More specifically, people want free health care but don't want "them" to have it, because "they" are moochers or lazy and are just taking advantage of the system. "If I get free handouts from the government, that's okay because I'm just getting my tax money back. God forbid someone else gets assistance, because that's my money, dammit!"
I know several people who have stated this point of view explicitly. The cognitive dissonance is tear-my-hair-out infuriating.
=Smidge=
Funny, I even read all sorts of political blogs when I'm bored and I've never heard anyone support the position you mentioned. I always hear one of two views:
For government-run health care view: "But, I shouldn't have to pay that! That person has more money than me, they can afford to pay for my bills as well as theirs!"
Against government-run health care view: "It's your bill - you have to pay it. It doesn't matter how much you make or if you did something to cause it or not, no one else is responsible for paying for your bills!"
You do realize that "the deficit" and "taxes" only differ in time frame, right? The deficit is paid off by future taxes, meaning that the higher the deficit goes, the higher taxes will have to rise at some point in the future to pay for it all.
First, it's NOT a punishment against poor people. They would have a higher income and they have control over how much they spend. I don't know about you, but I'm sick of seeing poor people subsidized by my tax dollars wearing $100 t-shirts and $200 pairs of jeans with iPhones and every video game system available. If they choose to buy that pack of cigarettes that they don't need, they'll pay more in taxes on it. If they chose not to, that's all money they can save or spend on something else. Also, since a consumption tax only applies to NEW goods purchased at the original POS, buying used not only means lower prices, but a further reduction in prices due to no taxes. Buying a used car becomes that much cheaper compared to buying a new car, shopping at a thrift store becomes that much more economical than buying new clothes (let alone the ridiculously overpriced crap you see most poor teens / 20-somethings wearing). Also, the consumption tax that I support, the FairTax, rebates the tax (actually, they do a pre-bate based on the number of people in your household) spent on necessities such as food, clothing, shampoo, etc. If you're poor and spend your money wisely, you can actually POCKET money from that pre-bate. Then, since consumption taxes encourage saving, the poor will have a greater incentive to save which means that eventually, they might not be poor anymore.
As for my sister? Her boss expects her to do it due to the job requirements of HAVING to have someone of her position working at all times. Secondly, they won't hire another person because it's too expensive for them due to what her job is. What does she do? She's a pharmacist (and since I read your last part already, I'm sure you're already pulling out the pitchfork and torch for her daring to work hard and get a high paying job). She works long days with no lunch breaks putting up with idiots and jerks for customers all day - all of that after going into debt and working her ass off for 6 years in pharmacy school while having no social life due to constant studying. So yes, she refuses to work overtime when she'll gain virtually no money for it (she's salaried so only the overtime is taxed at the absurdly high rate) and would have to put up with more self absorbed idiots who can't even bother to figure out something as simple as when your prescription is out of refills / expires, you have to get a new one - you can't just expect the pharmacist to fill it (since that's illegal). It's exactly the point Mankiw makes - if he's going to get pretty much nothing for it, there's no motivation for him to do any more work than he already does.
Lastly, why do you support punishing people for hard work and success? Well, I know the core reason why, jealously, but other than that - what's your justification for punishing someone for doing something with their life? It's people with your mindset that cause me to think every day and question why I'm killing myself with working 40+ hours a week AND doing grad school full time when people like you will vilify me and demand I be punished for my hard work. Why do you think it's OK for one person to be forced to pay for another person's bill? Would you be OK with money being forcefully taken from your pocket to pay my bills (since I'm confident you make much more than I do)? Or is it only OK when it's someone else's money being taken and given to you / those you chose?
Economists who actually study how taxes affect people's decisions would beg to differ. However, you provide a fine example of why having discussions about anything regarding economics is utterly pointless on slashdot - because the overwhelming majority are people like you with no knowledge of economics and you have no desire to learn either. I've only come across one other person in my 10 years on slashdot who has a degree in Economics. It's actually quite frustrating having to hear all the blatant misinformation by ignorant people deluding themselves into thinking that they're experts.
