[subego]

Originally Posted by Shaddim 

What gap?

The gap if you were to pay 0%.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by mduell 

How much did they each make in excess payments on their taxes last year?

Oh that's right, they want to tax other people more.

If you follow the instructions in the tax package, you do multiple calculations with different assumptions until you find the least tax you owe, and pay that. The instructions do not say "but you're welcome to voluntarily pay more if you like," in part I think because that would be even harder to explain than the regular tax instructions.

[Shaddim]

Originally Posted by subego 

The gap if you were to pay 0%.

Then I guess they should make sure that it stays at a sane level, right?

[subego]

I'm asking about the citizens who have to make up your shortfall.

They, like you, have only limited ability as individuals to determine the rates which Congress sets.

Repeating the question, by not paying taxes, aren't you ****ing over your fellow citizens who have to make up your shortfall?

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by subego 

I'm asking about the citizens who have to make up your shortfall.

They, like you, have only limited ability as individuals to determine the rates which Congress sets.

Repeating the question, by not paying taxes, aren't you ****ing over your fellow citizens who have to make up your shortfall?

Is this the fellow citizens who currently ain't paying anything (or very little) and are thus freeloading? The ones who voted for the morons who spent all the tax income on useless crap? F 'em.

[subego]

Am I mistaken in thinking you pay little to no taxes relative to your income? That's certainly the impression you're trying to give.

[Doofy]

I have no legal or moral obligation to pay income tax.

[subego]

So, you're a freeloader?

[Doofy]

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

[subego]

So that's one vote for "**** over your fellow citizen".

[Doofy]

Absolutely.

[subego]

I appreciate your candor. Many delude themselves into thinking your position is somehow not ****ing over your fellow citizen.

[Doofy]

My "fellow citizen" likes being f'ed over, hence he keeps voting for the same d**kheads. So I'm just helping him out and giving him what he wants.

[subego]

Mighty white of you.

[Doofy]

STOP BEING RACIST!
Allcaps

[besson3c]

Does the Queen know that you aren't paying taxes, Doofy?

[Doofy]

Yes Bess.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Doofy 

Yes Bess.

Does she approve? Aren't you a little worried?

Just to be on the safe side maybe you should have sex with her if you haven't already.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Does she approve?

Yes Bess.

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Aren't you a little worried?

No Bess.

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Just to be on the safe side maybe you should have sex with her if you haven't already.

I don't think Phil would be best pleased with that!

[besson3c]

How come you aren't afraid of the government but you are the monarch? Who cares if Phil would not be pleased with that?

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

How come you aren't afraid of the government but you are the monarch?

Allcaps

[besson3c]

Maybe because the Queen is YOUR EMPLOYER??

[Shaddim]

Originally Posted by subego 

I'm asking about the citizens who have to make up your shortfall.

They, like you, have only limited ability as individuals to determine the rates which Congress sets.

Repeating the question, by not paying taxes, aren't you ****ing over your fellow citizens who have to make up your shortfall?

I'm in a unique position that I can pay what I want, they're fortunate that I'm willing to be flexible. If they decide to get greedy and try to take more than I feel is fair, I'll adjust our taxable income accordingly. One way or the other, I'm not going to pay an outrageous income tax.

Do you feel it is my obligation to pay 70, 80, 90% income tax?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Shaddim 

I'm in a unique position that I can pay what I want, they're fortunate that I'm willing to be flexible. If they decide to get greedy and try to take more than I feel is fair, I'll adjust our taxable income accordingly. One way or the other, I'm not going to pay an outrageous income tax.

Do you feel it is my obligation to pay 70, 80, 90% income tax?

I think you've been and are being emotional about this subject personalizing it to the extent you are. Nobody is asking you to pay 70, 80, or 90%, or any percent for that matter.

What is being expressed primarily is similar emotion, a lot of it probably unfocused, but the salient part of it over stuff that we should find common ground over: exploitation of tax loopholes, and the general premise that some of the same people that caused this economic mess can exploit these loopholes.

There are people that will go beyond this and say that all rich people should have their money relinquished, but let's start here with the whole loophole thing. What do you think?

[subego]

Originally Posted by Shaddim 

Do you feel it is my obligation to pay 70, 80, 90% income tax?

No. Where did you get the impression I did?

[subego]

Originally Posted by Shaddim 

I'm in a unique position that I can pay what I want, they're fortunate that I'm willing to be flexible. If they decide to get greedy and try to take more than I feel is fair, I'll adjust our taxable income accordingly. One way or the other, I'm not going to pay an outrageous income tax.

All I can do here is repeat the question. By not paying taxes, aren't you ****ing over your fellow citizens* who have to make up your shortfall?

