[peeb]

Originally Posted by RAILhead 

Define "underclass."

I'm not sure that I want to venture a definition, but what I'm getting at is a group of people systematically excluded from social and economic opportunity.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by RAILhead 

Why do "they" need support? They can live within their means just like I do. It's not my fault they didn't have the same opportunities in life that I had, and that I'm able to afford a quality of living that some see as more comfortable than that of those we're talking about.

Why would I increase their taxes? I never said that at all.

The bottom line is, why should I be financially punished/burdened because the guy next to me didn't get my education or opportunities? That's total crap. You can't grade papers with re dink anymore because red's too harsh. You can't let you team beat the other by more that 50 points because it's demoralizing. You have to give 38 million lawbreakers amnesty because they just want a better life.

PURE CRAP.

And there's part of your problem: the people you're wanting to "help" -- poor Americans -- are getting screwed by the same open-border crap you're wanting to support by all these hand outs. Another example is the SCHIP bill that THANKFULLY got vetoed. If you were a family of 4 and made less that $82,000 per year, you would have qualified for GOVERNMENT ASSISTED HEALTH CARE.

WHAT?!?!

When will people learn that Big Brother screws-up everything he touches, and quit trying to get him more involved?

Railhead, I'm not addressing this on emotional terms like you are, just trying to be as practical as possible.

So, if you don't increase taxes to the poor, where does the government get this extra money if we were to simultaneously roll back taxes for the rich? How do we finance our existing social programs? Education? This war? Medicaid? Where would this money come from?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by RAILhead 

Which is one reason we need to end incentives for illegals, and we need to nail the companies that hire them.

Okay, and what would this do to our economy as we simultaneously roll back taxes for the rich? Again, speaking in practical terms here... Please do not insinuate any statement of mine from this other than what is being asked, because I don't claim to have an answer myself.. I'm simply stating that this is a complex system that needs to be balanced. There are tradeoffs with other approach that have their own highly relevant ramifications.

[RAILhead]

Originally Posted by peeb 

I'm not sure that I want to venture a definition, but what I'm getting at is a group of people systematically excluded from social and economic opportunity.

Now tell me why I'm responsible for them...

[peeb]

Originally Posted by RAILhead 

Now tell me why I'm responsible for them...

Moral issues aside, a large number of them is destabilizing and dangerous.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by RAILhead 

Now tell me why I'm responsible for them...

See, this is where we start talking past each other. I'm not saying you are responsible for them in the moral sense, but that you need them, and that it is foolish (and not in your best interest) to try to push them further down the ladder.

[RAILhead]

How am I pushing them further down the ladder?

[besson3c]

You would be if you wanted to increase their taxes (although you didn't specifically say you wanted to, you also wanted to reduce taxes on the rich, so I wonder where the additional money would come from?)

[peeb]

Agreed - you are proposing pushing more of the burden for paying for society onto the poor.

[RAILhead]

Where are these taxes you keep mentioning coming from? Taxes for what? In my world, there'd be no Big Brother social program that would be funded with taxpayer money.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by RAILhead 

Where are these taxes you keep mentioning coming from? Taxes for what? In my world, there'd be no Big Brother social program that would be funded with taxpayer money.

So no public education, no social security, no medicaid, no fire/police, no post office, no BMV, no welfare, no public roads... What will you be replacing these programs with?

[RAILhead]

Only a few of those qualify for social programs in my context. SS? Do you really trust Big Brother to take care of you? No, open the market and privatize. Medicaid? Same thing. Welfare? Only under the most rigid of circumstances.

All of this should be taken away from the government, because by allowing the government to control it, we are, in turn, allowing the government to control us more.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by RAILhead 

Only a few of those qualify for social programs in my context. SS? Do you really trust Big Brother to take care of you? No, open the market and privatize. Medicaid? Same thing. Welfare? Only under the most rigid of circumstances.

All of this should be taken away from the government, because by allowing the government to control it, we are, in turn, allowing the government to control us more.

We could spend all day picking apart each program, but my overarching question is: what do you replace all of these programs with if you do away with all social programs like you said you wanted to?

[RAILhead]

Privatization.

[besson3c]

So you would privatize everything?

Okay, so what happens if you can't afford to go to school at the prices set by these private schools? What if you are broke at the moment that your house is on fire, are fire departments supposed to bill you? If that would work anything like our medical system you would have to pay a premium to finance their billing department. What do people do if they simply cannot afford to pay for their fire bill? How about police bill? Do people think twice about calling the police if they hear a prowler in the bushes around their house if they are broke and can't afford to call the cops? Have you ever looked at the mess caused by having a privately owned highway in Toronto? Are private companies supposed to set our driving standards? Are we supposed to drive in a way that is profitable?