Consumption taxes are fair because 1) why should to get to avoid paying taxes just because you don't make much money? (though the proposed FairTax deals with your complaint there) and 2) those "evil rich" everyone wants to complain about avoiding taxes? Yea, they'd have no way around it - if you buy a new house, you pay the taxes, buy a new Ferrari, you pay the taxes, etc. I'm curious as to your reasoning for thinking that some people shouldn't have to pay taxes? Don't you think there's something horribly wrong when 50% of the country pays 3% of the taxes and the other 50% pays 97%? (Those are rounded off numbers from 2008 income tax data that you can look up easily online)
Income tax discourages work because one, you have to work more to get the same amount of money, and two, because we use a progressive income tax system where the more you earn, the less you get to keep from the next dollar you earn. If you read up on economics and taxation, you'll find plenty of information on how income taxes discourage people from working (one personal example is my sister who refuses to work overtime - if she goes into overtime, she only gets about 10% of her overtime pay and the other 90% is taken in taxes, so it's not worth it for her to work).
Basically it comes down to this - why put out the effort to work more / harder when you're not going to get much in return due to taxes. Oh, and here's a blog post that Mankiw wrote regarding consumption tax vs. income tax a few years ago http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/06/consumption-vs-income-taxation.html
That's not unfamiliar, I've spoken to plenty of people from Canada and the UK who talked about how horrible the medical care was. I also recall something on the news say a year or so back about a woman in Canada pregnant with multiple babies and when she went to the hospital due to premature labor, they told her that they wouldn't take her and she should've made a reservation. It's also not unheard of for government run health care to say "You're too old for society to get any benefit from the cost of treating you".
Several years back my grandmother had a heart problem and by odd coincidence, a friends grandfather had the same heart problem. The difference? His grandfather lived in Canada. Now, if we follow popular myth, you'd assume that his grandfather was promptly treated and my grandmother died while jumping through paperwork from the evil insurance companies. Couldn't be farther from the truth. My grandmother was diagnosed with a problem on monday, saw a specialist on tuesday, and had surgery on friday. My friends grandfather was diagnosed, four months later he was able to see a specialist, and then another 3 months after that he was able to finally have surgery. Expecting someone to wait 7 months for an important heart surgery is utterly absurd. Then I also know friends in the UK who, despite loving the fact that (since they're young and have yet to ever have a job) don't have to pay for their health care, hate how it's run because of the whole "This is your government assigned doctor and if you don't like it, go fuck yourself and die" policy. So they've had doctors refuse to treat them for things and they CAN'T go anywhere else in the UK for it due to the NHS.
But you know, it would be beneficial for the US to change to that type of system.... I think the real reason the rest of the world is eager for the US to go (more) socialist is that old saying "misery loves company".
Government insurance is also "cheap" because they just don't pay doctors anything resembling the cost of treatment. I know a few doctors and they don't even bother filing Medicare or Medicaid forms because it would cost them more to pay someone to do the paperwork than they'd get from the government.
As for the infant mortality rate, it's been well documented that the US comes out behind because the US does something crazy when it comes to counting live births - they actually count all babies that are alive when born. Now, you'd expect all countries to do this, right? Wrong - the rest of the world fudges the numbers to make themselves look better. It varies by country, but the generals are if a baby is more than X weeks premature and dies after birth, they don't count it. If it's under a certain weight and dies, they don't count it. If it's under a certain age (some countries as high as 90 days after birth, which is when most infant deaths occur) they don't count it.
Lower life expectancy is, no surprise, because American's are a bunch of fatasses who hate exercise and love double bacon cheese burgers. That's why as American fast food is becoming more popular in other countries, they've been seeing a decline in the health rate and increase in obesities rates in countries that have usually been better than the US for life expectancy, obesity, and overall health.
The per capita expense is actually a very bad statistic to look at. With some areas, such as GDP, it is useful to look at GDP per capita because it's a relatively normal distribution. However, people getting sick is horribly skewed and one person with a very expensive to treat disease makes it appear that the average is much higher than it is. It would be much more useful to look at the mean, median, and mode for health care costs in countries. Only when we use truly useful numbers can we accurately compare cost and have a legitimate discussion on which system is more expensive for the average person.