*Citizens. Are you accusing all your fellow citizens of being greedy?

[el chupacabra]

Originally Posted by subego 

All I can do here is repeat the question. By not paying taxes, aren't you ****ing over your fellow citizens* who have to make up your shortfall?

Well I can't speak for shaddin but I'd say 'no'. I'm not screwing over my fellow citizen the government is; the people who voted for the government, and bankrupting policies, are the one's who screwed over their fellow citizens including those of us who are now being targeted as a means for more revenue.

Nobody needs to make up for any shortfall. If the government cut in half, the military, the social security pyramid scheme, unemployment, welfare, any-other-free-handout-programs,. they could pay all the bills. People should have never had any faith in these programs to begin with. These programs aren't getting any better, they just keep getting worse and worse over time.

Why is it that those of us who've been against these programs for decades are always the ones expected to pick up the tab when they fail?

I've got an idea; whoever voted for a politician must support with their tax dollars any programs he starts on capitol hill. Anyone who didn't vote for the winning politician doesn't have to pay any taxes for that politician's programs. Watch how many people vote for Obama etc. when they know THEY'LL be paying for cash for clunkers, unemployment, welfare, we can, hope, change, or whatever free handout program he has up his sleeve next. It seems so corrupt to me that people who put nothing in, but are on government free-handout-payroll can vote; can vote for policy of taking money from me to give to themselves.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by el chupacabra 

Nobody needs to make up for any shortfall. If the government cut in half, the military, the social security pyramid scheme, unemployment, welfare, any-other-free-handout-programs,. they could pay all the bills. People should have never had any faith in these programs to begin with. These programs aren't getting any better, they just keep getting worse and worse over time.

You forgot the biggest programs of them all by some margin: Medicare/Medicaid. Only, what do you replace them with and what are the costs of cutting them in half?

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by el chupacabra 

I've got an idea; whoever voted for a politician must support with their tax dollars any programs he starts on capitol hill. Anyone who didn't vote for the winning politician doesn't have to pay any taxes for that politician's programs.

:like:

[Shaddim]

Originally Posted by subego 

All I can do here is repeat the question. By not paying taxes, aren't you ****ing over your fellow citizens* who have to make up your shortfall?

*Citizens. Are you accusing all your fellow citizens of being greedy?

There is no shortfall, I pay my taxes.

We can keep going round and round on this, if you want.

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by el chupacabra 

Nobody needs to make up for any shortfall. If the government cut in half, the military, the social security pyramid scheme, unemployment, welfare, any-other-free-handout-programs,. they could pay all the bills. People should have never had any faith in these programs to begin with. These programs aren't getting any better, they just keep getting worse and worse over time.

Amen! A man after my own heart. If your message and mine are any closer, some may accuse us of being alter egos.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Amen! A man after my own heart. If your message and mine are any closer, some may accuse us of being alter egos.

I might begin to take these ideas seriously when one of you explain how these programs are replaced, or what the costs are of abandoning them and replacing them with nothing?

To me you can't just talk about doing stuff like this would the practical "then what?"

[el chupacabra]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

You forgot the biggest programs of them all by some margin: Medicare/Medicaid. Only, what do you replace them with and what are the costs of cutting them in half?

Fix the medical system and you've fixed medicare/medicaid. If I were king I'd use government regulation for the benefit of everyone for the first time in US history. I'd tell hospitals to have a fixed price that is the same for both insurance and individuals. Watch how many people abandon insurance when they only have to pay what insurance companies pay for medical procedures. Watch how insurance is forced to lower premiums to compete for business again, watch how that creates a cascading market force driving all medical prices even lower. My last medical procedure was billed at 3000, the insurance only paid 700. I still had to pay 300 in copay and "professional fees." So the hospital made out like bandits with $1000 for a 10 min procedure. That's a hundred dollars a minute; $6000 /hr for an old, routine procedure. One could argue that there are high costs with these procedures but the argument would be invalidated simply by looking at where all the money is going in the hospital; large saltwater fish tanks, marble walls and floors, trips to Maui for overpaid docs and administrators etc etc.. Its time to get real market forces back in the medical industry just like they are in every other industry (well, industries without government manipulation). When you go to Kroger and look at the price of bread it doesn't change based on the color of who is buying it. It doesn't change based on how rich the person is buying it, if the price is 2,46 it's 2,46. The medical industry is a powerful special interest of the elite, that uses the government to bully out competition with its regulations. For example it makes no sense that the government requires you to get a 4 year degree in whatever nonsense before you can even start your 6 year path to becoming a doctor. The only purpose of this requirement is to limit the number of doctors by weeding out people who don't want 10 years of school; then drive up the price of their services.

