It's not a tangential item. You were using it as an example of where government intervention supposedly helped, because the calorie counts told you McDonald's was supposedly so bad.
Except you missed the freakin' point -- it's NOT McDonald's. Go to ANY big chain restaurant, and order a big burger with bacon and cheese and a giant french fry order with a huge soda, and guess what? It's going to be about as many calories as you'd get at McDonald's. If you don't know enough to realize about how many calories are in a meal like that -- in general, not at McDonald's -- then you obviously haven't a clue about nutrition.
The government may have helped you understand that you were overeating, I suppose. But it has nothing to do with McDonald's. What they really needed to do is educate you on the calorie count in the type of meals you were eating, which apparently you didn't realize... and apparently still don't, since you blame McDonald's and also grossly exaggerate the numbers.
Yes, you win - you can put together a meal that's only half a day's calories.
NO -- that's again not the point. You claimed that just about everything on the menu was 2000 calories or more. Even if I interpret that to mean a "whole meal," that's still not anywhere near true.
The standard meals McDonald's offers are the value meals. By default, they come with medium fries and drink, which are roughly 500 calories. If you look through the sandwiches and such that tend to come with the value meals, they range from about 350-650 calories on average (with a few outliers). That adds up to roughly 1000 calories.
In other words, if you walk into McDonald's, and you order the most standard meals they offer, you'll "put together a meal that's only half a day's calories."
It's only if you deliberately make choices to find the most caloric sandwiches, ask for a larger size fries and drink, AND add on at least two other items (like desserts or something) that you'll reach a full day's calories.
I don't see how the moral you take away from this is that "you can put together a meal that's only half a day's calories" -- that's simply not true. THAT'S THE DEFAULT MEAL MCDONALD'S OFFERS. (And, if you actually think a bit and try to order some healthy choices, you're more than likely to get well below that amount of calories... even without the PDF.)
If you eat like a ravenous hog everytime you go to McDonald's and get the biggest craziest meal they'll sell you, and then on an extra sandwich and dessert MAYBE you'll get close to a full day's calories. But that would be true IN JUST ABOUT ANY RESTAURANT.
I think you've just proved my point.
Let me restate my two actual points, since you clearly missed them. (1) It's not about McDonald's. ANY restaurant with a menu of burgers, fries, and sodas is going to have similar calorie counts. (And it would be better to realize THAT rather than thinking the McDonald's is particularly evil or something.) (2) If you actual eat a "normal" meal at McDonald's, you'll likely be eating a normal amount of food for an average dinner for an average-sized person. It's only if you deliberately enlarge your meal to about twice the size of a "normal" McDonald's meal that you'll get to your supposed threshold of enough calories for an entire day.
You're assuming the only way to contribute to society is to work. That couldn't be any more wrong.
Never said that. This thread started as a conversation about taxation policy and economic balances. Of course people contribute to society in all sorts of intangible ways. But the most significant ECONOMIC "added value" an individual usually gives to society is while they are working -- that actually generates "new value," rather than living off of previously saved value.
The thought people who don't work don't contribute to the economy is a fundamental lack of understanding of how the economy actually works. Even if you ignore taxes on goods and services you can't have GDP without someone to consume the product. And THAT is how the economy works.
Please don't try to lecture me unless you bother to think about what you're saying.
Look -- your new argument is fundamentally flawed. If an elderly retired person dies, the wealth doesn't just disappear in a puff of smoke! It gets inherited or donated to a charity or fed to the government in the form of taxes or whatever. When someone is working, they are actually generating value and productivity for the economy. But once they retire, it doesn't matter who spends the wealth they've already accumulated. That money now exists, because that person worked. If they die early, it will be passed along and spent by someone else.
I'm not AT ALL saying that old people don't contribute greatly to our society in all sorts of culturally beneficial ways. And I'm all in favor of encouraging them to stay alive for all of those reasons. But in general they tend not to add significant economic value after retiring and in fact are generally in the process of lessening it. Sure they may be spending more at that point (though the percentage of old people who live below the poverty line and aren't spending very much at all may surprise you) -- but you'd have to prove that their spending would not occur if they died. And you haven't -- the money would flow to someone else, who likely would still spend significant portions of it.
Nope, it's not. You deliberately chose some of the highest calorie items on the menu and added on a dessert. As I said in my post, if you do this, you can get close to 2000 calories. But that isn't the standard the GP set:
almost everything on their menu was a *full day's* allotment of calories
I usually try not to be a jerk, but maybe you need some reading comprehension. Just because you can make up a standard possible meal that gets close to (but still, I would note, about 12% under) does NOT imply that "ALMOST EVERYTHING" on the menu is 2000 calories.
Also, note GP was talking at poor people at this point in his post. Newsflash: poor people don't order "value meals," because they're too expensive. Instead, they order a few things from the dollar menu, and you'd have to add quite a few of those together to get to 2000 calories... much more than 4 items.
Furthermore, if you go ANYWHERE and order a large burger piled high with bacon, cheese, and a special sauce, pair it with a giant amount of fries, a big soda, and a dessert, you're probably going to be eating 1700 calories (at a normal sit-down restaurant at dinner time, potentially quite a bit more). McDonald's isn't special in this regard.
On the other hand, if you choose a more reasonable sandwich, and only a normal or small size fries or drink to go with (and no dessert), you'll likely come in around 1000 calories or even quite a bit less... just as I said. That's a "typical" average calorie count if you're at all giving a crap about what you eat. And if you actually look for something that seems vaguely "healthy" on the menu, you'll probably end up with significantly fewer calories.
The point is that any idiot should realize that ordering a burger piled high with bad stuff, along with a giant plate of french fries, a big soda, and a dessert is going to be an insane number of calories, wherever you're eating it. I don't need calorie counts to tell me that. But you only get anywhere close to 2000 calories by deliberately seeking out the highest calorie menu items, not by just picking out almost anything on the menu, as GP claimed.
I fucking love McDonalds, but I stopped eating there. I'm a supposedly educated, well-off person with a relatively higher amount of "freedom" than some citizens. And I didn't know that almost everything on their menu was a *full day's* allotment of calories, until the Gubmint made them advertise it.
[Citation needed]
Here's a link to the McDonald's nutrition facts for their menus.
A standard "fulls day's allotment of calories" for an adult is 2000 calories, as assumed, for example, on most nutritional labels. (Many nutritional labels that contain multiple columns will give numbers for 2000 and 2500 calorie/day diets.)
Can you find any item on the menu that approaches those numbers? I can't. The highest calorie single-item is a "big breakfast" meal, which comes to a little over 1000 calories. Most of the premium sandwiches are in the 500-600 calorie range. Add on a standard size fries and drink, and you'll get to around 1000 calories.
Yes, that's a lot for a single meal, but for a 2000 or 2500 calorie diet, that's what a lot of people eat for dinner.
If you pick the worst sandwiches on the menu (double quarter pounder or one of the bacon/chicken sandwiches), you can get up to 750 calories just for the sandwich. Super-size (or, well, they got rid of it, but just ask for "large") fries and get some sugary soda, and you might get to 1500 calories. Even if you add on a dessert, you'll have to choose carefully to get the highest calorie counts to get anywhere near 2000 calories for a single "normal" meal. If you choose a "normal" value meal, with normal size stuff, you'd usually have to eat at least 2 of them to get to a "full day's allotment of calories."
And if you are more reasonable and choose smaller cheaper items, like a cheeseburger, small fries, etc., for your meal, then you're looking at significantly lower calories.
Meanwhile, take a look at calories even for SALADS at most sit-down restaurants. If you love that blackened chicken salad with blue cheese dressing and bacon bits, chances are you might be consuming more than your typical McDonald's Big Mac meal.
I'm NOT saying McDonald's is a healthy place to eat. But, like anywhere, you need to make reasonable choices. If you order the largest and fattiest items on the menu just about anywhere, you'll be eating a lot of calories. But most items on McDonald's menu won't get you anywhere near a "full day's allotment of calories" -- if you're "supposedly educated and well-off," maybe you might learn to read nutritional facts better.
Smokers tend to be less productive during their working life, so contribute less in the first place. Smoking breaks and coughing fits, plus time off sick etc.
Yep, and some of the cited studies take that into account. It's mostly the studies that are done by strong anti-smoking folks that magically seem to find more "lost productivity." For example, this study, which is fairly typical, estimates about $3500/year lost due to smoking breaks and "withdrawal" symptoms that happen when a smoker is struggling to wait for the next break.
Let's set aside various big issues with this, like whether all or even most smokers are the kind who need a continuous "fix" to survive the day. (Many people I've known who smoked were not "pack-a-day" types -- they would have occasional cigarettes a few times per day to relax.) The larger question is whether we can actually assume that non-smokers are productive continuously throughout the day and don't take their own "breaks" around the water cooler or coffee maker or just spacing out for a few minutes at the desk. Many studies on productivity would suggest that we should NOT assume a worker is continuously productive throughout an 8-hour workday... that's one of the reasons for mandated breaks, but most people end up having their own "downtime" anyway. Are smokers really costing more for breaks, or are they just more visible about how and when they take them? Also, if we're going to factor in lost time for unfocused smokers needing a fix, we need to factor in gained productivity for occasional smokers who might only take a smoking break once in a while to relieve stress and for whom it might actually make them feel better (and thus MORE productive).