Do you see what I'm getting at here? Privitization works in many cases, but it is no panacea, and saying that absolutely everything should be private is just dumb, IMHO.

[peeb]

Besson's right - privatization works well for some things, lousy for others. Nobody wants a private fire service, or all privatized roads, but they do want private manufacture of fire trucks and cars. Mixed economy, public private partnership. No modern economy functions without it.

[Chongo]

Many of the industries the U.K. nationalized have been privatized over the last 30+ years.
Nationalization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Chongo 

Many of the industries the U.K. nationalized have been privatized over the last 30+ years.
Nationalization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yeah, and?

[Chongo]

Originally Posted by peeb 

Besson's right - privatization works well for some things, lousy for others. Nobody wants a private fire service, or all privatized roads, but they do want private manufacture of fire trucks and cars. Mixed economy, public private partnership. No modern economy functions without it.

Most counties and some cities in Arizona ( and many other communties in the US) use Rural Metro (a private company)for their fire/ems service.
Rural/Metro Corporation

Rural/Metro Corporation is a leading provider of emergency and non-emergency medical transportation services, fire protection and other safety-related services to municipal, residential, commercial and industrial customers in approximately 400 communities throughout the United States.

[besson3c]

Yeah, my wife works part time for Rural Metro Ambulance in Indiana. They suck, unless you think paying their EMTs around $10/hour is a good idea, and paramedics only slightly more. Contrast this to Toronto's ambulance service - it absolutely blows Rural Metro out of the water, embarrasingly so.

[peeb]

It doesn't matter. What I'm pointing out is that a mix of public and private elements are essential for any successful economy. Pointing to things that are usually public, and providing an example of somewhere they are private, or vice versa, only serves to underline my point. If you wanted to argue against it, find a modern economy that has NO substantial publicly held, or NO substantial privately held elements.

[Chongo]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Yeah, my wife works part time for Rural Metro Ambulance in Indiana. They suck, unless you think paying their EMTs around $10/hour is a good idea, and paramedics only slightly more. Contrast this to Toronto's ambulance service - it absolutely blows Rural Metro out of the water, embarrasingly so.

I didn't say RM was good. In fact, they watched a Jack in the Box burn to the ground because it was on the wrong side of the street.

[Chongo]

Originally Posted by peeb 

It doesn't matter. What I'm pointing out is that a mix of public and private elements are essential for any successful economy. Pointing to things that are usually public, and providing an example of somewhere they are private, or vice versa, only serves to underline my point. If you wanted to argue against it, find a modern economy that has NO substantial publicly held, or NO substantial privately held elements.

North Korea, The Peoples Republic of China (before Hong Kong take over). Those are 100% state run, centralized economies.

[besson3c]

Whatever, you guys can argue these fine details if you want, I think it is clear that the underlying truth is that the vast majority of successful, modern societies are built off of a mix of public and private, including ours.

[peeb]

Originally Posted by Chongo 

North Korea, The Peoples Republic of China (before Hong Kong take over). Those are 100% state run, centralized economies.

Erm, they're not, but that aside, those examples only serve to underline my point, that the only successful modern economies are MIXED.

[RAILhead]

I didn't say to privatize everything -- quit putting words in my mouth. I said to privatize those items I mentioned the post I made above.

[besson3c]

Sorry, I misunderstood you. I was responding with this in mind:

In my world, there'd be no Big Brother social program that would be funded with taxpayer money.

[CreepDogg]

I agree overall with the point here - a mix is necessary. The question is how we decide what's public and what's private.

There are things that are clearly in the public interest that obviously work better when publicly run. There are other things that clearly work best through private enterprise. Then there are a whole bunch of things in the middle that people argue about, like health care.

It does bother me when people say the government shouldn't control anything, because they eff up everything they touch. Not true - and there are many private companies that have effed up just as bad if not worse than a lot of government programs. The stakes are higher when it's government, but there's no reason we can't have well-run government programs if we demand it and put the right checks and balances in place. For things that work well in private enterprise, profit motive and competition provide good checks and balances. There are other things where most people feel that profit motive has no business being in the equation. It's all about chasing the right balance. We'll never get it perfect. That's no reason to stop trying.

