumDeac]

What is the source of these rights? Who is to pay for them? If you don't agree to pay for my share of my health care, are you violating my rights? Please explain.

The individual is to pay for them if they are able. If they are not able, then everyone else should pay for them.

It's part of living in a society together. Everyone benefits when people are healthy.

 

[ChrisL68]

I was referring to dollars, not %. % of GDP we are slightly lower right now. Not historically low, but lower by a couple of percentage points. But do not fret, projections based on current laws will have us back up to historically high numbers (19% of GDP) by Obama's last year in office.

And historically, tax revenues have always increased. Due to things such as inflation and population growth.

The fact that we have had multi year periods of negative revenue increases in the past 13 years have been a major concern.

 

[Junebug]

The individual is to pay for them if they are able. If they are not able, then everyone else should pay for them.

It's part of living in a society together. Everyone benefits when people are healthy.

I must've missed this day in Con Law.

 

[BeachBumDeac]

I must've missed this day in Con Law.

Clearly the Constitution is the only possible source for things that we as a society should be doing for each other.

 

[jhmd2000]

The individual is to pay for them if they are able. If they are not able, then everyone else should pay for them.

It's part of living in a society together. Everyone benefits when people are healthy.

As the OP illustrates, that utopiaist's naiveté meets with the hangman's noose now under the current system where everyone is responsible for their own care (beer + cigarettes + obesity + luxury items coming ahead of health insurance); much less when you discover the "health care right."

If people don't prioritize their own health, why should the rest of us pick up the tab so they can abuse their bodies and buy nice things? If you're not going to take personal financial responsibility for your own health care, then at the very least to qualify to ride for free on the public option you should have to demonstrate basic personal responsibility for not being overweight and not smoking. Before you ask for help, figure out the difference between a want and a need. Is that really too much to ask?

 

[ImTheCaptain]

i mean, there's a difference between eating twinkies all day and a poor guy who falls/breaks his leg or back while working

 

[BeachBumDeac]

You'll never have 100% personal responsibility. The way to INCREASE personal responsibility is through education and opportunity for economic advancement (i.e., more jobs).

 

[Deacon923]

The Constitution, in this case, is just a smokescreen. This nation (and all other modern industrialized countries) decided a long time ago that medical care is going to be made available to all citizens in one form or another. Junebug and JHMD want to cry Constitution to avoid directly stating that they don't want to pay for poor people to get care, and that they are OK with poor people dying avoidable deaths if it will save them money and keep government "small". They may also trot out the "forced charity" line, which is just another way of avoiding the issue, because everyone with any intellectual honesty knows that universal modern healthcare is not going to be made available through the offering plate.

We can turn the thread into a sham constitutional argument if you want, but just be aware that you are getting Constitutionally trolled.

 

[jhmd2000]

You'll never have 100% personal responsibility. The way to INCREASE personal responsibility is through education and opportunity for economic advancement (i.e., more jobs).

I don't think we're threatening the 100% personal responsibility barrier any time soon. I don't think we can even see it behind the wall of entitlements to subsidized housing, food, health care, public education, child care, etc., etc., etc. This gets back to my point about how these programs, ostensibly well-intended at conception, inevitably supplant private responsibility and render people dependent upon them. When you chase out the expectation that at the very least you do what is in your control to improve your health, raise your children and work, you're eroding the one non-negotiable building block to economic advancement: an abiding sense of personal responsibility. Instead, we've got a victim/entitlement culture and multigenerational subsistence dependency, and that's not good enough. Seriously, please show me how you get to an economically advanced state from our now current starting expectation of: "Be as fat, reproductively fruitful, lazy, drunk and hooked on cancer sticks* as you want, your 'rights' to life's basics (and now, several wants) will be provided, whether you help yourself or not. Remember, your condition is always someone else's fault, and you have the right to look to others to provide for you."

* Please know that I well recognize that not everyone who isn't currently on their economic feet meets these criteria; they are offered not as an off-ramp to your having to address the issue, but as a demonstration that our current policies don't screen for any of these factors which ARE within almost everyone's control, and which---I would hope we could agree---severely exacerbate the existing problems. My point is that if we at least asked people to control what they can control, they'll be taking the first, monumental step towards being able to provide for themselves. The cynic in me can't help but notice that our policies discourage that first and most important step. "Have as many babies as you want, we'll always provide." isn't working.

 

[Deacon923]

JHMD you've made this point ad nauseam. Most people would agree that our current system is not ideal and you've beat that dead horse to a bloody rotten pulp on this and many other threads. What I'd like to see from you, as an obviously intelligent person, is two things in a post:
1. An acknowledgement that no government system is immune from abuse, and that one-off anecdotes from dubious sources about isolated incidents of abuse do not constitute evidence that an entire system is irredeemably broken.
2. A post that, instead of yet again molesting the dead horse of your objection to subsistence welfare programs, outlines your proposal for reform so we can discuss it.

 

[jhmd2000]

The Constitution, in this case, is just a smokescreen. This nation (and all other modern industrialized countries) decided a long time ago that medical care is going to be made available to all citizens in one form or another. Junebug and JHMD want to cry Constitution to avoid directly stating that they don't want to pay for poor people to get care, and that they are OK with poor people dying avoidable deaths if it will save them money and keep government "small". They may also trot out the "forced charity" line, which is just another way of avoiding the issue, because everyone with any intellectual honesty knows that universal modern healthcare is not going to be made available through the offering plate.

We can turn the thread into a sham constitutional argument if you want, but just be aware that you are getting Constitutionally trolled.

I love it when others pretend to speak for me. Allow me to return the favor. 923 thinks that poor, dependent people should stay poor and dependent, and that the current system is working just fine. Heck, maybe a fourth generation now dependent on the government is just the beginning. Anyone who thinks that the poor, subsistent, dependent child born as the eighth in line to a single, unhealthy mother deserves a better lot in life than her current condition clearly doesn't understand how good this hungry and hopeless child really has it. Sure, 923 wants good, accountable, performing schools and a stable, supportive family unit for his kids, but let's not try any reforms to our current failed policies that might jeopardize the tenuous grasp that the single mother's eighth child has on this lottery ticket of our beautiful, immaculately-intended dependency programs. Those policies are working just fine, thank you very much. Anyone who can't see the smashing success of these dependency programs is either too racist, too stupid, must be a birther, desire a State religion, or surely must stomp hamsters for sport. Those are your alternatives: conformity with the State religion of low expectations paired with a blind-eye to the results, or obvious hatred. Please choose accordingly.