Same deal with sick days. $500 for extra sick days for smokers, but studies also show that people who take more time off often gain productivity from additional rest and time away from work. What's the balance here? Again, smokers probably cost more, but we shouldn't always assume that a sick day equals lost productivity -- to the contrary, productivity studies show that most workers would be MORE productive if they more frequently took sick days or personal days when needed.
Bottom line -- I'm sure many smokers DO cost more in lost productivity, but estimating the actual effect is quite difficult, and studies that have tried to come to mixed conclusions. Regardless, you'd need a lot of lost productivity to offset the extra cost of non-smokers in additional healthcare expenses, retirement expenses, and end-of-life care for people with chronic degenerative diseases. Even if the worst-case studies are accurate and smokers cost an extra $5000/year or something to employers, over a 40-year career, that comes to $200,000. Estimates are that smokers save about $100,000 in health-care costs alone. Add in savings in retirement and pension payouts, as well as kids paying for long-term care facilities for old people, etc., and you're very likely going to surpass any productivity losses in care for old people.
Smokers tend to damage other people's health as well, so any study that only looks at their own life expectancy is flawed.
Do you think these study authors are idiots? Of course they factor this in. The dangers of second-hand smoke have been known for decades, so most studies include societal costs due to illnesses caused to others. In the U.S., though, smoking in public places has been greatly restricted in the past decade or so, so those costs will be significantly reduced compared to what they were in the past (where, even with second-hand smoke illnesses, cost due to smokers was a wash).
Again, I'm focusing on cost here. Obviously there are social and moral reasons not to let people harm others, so I'm all for smoking bans in a lot of public venues. But that's a different question from whether smoking ac
Those analyses are a bit narrow. Smokers are much more likely to die while still economically active.
Nope, not true -- on average. It's true that more smokers will die than non-smokers when economically active. But MOST of the gains in lifespan for non-smokers are in retirement. On average, non-smokers may live to 80-85, while on average, smokers may die at 70-75. Yes, there are tragedies where some young person dies of lung cancer at 40 or 45, but there are plenty of non-smokers who have heart attacks then too.
The issue is the average. And for MOST smokers, what they are losing is an additional 10 years of retirement or so, i.e., NOT when they are "economically active."
So the net benefit is rather more complicated to calculate.
Agreed. That's why different studies will come up with different numbers. I've tried finding a lot of these studies (which I was skeptical of at first), and MOST of them conclude that smokers save society money overall or at least come to about the same cost as non-smokers. The ONLY ones I've seen which take into account life-long costs and claim smokers cost more generally include some nebulous factors like "lost wages and loss of life enjoyment due to death." Not taxes lost, mind you, but wages, and personal loss of enjoying life. Maybe these things mean something to family members of the deceased, but they aren't necessarily relevant to the overall economic burden of smokers on society. After all, if they live until age 95 instead, the kids could end up shelling out a lot more money in elderly care than they lost because dad dropped dead at 55 while they in high school.
In any event, the answer to the problem is obviously not, "encourage more people to take up smoking"
Absolutely. I'm NOT encouraging anyone to smoke. I think there are plenty of reasons to want to help people live long and happy lives. But that's not the question which started this thread, which is about whether it's "fair" to tax smokers more because they (supposedly) cost society more.
You fail to account for the calculable (also monetary) benefit stemming from that activity!
Me? What do I have to do with it? I was citing studies. Some studies try to take these various benefits into account. Some do not. Judge them on the basis of their details, not what you imagine they "fail" to do.
It's not about you, nor about me. It's about statistical averages of economic outcomes in society at large.
the difference would be made up in about 2 years of additional taxes that I get to pay on account of actually being alive not to mention the benefit to the economy of my general activities. Those monies would generally contribute to healthcare effectively repaying the cost of smoking.
Not on average. When you think of "smokers dying young," you probably think of some tragedy where some 40 or 50-year-old dies of lung cancer and leaves a family behind with some young kids. While that happens, so do random heart attacks (particularly for young males), even if they aren't smokers.
That's not the typical situation. On average, assuming you survive childhood in a developed country, you're now looking at a life expectancy of over 80 years. So, when we say that smokers lose a decade of lifespan, on average we're talking about people dying on average at 70-75 years old, rather than 80-85 or something.
How many people are still economically active and still contributing a net positive to society when they're over 70? Not many. They're often receiving Social Security, Medicare, pension or retirement benefits, etc. For the average non-smoker, we're not getting an extra 10 years of economic activity -- we're giving them an extra 10 years of retirement.
So, no, non-smokers will NOT repay society on average for living longer.
Otherwise one should consider the best option for society is banning new life altogether.
No -- that's the wrong conclusion. If you want to be heartless, the "best option" would be killing old people immediately after they retire and cease to be a net contributor to the economy. The "cheapest" person is the active productive smoker who works until he's 65 and drops dead immediately. The "most expensive" person is the non-smoker who lives to be 95 and goes through a litany of knee replacements, convalescence due to hip fracture, treatment of various minor cancers, then spends the last 10 years unable to care for himself due to dementia.
I'm NOT encouraging people to smoke. I'm NOT saying that we shouldn't value older people and encourage them to live long healthy lives.
What I am saying is that if we want to discourage people from smoking and ask them to pay more taxes, etc., we should be HONEST about the motivations and say -- "we're punishing you economically because we disapprove of the behavior, we think it's harmful to self and others, and we'd like you to live a long life." We should NOT try to justify such arguments by saying "Well, you cost more, so you have to pay in your fair share," because that's just not true.
You may want to take that study that says smokers save society money with a MASSIVE grain of salt
I do. Which is the reason I provided the subsequent post which references a couple more studies. And I've seen at least three or four more studies on this topic which came to similar conclusions (and most of these done by people who have no relation to the tobacco industry).
If you've seen an economic analysis of smoking effects that comes to a different conclusion about overall lifetime healthcare and societal costs for smoking (not per year), please cite it for comparison.
What's missing from your analysis is that the people who live longer also contribute more to society.
It's not my analysis. I'm just noting what actual research on the topic has found, taking all economic impacts into consideration.
Not just in taxes
Nope. Most of the extended lifespan is for retired people, who are a net drain on society (economically). Yes, you might have an argument if smokers were all dying at age 35 or something. But they're not. They lifespan extension that non-smokers get is mostly an extra decade or two when they're retired, and generally taking a lot more FROM society than they are paying in in taxes.
but in general - grandparents help raise children, they are a sort of institutional memory, etc.
Agreed. Absolutely. I'm NOT saying people should be trying to kill themselves or shorten their lives. I'm NOT arguing in favor smoking or obesity.
I was merely responding to the previous poster's argument that there's an economic reason to charge smokers more. There may be all sorts of societal reasons why we think it's better for people to live longer. But saving money overall generally isn't one of them.
Also, I know when I bring this up, it's bound to be controversial. But the research is easily found. Here's a reasonable summary (for a popular media story). Some interesting passages:
[S]mokers die some 10 years earlier than nonsmokers, according to the CDC, and those premature deaths provide a savings to Medicare, Social Security, private pensions and other programs.
Vanderbilt University economist Kip Viscusi studied the net costs of smoking-related spending and savings and found that for every pack of cigarettes smoked, the country reaps a net cost savings of 32 cents.
[SNIP]
Other researchers have reached similar conclusions.
A Dutch study published last year in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal said that health care costs for smokers were about $326,000 from age 20 on, compared to about $417,000 for thin and healthy people.
The reason: The thin, healthy people lived much longer.
Willard Manning, a professor of health economics and policy at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy Studies, was lead author on a paper published two decades ago in the Journal of the American Medical Association that found that, taking into account tobacco taxes in effect at the time, smokers were not a financial burden to society.
"We were actually quite surprised by the finding because we were pretty sure that smokers were getting cross-subsidized by everybody else," said Manning, who suspects the findings would be similar today. "But it was only when we put all the pieces together that we found it was pretty much a wash."
So, what's the REAL reason governments do this?
The goal of the U.S. health care system is "prolonging disability-free life," states the 2004 Surgeon General's report on the health consequences of smoking. "Thus any negative economic impacts from gains in longevity with smoking reduction should not be emphasized in public health decisions."
In other words -- governments deliberately avoid talking about the issue, lest it seem to encourage people to smoke.
By the way, there are similar studies about obesity -- in the end, it's not about savings.
Sure, it "works," if you want to arbitrarily punish smokers. (For the record, I'm NOT a smoker, not that it should matter.)
For tobacco, which is clearly proven to cause a range of costly health problems, we levy a tax that the government uses to cover the extra public healthcare costs that come from smoking.
So, do you also levy a higher tax on NON-smokers, since many studies on the issue have shown that any additional cost due to smoking is outweighed by the additional costs of living longer and needing extended medical care for decades into old age. (Lung cancer may be expensive, but it often kills before all those long degenerative diseases set in.)