I might begin to take these ideas seriously when one of you explain how these programs are replaced, or what the costs are of abandoning them and replacing them with nothing?

Why do you need to replace the programs? Just stop spending money on them; the cost of abandoning them is lower taxes and higher productivity. If you cut people's welfare check in half it just means they can't afford a PS3 in each room, a family plan of iPhones, $50/mo cable, junk food, laptops, ipads, guitars, big screen TVs, an apartment with a pool, $300 tickets to sporting events, movies +popcorn + sugar water, coffee, alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana. Maybe these people wouldn't have so many kids if they knew the government wasn't going to pay them for it.

It's funny how 26 year old people get on TV and cry about how they can't afford 1000/yr for medical bills but can afford all the things I mentioned above which amount to way over 1000. Perhaps the medical bill looks big because it happens in lump sums a couple times a year and the other services are smaller payments throughout the year.

Heres a very conservative budget to show how much money the "poor" are wasting. The average poor person on government entitlement programs actually spends way way more than what I have listed below. The idea that a person has only 1 cup of dollar coffee a day, or only drinks once every week or two is just ridiculous but thats how I did the math anyway.
iphone for 1: $70x12=$840 /yr
cable: $50x12=$600/yr
football tickets: 3 times a year x $70 = 210/yr
walmart TV: $800 divided over 4 years = $200/yr
$350 PS3+games divided over 5 years = $70/yr
1 movie a month = $8x12 = $96/yr
1 pack cigs per week = 260/yr
$4 beer per week = 208/yr
1 drink if eating out once every 2 weeks $6x26weeks = 156/yr
1 cup cheap coffee per day = 365x$1.19 = $434/yr
soda once every 2 weeks = 26weeks x $2 = $52

total = $3126 / yr that could be saved for necessities rather than wants. If people WANT something they need to get motivated in finding a job or make their own job to pay for it. The government should not be in the business of buying non-essential items for people.

If we cut the military in half the consequences will mostly be less war games, less war, and more lives. It's funny how the government can justify routinely shooting off missiles where each one costs more than a $200,000 house... and that's just the start of it. Boom there goes $200,000 dollars, "oops we missed the mannequin, that's ok try again", boom there goes another $200,000. Why not take that $400,00 and hire 20 welfare/unemployment people to fix a road, join an apprenticeship, to build a fish pond for aquaculture, to pick up trash, to restore a landscape, or to build their own house? The military use to hire people for such projects but now they've come away from that as society degrades into a free handout system.

I have been poorer than the poor, my daddy was poor, and my grandaddy before him was poor. My grandaddy pulled rusty nails out of fence posts and used them to build his own house. He went from poor to wealthy through hard work and SAVING. He gave me nothing, he said I needed to learn to make it on my own, and he was right. One of my business partners came here a few decades ago with no money or education; couldn't speak English; got a job; SAVED his money; bought half the company; now owns an internationally famous fabrication plant that helps make many of the cars you drive. He did it all with no government assistance and still can't read English to this day. I don't feel sorry for the-poor. Unless someone's disabled they should receive no government assistance... Just. like. me.

[ghporter]

How many people are involved in that $1,000, 10 minute procedure? Way more than you probably think, from the doctors, nurses and technicians who do the procedure, to the stock and supply people that make sure everybody has gloves that fit to the maintenance workers who make sure the lights come on and the housekeeping workers who make sure the suite is clean enough for the procedure...if it isn't as utterly simple as freezing a wart with liquid nitrogen (which probably costs a couple hundred dollars to whomever pays for it), then there's are scores of people who must do their jobs extremely well for the procedure to be safe and effective.

I will agree that there are many good places to cut costs, starting out with CYA tests that aren't really helpful. But then, a lot of people can't get MRIs covered, when these would clearly identify many problems from the start and save months of time, days and days away from work, and plenty of discomfort, too.

Further, the people who Medicare and Medicaid are aimed at are precisely the people who cannot afford outside insurance, let alone out of pocket payment for medical care. Trimming costs from these programs is a good idea, but it needs to be done with a good understanding of how they work.

One way to do this might be to reverse the process for verifying whether charges to Medicare are valid. Currently a charge is processed and paid, and only then does anyone even think to step in and say "was this actually performed, was it needed, and was it documented appropriately?". A simple process to evaluate charges based on statistical analysis and the track record of the doctor involved (valid claims, correct diagnoses, accurate documentation) could save billions every year, without slowing down access to care or extending wait times for appointments.

But just looking at a procedure that lasts (for you, the patient) 10 minutes and saying "$1,000 is way too much to charge for that!" ignores the massive, and absolutely necessary systems behind the 10 minutes you spent in the procedure room.

