So Obama throws Mubarak under the bus so Egypt can have democracy, now he supports a military coup to remove a democratically elected leader by the same military that used to keep Mubarak in power. Way to have a consistent foreign policy, chief.
First of all, the US created the UN and other international institutions against the will of Europeans and most other nations, who, prior to Willsonian idea of collective security, did not understand or attempt any form of international relations not based on balance of power. Not disagreeing that there are many of us in the US (myself included) who think this is dumb on our part, but it is just a little bit unfair to single out the country that contributed the most to international cooperation as being against it.
Btw, international cooperation today is greatest it has ever been due to capitalism and globalization so you should be happy. Just about every person in the world is involved in voluntary and productive cooperation as well as competition with people all over the world within the global market. Lookup Milton Friedman's example of a pencil: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5Gppi-O3a8 for a beautiful illustration.
Governments are not the place to look for any kind of cooperation that sacrifices the interests of their country for others, even a little bit. It is not only very difficult and unnatural for such a thing to happen in any democracy as such gov. will not last very long, but it is morally suspect as well. Try running for election in any country on a platform of say reducing welfare benefits or increasing taxes for citizens of that country in order to help the starving in other countries in the name of eliminating nationalism and patriotism and see how far that gets you,
I'm self employed so I am very well aware of the employer contribution as I pay both. It is irrational to expect that you can expand coverage without increasing the cost.
Can you explain to me by what magic trick (if we switch to a single payer system) the coverage can be made universal while maintaining the same standard of care, without people who pay for it paying more?
Since I am not part of a borg collective I do not care about the cost per average person. It is not a trick, it is a different way of looking at the society: individuals engaging in cooperation on voluntary basis when it suits their individual interests, versus state coercion to achieve better statistics by sacrificing some for the sake of others.
I don't think you would like it. Competition between countries, just like competition between business, and individuals, is where good things come from. Centralized power leads to stagnation.
Most people don't support what he has done. Most people understand the difference between whistleblowing about NSA domestic spying activities and sharing classified information about foreign spying operation with foreign powers. He has lost all credibility when he went to China and he made it worse when he went to Putin and tried to get asylum in countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Russia etc, It is depressing how stupid and out of touch with reality people on this site are.
US government, just like any other, is primarily responsible to its citizens who elected it to look after their interests. It is not a matter of whose life is more important. If you don't like it, move to a planet where there are no countries.
I spend substantially less than $5K/year and I have excellent insurance and have received outstanding care every time I needed it. I have lived under NHS before and I know the difference.
The cost per taxpayer is exactly the right way to look at it as that is the cost per actual human being that will be paying for it and the simple fact is that in the UK they pay more.
If you have health insurance in the US today and we switch to a single payer system tomorrow, you annual direct out of pocket net spending on healthcare will increase and your quality of care will decrease. That is just a simple fact that nobody can dispute.
Looking at collective statistics is almost always the wrong way to look at a problem as it hides the sacrifice that some are forced to make for the sake of others.
"Simply go to a universal system" would mean higher cost for worse coverage, just like in UK. NHS costs about $5K a year per taxpayer. On top of it, if you are used to the level of care and service you get by the US healthcare system, you would be shocked at how poor the care is in the UK.
Cut taxes? People have a choice to invest in solar panels, or other things if they prefer. What is the advantage of the government taking that money and making the choice for them? I guess people are dumb and the government knows better, right?
When they built the Hoover Dam, Las Vegas was a small town and Nevada had a tiny population so the setup was that the majority of the energy goes to Southern California. I think Nevada gets only about 25%. Yes it hardly makes sense now that Vegas is right next door but almost all Vegas power comes from coal and natural gas.
First you have to decide on the definition of consciousness. If you take Oxford definition "the state of being awake and aware of oneâ(TM)s surroundings" then sensors throughout your body have something to do with it. I would think replacing your body with a different one (say a very sick or paralyzed or old body with a young and healthy one) would affect your consciousness.
Terrible pump design? Show me a human designed pump that can operate for ~100 years at 60-100 beats a minute without stopping once and that under normal operation requires no maintenance.