As for your comment about this changing people's mind about government run health care? I don't think it would, because health has nothing to do with government run care - it's about people's rights and personal responsibility. If you are an adult, then you are responsible for yourself - no one else is responsible for you. After you turned 18 and moved out of mommy and daddy's house, they stopped paying your bills because you're an adult and have to take care of yourself now - you don't get to decide that someone else should be forced to pay your bills. It doesn't matter if it's bad decisions or bad luck that cause you to not be able to pay your bills, they're still your bills and yours lone. There are all sorts of things where bad luck or bad decisions leads people to have severe financial hardships - yet for some reason health care is the only one where people think it's ok to force someone else to pay your bills (well, some people think it's ok to do it with education too, but that's a much smaller group). You have the right to your property. You would be furious if the government kicked in your door and took your possessions to give to someone else, so why is it ok for them to forcefully take money from one person to pay another person's medical bills? People have developed this mentality of "if it benefits me, it's good" (well, the mentality has always been around in a minority, it's just that it's becoming quite popular these days), and they use that to justify stealing to pay their bills.
Which is exactly what happened with the federal income tax - originally it was just a 1% tax on the "evil rich" and then the government kept taking more and more money from more and more people. It's good to see that the people in Washington learned from history and didn't let the bill pass.
Also, income taxes are a very inefficient form of taxation because it discourages people from working (Economist Gregory Mankiw wrote an article in the NY Times recently about this). Consumption taxes (sales tax) are much more efficient and fair system of taxation.
Apparently that ego is a problem for a lot of graduates these days, especially ones with a business degree. I've heard many hiring managers complain that a lot of these kids graduate and expect to be made a mid-to-high level manager right from the start instead of getting an entry position.
In general, yes. Some other schools have more pull, especially if you're applying for a job within a few states. For instance, I'm in grad school for Economics and there are several very big multi-national corporations in my home city, and as such due to the research the professors / grad students do for the businesses in the area, you have more pull in getting a job with one of those companies.
For instance, when I was in high school applying for college and advisor told me that if I was planning on staying in the area, the nearby high reputation private school would be a good choice but if I was planning on leaving the area, then another much more nationally known university would be a better choice.
Regarding your comment about a single vendor managing all security, MS is NOT forcing anyone to use this. Windows Update merely puts it in there as an OPTIONAL update if you don't already have A/V software installed. Basically, they're doing this to cut down on the botnets due to people buying a computer with a 30-day subscription to Norton and then never paying for a full subscription.
Well, it depends. Some schools ARE better than others. I hardly think you'd consider an engineering degree from MIT equivalent to an engineering degree from UC Berkley - not knocking their program there, just saying that MIT's is better. However, for the majority of colleges, no, it doesn't matter much because few people are going to know EVERY program at EVERY college to judge on how your specific choice of college affected your education.
Well I have to ask - where the hell do you live? Just like with any business, businesses are where the customers are. People who choose to live in the middle of nowhere (such as some of my family) are going to have fewer options and lower quality / higher prices as a result. That's why I like living in the suburbs of a city - you don't have all the negatives of city life, yet you don't have the isolation from businesses of rural life.
Maybe where you live. In the major US city where I live, prices have gone down, speeds have gone up, and there's no bandwidth limits - and that's with only two companies for the last decade.
The cable company provides 5-6 monthly plans ranging from $20/month for 768k to $55/month for 15 Mb, while the phone companies DSL offers $25/month for 768k and $40/month for 5Mb. Both companies also give discounts on internet if you get other services (home phone or cable tv) through them. Around 8 years ago it was $60/month for 1 Mb (cable) and $50/month for 768k (DSL).
Ah, yet another person who doesn't understand why economists disagree. Economists rarely ever disagree about what the effects of a policy will be - they disagree over whether or not the government should pursue a certain agenda. Krugman is openly for more government control and higher taxes because he thinks the government should run the show and people are nothing but slaves for the government to order around. He's well aware about the effects of those higher taxes, but he thinks their goal (raping businesses and making people more reliant on the government) is good.