[Athens]

Lets look at my spending

Rent $1100 x 12 = $13200
iphone for 1: $117x12=$1411 /yr
cable+internet: $144x12=$1733 /yr
hockey tickets: 2 times a year x $160 = 320/yr
Car Payments: $274 x 26 payments a year $7124/yr
Basic Auto Insurance $70 x 12 = $840
Extra Auto Insurance $96 x 12 = $1152
2 movie a month = $0x12 = $0/yr
1 pack cigs per day $9.35 x 365 = $3412.75
Pop per day $2.26 x 365 = $824.9
Fuel $1.27 per L x 2400 L a year = $3048
Power $80 every 2 months x 6 = $480
Home Insurance = $35.00 x 12 = $420
Netflix 8.99 x 12 = 107.88
Skype 2.99 x 12 = 35.88
Bank Accounts $32.00 x 12 = $384
Food $150 per week x 52 = $7800

Total = $42291.00
Roommate Contributions = $4800
Out of my pocket = 37491

About $10 000 in income taxes, EI, CPP


And my Medical costs $64.00 a month, no co-pay, mostly no fee's, and no bills No worries and no hassles.

[Athens]

oh and I'm broke, living pay check to pay check and really need to be making at least 90k a year to really make it in this city if I ever want to actually own a home

[Shaddim]

$9.35 /pack for cigs? Jebus. Last time I grabbed some Camels, about 2 weeks ago, they were $4.50.

[subego]

It's $9 or so in Chicago.

[Athens]

Its 7-8 bucks in Washington

[subego]

I think it was about 10 years ago someone actually asked to bum a cigarette. People offer to buy one.

[hyteckit]

Originally Posted by el chupacabra 

It's funny how 26 year old people get on TV and cry about how they can't afford 1000/yr for medical bills but can afford all the things I mentioned above which amount to way over 1000. Perhaps the medical bill looks big because it happens in lump sums a couple times a year and the other services are smaller payments throughout the year.

Heres a very conservative budget to show how much money the "poor" are wasting. The average poor person on government entitlement programs actually spends way way more than what I have listed below. The idea that a person has only 1 cup of dollar coffee a day, or only drinks once every week or two is just ridiculous but thats how I did the math anyway.
iphone for 1: $70x12=$840 /yr
cable: $50x12=$600/yr
football tickets: 3 times a year x $70 = 210/yr
walmart TV: $800 divided over 4 years = $200/yr
$350 PS3+games divided over 5 years = $70/yr
1 movie a month = $8x12 = $96/yr
1 pack cigs per week = 260/yr
$4 beer per week = 208/yr
1 drink if eating out once every 2 weeks $6x26weeks = 156/yr
1 cup cheap coffee per day = 365x$1.19 = $434/yr
soda once every 2 weeks = 26weeks x $2 = $52

total = $3126 / yr that could be saved for necessities rather than wants. If people WANT something they need to get motivated in finding a job or make their own job to pay for it. The government should not be in the business of buying non-essential items for people.

What I find ridiculous is your assumptions.

Let me see. I don't drink, don't smoke, never had a cable subscription, never bought football tickets or any sports tickets.

A cup of coffee is 30 cents if you make your own. A can of soda is 25 cents. Don't know many poor people with an iPhone and a $70/mo plan.

Average food stamp a household receives monthly is around $150 to $200.

But medical insurance is only $1000/yr? It's more like $3000/yr for an average medical plan. Average family plan is $13,000/yr.

You seriously just tossing sh*t into the wind.

[Athens]

And the worst thing is my care is probably better then yours for "most" issues and the personal financial burden is a great deal less and my tax burden is marginally worse then yours.

[Shaddim]

If you're fairly young and in good health, traditional health insurance is for suckers, unless your company is picking up the tab. A HSA combined with a catastrophic health plan is smart money.

[Athens]

That is so not true. Because even young and healthy people can fall victim to cancer, food born illness, accidents and genetic problems never detected before. And for those people that appear to be young and healthy originally isn't that where the problem of being under insured comes to play. Not having insurance for something not expected because of good health?

[ghporter]

Young people are at a significantly higher risk for catastrophic accidents than people over a out 50. Eating right and staying active will not help a lot when the truck (driven by a 20-something) runs clean over your car.

When someone in his 20s is involved in a catastrophic accident, he is far likely to require assistance with things like daily living (feeding, bathing, dressing, etc.) for decades than someon over 40, and still likely to die before reaching 60.

To say that a "young and healthy" person doesn't need medical insurance ignores even the lesser problems like a severe case of flu, or a "minor" injury like a fractured leg, which could put you out of work for weeks - and maybe even lose you your job. Getting re-employed because you were let go is hard, whether it was because you just didn't show up, or whether you were hospitalized.