Seriously, look it up. One study in the U.S. concluded that smokers save society 32 cents for every cigarette they smoke. (And that's only accounting for health care and such -- it doesn't include additional taxes like the one you're talking about that arbitrarily punish smokers.)
All Canadians get the same public funded healthcare. The ones who are doing something that clearly puts a larger burden on the system pay for it.
If you're charging an annual health premium (like American private insurance), you should be charging smokers more. BUT, if you're taxing people for life-long health care cost, you should be SUBSIDIZING smoking... because they're saving you all those long-term costs of various old-age diseases... well, that is if you really want everyone to pay according to their own "burden" on the system.
I was replying to a comment that strongly implied that the four editors were violating Wikipedia's own policies, and "it took a lawsuit" to expose them.
Just to be clear, I wasn't at all arguing with you or implying that anything libelous has taken place on Wikipedia. I don't know anything about the case; I was merely clarifying what the law is. I explicitly said that I don't know whether or how the law would apply to this case, merely that just because information had been previously published does NOT always mean it's okay legally to republish it.
On the contrary, everything the tried to put in the article seems to meet Wiki guidelines.
If anything, what I'm pointing out is that Wiki guidelines wouldn't necessarily protect editors if they didn't do due diligence in vetting their sources. A media source's internal guidelines can't override the law. If a newspaper doesn't vet sources properly, and publishes libelous materials, it does not matter if they followed some internal newspaper source guidelines correctly.
I have no idea about this particular case, but I have certainly seen situations on Wikipedia where editors have resorted to bad tactics like citing misleading sources, or citing bad sources (which still meet Wikipedia guidelines) when other better ones are available with better information, or only citing the few sources that agree with them while omitting the majority that disagree, etc.
And rather than malicious intent, they seem to have been "fighting the good fight" against attempts by sockpuppets to whitewash the article on behalf of Yank Barry.
I explicitly said that despite the name, the legal standard DOES NOT require malicious intent. Rather, "actual malice" does not require proof of intent. It only requires that the someone published something they knew was false, or showed "reckless disregard" for whether the information was true or false.
All I'm saying is that I have definitely seen instances on Wikipedia where editors have certainly shown what I would call "reckless disregard" when seeking out any source that would support their viewpoint, regardless of whether the information they find is true or false or whether the source is actually reliable (not "reliable" according to Wiki standards, but *actually* reliable).
I don't know whether any of this might or might not have happened in this case. I don't care enough to investigate it. But we should be clear about what the legal standards are.
How is what they do any different than renting a DVR and antenna and installing them in your own home?
Because you're not renting them and installing them in your own home?
Aereo offered an individual antenna for each customer, as well as data that was kept separate for each customer.
Not quite. Aereo has admitted that many of its antennas are dynamically assigned, so it was more like you "rented" the antenna for very specific windows of time, then "unrented" it again, then "rented" it again whenever a particular program came on.
The only thing different about it than standard equipment rentals was that they kept the devices at their location, rather than at yours, so the cable connecting you to your rented devices was a bit longer.
Actually, there are quite a few things that are different here. It's not only that the "rented" equipment never leaves the possession of the company "renting" it. Also, the equipment is never directly under the customer's control or direct management (the equipment is only accessed by the customer by using the service of the company). Also, the equipment "magically" is "unrented" and "rerented" at the company's convenience.
We already accept that equipment rentals are perfectly legal. Making the cable longer shouldn't magically make them illegal.
But that's NOT what's happening here. We haven't just made the "cable longer." Instead, the "rental" never actually looks anything like a normal "rental." The customer never takes possession of the device, the customer never has any direct contact with the device except through the company that provides the device and is always in possession of it, and the company dynamically "revokes the rental" at will when it accords with their business model.
That's not "renting" according to any number of standard definitions.
Normally, when a business does something like this, it's called "providing a service." How exactly they allocate the equipment to provide that service is irrelevant. For example, if you pay for a service to get computational time on some server somewhere, it's sort of like "renting" it, but it isn't actually "renting" in any tangible sense. Whether a company has one supercompter somewhere where it does all the computation or lots of individual computers with lesser processors dynamically allocated to individual customers shouldn't necessarily change the way it is regulated. If a company has a giant antenna and rebroadcasts television shows to others, it is a cable company -- by definition, since that's how the earliest cable companies operated. Should that necessarily change just because the company chooses a less efficient strategy for creating equipment?
Imagine if this sort of legal argument actually made significant headway -- any business could become exempt from regulation if it provided sufficiently "personalized" equipment or maybe even "personalized" service.
"Sorry, federal government, I know we're supposedly a 'bank,' but we're not really a bank. See, we're just a courier service. It's perfectly legal for someone to store his money in a safe on his property. And it's perfectly legal to rent a space on another property to put a safe, and to pay someone to transport the money to and from that safe. And it's also perfectly legal for an individual person to make a personal loan to another person. And it's perfectly legal to pay someone to transport goods between two people. SO, what we really are is a courier service -- and we can prove it because we actually require individual persons (whom we call 'tellers') to transport money between locations... heck, we even 'dynamically assign' an 'individual' teller to each customer -- ONE AT A TIME! How could you possibly think we are a 'bank'? No way should we be subject to government regulation!"
That isn't a legal loophole or trying to rely on a literal in
To draw from the analogy someone posted below, that'd be like you buying your own antenna and asking to place it on your neighbor's property because he sits on top of the hill blocking your house. Dynamically assigning a micro-antenna to a subscriber on-demand just blurs the line. (The fact that all this is technically stupid when you could just use a single antenna is simply a consequence of Copyright law creating artificial scarcity and giving content producers a monopoly on distribution.)
What's often forgotten about all of this is that Aereo's model is extremely similar to how cable television companies themselves got started. From what is arguably the first cable company:
The [Service Electric] company was started in 1948 in Mahanoy City by John Walson, who owned a General Electric appliance store. At the time, the surrounding mountains in Schuylkill County made over-the-air reception from Philadelphia television stations difficult. Walson, who was interested in selling television sets through his store, solved the problem by building an antenna on top of the mountain overlooking the town. He initially ran a cable to his warehouse and then to his appliance store, using boosters to enhance the signal. Along the way, he hooked up neighbors to the antenna system. Although there are others who have laid claim to the honor, Walson is often recognized for having built the first cable TV system in the United States.
So, actually I imagine part of the reason you couldn't use a single antenna is because arguably that was the origin of the entire business of cable companies to begin with. Aereo was just replicating the original cable business model, except with a subtle tweak to "personalize" the antennas just a bit. Thus, it doesn't surprise me at all that they lost.
It's not just the Supremes, all courts were originally supposed to take such a broad view, and sometimes do. But more typically, they will make what they see as a legally conservative ruling even when they can clearly see it is wrong, and rationalize that it is the higher courts job to reverse them.
Sort of. The U.S. legal system is a bit of a hybrid system, with roots both in the English "common law" tradition but also having some fundamental aspects of "civil law" under Constitutional constraints.
In the common law tradition, courts effectively got to make up the law whenever there was no clear precedent on point, judging cases on the basis of broad principles of fairness. In civil law traditions, on the other hand, the legislative law plays a stronger role, and if there's no law on the topic, courts have fewer remedies at their disposal.
In the U.S., the idea of court precedent (stare decisis) governs similar sets of cases (as in common law traditions), but judges do have discretion to make a broader ruling when there's no precedent on point. But they can't just take a "broad view" on principle and directly contradict what superior courts have ruled in the past, even if it's a "fair" solution. The only time they can do this is when there's some aspect of codified law (e.g., a Constitutional principle) at stake, which appears to override any relevant precedent.
Inferior courts that randomly disregard precedent will simply have their rulings overturned, which isn't a good use of anyone's time. Both the Constitution (and laws that flow from it) and binding precedent from superior courts are effectively "settled law," and lower courts are expected to abide by it... that really hasn't changed much since the early days of the U.S. When you say that a ruling is clearly "wrong," from a legal standpoint that requires there to be some legal dispute which is not "settled law" (or, occasionally, something that used to be "settled" but recent trends have led to more challenges).
I don't agree with the Wickard vs Filburn ruling, I'm just stating what it effectively means. That's why I used the term fungible when talking about a flight.
Has your interpretation actually been tested or invoked in court?
The reason I ask is because -- while it sounds interesting -- I'm not sure you could get away with it unless you were also talking about a private airline or something that only operates within state borders.
A ticket for a particular passage on a commercial flight may not be fungible, but buying a ticket from a commercial airline most certainly participates in interstate commerce directly, assuming the airline operates across state borders (which almost all, or maybe all airlines do?). If your refusal to buy grain from your neighbor constitutes enough influence to affect interstate commerce, then surely your choice to buy an airline ticket that encourages national airlines to choose routes through your state and local airport (i.e., creating local demand for service from a national company) is participating in interstate commerce.