As another brilliant economist (Gregory Mankiw) said recently, Paul Krugman is a great theoretical economist - but when it comes to real world applications he's clueless. *That's paraphrased, I didn't feel like pulling up the exact quote*
You're absolutely right - however when the government passes laws and proposes other laws that actively harm the economic recovery, that's not going to happen. That absolute last thing you do during a recession is raise taxes - even tax crazy Europe knows that. Yet here's the administration raising taxes away, adding new taxes to businesses to discourage hiring new workers, and talking about adding even MORE taxes.
I was at a lecture a couple weeks ago by Nobel Prize winning Economist Edward Prescott and he stated exactly this same point - that the current government's poor tax policy is the biggest thing keeping the economy from recovering faster.
But I mean, what would a professor who's won the Nobel Prize in his field know compared to your undoubted mastery of Economics....
Do some research on the CRA and how the changes made to it in the mid-90's caused the housing bubble. But hey, why use facts when you can just sit back and blame "the evil rich".
You mean the housing bubble mainly caused by Clinton's changes to the Community Reinvestment Act, which essentially forced banks to give loans to people who were unqualified and would have been turned down had there not been government intervention? Housing prices throughout history have always stayed about the same when adjusted for inflation. Then at almost the exact time that the CRA was modified, all of the sudden prices shot up and people who were in no financial position to own a home did because of politicians who held the view that "everyone should own their own home, even if they can't afford it" - then predictably as soon as the economy got rough a few years back, those people stopped being able to pay their mortgage and it triggered a massive avalanche of defaults because as more people defaulted and the economy went down, more people got laid off which resulted in more people defaulting, etc.
I'm not blaming the economy on Clinton. The housing bubble, yes, because it's been directly linked to his changes to the CRA. However, the real villain behind the current economy? Consumers around the world who had too much debt. People racked up all sorts of debt because they thought they could just put it on a credit card or take out a loan and forget about it - but eventually, the bill comes due and they couldn't pay it.
However, it's easier for you to blame the banks. After all, they make more money than you and thus must be evil. People complain about greed being a problem - and it is, just not the greed that they're thinking of. Only a small portion of the population suffers from greed that makes them way to steal from those who have less to enrich themselves. A large portion of the population though suffers from greed that makes them vilify anyone who has more than them and demand the government confiscate their money and give it to those who didn't earn it.
It's "pre-existing" because if your yearly insurance bill would be over $2,000, it's cheaper to pay the fine and NOT have insurance and then if you get sick, buy some insurance and they're forced to pay for your illness despite you not paying into the system. Insurance works by you paying in with a low probability of needing payouts - when you do, they pay for it out of those funds. Insurance is just that - insurance you pay money just in case something bad happens. You don't wait UNTIL something bad happens and then buy insurance.
Wrong. Bush did a small temporary bailout to keep the car companies from going under. Then after they pissed away that money, Obama flat out used government money to BUY the damn companies.
As for Republicans dragging their feet? That's because, unlike many of the Democrats who got booted yesterday for voting for Obamacare, the Republicans were listening to their constituents. A large group of Americans (not just Republicans, but also plenty of Democrats) looked at their plan which would achieve two things for sure - higher taxes and more government control over your life - and said DO NOT WANT!!
Yes, and without him we'd be recovering much faster. Clinton may have been a Democrat, but he was completely against traditional Democrat values when it came to the economy. He actually had knowledge of Economics, unlike Obama. Obama has businesses terrified of hiring because of all his plans for raising taxes (on top of the taxes he's already raised), he's adding more government debt to an already unsustainable debt, and he took a trillion dollars of stimulus money and spent it on nothing that actually stimulates the economy in any meaningful way.
I have a bachelors in Economics and am in grad school for Economics - and I can tell you that very, VERY few people in the Economics departments at universities support Obama due to his utterly idiotic policies when it comes to the economy.
Slashdot Mirror
More specifically, people want free health care but don't want "them" to have it, because "they" are moochers or lazy and are just taking advantage of the system. "If I get free handouts from the government, that's okay because I'm just getting my tax money back. God forbid someone else gets assistance, because that's my money, dammit!"