[OldManMac]

Great question.

David Frum Asks, 'When Did The GOP Lose Touch?' : NPR

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by el chupacabra 

Fix the medical system and you've fixed medicare/medicaid. If I were king I'd use government regulation for the benefit of everyone for the first time in US history. I'd tell hospitals to have a fixed price that is the same for both insurance and individuals. Watch how many people abandon insurance when they only have to pay what insurance companies pay for medical procedures. Watch how insurance is forced to lower premiums to compete for business again, watch how that creates a cascading market force driving all medical prices even lower. My last medical procedure was billed at 3000, the insurance only paid 700. I still had to pay 300 in copay and "professional fees." So the hospital made out like bandits with $1000 for a 10 min procedure. That's a hundred dollars a minute; $6000 /hr for an old, routine procedure. One could argue that there are high costs with these procedures but the argument would be invalidated simply by looking at where all the money is going in the hospital; large saltwater fish tanks, marble walls and floors, trips to Maui for overpaid docs and administrators etc etc.. Its time to get real market forces back in the medical industry just like they are in every other industry (well, industries without government manipulation). When you go to Kroger and look at the price of bread it doesn't change based on the color of who is buying it. It doesn't change based on how rich the person is buying it, if the price is 2,46 it's 2,46. The medical industry is a powerful special interest of the elite, that uses the government to bully out competition with its regulations. For example it makes no sense that the government requires you to get a 4 year degree in whatever nonsense before you can even start your 6 year path to becoming a doctor. The only purpose of this requirement is to limit the number of doctors by weeding out people who don't want 10 years of school; then drive up the price of their services.

Interesting thinking here, I'm not sure about the deregulation part of it, but the fixed costs part is interesting...

Why do you need to replace the programs? Just stop spending money on them; the cost of abandoning them is lower taxes and higher productivity. If you cut people's welfare check in half it just means they can't afford a PS3 in each room, a family plan of iPhones, $50/mo cable, junk food, laptops, ipads, guitars, big screen TVs, an apartment with a pool, $300 tickets to sporting events, movies +popcorn + sugar water, coffee, alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana. Maybe these people wouldn't have so many kids if they knew the government wasn't going to pay them for it.

I think this makes a hush money ton of assumptions:

1) That the only cost of abandoning Medicare/Medicaid (I'm not sure how we just switched to welfare) is lower taxes and higher productivity. What kind of higher productivity do you expect from the elderly?

2) Since you want to seem to switch this to being about welfare, this also assumes that all welfare costs involve these things. What about health care costs? Child support? What about the disabled? The list goes on and on...

It's funny how 26 year old people get on TV and cry about how they can't afford 1000/yr for medical bills but can afford all the things I mentioned above which amount to way over 1000. Perhaps the medical bill looks big because it happens in lump sums a couple times a year and the other services are smaller payments throughout the year.

$1000/year? In what universe are medical costs $1000/year? I have the cheapest health insurance I can find and I'm paying something like $180/month for it, and it covers jack shit. Even if neither my wife nor myself get sick, never need to visit a doctor or purchase prescription drugs, and skip going to the dentist our insurance costs are more than double this alone.

Heres a very conservative budget to show how much money the "poor" are wasting. The average poor person on government entitlement programs actually spends way way more than what I have listed below. The idea that a person has only 1 cup of dollar coffee a day, or only drinks once every week or two is just ridiculous but thats how I did the math anyway.
iphone for 1: $70x12=$840 /yr
cable: $50x12=$600/yr
football tickets: 3 times a year x $70 = 210/yr
walmart TV: $800 divided over 4 years = $200/yr
$350 PS3+games divided over 5 years = $70/yr
1 movie a month = $8x12 = $96/yr
1 pack cigs per week = 260/yr
$4 beer per week = 208/yr
1 drink if eating out once every 2 weeks $6x26weeks = 156/yr
1 cup cheap coffee per day = 365x$1.19 = $434/yr
soda once every 2 weeks = 26weeks x $2 = $52

total = $3126 / yr that could be saved for necessities rather than wants. If people WANT something they need to get motivated in finding a job or make their own job to pay for it. The government should not be in the business of buying non-essential items for people.

I'm still unsure as to how this became about welfare, but I think that you need to put aside the whole moral/emotional angle here because the way I'm looking at this this is completely irrelevant. The poor has an impact on all of us economically, ignoring them or supporting them it doesn't matter, they aren't simply going to go away, even if they are left to die or welfare is removed altogether this is still going to cost money. One can wish all day that they'd spend their money the way you deem responsible, this is not going to change a thing, this element is going to exist no matter what.