Even if the airline were solely located in a single state, you couldn't get away with it, since federal regulations have already found ways to target companies which don't go beyond state borders.
Anyhow, again, if you've actually heard someone successfully make this sort of argument in court, I'd be very interested, because it doesn't seem like it could actually work.
Yes, that is the way it's supposed to work. If one car repair shop charges you $200/h and another $100/h, and you know they both get the job done, which one are you going to take your car to?
It depends -- what do you mean by "get the job done"? If the cheaper shop will do the minimum possible and do it so fast that they will make errors, maybe the savings will end up costing me in the long run. Or, if the more expensive shop takes additional time to look over other aspects of the car and notices something the other didn't, maybe that could save me money in the long run.
Most people want the lowest price for a competent job, not just the lowest price. If I have to pay a premium to ensure the job is done well, I might. ($200/hour sounds a little extreme, but some premium might be worth it.)
Are you willing to pay extra if the $200/h shop's mechanic has a Ph.D. in English literature?
Is he a better mechanic? Is he more likely to take care of my car so that it will save me maintenance costs down the line? If so, maybe. I don't care what his credentials are, though, as long as he's a good mechanic.
I don't see what you think is wrong with businesses choosing cheap labor and paying only for qualifications they actually need: you do the same thing in your daily life.
Most people learn at some point in their lives that cheapness often comes with significant costs. I know we live in a "disposable" society, but I generally prefer equipment that is durable and will last me a long time to something where I have to go buy a replacement every few years. That means it costs more.
Same thing with service. I've learned from experience that hiring maintenance people, for example, solely on the basis of price is usually a bad move. Sometimes you get a "good deal," but sometimes they ruin your stuff, or they do such a bad job that you end up redoing half of it yourself.
Of course, one can also pay more and still end up with incompetence. Paying more is not necessarily a guarantee for good work, but paying the least possible is likely to get you subpar work a significant part of the time.
So, you're right -- an employer pays as much as he thinks he needs to "get the job done" to his standards. If he wants to raise the standards, it might be worth raising the wage and the qualifications necessary for the job.
My pay is about 15% below market average, but this was the tradeoff I was willing to make in order to have a less stressful work life (and my lifestyle is such that I could afford the cut).
Bravo to you, sir. Seriously. Not many people are willing to stand up for themselves in this way, and that is precisely why the current overworked situation continues to exist.
Numerous studies have shown that people who are "on the job" for ridiculous hours every week without ever taking a vacation do not perform as efficiently as those who are well-rested. But management at most companies is stupid -- and, well, mostly consists of the particular type of stupid person who thinks that long hours is always the cure for any problem and the way to get ahead.
Also, more specifically to your point, most people have no actual sense of how their needs/wants are "calibrated" to their income. People who live on $100k salaries simply can't imagine living on $50k, and people who live on $50k can't imagine living on $30k, etc. But there are all sorts of ways to reduce consumption if you want to. These are the same type of people (i.e., most people) who have to be forced to sock away X% of their income for retirement by having it directly removed from their pay, otherwise they'd likely just spend their bank account until the balance is $0 that month.
Unless you're near the bottom of the middle-class or lower, chances are that lots of people manage to live perfectly happy and respectable lives earning much less money than you do. (And people who work fewer hours are generally happier as well.) It's just that people look at their income, and they figure out what they can afford with that income, and then they basically tailor their purchases to use up most of that income... whatever it is. It isn't that they COULDN'T live on signficantly less (and perhaps be just as happy), it's that they don't need to figure out how, so they don't.
So it comes down to: what makes you most happy? Having free time and time off from work, or competing in the "rat race" just to earn an extra few thousand to buy whatever random crap you won't have time to enjoy because you're always at work?
I like my job, and I don't mind putting in some extra hours when I need to. But if you're not eager to do so, it's often not a good trade.
There's nothing in the Wikipedia article that hasn't been printed in the press about Barry.
That isn't the standard for determining libel. In the U.S., the standard (for public figures, presumably would apply to Wikipedia entries) is that the information is published with actual malice, which, contrary to the term's name, does not legally require malicious intent. Instead, it only requires that those who published the information knew the information was false OR published it "with reckless disregard" for whether the information was true or false.
In other words, if a media story appeared in the past that accidentally included false or misleading information (which was later corrected or clarified), but Wikipedia's editors insisted on RE-publishing the false information without regard to whether it was true or false (and did so in a reckless or deliberate fashion), they could be guilty of libel... even if the information had previously appeared in another source.
Further, even if the information is TRUE, it is also possible for a suit to be brought under a false light tort, particularly if true information is taken out of context to make it deliberately misleading. (Also, the implications must be "highly offensive" to a reasonable person.) Many courts look less kindly on false light suits than in the past, but it still can be relevant in some cases.
I don't know whether either of these is likely in this particular case, but just because someone else has said something about someone in the past doesn't mean you can always publish it without any consequences in the future.
Such equipment records surely don't exist back to 1880.... So, my argument stands.
Just because you think something couldn't possibly be true doesn't mean it isn't.
Thermometer manufacture was precise enough to produce very high quality instruments by the late 1800s. The issue, as GP points out, isn't random errors popping up (thermometers were about as accurate as rulers could be in the late 1800s), but rather whether we know how the instruments were calibrated and how older scales might match up to instruments that were calibrated against modern international standards.
And, at least in the U.S., standard regular calibration standards had been agreed upon by the first couple decades of the 1900s. Good instruments even decades before then should have very little random error -- the question is only whether anyone bothered to check new equipment calibrated to international standards against the old equipment (or sent the old equipment to be tested once such standards were developed).
So, then you have to ask yourself: people who are bothering to meticulously record scientific data continuously for decades on end -- and they're not going to even bother to check whether their old instruments line up properly with new calibration standards?
Sure, I'm positive there are plenty of places that don't have such records. But we have continuous logbooks going back for centuries in many places. The idea that people taking meticulous records wouldn't even bother to check new equipment against old just seems a little ridiculous... not saying it wouldn't happen, but we have plenty of data points where it did happen to extrapolate estimates for error distributions.
You're acting like temperature measurement in the late 1800s was people guessing random numbers or drawing them out of a hat. But that's not what it was like, and there were lots of places with VERY detailed records.
What you are suggesting is that the US could pass a law that says "All non-citizens must be Christian" or that it would be OK to search, arrest, and detain anyone who is not a US citizen for no other reason than "S/He is not Christian"
I think that's a pretty extreme reading of GP's position.
I mostly agree with you, but you have to admit that there are quite a few instances where the U.S. government grants rights to citizens that are not granted to non-citizens in random places around the world (e.g., right to vote, right to collect various government benefits, etc.).
The main RELEVANT situation to the present discussion is prisoners of war. There are centuries of legal precedent saying that foreign people captured as prisoners of war do NOT have standard legal rights under the U.S. justice system. (Imagine if, in the midst of WWII, we had to ship back every German and Japanese soldier we captured, arraign them, and put them on trial -- not only would it be practically impossible, but it would violate various "rules of war.") They DO have certain rights under the Geneva convention accords that the U.S. government signed onto.
Now -- the LEGAL question in the case of "enemy combantants" or Guantanamo or whatever is: Are the persons in question legally equivalent to "prisoners or war" or are they not? If they are "prisoners of war," there's clear precedent saying the U.S. government does NOT have to grant them various rights. Or are they something else (as it seems our government claims), a new legal category?
Personally, I agree with you -- the U.S. government shouldn't be able to detain random people from around the world indefinitely, unless there's something like an official declared war or something, and even then, there needs to be adherence to the Geneva protocols, etc.
But your idea that everyone -- citizen or not -- has the same rights under the U.S. Constitution is simply wrong.
Great post. I think there may be cases where 6 hours is pushing it, but you're absolutely right that 24 hours should be a limit. If people are getting arrested where it takes more than 24 hours to gather enough evidence to charge them, then the police should be doing more research and collecting more evidence BEFORE the arrest.
'Tis better that 20 guilty persons are freed by a computer error (or computer operator error) than that one innocent person is kept in jail indefinitely by a computer error.
I also sat down when considering colleges and looked at my choices. Due to income levels, Ivy Leagues were out for me, as was any private school. That left state schools.
I don't know when you went to school, but this is actually not true nowadays for very talented students. Most of the Ivy League schools have exceptional financial aid available for poor or even middle-class, sometimes making them even cheaper than state schools. For example, Harvard has a policy that students with family incomes below $65,000 pay NOTHING for tuition, and those with family incomes up to $150,000 are not expected to contribute more than 10% of that income. Other top schools may not be quite as generous, but they will often offer significant aid to those who really can't afford to go there.
It's really the "mid-level" private schools and smaller private colleges that charge the ridiculous tuitions to just about all students. I agree that most people can't really afford them (and end up with ridiculous loans if they try).
So -- if you're a talented student and have a chance at an Ivy or other top-tier school, I'd seriously suggest you check into their aid policies before deciding it's "unaffordable."
Slashdot Mirror
Way to pick a tangential item to shoot down.
It's not a tangential item. You were using it as an example of where government intervention supposedly helped, because the calorie counts told you McDonald's was supposedly so bad.