I know several people who have stated this point of view explicitly. The cognitive dissonance is tear-my-hair-out infuriating. =Smidge=
Funny, I even read all sorts of political blogs when I'm bored and I've never heard anyone support the position you mentioned. I always hear one of two views:
For government-run health care view: "But, I shouldn't have to pay that! That person has more money than me, they can afford to pay for my bills as well as theirs!"
Against government-run health care view: "It's your bill - you have to pay it. It doesn't matter how much you make or if you did something to cause it or not, no one else is responsible for paying for your bills!"
You do realize that "the deficit" and "taxes" only differ in time frame, right? The deficit is paid off by future taxes, meaning that the higher the deficit goes, the higher taxes will have to rise at some point in the future to pay for it all.
Nope, I'd just use what's freely available, as I have since the internet came about.
In my case, yes, I can definitely say that I would not have purchased any porn dvd's.
First, it's NOT a punishment against poor people. They would have a higher income and they have control over how much they spend. I don't know about you, but I'm sick of seeing poor people subsidized by my tax dollars wearing $100 t-shirts and $200 pairs of jeans with iPhones and every video game system available. If they choose to buy that pack of cigarettes that they don't need, they'll pay more in taxes on it. If they chose not to, that's all money they can save or spend on something else. Also, since a consumption tax only applies to NEW goods purchased at the original POS, buying used not only means lower prices, but a further reduction in prices due to no taxes. Buying a used car becomes that much cheaper compared to buying a new car, shopping at a thrift store becomes that much more economical than buying new clothes (let alone the ridiculously overpriced crap you see most poor teens / 20-somethings wearing). Also, the consumption tax that I support, the FairTax, rebates the tax (actually, they do a pre-bate based on the number of people in your household) spent on necessities such as food, clothing, shampoo, etc. If you're poor and spend your money wisely, you can actually POCKET money from that pre-bate. Then, since consumption taxes encourage saving, the poor will have a greater incentive to save which means that eventually, they might not be poor anymore.
As for my sister? Her boss expects her to do it due to the job requirements of HAVING to have someone of her position working at all times. Secondly, they won't hire another person because it's too expensive for them due to what her job is. What does she do? She's a pharmacist (and since I read your last part already, I'm sure you're already pulling out the pitchfork and torch for her daring to work hard and get a high paying job). She works long days with no lunch breaks putting up with idiots and jerks for customers all day - all of that after going into debt and working her ass off for 6 years in pharmacy school while having no social life due to constant studying. So yes, she refuses to work overtime when she'll gain virtually no money for it (she's salaried so only the overtime is taxed at the absurdly high rate) and would have to put up with more self absorbed idiots who can't even bother to figure out something as simple as when your prescription is out of refills / expires, you have to get a new one - you can't just expect the pharmacist to fill it (since that's illegal). It's exactly the point Mankiw makes - if he's going to get pretty much nothing for it, there's no motivation for him to do any more work than he already does.
Lastly, why do you support punishing people for hard work and success? Well, I know the core reason why, jealously, but other than that - what's your justification for punishing someone for doing something with their life? It's people with your mindset that cause me to think every day and question why I'm killing myself with working 40+ hours a week AND doing grad school full time when people like you will vilify me and demand I be punished for my hard work. Why do you think it's OK for one person to be forced to pay for another person's bill? Would you be OK with money being forcefully taken from your pocket to pay my bills (since I'm confident you make much more than I do)? Or is it only OK when it's someone else's money being taken and given to you / those you chose?
Economists who actually study how taxes affect people's decisions would beg to differ. However, you provide a fine example of why having discussions about anything regarding economics is utterly pointless on slashdot - because the overwhelming majority are people like you with no knowledge of economics and you have no desire to learn either. I've only come across one other person in my 10 years on slashdot who has a degree in Economics. It's actually quite frustrating having to hear all the blatant misinformation by ignorant people deluding themselves into thinking that they're experts.