I'm not suggesting that we cater to them in any particular way, but I think the way you need to go at this problem is looking at the cheapest and most effective solutions while being completely open-minded as to what sort of moral implications they involve. I think the whole moral thing just clouds everything.

If we cut the military in half the consequences will mostly be less war games, less war, and more lives. It's funny how the government can justify routinely shooting off missiles where each one costs more than a $200,000 house... and that's just the start of it. Boom there goes $200,000 dollars, "oops we missed the mannequin, that's ok try again", boom there goes another $200,000. Why not take that $400,00 and hire 20 welfare/unemployment people to fix a road, join an apprenticeship, to build a fish pond for aquaculture, to pick up trash, to restore a landscape, or to build their own house? The military use to hire people for such projects but now they've come away from that as society degrades into a free handout system.

Maybe we are still operating in a cold war mentality? In modern times if you want to deplete our resources and wage war against us you don't need a bigger, badder army, you need stealthy, moderately funded terrorist cells. Maybe this is something our government hasn't figured out yet?

I have been poorer than the poor, my daddy was poor, and my grandaddy before him was poor. My grandaddy pulled rusty nails out of fence posts and used them to build his own house. He went from poor to wealthy through hard work and SAVING. He gave me nothing, he said I needed to learn to make it on my own, and he was right. One of my business partners came here a few decades ago with no money or education; couldn't speak English; got a job; SAVED his money; bought half the company; now owns an internationally famous fabrication plant that helps make many of the cars you drive. He did it all with no government assistance and still can't read English to this day. I don't feel sorry for the-poor. Unless someone's disabled they should receive no government assistance... Just. like. me.

I still think this whole emotional stance you are taking here is the wrong way to look at all of this stuff.

[el chupacabra]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

I think this makes a hush money ton of assumptions:

They're not assumptions that I'm making. They're facts, the non-debatable way that it is; and Ill tell you why. You see whenever someone disagrees with me in the political forum I find it funny because it's really a matter of giving me way more credit for these ideas than I deserve. I don't come up with any of this stuff on my own. It's all stuff I've witnessed abroad or in history. Any ideas I post here are just bits and pieces picked from this country over here and that one over there. I wouldn't post it if I'd observed a system over seas that was a failure. These ideas are already tried tested and true, proven, solutions. Its kind of frustrating that so many people now days are so absorbed, and trapped in their small little box of extremist, mega-corporate, special interest shaped society mentality, that they act like all other alternative propositions are some kind of impossible fantasy. The fact of the matter is personal responsibility is the ONLY solution to our societies problems; government and social. Any solution that goes through congress must involve personal responsibility or it will fail guaranteed.

1) That the only cost of abandoning Medicare/Medicaid (I'm not sure how we just switched to welfare) is lower taxes and higher productivity. What kind of higher productivity do you expect from the elderly?

Well I've seen elderly in Peru, and HK who are more fit and productive than the average 30 something here in US. Actually I've seen it all over come to think about it. By the way I shouldn't have said anything about "abandoning" the programs. My original argument was to cut all the programs in half... I don't want to cut everyone off I just want to make people more efficient because I know it's possible. I responded incorrectly to your statement: "I might begin to take these ideas seriously when one of you explain how these programs are replaced, or what the costs are of abandoning them and replacing them with nothing?".

2) Since you want to seem to switch this to being about welfare, this also assumes that all welfare costs involve these things. What about health care costs? Child support? What about the disabled? The list goes on and on...

I didn't switch it to being about welfare; you switched it to being about medicaid/medicare(which I'm fine with). My original post that you responded to mentioned welfare; not the health care system, so that's why I'm keeping it on the table. Medicare and medicaid would be the last can of worms I would touch. And I already said disabled people are the only ones who really deserve free handouts. To answer your list of questions, keep in mind people have been surviving for eons without all these unnatural structured unsustainable free-handout programs.

$1000/year? In what universe are medical costs $1000/year? I have the cheapest health insurance I can find and I'm paying something like $180/month for it, and it covers jack shit. Even if neither my wife nor myself get sick, never need to visit a doctor or purchase prescription drugs, and skip going to the dentist our insurance costs are more than double this alone.