Except you missed the freakin' point -- it's NOT McDonald's. Go to ANY big chain restaurant, and order a big burger with bacon and cheese and a giant french fry order with a huge soda, and guess what? It's going to be about as many calories as you'd get at McDonald's. If you don't know enough to realize about how many calories are in a meal like that -- in general, not at McDonald's -- then you obviously haven't a clue about nutrition.
The government may have helped you understand that you were overeating, I suppose. But it has nothing to do with McDonald's. What they really needed to do is educate you on the calorie count in the type of meals you were eating, which apparently you didn't realize... and apparently still don't, since you blame McDonald's and also grossly exaggerate the numbers.
Yes, you win - you can put together a meal that's only half a day's calories.
NO -- that's again not the point. You claimed that just about everything on the menu was 2000 calories or more. Even if I interpret that to mean a "whole meal," that's still not anywhere near true.
The standard meals McDonald's offers are the value meals. By default, they come with medium fries and drink, which are roughly 500 calories. If you look through the sandwiches and such that tend to come with the value meals, they range from about 350-650 calories on average (with a few outliers). That adds up to roughly 1000 calories.
In other words, if you walk into McDonald's, and you order the most standard meals they offer, you'll "put together a meal that's only half a day's calories."
It's only if you deliberately make choices to find the most caloric sandwiches, ask for a larger size fries and drink, AND add on at least two other items (like desserts or something) that you'll reach a full day's calories.
I don't see how the moral you take away from this is that "you can put together a meal that's only half a day's calories" -- that's simply not true. THAT'S THE DEFAULT MEAL MCDONALD'S OFFERS. (And, if you actually think a bit and try to order some healthy choices, you're more than likely to get well below that amount of calories... even without the PDF.)
If you eat like a ravenous hog everytime you go to McDonald's and get the biggest craziest meal they'll sell you, and then on an extra sandwich and dessert MAYBE you'll get close to a full day's calories. But that would be true IN JUST ABOUT ANY RESTAURANT.
I think you've just proved my point.
Let me restate my two actual points, since you clearly missed them. (1) It's not about McDonald's. ANY restaurant with a menu of burgers, fries, and sodas is going to have similar calorie counts. (And it would be better to realize THAT rather than thinking the McDonald's is particularly evil or something.) (2) If you actual eat a "normal" meal at McDonald's, you'll likely be eating a normal amount of food for an average dinner for an average-sized person. It's only if you deliberately enlarge your meal to about twice the size of a "normal" McDonald's meal that you'll get to your supposed threshold of enough calories for an entire day.
You're assuming the only way to contribute to society is to work. That couldn't be any more wrong.
Never said that. This thread started as a conversation about taxation policy and economic balances. Of course people contribute to society in all sorts of intangible ways. But the most significant ECONOMIC "added value" an individual usually gives to society is while they are working -- that actually generates "new value," rather than living off of previously saved value.
The thought people who don't work don't contribute to the economy is a fundamental lack of understanding of how the economy actually works. Even if you ignore taxes on goods and services you can't have GDP without someone to consume the product. And THAT is how the economy works.
Please don't try to lecture me unless you bother to think about what you're saying.
Look -- your new argument is fundamentally flawed. If an elderly retired person dies, the wealth doesn't just disappear in a puff of smoke! It gets inherited or donated to a charity or fed to the government in the form of taxes or whatever. When someone is working, they are actually generating value and productivity for the economy. But once they retire, it doesn't matter who spends the wealth they've already accumulated. That money now exists, because that person worked. If they die early, it will be passed along and spent by someone else.
I'm not AT ALL saying that old people don't contribute greatly to our society in all sorts of culturally beneficial ways. And I'm all in favor of encouraging them to stay alive for all of those reasons. But in general they tend not to add significant economic value after retiring and in fact are generally in the process of lessening it. Sure they may be spending more at that point (though the percentage of old people who live below the poverty line and aren't spending very much at all may surprise you) -- but you'd have to prove that their spending would not occur if they died. And you haven't -- the money would flow to someone else, who likely would still spend significant portions of it.
I'd say that's a typical McDonald's order.
Nope, it's not. You deliberately chose some of the highest calorie items on the menu and added on a dessert. As I said in my post, if you do this, you can get close to 2000 calories. But that isn't the standard the GP set:
almost everything on their menu was a *full day's* allotment of calories
I usually try not to be a jerk, but maybe you need some reading comprehension. Just because you can make up a standard possible meal that gets close to (but still, I would note, about 12% under) does NOT imply that "ALMOST EVERYTHING" on the menu is 2000 calories.
Also, note GP was talking at poor people at this point in his post. Newsflash: poor people don't order "value meals," because they're too expensive. Instead, they order a few things from the dollar menu, and you'd have to add quite a few of those together to get to 2000 calories... much more than 4 items.
Furthermore, if you go ANYWHERE and order a large burger piled high with bacon, cheese, and a special sauce, pair it with a giant amount of fries, a big soda, and a dessert, you're probably going to be eating 1700 calories (at a normal sit-down restaurant at dinner time, potentially quite a bit more). McDonald's isn't special in this regard.
On the other hand, if you choose a more reasonable sandwich, and only a normal or small size fries or drink to go with (and no dessert), you'll likely come in around 1000 calories or even quite a bit less... just as I said. That's a "typical" average calorie count if you're at all giving a crap about what you eat. And if you actually look for something that seems vaguely "healthy" on the menu, you'll probably end up with significantly fewer calories.
The point is that any idiot should realize that ordering a burger piled high with bad stuff, along with a giant plate of french fries, a big soda, and a dessert is going to be an insane number of calories, wherever you're eating it. I don't need calorie counts to tell me that. But you only get anywhere close to 2000 calories by deliberately seeking out the highest calorie menu items, not by just picking out almost anything on the menu, as GP claimed.
I fucking love McDonalds, but I stopped eating there. I'm a supposedly educated, well-off person with a relatively higher amount of "freedom" than some citizens. And I didn't know that almost everything on their menu was a *full day's* allotment of calories, until the Gubmint made them advertise it.
[Citation needed]
Here's a link to the McDonald's nutrition facts for their menus.
A standard "fulls day's allotment of calories" for an adult is 2000 calories, as assumed, for example, on most nutritional labels. (Many nutritional labels that contain multiple columns will give numbers for 2000 and 2500 calorie/day diets.)
Can you find any item on the menu that approaches those numbers? I can't. The highest calorie single-item is a "big breakfast" meal, which comes to a little over 1000 calories. Most of the premium sandwiches are in the 500-600 calorie range. Add on a standard size fries and drink, and you'll get to around 1000 calories.
Yes, that's a lot for a single meal, but for a 2000 or 2500 calorie diet, that's what a lot of people eat for dinner.
If you pick the worst sandwiches on the menu (double quarter pounder or one of the bacon/chicken sandwiches), you can get up to 750 calories just for the sandwich. Super-size (or, well, they got rid of it, but just ask for "large") fries and get some sugary soda, and you might get to 1500 calories. Even if you add on a dessert, you'll have to choose carefully to get the highest calorie counts to get anywhere near 2000 calories for a single "normal" meal. If you choose a "normal" value meal, with normal size stuff, you'd usually have to eat at least 2 of them to get to a "full day's allotment of calories."
And if you are more reasonable and choose smaller cheaper items, like a cheeseburger, small fries, etc., for your meal, then you're looking at significantly lower calories.
Meanwhile, take a look at calories even for SALADS at most sit-down restaurants. If you love that blackened chicken salad with blue cheese dressing and bacon bits, chances are you might be consuming more than your typical McDonald's Big Mac meal.
I'm NOT saying McDonald's is a healthy place to eat. But, like anywhere, you need to make reasonable choices. If you order the largest and fattiest items on the menu just about anywhere, you'll be eating a lot of calories. But most items on McDonald's menu won't get you anywhere near a "full day's allotment of calories" -- if you're "supposedly educated and well-off," maybe you might learn to read nutritional facts better.
Smokers tend to be less productive during their working life, so contribute less in the first place. Smoking breaks and coughing fits, plus time off sick etc.
Yep, and some of the cited studies take that into account. It's mostly the studies that are done by strong anti-smoking folks that magically seem to find more "lost productivity." For example, this study, which is fairly typical, estimates about $3500/year lost due to smoking breaks and "withdrawal" symptoms that happen when a smoker is struggling to wait for the next break.
Let's set aside various big issues with this, like whether all or even most smokers are the kind who need a continuous "fix" to survive the day. (Many people I've known who smoked were not "pack-a-day" types -- they would have occasional cigarettes a few times per day to relax.) The larger question is whether we can actually assume that non-smokers are productive continuously throughout the day and don't take their own "breaks" around the water cooler or coffee maker or just spacing out for a few minutes at the desk. Many studies on productivity would suggest that we should NOT assume a worker is continuously productive throughout an 8-hour workday... that's one of the reasons for mandated breaks, but most people end up having their own "downtime" anyway. Are smokers really costing more for breaks, or are they just more visible about how and when they take them? Also, if we're going to factor in lost time for unfocused smokers needing a fix, we need to factor in gained productivity for occasional smokers who might only take a smoking break once in a while to relieve stress and for whom it might actually make them feel better (and thus MORE productive).