Consumption taxes are fair because 1) why should to get to avoid paying taxes just because you don't make much money? (though the proposed FairTax deals with your complaint there) and 2) those "evil rich" everyone wants to complain about avoiding taxes? Yea, they'd have no way around it - if you buy a new house, you pay the taxes, buy a new Ferrari, you pay the taxes, etc. I'm curious as to your reasoning for thinking that some people shouldn't have to pay taxes? Don't you think there's something horribly wrong when 50% of the country pays 3% of the taxes and the other 50% pays 97%? (Those are rounded off numbers from 2008 income tax data that you can look up easily online)
Income tax discourages work because one, you have to work more to get the same amount of money, and two, because we use a progressive income tax system where the more you earn, the less you get to keep from the next dollar you earn. If you read up on economics and taxation, you'll find plenty of information on how income taxes discourage people from working (one personal example is my sister who refuses to work overtime - if she goes into overtime, she only gets about 10% of her overtime pay and the other 90% is taken in taxes, so it's not worth it for her to work).
Here's Mankiw's article (it's simplified due to being in a short newspaper column as well as being something everyone can read and understand) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/business/economy/10view.html?_r=1 and here's his response to people who had some complaints with it http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2010/10/response-to-queries.html
Basically it comes down to this - why put out the effort to work more / harder when you're not going to get much in return due to taxes. Oh, and here's a blog post that Mankiw wrote regarding consumption tax vs. income tax a few years ago http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/06/consumption-vs-income-taxation.html
That's not unfamiliar, I've spoken to plenty of people from Canada and the UK who talked about how horrible the medical care was. I also recall something on the news say a year or so back about a woman in Canada pregnant with multiple babies and when she went to the hospital due to premature labor, they told her that they wouldn't take her and she should've made a reservation. It's also not unheard of for government run health care to say "You're too old for society to get any benefit from the cost of treating you".
Several years back my grandmother had a heart problem and by odd coincidence, a friends grandfather had the same heart problem. The difference? His grandfather lived in Canada. Now, if we follow popular myth, you'd assume that his grandfather was promptly treated and my grandmother died while jumping through paperwork from the evil insurance companies. Couldn't be farther from the truth. My grandmother was diagnosed with a problem on monday, saw a specialist on tuesday, and had surgery on friday. My friends grandfather was diagnosed, four months later he was able to see a specialist, and then another 3 months after that he was able to finally have surgery. Expecting someone to wait 7 months for an important heart surgery is utterly absurd. Then I also know friends in the UK who, despite loving the fact that (since they're young and have yet to ever have a job) don't have to pay for their health care, hate how it's run because of the whole "This is your government assigned doctor and if you don't like it, go fuck yourself and die" policy. So they've had doctors refuse to treat them for things and they CAN'T go anywhere else in the UK for it due to the NHS.
But you know, it would be beneficial for the US to change to that type of system.... I think the real reason the rest of the world is eager for the US to go (more) socialist is that old saying "misery loves company".
Government insurance is also "cheap" because they just don't pay doctors anything resembling the cost of treatment. I know a few doctors and they don't even bother filing Medicare or Medicaid forms because it would cost them more to pay someone to do the paperwork than they'd get from the government.
As for the infant mortality rate, it's been well documented that the US comes out behind because the US does something crazy when it comes to counting live births - they actually count all babies that are alive when born. Now, you'd expect all countries to do this, right? Wrong - the rest of the world fudges the numbers to make themselves look better. It varies by country, but the generals are if a baby is more than X weeks premature and dies after birth, they don't count it. If it's under a certain weight and dies, they don't count it. If it's under a certain age (some countries as high as 90 days after birth, which is when most infant deaths occur) they don't count it.
Lower life expectancy is, no surprise, because American's are a bunch of fatasses who hate exercise and love double bacon cheese burgers. That's why as American fast food is becoming more popular in other countries, they've been seeing a decline in the health rate and increase in obesities rates in countries that have usually been better than the US for life expectancy, obesity, and overall health.
The per capita expense is actually a very bad statistic to look at. With some areas, such as GDP, it is useful to look at GDP per capita because it's a relatively normal distribution. However, people getting sick is horribly skewed and one person with a very expensive to treat disease makes it appear that the average is much higher than it is. It would be much more useful to look at the mean, median, and mode for health care costs in countries. Only when we use truly useful numbers can we accurately compare cost and have a legitimate discussion on which system is more expensive for the average person.