[thunderous_funker]

In my experience, the people who say that the government can't be trusted to run healthcare are the same people who tell us to trust the president when it comes to sending our troops to war. In wartime, the public is supposed to trust that the people in charge have information we don't and are operating with wisdom beyond our reckoning.

But healthcare? Nah, they're too stupid to run that.

Nevermind the fact that medicare and medicaid operate at adminsitrative overhead so low it would make private insurers cream their shorts.

[ebuddy]

Originally Posted by thunderous_funker 

In my experience, the people who say that the government can't be trusted to run healthcare are the same people who tell us to trust the president when it comes to sending our troops to war. In wartime, the public is supposed to trust that the people in charge have information we don't and are operating with wisdom beyond our reckoning.

It could be argued that wartime, international interests, intentions, and actions are less transparent than domestic social issues. In some part due to national security. For example, most are unaware and/or do not like to think about the fact that Russia and China are engaged in joint military strategy and other arrangements through the Sino-Russian pact. A pact drafted against "perceived US hegemony" in 1998, (i.e. prior to our action in Iraq) or the fact that China is engaged in military build-up the likes of which none of us are familiar with both extremely interested and active in the Middle East. There are some issues that require us to muster the collective resources of the entire country and other issues best left up to the private industry.

But healthcare? Nah, they're too stupid to run that.

Conversely, it is interesting to me to hear indictments of unprecedented corruption, spending, waste, civil rights abuses, and bungled military action in one breath and advocate giving them our health, wealth, and carbon credit in another.

Nevermind the fact that medicare and medicaid operate at adminsitrative overhead so low it would make private insurers cream their shorts.

Of course, no mention of how heavily medicare and medicaid rely on for-profit, private market insurers, operators, and administrators.

[thunderous_funker]

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

It could be argued that wartime, international interests, intentions, and actions are less transparent than domestic social issues.

Right. Transparency makes government accountable. Which is why people don't get so nervous about the Department of Health and Human Services, but get all kinds of jumpy about the Pentagon. Why trust an agency that doesn't even get budget audits?

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Conversely, it is interesting to me to hear indictments of unprecedented corruption, spending, waste, civil rights abuses, and bungled military action in one breath and advocate giving them our health, wealth, and carbon credit in another.

Again, the worst abuses are in the sectors of government which are not held to the same level of accountability as others.

But the tone of this discussion raises interesting points about our perceived relationship to government. Namely, the notion of the "them". Whenever poeple feel that the government isn't acting in their interests, it becomes a "them". It creeps into my speech when I'm talking about the Pentagon, because that is the branch of government from which I feel the most alienated, over which I feel the least amount of control. It creeps into your speech when talking about those who provide social services.

Ideally, of course, the government shouldn't be a "them". After all, we have democratic structures and the government should be doing OUR will, not pursuing some agenda of its own.

I posit that our comfort with the degree to which our government provides services hinges almost entirely on how responsive we feel that current government is to our interests.

I happen to believe that a lot of the political divide that paralyzes this country would melt away if people of all political persuasions felt that government was more responsive to them. This is at the heart of the historically conservative notion of small, local government. It is also the central idea to classical liberalism--governing ourselves as we wish to be governed. So much of the conflict between right and left is simply a measure of how much we feel in control of our own government.

Conservatives are guilty of forgetting that the growth of the federal government was a natural, organic and popularly demanded response to massive corruption at state and local levels. State politicians are cheap. Adding a level of federal oversight (responsive to the public through national elections, that is to say, high profile) was the solution.

Liberals are guilty of forgetting that federal oversight is only a good idea when its responsive to the public. Federal oversight isn't good in and of itself. When it ceases to serve our interests, it become a hinderance.

Anyway, that's a whole discussion in and of itself but I had to say it.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Of course, no mention of how heavily medicare and medicaid rely on for-profit, private market insurers, operators, and administrators.

You missed my point. The federal programs operate at a fraction of the administrative overhead of private insurers. The argument that government can't run healthcare cost effectively are patently false and without merit. There may be other legitimate objections to a national insurance plan, but cost of administration isn't a valid one despite it making the top of most talking points bulletins. Its baseless noise.

ONe of the key arguments for a single payer system (and arguably the most persuasive regardless of your political leanings) is that healthcare providers spend mountains of money dealing with endless complexity of dealing with dozens of insurance companies, each with its own ineffecient papertrail and billing system. That is why even a small town dentist has someone on the payroll (or multiple someones) who do nothing all day but deal with insurance companies. That entire layer of cost and ineffeciency would be eliminated by a single payer system. That means your doctor, dentist, ob/gyn, etc have more in their budget for actual healthcare.