Same deal with sick days. $500 for extra sick days for smokers, but studies also show that people who take more time off often gain productivity from additional rest and time away from work. What's the balance here? Again, smokers probably cost more, but we shouldn't always assume that a sick day equals lost productivity -- to the contrary, productivity studies show that most workers would be MORE productive if they more frequently took sick days or personal days when needed.
Bottom line -- I'm sure many smokers DO cost more in lost productivity, but estimating the actual effect is quite difficult, and studies that have tried to come to mixed conclusions. Regardless, you'd need a lot of lost productivity to offset the extra cost of non-smokers in additional healthcare expenses, retirement expenses, and end-of-life care for people with chronic degenerative diseases. Even if the worst-case studies are accurate and smokers cost an extra $5000/year or something to employers, over a 40-year career, that comes to $200,000. Estimates are that smokers save about $100,000 in health-care costs alone. Add in savings in retirement and pension payouts, as well as kids paying for long-term care facilities for old people, etc., and you're very likely going to surpass any productivity losses in care for old people.
Smokers tend to damage other people's health as well, so any study that only looks at their own life expectancy is flawed.
Do you think these study authors are idiots? Of course they factor this in. The dangers of second-hand smoke have been known for decades, so most studies include societal costs due to illnesses caused to others. In the U.S., though, smoking in public places has been greatly restricted in the past decade or so, so those costs will be significantly reduced compared to what they were in the past (where, even with second-hand smoke illnesses, cost due to smokers was a wash).
Again, I'm focusing on cost here. Obviously there are social and moral reasons not to let people harm others, so I'm all for smoking bans in a lot of public venues. But that's a different question from whether smoking ac
Those analyses are a bit narrow. Smokers are much more likely to die while still economically active.
Nope, not true -- on average. It's true that more smokers will die than non-smokers when economically active. But MOST of the gains in lifespan for non-smokers are in retirement. On average, non-smokers may live to 80-85, while on average, smokers may die at 70-75. Yes, there are tragedies where some young person dies of lung cancer at 40 or 45, but there are plenty of non-smokers who have heart attacks then too.
The issue is the average. And for MOST smokers, what they are losing is an additional 10 years of retirement or so, i.e., NOT when they are "economically active."
So the net benefit is rather more complicated to calculate.
Agreed. That's why different studies will come up with different numbers. I've tried finding a lot of these studies (which I was skeptical of at first), and MOST of them conclude that smokers save society money overall or at least come to about the same cost as non-smokers. The ONLY ones I've seen which take into account life-long costs and claim smokers cost more generally include some nebulous factors like "lost wages and loss of life enjoyment due to death." Not taxes lost, mind you, but wages, and personal loss of enjoying life. Maybe these things mean something to family members of the deceased, but they aren't necessarily relevant to the overall economic burden of smokers on society. After all, if they live until age 95 instead, the kids could end up shelling out a lot more money in elderly care than they lost because dad dropped dead at 55 while they in high school.
In any event, the answer to the problem is obviously not, "encourage more people to take up smoking"
Absolutely. I'm NOT encouraging anyone to smoke. I think there are plenty of reasons to want to help people live long and happy lives. But that's not the question which started this thread, which is about whether it's "fair" to tax smokers more because they (supposedly) cost society more.
You fail to account for the calculable (also monetary) benefit stemming from that activity!
Me? What do I have to do with it? I was citing studies. Some studies try to take these various benefits into account. Some do not. Judge them on the basis of their details, not what you imagine they "fail" to do.
I'm not sure about you but for me
It's not about you, nor about me. It's about statistical averages of economic outcomes in society at large.
the difference would be made up in about 2 years of additional taxes that I get to pay on account of actually being alive not to mention the benefit to the economy of my general activities. Those monies would generally contribute to healthcare effectively repaying the cost of smoking.
Not on average. When you think of "smokers dying young," you probably think of some tragedy where some 40 or 50-year-old dies of lung cancer and leaves a family behind with some young kids. While that happens, so do random heart attacks (particularly for young males), even if they aren't smokers.
That's not the typical situation. On average, assuming you survive childhood in a developed country, you're now looking at a life expectancy of over 80 years. So, when we say that smokers lose a decade of lifespan, on average we're talking about people dying on average at 70-75 years old, rather than 80-85 or something.
How many people are still economically active and still contributing a net positive to society when they're over 70? Not many. They're often receiving Social Security, Medicare, pension or retirement benefits, etc. For the average non-smoker, we're not getting an extra 10 years of economic activity -- we're giving them an extra 10 years of retirement.
So, no, non-smokers will NOT repay society on average for living longer.
Otherwise one should consider the best option for society is banning new life altogether.
No -- that's the wrong conclusion. If you want to be heartless, the "best option" would be killing old people immediately after they retire and cease to be a net contributor to the economy. The "cheapest" person is the active productive smoker who works until he's 65 and drops dead immediately. The "most expensive" person is the non-smoker who lives to be 95 and goes through a litany of knee replacements, convalescence due to hip fracture, treatment of various minor cancers, then spends the last 10 years unable to care for himself due to dementia.
I'm NOT encouraging people to smoke. I'm NOT saying that we shouldn't value older people and encourage them to live long healthy lives.
What I am saying is that if we want to discourage people from smoking and ask them to pay more taxes, etc., we should be HONEST about the motivations and say -- "we're punishing you economically because we disapprove of the behavior, we think it's harmful to self and others, and we'd like you to live a long life." We should NOT try to justify such arguments by saying "Well, you cost more, so you have to pay in your fair share," because that's just not true.
You may want to take that study that says smokers save society money with a MASSIVE grain of salt
I do. Which is the reason I provided the subsequent post which references a couple more studies. And I've seen at least three or four more studies on this topic which came to similar conclusions (and most of these done by people who have no relation to the tobacco industry).
If you've seen an economic analysis of smoking effects that comes to a different conclusion about overall lifetime healthcare and societal costs for smoking (not per year), please cite it for comparison.
What's missing from your analysis is that the people who live longer also contribute more to society.
It's not my analysis. I'm just noting what actual research on the topic has found, taking all economic impacts into consideration.
Not just in taxes
Nope. Most of the extended lifespan is for retired people, who are a net drain on society (economically). Yes, you might have an argument if smokers were all dying at age 35 or something. But they're not. They lifespan extension that non-smokers get is mostly an extra decade or two when they're retired, and generally taking a lot more FROM society than they are paying in in taxes.
but in general - grandparents help raise children, they are a sort of institutional memory, etc.
Agreed. Absolutely. I'm NOT saying people should be trying to kill themselves or shorten their lives. I'm NOT arguing in favor smoking or obesity.
I was merely responding to the previous poster's argument that there's an economic reason to charge smokers more. There may be all sorts of societal reasons why we think it's better for people to live longer. But saving money overall generally isn't one of them.
Also, I know when I bring this up, it's bound to be controversial. But the research is easily found. Here's a reasonable summary (for a popular media story). Some interesting passages:
[S]mokers die some 10 years earlier than nonsmokers, according to the CDC, and those premature deaths provide a savings to Medicare, Social Security, private pensions and other programs.
Vanderbilt University economist Kip Viscusi studied the net costs of smoking-related spending and savings and found that for every pack of cigarettes smoked, the country reaps a net cost savings of 32 cents.
[SNIP]
Other researchers have reached similar conclusions.
A Dutch study published last year in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal said that health care costs for smokers were about $326,000 from age 20 on, compared to about $417,000 for thin and healthy people.
The reason: The thin, healthy people lived much longer.
Willard Manning, a professor of health economics and policy at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy Studies, was lead author on a paper published two decades ago in the Journal of the American Medical Association that found that, taking into account tobacco taxes in effect at the time, smokers were not a financial burden to society.
"We were actually quite surprised by the finding because we were pretty sure that smokers were getting cross-subsidized by everybody else," said Manning, who suspects the findings would be similar today. "But it was only when we put all the pieces together that we found it was pretty much a wash."
So, what's the REAL reason governments do this?
The goal of the U.S. health care system is "prolonging disability-free life," states the 2004 Surgeon General's report on the health consequences of smoking. "Thus any negative economic impacts from gains in longevity with smoking reduction should not be emphasized in public health decisions."
In other words -- governments deliberately avoid talking about the issue, lest it seem to encourage people to smoke.
By the way, there are similar studies about obesity -- in the end, it's not about savings.
Here in Canada we have a strategy that works.
Sure, it "works," if you want to arbitrarily punish smokers. (For the record, I'm NOT a smoker, not that it should matter.)
For tobacco, which is clearly proven to cause a range of costly health problems, we levy a tax that the government uses to cover the extra public healthcare costs that come from smoking.