I forgot, in socialist societies medical bills automatically refer to insurance costs; my bad, I honestly didn't see that coming. I was talking about the actual bills not the cost of insurance. You see some of us only acquired insurance recently in our life so I don't automatically default to thinking about it unless someone mentions the word scam; I'm pretty sickly, and for most of my life I had no insurance and just paid bills out of pocket, even when I was poor which is part of the reason I don't understand why 'poor' cant afford med bills. I will admit the size of the bills always pissed me off... but I afforded it... and it made me much more careful about getting hurt or sick... If I average all my medical costs throughout my life they come out to roughly $500/year. I thought I was being really lenient with the $1000/yr figure for young people. Yes I know insurance is $3000-$4000/yr. That should show you what a racket and scam it is. Insurance makes no sense at all period. In the old days you could get insured directly by your doctor. You just pay a flat rate for his service for a period of time and it accomplishes the same thing as insurance; only much cheaper of course. You could also get on a payment plan treatments... not a big deal. By having a society based on insurance you've given up the market force of bargaining power to a middle-man. Why would insurance want to keep the price of health care low? They don't care, whatever they loose they pass on to the commune's premium the next year. They can only negotiate the price down so much without the ability to weed out expensive doctors and clinics. That's the individual's job; except now days individuals just go to any doctor or hospital without checking the price first; because after all insurance will pay for it.

I'm still unsure as to how this became about welfare, but I think that you need to put aside the whole moral/emotional angle here because the way I'm looking at this this is completely irrelevant. The poor has an impact on all of us economically, ignoring them or supporting them it doesn't matter, they aren't simply going to go away, even if they are left to die or welfare is removed altogether this is still going to cost money. One can wish all day that they'd spend their money the way you deem responsible, this is not going to change a thing, this element is going to exist no matter what.

I'm not suggesting that we cater to them in any particular way, but I think the way you need to go at this problem is looking at the cheapest and most effective solutions while being completely open-minded as to what sort of moral implications they involve. I think the whole moral thing just clouds everything.

There is no emotional angle. In this case you are siding with the prevailing liberal thought. Perhaps if the solutions I offered complied and agreed with the liberal angle my angle would be interpreted as based on 'rational experience' rather than emotion. Unfortunately I don't really know what the liberal thought is aside from "find a cheaper solution that doesn't lessen the payment to anyone's government check". So far these issues have been problematic for decades if not more, liberals say "lets discuss, lets analyze, lets analyze some more, lets analyze every solution to death." When does it stop? We're running out of time. When do we say enough nonsense and implement a proposed solution?

I don't think the poor will go away. But I know they can be more efficient if they aren't receiving so many free rides. Compared to how I lived as a child, today's poor live a lifestyle of luxury hands down. So there is room to cut some of the free rides. After all why would they be motivated to be more productive if they can live in luxury for near free?

Maybe we are still operating in a cold war mentality? In modern times if you want to deplete our resources and wage war against us you don't need a bigger, badder army, you need stealthy, moderately funded terrorist cells. Maybe this is something our government hasn't figured out yet?

Oh the government has figured it out alright. After all they invented modern terrorism. The military, the way it currently is, serves a very practical purpose, it's just not a benefit for us... to say the least.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by el chupacabra 

They're not assumptions that I'm making. They're facts, the non-debatable way that it is; and Ill tell you why. You see whenever someone disagrees with me in the political forum I find it funny because it's really a matter of giving me way more credit for these ideas than I deserve. I don't come up with any of this stuff on my own. It's all stuff I've witnessed abroad or in history. Any ideas I post here are just bits and pieces picked from this country over here and that one over there. I wouldn't post it if I'd observed a system over seas that was a failure. These ideas are already tried tested and true, proven, solutions. Its kind of frustrating that so many people now days are so absorbed, and trapped in their small little box of extremist, mega-corporate, special interest shaped society mentality, that they act like all other alternative propositions are some kind of impossible fantasy. The fact of the matter is personal responsibility is the ONLY solution to our societies problems; government and social. Any solution that goes through congress must involve personal responsibility or it will fail guaranteed.

You witnessing stuff does not make it factual, what you've witnessed doesn't even belong in a paragraph justifying what is factual and what isn't, with all due respect.

Well I've seen elderly in Peru, and HK who are more fit and productive than the average 30 something here in US. Actually I've seen it all over come to think about it. By the way I shouldn't have said anything about "abandoning" the programs. My original argument was to cut all the programs in half... I don't want to cut everyone off I just want to make people more efficient because I know it's possible. I responded incorrectly to your statement: "I might begin to take these ideas seriously when one of you explain how these programs are replaced, or what the costs are of abandoning them and replacing them with nothing?".

I'm not really sure how any of this makes anything you've said factual. I'm not saying that this is not factual, just that you haven't made your case.

I still want to know what the costs of cutting these programs in half are. You can't just throw out an arbitrary percentage because this is what your gut feeling tells you feels right. Every cut, especially ones these large, will have positive and negative ramifications which need to be accounted for.

I didn't switch it to being about welfare; you switched it to being about medicaid/medicare(which I'm fine with). My original post that you responded to mentioned welfare; not the health care system, so that's why I'm keeping it on the table. Medicare and medicaid would be the last can of worms I would touch. And I already said disabled people are the only ones who really deserve free handouts. To answer your list of questions, keep in mind people have been surviving for eons without all these unnatural structured unsustainable free-handout programs.