Again, there may be real obstacles to a more socialized system, but cost of administration isn't one of them. Period.

[Chongo]

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

China is engaged in military build-up the likes of which none of us are familiar with both extremely interested and active in the Middle East.

Courtesy of the Loral and Bill Clinton

[thunderous_funker]

Why the f*ck wouldn't China be militarizing? Why the f*ck wouldn't they be paying attention to the middle east?

You think Americans are the only people who know there the oil is?

Physician, heal thyself.

[ebuddy]

Originally Posted by thunderous_funker 

Right. Transparency makes government accountable. Which is why people don't get so nervous about the Department of Health and Human Services, but get all kinds of jumpy about the Pentagon. Why trust an agency that doesn't even get budget audits?

Who audited the spending of over $8 billion in bioterrorism preparedness or the goal of electronic "health records" on all Americans by 2014, or $100 million for a new healthy marriage program and $50 million for a new fatherhood program? How are we doing on the impending influenza pandemic? Conservatively, for every $10 spent on Medicare, $1 goes to fraud, waste, and abuse which costs us as much as $13 billion annually. If folks aren't jumpy about the Department of Health and Human Services, it's because it's not as fashionable a concern as the Pentagon. Period. You might be surprised at how many people are jumpy about Area 51.

Again, the worst abuses are in the sectors of government which are not held to the same level of accountability as others.

Unfortunately, this lacking of transparency transcends the Pentagon and constitutes most of the well-intentioned programs this government administers.

Ideally, of course, the government shouldn't be a "them". After all, we have democratic structures and the government should be doing OUR will, not pursuing some agenda of its own.

This looks good on paper, but so far as I know this is not mob rules governance. What is OUR will? It takes only two people here on MacNN to espouse five different wills. The government can't possibly do our will. This is why I refer to "them" as "them". Because they are not "me".

I happen to believe that a lot of the political divide that paralyzes this country would melt away if people of all political persuasions felt that government was more responsive to them. This is at the heart of the historically conservative notion of small, local government. It is also the central idea to classical liberalism--governing ourselves as we wish to be governed. So much of the conflict between right and left is simply a measure of how much we feel in control of our own government.

So people have differing ideals on what constitutes a government acting on their behalf.

You missed my point. The federal programs operate at a fraction of the administrative overhead of private insurers. The argument that government can't run healthcare cost effectively are patently false and without merit. There may be other legitimate objections to a national insurance plan, but cost of administration isn't a valid one despite it making the top of most talking points bulletins. Its baseless noise.

This means absolutely nothing without some information to back it up. I believe this mentality stems from the notion that "private" means only self-interest while "public" means the common good. This mentality fails woefully at acknowledging human nature.

ONe of the key arguments for a single payer system (and arguably the most persuasive regardless of your political leanings) is that healthcare providers spend mountains of money dealing with endless complexity of dealing with dozens of insurance companies, each with its own ineffecient papertrail and billing system. That is why even a small town dentist has someone on the payroll (or multiple someones) who do nothing all day but deal with insurance companies. That entire layer of cost and ineffeciency would be eliminated by a single payer system. That means your doctor, dentist, ob/gyn, etc have more in their budget for actual healthcare.

Again, there may be real obstacles to a more socialized system, but cost of administration isn't one of them. Period.

Cost of Administration is most definitely one of them. Touting the fact that the government does not spend enough on administrative oversight is not a selling point to me. The discrepancy between private insurance and Medicare/Medicaid begins to dwindle when the government actually initiates some oversight. Worse, the comparisons made by proponents of public health are often so misleading it is impossible to sift through the hype. For example, those on Medicare/Medicaid seek services much more frequently, too often unnecessarily and the disparity is generally figured on percentage of claims. Private spends no more than Public, but Public runs through a greater number of claims. One more problem is the fact that the distribution of costs to the provider to fund the necessary infrastructure for Medicaid and in meeting its, at times, ridiculous regulations is also not accounted for. IMO, there is no "period" here.

[ebuddy]

Originally Posted by thunderous_funker 

Why the f*ck wouldn't China be militarizing? Why the f*ck wouldn't they be paying attention to the middle east?

You think Americans are the only people who know there the oil is?

Physician, heal thyself.

This is interesting. I gave a reason why the US would be militarizing and why the US would be paying attention to the Middle East. I've often asked whether or not people believe imperialism is exclusive to the US. Funny how it doesn't work both ways.

I think self-medicating is what got us into this mess.