So, do you also levy a higher tax on NON-smokers, since many studies on the issue have shown that any additional cost due to smoking is outweighed by the additional costs of living longer and needing extended medical care for decades into old age. (Lung cancer may be expensive, but it often kills before all those long degenerative diseases set in.)
Seriously, look it up. One study in the U.S. concluded that smokers save society 32 cents for every cigarette they smoke. (And that's only accounting for health care and such -- it doesn't include additional taxes like the one you're talking about that arbitrarily punish smokers.)
All Canadians get the same public funded healthcare. The ones who are doing something that clearly puts a larger burden on the system pay for it.
If you're charging an annual health premium (like American private insurance), you should be charging smokers more. BUT, if you're taxing people for life-long health care cost, you should be SUBSIDIZING smoking... because they're saving you all those long-term costs of various old-age diseases... well, that is if you really want everyone to pay according to their own "burden" on the system.
I was replying to a comment that strongly implied that the four editors were violating Wikipedia's own policies, and "it took a lawsuit" to expose them.
Just to be clear, I wasn't at all arguing with you or implying that anything libelous has taken place on Wikipedia. I don't know anything about the case; I was merely clarifying what the law is. I explicitly said that I don't know whether or how the law would apply to this case, merely that just because information had been previously published does NOT always mean it's okay legally to republish it.
On the contrary, everything the tried to put in the article seems to meet Wiki guidelines.
If anything, what I'm pointing out is that Wiki guidelines wouldn't necessarily protect editors if they didn't do due diligence in vetting their sources. A media source's internal guidelines can't override the law. If a newspaper doesn't vet sources properly, and publishes libelous materials, it does not matter if they followed some internal newspaper source guidelines correctly.
I have no idea about this particular case, but I have certainly seen situations on Wikipedia where editors have resorted to bad tactics like citing misleading sources, or citing bad sources (which still meet Wikipedia guidelines) when other better ones are available with better information, or only citing the few sources that agree with them while omitting the majority that disagree, etc.
And rather than malicious intent, they seem to have been "fighting the good fight" against attempts by sockpuppets to whitewash the article on behalf of Yank Barry.
I explicitly said that despite the name, the legal standard DOES NOT require malicious intent. Rather, "actual malice" does not require proof of intent. It only requires that the someone published something they knew was false, or showed "reckless disregard" for whether the information was true or false.
All I'm saying is that I have definitely seen instances on Wikipedia where editors have certainly shown what I would call "reckless disregard" when seeking out any source that would support their viewpoint, regardless of whether the information they find is true or false or whether the source is actually reliable (not "reliable" according to Wiki standards, but *actually* reliable).
I don't know whether any of this might or might not have happened in this case. I don't care enough to investigate it. But we should be clear about what the legal standards are.
How is what they do any different than renting a DVR and antenna and installing them in your own home?
Because you're not renting them and installing them in your own home?
Aereo offered an individual antenna for each customer, as well as data that was kept separate for each customer.
Not quite. Aereo has admitted that many of its antennas are dynamically assigned, so it was more like you "rented" the antenna for very specific windows of time, then "unrented" it again, then "rented" it again whenever a particular program came on.
The only thing different about it than standard equipment rentals was that they kept the devices at their location, rather than at yours, so the cable connecting you to your rented devices was a bit longer.
Actually, there are quite a few things that are different here. It's not only that the "rented" equipment never leaves the possession of the company "renting" it. Also, the equipment is never directly under the customer's control or direct management (the equipment is only accessed by the customer by using the service of the company). Also, the equipment "magically" is "unrented" and "rerented" at the company's convenience.
We already accept that equipment rentals are perfectly legal. Making the cable longer shouldn't magically make them illegal.
But that's NOT what's happening here. We haven't just made the "cable longer." Instead, the "rental" never actually looks anything like a normal "rental." The customer never takes possession of the device, the customer never has any direct contact with the device except through the company that provides the device and is always in possession of it, and the company dynamically "revokes the rental" at will when it accords with their business model.
That's not "renting" according to any number of standard definitions.
Normally, when a business does something like this, it's called "providing a service." How exactly they allocate the equipment to provide that service is irrelevant. For example, if you pay for a service to get computational time on some server somewhere, it's sort of like "renting" it, but it isn't actually "renting" in any tangible sense. Whether a company has one supercompter somewhere where it does all the computation or lots of individual computers with lesser processors dynamically allocated to individual customers shouldn't necessarily change the way it is regulated. If a company has a giant antenna and rebroadcasts television shows to others, it is a cable company -- by definition, since that's how the earliest cable companies operated. Should that necessarily change just because the company chooses a less efficient strategy for creating equipment?
Imagine if this sort of legal argument actually made significant headway -- any business could become exempt from regulation if it provided sufficiently "personalized" equipment or maybe even "personalized" service.
"Sorry, federal government, I know we're supposedly a 'bank,' but we're not really a bank. See, we're just a courier service. It's perfectly legal for someone to store his money in a safe on his property. And it's perfectly legal to rent a space on another property to put a safe, and to pay someone to transport the money to and from that safe. And it's also perfectly legal for an individual person to make a personal loan to another person. And it's perfectly legal to pay someone to transport goods between two people. SO, what we really are is a courier service -- and we can prove it because we actually require individual persons (whom we call 'tellers') to transport money between locations... heck, we even 'dynamically assign' an 'individual' teller to each customer -- ONE AT A TIME! How could you possibly think we are a 'bank'? No way should we be subject to government regulation!"
That isn't a legal loophole or trying to rely on a literal in
To draw from the analogy someone posted below, that'd be like you buying your own antenna and asking to place it on your neighbor's property because he sits on top of the hill blocking your house. Dynamically assigning a micro-antenna to a subscriber on-demand just blurs the line. (The fact that all this is technically stupid when you could just use a single antenna is simply a consequence of Copyright law creating artificial scarcity and giving content producers a monopoly on distribution.)
What's often forgotten about all of this is that Aereo's model is extremely similar to how cable television companies themselves got started. From what is arguably the first cable company:
The [Service Electric] company was started in 1948 in Mahanoy City by John Walson, who owned a General Electric appliance store. At the time, the surrounding mountains in Schuylkill County made over-the-air reception from Philadelphia television stations difficult. Walson, who was interested in selling television sets through his store, solved the problem by building an antenna on top of the mountain overlooking the town. He initially ran a cable to his warehouse and then to his appliance store, using boosters to enhance the signal. Along the way, he hooked up neighbors to the antenna system. Although there are others who have laid claim to the honor, Walson is often recognized for having built the first cable TV system in the United States.
So, actually I imagine part of the reason you couldn't use a single antenna is because arguably that was the origin of the entire business of cable companies to begin with. Aereo was just replicating the original cable business model, except with a subtle tweak to "personalize" the antennas just a bit. Thus, it doesn't surprise me at all that they lost.
It's not just the Supremes, all courts were originally supposed to take such a broad view, and sometimes do. But more typically, they will make what they see as a legally conservative ruling even when they can clearly see it is wrong, and rationalize that it is the higher courts job to reverse them.
Sort of. The U.S. legal system is a bit of a hybrid system, with roots both in the English "common law" tradition but also having some fundamental aspects of "civil law" under Constitutional constraints.
In the common law tradition, courts effectively got to make up the law whenever there was no clear precedent on point, judging cases on the basis of broad principles of fairness. In civil law traditions, on the other hand, the legislative law plays a stronger role, and if there's no law on the topic, courts have fewer remedies at their disposal.
In the U.S., the idea of court precedent (stare decisis) governs similar sets of cases (as in common law traditions), but judges do have discretion to make a broader ruling when there's no precedent on point. But they can't just take a "broad view" on principle and directly contradict what superior courts have ruled in the past, even if it's a "fair" solution. The only time they can do this is when there's some aspect of codified law (e.g., a Constitutional principle) at stake, which appears to override any relevant precedent.
Inferior courts that randomly disregard precedent will simply have their rulings overturned, which isn't a good use of anyone's time. Both the Constitution (and laws that flow from it) and binding precedent from superior courts are effectively "settled law," and lower courts are expected to abide by it... that really hasn't changed much since the early days of the U.S. When you say that a ruling is clearly "wrong," from a legal standpoint that requires there to be some legal dispute which is not "settled law" (or, occasionally, something that used to be "settled" but recent trends have led to more challenges).
I don't agree with the Wickard vs Filburn ruling, I'm just stating what it effectively means. That's why I used the term fungible when talking about a flight.
Has your interpretation actually been tested or invoked in court?
The reason I ask is because -- while it sounds interesting -- I'm not sure you could get away with it unless you were also talking about a private airline or something that only operates within state borders.
A ticket for a particular passage on a commercial flight may not be fungible, but buying a ticket from a commercial airline most certainly participates in interstate commerce directly, assuming the airline operates across state borders (which almost all, or maybe all airlines do?). If your refusal to buy grain from your neighbor constitutes enough influence to affect interstate commerce, then surely your choice to buy an airline ticket that encourages national airlines to choose routes through your state and local airport (i.e., creating local demand for service from a national company) is participating in interstate commerce.