As for your comment about this changing people's mind about government run health care? I don't think it would, because health has nothing to do with government run care - it's about people's rights and personal responsibility. If you are an adult, then you are responsible for yourself - no one else is responsible for you. After you turned 18 and moved out of mommy and daddy's house, they stopped paying your bills because you're an adult and have to take care of yourself now - you don't get to decide that someone else should be forced to pay your bills. It doesn't matter if it's bad decisions or bad luck that cause you to not be able to pay your bills, they're still your bills and yours lone. There are all sorts of things where bad luck or bad decisions leads people to have severe financial hardships - yet for some reason health care is the only one where people think it's ok to force someone else to pay your bills (well, some people think it's ok to do it with education too, but that's a much smaller group). You have the right to your property. You would be furious if the government kicked in your door and took your possessions to give to someone else, so why is it ok for them to forcefully take money from one person to pay another person's medical bills? People have developed this mentality of "if it benefits me, it's good" (well, the mentality has always been around in a minority, it's just that it's becoming quite popular these days), and they use that to justify stealing to pay their bills.
Which is exactly what happened with the federal income tax - originally it was just a 1% tax on the "evil rich" and then the government kept taking more and more money from more and more people. It's good to see that the people in Washington learned from history and didn't let the bill pass.
Also, income taxes are a very inefficient form of taxation because it discourages people from working (Economist Gregory Mankiw wrote an article in the NY Times recently about this). Consumption taxes (sales tax) are much more efficient and fair system of taxation.
Apparently that ego is a problem for a lot of graduates these days, especially ones with a business degree. I've heard many hiring managers complain that a lot of these kids graduate and expect to be made a mid-to-high level manager right from the start instead of getting an entry position.
In general, yes. Some other schools have more pull, especially if you're applying for a job within a few states. For instance, I'm in grad school for Economics and there are several very big multi-national corporations in my home city, and as such due to the research the professors / grad students do for the businesses in the area, you have more pull in getting a job with one of those companies.
For instance, when I was in high school applying for college and advisor told me that if I was planning on staying in the area, the nearby high reputation private school would be a good choice but if I was planning on leaving the area, then another much more nationally known university would be a better choice.
Just an FYI regarding firewalls - if you're on Win 7, there's no need to pay for a firewall because Win 7 finally has a good built in firewall.
Regarding your comment about a single vendor managing all security, MS is NOT forcing anyone to use this. Windows Update merely puts it in there as an OPTIONAL update if you don't already have A/V software installed. Basically, they're doing this to cut down on the botnets due to people buying a computer with a 30-day subscription to Norton and then never paying for a full subscription.
Well, it depends. Some schools ARE better than others. I hardly think you'd consider an engineering degree from MIT equivalent to an engineering degree from UC Berkley - not knocking their program there, just saying that MIT's is better. However, for the majority of colleges, no, it doesn't matter much because few people are going to know EVERY program at EVERY college to judge on how your specific choice of college affected your education.
Well I have to ask - where the hell do you live? Just like with any business, businesses are where the customers are. People who choose to live in the middle of nowhere (such as some of my family) are going to have fewer options and lower quality / higher prices as a result. That's why I like living in the suburbs of a city - you don't have all the negatives of city life, yet you don't have the isolation from businesses of rural life.
Maybe where you live. In the major US city where I live, prices have gone down, speeds have gone up, and there's no bandwidth limits - and that's with only two companies for the last decade.
The cable company provides 5-6 monthly plans ranging from $20/month for 768k to $55/month for 15 Mb, while the phone companies DSL offers $25/month for 768k and $40/month for 5Mb. Both companies also give discounts on internet if you get other services (home phone or cable tv) through them. Around 8 years ago it was $60/month for 1 Mb (cable) and $50/month for 768k (DSL).