Ayatollah Khomeini: "We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let Iran burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world"
There is a difference between rational countries having the bomb and countries run by Islamic fanatics having the bomb.
Foxconn has no choice. If another company's cost of manufacturing a gadget are lower, then that's where the production will go. Anyway, increasing production efficiency is always a good thing. That's where all human progress comes from. The biggest improvements in population, lifespan, quality of life and human condition in general, the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution, were both based on the ability to have fewer people do the work that used to take many.
It's not a matter of reverence to Scalia but it is just a shame that people pick on one Justice who has been sticking for the actual meaning of the Constitution, perhaps imperfectly, while giving a free pass to the four liberal Justices who are automatic votes for every liberal cause regardless of the law. But then they do not even claim to respect the Constitution to any great extent, so at least they are not hypocritical I guess.
But this is where you are wrong: the Constitution is not intended to provide decisions on every problem. The people through their representatives (ie the majority) decide on the laws, the Constitution is there to provide protection for basic individual rights against the abuse by the majority. For example, the Congress could pass a law today that children should be taken away from their parents at birth and raised somewhere else, and this would not be unconstitutional. It is just one of the many, many issues on which Constitution is silent and for those things we have to rely on the good sense of the people and their elected representatives.
Another thing the Constitution does not protect is the right for gay marriage to be treated equally as the heterosexual marriage. The Congress or the states could pass a law today to allow gay marriage and of course that would be no problem. The problem is that they did not do that. They explicitly and with huge majority passed a law to deny benefits to gay couples and this should be allowed to stand as the will of the people, until it is changed by the will of the people. Instead, the Constitution is being willfully misinterpreted by activist judges in order to overrule the will of the people because it disagreed with their personal sense of right and wrong, which constitutes abuse of power by the judicial branch.
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Didn't the Egyptians just elect this guy a year ago?
Yep, they elected a Muslim Brotherhood guy who made election campaign statements like
'"The Koran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our path and death in the name of Allah is our goal"
Now they found it shocking that the guy is just a tiny bit of an Islamic fanatic.
That didn't make sense. Short of installing Obama as the ruler of Egypt, we can hardly get any more involved in what's going on there.
Don't be naive. Short of installing Obama as the ruler of Egypt, we can hardly get any less involved in what's going on there.
North Korea is better than Egypt was under the Pharaohs. Different time, different standards.
So Obama throws Mubarak under the bus so Egypt can have democracy, now he supports a military coup to remove a democratically elected leader by the same military that used to keep Mubarak in power. Way to have a consistent foreign policy, chief.
First of all, the US created the UN and other international institutions against the will of Europeans and most other nations, who, prior to Willsonian idea of collective security, did not understand or attempt any form of international relations not based on balance of power. Not disagreeing that there are many of us in the US (myself included) who think this is dumb on our part, but it is just a little bit unfair to single out the country that contributed the most to international cooperation as being against it.
Btw, international cooperation today is greatest it has ever been due to capitalism and globalization so you should be happy. Just about every person in the world is involved in voluntary and productive cooperation as well as competition with people all over the world within the global market. Lookup Milton Friedman's example of a pencil: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5Gppi-O3a8 for a beautiful illustration.
Governments are not the place to look for any kind of cooperation that sacrifices the interests of their country for others, even a little bit. It is not only very difficult and unnatural for such a thing to happen in any democracy as such gov. will not last very long, but it is morally suspect as well. Try running for election in any country on a platform of say reducing welfare benefits or increasing taxes for citizens of that country in order to help the starving in other countries in the name of eliminating nationalism and patriotism and see how far that gets you,
I'm self employed so I am very well aware of the employer contribution as I pay both. It is irrational to expect that you can expand coverage without increasing the cost.
Can you explain to me by what magic trick (if we switch to a single payer system) the coverage can be made universal while maintaining the same standard of care, without people who pay for it paying more?
Since I am not part of a borg collective I do not care about the cost per average person. It is not a trick, it is a different way of looking at the society: individuals engaging in cooperation on voluntary basis when it suits their individual interests, versus state coercion to achieve better statistics by sacrificing some for the sake of others.
I don't think you would like it. Competition between countries, just like competition between business, and individuals, is where good things come from. Centralized power leads to stagnation.