Even if the airline were solely located in a single state, you couldn't get away with it, since federal regulations have already found ways to target companies which don't go beyond state borders.
Anyhow, again, if you've actually heard someone successfully make this sort of argument in court, I'd be very interested, because it doesn't seem like it could actually work.
Yes, that is the way it's supposed to work. If one car repair shop charges you $200/h and another $100/h, and you know they both get the job done, which one are you going to take your car to?
It depends -- what do you mean by "get the job done"? If the cheaper shop will do the minimum possible and do it so fast that they will make errors, maybe the savings will end up costing me in the long run. Or, if the more expensive shop takes additional time to look over other aspects of the car and notices something the other didn't, maybe that could save me money in the long run.
Most people want the lowest price for a competent job, not just the lowest price. If I have to pay a premium to ensure the job is done well, I might. ($200/hour sounds a little extreme, but some premium might be worth it.)
Are you willing to pay extra if the $200/h shop's mechanic has a Ph.D. in English literature?
Is he a better mechanic? Is he more likely to take care of my car so that it will save me maintenance costs down the line? If so, maybe. I don't care what his credentials are, though, as long as he's a good mechanic.
I don't see what you think is wrong with businesses choosing cheap labor and paying only for qualifications they actually need: you do the same thing in your daily life.
Most people learn at some point in their lives that cheapness often comes with significant costs. I know we live in a "disposable" society, but I generally prefer equipment that is durable and will last me a long time to something where I have to go buy a replacement every few years. That means it costs more.
Same thing with service. I've learned from experience that hiring maintenance people, for example, solely on the basis of price is usually a bad move. Sometimes you get a "good deal," but sometimes they ruin your stuff, or they do such a bad job that you end up redoing half of it yourself.
Of course, one can also pay more and still end up with incompetence. Paying more is not necessarily a guarantee for good work, but paying the least possible is likely to get you subpar work a significant part of the time.
So, you're right -- an employer pays as much as he thinks he needs to "get the job done" to his standards. If he wants to raise the standards, it might be worth raising the wage and the qualifications necessary for the job.
My pay is about 15% below market average, but this was the tradeoff I was willing to make in order to have a less stressful work life (and my lifestyle is such that I could afford the cut).
Bravo to you, sir. Seriously. Not many people are willing to stand up for themselves in this way, and that is precisely why the current overworked situation continues to exist.
Numerous studies have shown that people who are "on the job" for ridiculous hours every week without ever taking a vacation do not perform as efficiently as those who are well-rested. But management at most companies is stupid -- and, well, mostly consists of the particular type of stupid person who thinks that long hours is always the cure for any problem and the way to get ahead.
Also, more specifically to your point, most people have no actual sense of how their needs/wants are "calibrated" to their income. People who live on $100k salaries simply can't imagine living on $50k, and people who live on $50k can't imagine living on $30k, etc. But there are all sorts of ways to reduce consumption if you want to. These are the same type of people (i.e., most people) who have to be forced to sock away X% of their income for retirement by having it directly removed from their pay, otherwise they'd likely just spend their bank account until the balance is $0 that month.
Unless you're near the bottom of the middle-class or lower, chances are that lots of people manage to live perfectly happy and respectable lives earning much less money than you do. (And people who work fewer hours are generally happier as well.) It's just that people look at their income, and they figure out what they can afford with that income, and then they basically tailor their purchases to use up most of that income... whatever it is. It isn't that they COULDN'T live on signficantly less (and perhaps be just as happy), it's that they don't need to figure out how, so they don't.
So it comes down to: what makes you most happy? Having free time and time off from work, or competing in the "rat race" just to earn an extra few thousand to buy whatever random crap you won't have time to enjoy because you're always at work?
I like my job, and I don't mind putting in some extra hours when I need to. But if you're not eager to do so, it's often not a good trade.
There's nothing in the Wikipedia article that hasn't been printed in the press about Barry.
That isn't the standard for determining libel. In the U.S., the standard (for public figures, presumably would apply to Wikipedia entries) is that the information is published with actual malice, which, contrary to the term's name, does not legally require malicious intent. Instead, it only requires that those who published the information knew the information was false OR published it "with reckless disregard" for whether the information was true or false.
In other words, if a media story appeared in the past that accidentally included false or misleading information (which was later corrected or clarified), but Wikipedia's editors insisted on RE-publishing the false information without regard to whether it was true or false (and did so in a reckless or deliberate fashion), they could be guilty of libel... even if the information had previously appeared in another source.
Further, even if the information is TRUE, it is also possible for a suit to be brought under a false light tort, particularly if true information is taken out of context to make it deliberately misleading. (Also, the implications must be "highly offensive" to a reasonable person.) Many courts look less kindly on false light suits than in the past, but it still can be relevant in some cases.
I don't know whether either of these is likely in this particular case, but just because someone else has said something about someone in the past doesn't mean you can always publish it without any consequences in the future.
Such equipment records surely don't exist back to 1880.... So, my argument stands.
Just because you think something couldn't possibly be true doesn't mean it isn't.
Thermometer manufacture was precise enough to produce very high quality instruments by the late 1800s. The issue, as GP points out, isn't random errors popping up (thermometers were about as accurate as rulers could be in the late 1800s), but rather whether we know how the instruments were calibrated and how older scales might match up to instruments that were calibrated against modern international standards.
And, at least in the U.S., standard regular calibration standards had been agreed upon by the first couple decades of the 1900s. Good instruments even decades before then should have very little random error -- the question is only whether anyone bothered to check new equipment calibrated to international standards against the old equipment (or sent the old equipment to be tested once such standards were developed).
So, then you have to ask yourself: people who are bothering to meticulously record scientific data continuously for decades on end -- and they're not going to even bother to check whether their old instruments line up properly with new calibration standards?
Sure, I'm positive there are plenty of places that don't have such records. But we have continuous logbooks going back for centuries in many places. The idea that people taking meticulous records wouldn't even bother to check new equipment against old just seems a little ridiculous... not saying it wouldn't happen, but we have plenty of data points where it did happen to extrapolate estimates for error distributions.
You're acting like temperature measurement in the late 1800s was people guessing random numbers or drawing them out of a hat. But that's not what it was like, and there were lots of places with VERY detailed records.
What you are suggesting is that the US could pass a law that says "All non-citizens must be Christian" or that it would be OK to search, arrest, and detain anyone who is not a US citizen for no other reason than "S/He is not Christian"
I think that's a pretty extreme reading of GP's position.
I mostly agree with you, but you have to admit that there are quite a few instances where the U.S. government grants rights to citizens that are not granted to non-citizens in random places around the world (e.g., right to vote, right to collect various government benefits, etc.).
The main RELEVANT situation to the present discussion is prisoners of war. There are centuries of legal precedent saying that foreign people captured as prisoners of war do NOT have standard legal rights under the U.S. justice system. (Imagine if, in the midst of WWII, we had to ship back every German and Japanese soldier we captured, arraign them, and put them on trial -- not only would it be practically impossible, but it would violate various "rules of war.") They DO have certain rights under the Geneva convention accords that the U.S. government signed onto.
Now -- the LEGAL question in the case of "enemy combantants" or Guantanamo or whatever is: Are the persons in question legally equivalent to "prisoners or war" or are they not? If they are "prisoners of war," there's clear precedent saying the U.S. government does NOT have to grant them various rights. Or are they something else (as it seems our government claims), a new legal category?
Personally, I agree with you -- the U.S. government shouldn't be able to detain random people from around the world indefinitely, unless there's something like an official declared war or something, and even then, there needs to be adherence to the Geneva protocols, etc.
But your idea that everyone -- citizen or not -- has the same rights under the U.S. Constitution is simply wrong.
Great post. I think there may be cases where 6 hours is pushing it, but you're absolutely right that 24 hours should be a limit. If people are getting arrested where it takes more than 24 hours to gather enough evidence to charge them, then the police should be doing more research and collecting more evidence BEFORE the arrest.
Perhaps this could be the origin of a new legal platitude:
'Tis better that 20 guilty persons are freed by a computer error (or computer operator error) than that one innocent person is kept in jail indefinitely by a computer error.
(Doesn't quite have the same ring...)
I also sat down when considering colleges and looked at my choices. Due to income levels, Ivy Leagues were out for me, as was any private school. That left state schools.
I don't know when you went to school, but this is actually not true nowadays for very talented students. Most of the Ivy League schools have exceptional financial aid available for poor or even middle-class, sometimes making them even cheaper than state schools. For example, Harvard has a policy that students with family incomes below $65,000 pay NOTHING for tuition, and those with family incomes up to $150,000 are not expected to contribute more than 10% of that income. Other top schools may not be quite as generous, but they will often offer significant aid to those who really can't afford to go there.
It's really the "mid-level" private schools and smaller private colleges that charge the ridiculous tuitions to just about all students. I agree that most people can't really afford them (and end up with ridiculous loans if they try).
So -- if you're a talented student and have a chance at an Ivy or other top-tier school, I'd seriously suggest you check into their aid policies before deciding it's "unaffordable."