Ah, yet another person who doesn't understand why economists disagree. Economists rarely ever disagree about what the effects of a policy will be - they disagree over whether or not the government should pursue a certain agenda. Krugman is openly for more government control and higher taxes because he thinks the government should run the show and people are nothing but slaves for the government to order around. He's well aware about the effects of those higher taxes, but he thinks their goal (raping businesses and making people more reliant on the government) is good.
As another brilliant economist (Gregory Mankiw) said recently, Paul Krugman is a great theoretical economist - but when it comes to real world applications he's clueless. *That's paraphrased, I didn't feel like pulling up the exact quote*
You're absolutely right - however when the government passes laws and proposes other laws that actively harm the economic recovery, that's not going to happen. That absolute last thing you do during a recession is raise taxes - even tax crazy Europe knows that. Yet here's the administration raising taxes away, adding new taxes to businesses to discourage hiring new workers, and talking about adding even MORE taxes.
I was at a lecture a couple weeks ago by Nobel Prize winning Economist Edward Prescott and he stated exactly this same point - that the current government's poor tax policy is the biggest thing keeping the economy from recovering faster.
But I mean, what would a professor who's won the Nobel Prize in his field know compared to your undoubted mastery of Economics....
Do some research on the CRA and how the changes made to it in the mid-90's caused the housing bubble. But hey, why use facts when you can just sit back and blame "the evil rich".
You mean the housing bubble mainly caused by Clinton's changes to the Community Reinvestment Act, which essentially forced banks to give loans to people who were unqualified and would have been turned down had there not been government intervention? Housing prices throughout history have always stayed about the same when adjusted for inflation. Then at almost the exact time that the CRA was modified, all of the sudden prices shot up and people who were in no financial position to own a home did because of politicians who held the view that "everyone should own their own home, even if they can't afford it" - then predictably as soon as the economy got rough a few years back, those people stopped being able to pay their mortgage and it triggered a massive avalanche of defaults because as more people defaulted and the economy went down, more people got laid off which resulted in more people defaulting, etc.
I'm not blaming the economy on Clinton. The housing bubble, yes, because it's been directly linked to his changes to the CRA. However, the real villain behind the current economy? Consumers around the world who had too much debt. People racked up all sorts of debt because they thought they could just put it on a credit card or take out a loan and forget about it - but eventually, the bill comes due and they couldn't pay it.
However, it's easier for you to blame the banks. After all, they make more money than you and thus must be evil. People complain about greed being a problem - and it is, just not the greed that they're thinking of. Only a small portion of the population suffers from greed that makes them way to steal from those who have less to enrich themselves. A large portion of the population though suffers from greed that makes them vilify anyone who has more than them and demand the government confiscate their money and give it to those who didn't earn it.
It's "pre-existing" because if your yearly insurance bill would be over $2,000, it's cheaper to pay the fine and NOT have insurance and then if you get sick, buy some insurance and they're forced to pay for your illness despite you not paying into the system. Insurance works by you paying in with a low probability of needing payouts - when you do, they pay for it out of those funds. Insurance is just that - insurance you pay money just in case something bad happens. You don't wait UNTIL something bad happens and then buy insurance.
Wrong. Bush did a small temporary bailout to keep the car companies from going under. Then after they pissed away that money, Obama flat out used government money to BUY the damn companies.
As for Republicans dragging their feet? That's because, unlike many of the Democrats who got booted yesterday for voting for Obamacare, the Republicans were listening to their constituents. A large group of Americans (not just Republicans, but also plenty of Democrats) looked at their plan which would achieve two things for sure - higher taxes and more government control over your life - and said DO NOT WANT!!
And under Obama we are slowly recovering
Yes, and without him we'd be recovering much faster. Clinton may have been a Democrat, but he was completely against traditional Democrat values when it came to the economy. He actually had knowledge of Economics, unlike Obama. Obama has businesses terrified of hiring because of all his plans for raising taxes (on top of the taxes he's already raised), he's adding more government debt to an already unsustainable debt, and he took a trillion dollars of stimulus money and spent it on nothing that actually stimulates the economy in any meaningful way.
I have a bachelors in Economics and am in grad school for Economics - and I can tell you that very, VERY few people in the Economics departments at universities support Obama due to his utterly idiotic policies when it comes to the economy.