But capitalism hasn't been around for eons...

I forgot, in socialist societies medical bills automatically refer to insurance costs; my bad, I honestly didn't see that coming.

Canada, a country I'm familiar with, is not a socialist society.

I was talking about the actual bills not the cost of insurance. You see some of us only acquired insurance recently in our life so I don't automatically default to thinking about it unless someone mentions the word scam; I'm pretty sickly, and for most of my life I had no insurance and just paid bills out of pocket, even when I was poor which is part of the reason I don't understand why 'poor' cant afford med bills. I will admit the size of the bills always pissed me off... but I afforded it... and it made me much more careful about getting hurt or sick... If I average all my medical costs throughout my life they come out to roughly $500/year. I thought I was being really lenient with the $1000/yr figure for young people. Yes I know insurance is $3000-$4000/yr. That should show you what a racket and scam it is. Insurance makes no sense at all period. In the old days you could get insured directly by your doctor. You just pay a flat rate for his service for a period of time and it accomplishes the same thing as insurance; only much cheaper of course. You could also get on a payment plan treatments... not a big deal. By having a society based on insurance you've given up the market force of bargaining power to a middle-man. Why would insurance want to keep the price of health care low? They don't care, whatever they loose they pass on to the commune's premium the next year. They can only negotiate the price down so much without the ability to weed out expensive doctors and clinics. That's the individual's job; except now days individuals just go to any doctor or hospital without checking the price first; because after all insurance will pay for it.

You are far from alone, but I hope you don't see your basically gambling not facing financial ruin as any sort of solution or something to be proud of. For a self proprietor like myself a personal health disaster can not only drain all of your assets, but those of your business as well, jeopardizing the incomes of those which you work with too.

As a country we can do far better than what we have now. I'm just coming to discover the whole joy that is the stuff you were talking about where just having insurance can result in lower medical bills even if they haven't co-payed - the whole different rates for insurance providers thing. I don't know exactly what system would be best for America, but it sure seems like the whole private insurance thing is like bashing a square peg into a round hole in terms of the massive complexity and administrative overhead that goes along with ponies and rainbows like this. The complexity of what we have now seems akin to politicians complaining about bills being too large, only many of these same politicians seem okay with reinforcing what we have now. It makes no sense. What I still don't understand and have said many times in here is why politicians aren't out there trying to reduce costs across the board with the system we have now.

There is no emotional angle.

Your post I responded to was dripping with it, or at least moral stuff.

In this case you are siding with the prevailing liberal thought. Perhaps if the solutions I offered complied and agreed with the liberal angle my angle would be interpreted as based on 'rational experience' rather than emotion. Unfortunately I don't really know what the liberal thought is aside from "find a cheaper solution that doesn't lessen the payment to anyone's government check". So far these issues have been problematic for decades if not more, liberals say "lets discuss, lets analyze, lets analyze some more, lets analyze every solution to death." When does it stop? We're running out of time. When do we say enough nonsense and implement a proposed solution?

The liberal solution in terms of health care would probably start more along the lines of what we have now is not working, and we're running out of time with it.

There is no single liberal solution though, they range from a hybrid private/public system (like we have now) and an expansion of the public side of things to fully public to solutions that try to work within the private market. I'd say there is no single liberal anything, us liberals are pretty much generally the "miscellaneous" category in terms of our ideological makeup in comparison to the ideologically rigid and narrow right.

I don't think the poor will go away. But I know they can be more efficient if they aren't receiving so many free rides. Compared to how I lived as a child, today's poor live a lifestyle of luxury hands down. So there is room to cut some of the free rides. After all why would they be motivated to be more productive if they can live in luxury for near free?

I think if you want to make the argument that welfare needs to be reformed the conversation should not start with generalizations, that's what I took issue with. I'm fine with redefining who is eligible for welfare and what those benefits should be.

Oh the government has figured it out alright. After all they invented modern terrorism. The military, the way it currently is, serves a very practical purpose, it's just not a benefit for us... to say the least.

I just haven't decided what the military is all about, and likewise for our entire foreign policy really.

[Athens]

The biggest military threat in the next 100 years is not terrorism. As resources run low around the globe you can expect large military conflicts. The biggest military problem is technology. Modern militaries can not sustain losses at a recoverable rate. While you might be able to take out 150 enemy units for every one of your's lost, at the end of the day once lost it takes to long to replace. The military with the most sustainable technology and most man power will win. A highly technical force can be really small for the type of operations we do today against terrorist targets or third world countries. And with the migration of manufacturing jobs and heavy industry jobs over seas the ability to arm up if needed is also damaged.