Most people don't support what he has done. Most people understand the difference between whistleblowing about NSA domestic spying activities and sharing classified information about foreign spying operation with foreign powers. He has lost all credibility when he went to China and he made it worse when he went to Putin and tried to get asylum in countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Russia etc, It is depressing how stupid and out of touch with reality people on this site are.
US government, just like any other, is primarily responsible to its citizens who elected it to look after their interests. It is not a matter of whose life is more important. If you don't like it, move to a planet where there are no countries.
I spend substantially less than $5K/year and I have excellent insurance and have received outstanding care every time I needed it. I have lived under NHS before and I know the difference.
The cost per taxpayer is exactly the right way to look at it as that is the cost per actual human being that will be paying for it and the simple fact is that in the UK they pay more.
If you have health insurance in the US today and we switch to a single payer system tomorrow, you annual direct out of pocket net spending on healthcare will increase and your quality of care will decrease. That is just a simple fact that nobody can dispute.
Looking at collective statistics is almost always the wrong way to look at a problem as it hides the sacrifice that some are forced to make for the sake of others.
"Simply go to a universal system" would mean higher cost for worse coverage, just like in UK. NHS costs about $5K a year per taxpayer. On top of it, if you are used to the level of care and service you get by the US healthcare system, you would be shocked at how poor the care is in the UK.
Cut taxes? People have a choice to invest in solar panels, or other things if they prefer. What is the advantage of the government taking that money and making the choice for them? I guess people are dumb and the government knows better, right?
When they built the Hoover Dam, Las Vegas was a small town and Nevada had a tiny population so the setup was that the majority of the energy goes to Southern California. I think Nevada gets only about 25%. Yes it hardly makes sense now that Vegas is right next door but almost all Vegas power comes from coal and natural gas.
First you have to decide on the definition of consciousness. If you take Oxford definition "the state of being awake and aware of oneâ(TM)s surroundings" then sensors throughout your body have something to do with it. I would think replacing your body with a different one (say a very sick or paralyzed or old body with a young and healthy one) would affect your consciousness.
Terrible pump design? Show me a human designed pump that can operate for ~100 years at 60-100 beats a minute without stopping once and that under normal operation requires no maintenance.
Ayatollah Khomeini: "We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let Iran burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world"
There is a difference between rational countries having the bomb and countries run by Islamic fanatics having the bomb.
You have no idea what it was like in the Soviet Union. It's easy to look up but you are too lazy.
Russians will never give up nukes. It's their only defense against China.
They gave him a lifetime supply of Twinkies as well.
Foxconn has no choice. If another company's cost of manufacturing a gadget are lower, then that's where the production will go. Anyway, increasing production efficiency is always a good thing. That's where all human progress comes from. The biggest improvements in population, lifespan, quality of life and human condition in general, the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution, were both based on the ability to have fewer people do the work that used to take many.
It's not a matter of reverence to Scalia but it is just a shame that people pick on one Justice who has been sticking for the actual meaning of the Constitution, perhaps imperfectly, while giving a free pass to the four liberal Justices who are automatic votes for every liberal cause regardless of the law. But then they do not even claim to respect the Constitution to any great extent, so at least they are not hypocritical I guess.
But this is where you are wrong: the Constitution is not intended to provide decisions on every problem. The people through their representatives (ie the majority) decide on the laws, the Constitution is there to provide protection for basic individual rights against the abuse by the majority. For example, the Congress could pass a law today that children should be taken away from their parents at birth and raised somewhere else, and this would not be unconstitutional. It is just one of the many, many issues on which Constitution is silent and for those things we have to rely on the good sense of the people and their elected representatives.
Another thing the Constitution does not protect is the right for gay marriage to be treated equally as the heterosexual marriage. The Congress or the states could pass a law today to allow gay marriage and of course that would be no problem. The problem is that they did not do that. They explicitly and with huge majority passed a law to deny benefits to gay couples and this should be allowed to stand as the will of the people, until it is changed by the will of the people. Instead, the Constitution is being willfully misinterpreted by activist judges in order to overrule the will of the people because it disagreed with their personal sense of right and wrong, which constitutes abuse of power by the judicial branch.