...which would make sense, if collecting state-level stamp taxes had anything whatsoever to do with this problem.
1. There are also federal taxes on cigarettes.
2. States cover lots of medical expenses, so if the real concern was defraying the (imaginary) additional healthcare costs of smokers, all state cigarette taxes could be dedicated to healthcare expenditures instead of the general fund.
That's like the old joke: Q: What do you call a bus filled with lawyers going off a cliff? A: A good start.
If we killed off all the health insurance companies I guess we'd have to adopt something like the Canadian system and actually save some money (us pinkos are notorious tightwads).
Even stranger is that he used "bought a cheaper car without airbags" as an example. Airbags were a government mandate! If you want to complain about intrusive government, that would be a very good one to criticize. Especially as airbags do almost nothing to help people wearing seat belts, and actually make it more dangerous for smaller people (e.g. petite women).
It would make a lot more sense to complain about people who died because they skimped on medical care because the government required cars to have airbags.
Being a non-fan of big government solutions, I think charging people for the actual risk of insuring them is a step in the right direction
Makes sense, as long as you also reduce Medicare and Social Security taxes for smokers. They're puffing hard to use fewer of those benefits, so your principle of "charging people for the actual risk of insuring them" requires that they pay less for them.
The nordics are not socialist. They are social democrats with a mixed economy where the government assumes responsibility for some critical infrastructure while aggressively breaking up cartels and preventing (to some extent) collusion in an otherwise free market in order to keep the markets free.
Actually, the nordics are good examples of libertarian ideals.
Yes, of Left Libertarian ideals, but those are almost completely unknown, and probably anathema, to most American libertarians.
Then I invite you to look at Australia with a similar system and an economy not in the toilet.
That's because it's a resource-based economy selling megatons of crap to the Chinese. Wait for the China bubble to burst and tell us how well it's doing.
However badly Australia does when the Chinese bubble bursts, it would be worse if they had US style healthcare (either pre or post Obamacare) as it costs at least 50% more, while being no better, and not covering everyone. Say what you want about Australians with their kangaroos and funny accents, they're not dumb enough to adopt American style healthcare.
Nothing (to state the obvious), but the reason to quit smoking is for the sake of your own health, not minimize your healthcare costs. Your lifetime healthcare costs will probably be higher if you quit. Really want to screw the system? Live to be 100.
I just got back from Montana. No need to worry, all the zombies are just fine. We just let them loose from time to time to eat all the Californians that keep showing up..
Interesting idea. Can we borrow some of you zombies for my state?
According to an advisory from the company, most (but not all) of their customers have installed the updated firmware.
The problem is getting customers to do the update. In typical egocentric Slashdot fashion, many posters will sanctimoniously say that they do daily checks for security updates or whatever. The problem is that they forget that broadcasters, and many other folks, have a lot of things to worry about in addition to Internet security. Maybe the answer is just to take stuff like this off the Internet. They had ways of handling this before it was popular to connect everything including your toaster to the Internet. Which reminds me, I keep getting burnt toast and I'm trying to trace down a Chinese IP address...
if the progressives had their way and there with universal health care (instead of the republican RomneyCare plan) then the hiring and firing employees would be that much simpler; a whole category of paperwork and costs... gone.
No problem, I like smart-assery, but turnabout is fair play.
to blame economic events on any single person or reason is powerfully misguided
No problem, I blame congress and plenty of other douche bags. Most importantly I rarely blame a single president. W was pretty bad, but many of his predecessors, including Clinton, had a hand in this.
At the end of the day, markets go up and also down... sadly they go down, and for incredibly complex, possibly inexplicable, usually compound, always global, reasons.
Of course they always go up and down. The important question is how far do they go down. The regulation we had from the Great Depression did an amazingly good job of keeping the downs from being catastrophic crashes. That was very different from the previous history of the US where crashes (panics as they used to call them) happened with frightening regulatory. The Depression Era regulation was actually the best thing that could have happened to capitalism, but eventually people with too much money decide they should be able to eat ice cream for dinner and stay up as late as they want. The regulation wasn't dismantled in a day, but the progressive dismantling of it reared its ugly head. Financial markets need to be regulated, just as we need laws against fraud (not much difference really).
Sorry, I didn't it was a complete coincidence that your saying why they lost was because people don't want to take personal responsibility, had nothing to do with the fact that that was a favorite theme of their losing candidate.
I think they're betting that it will piss off enough of the working poor for them to demand a real single-payer system.
Obama's 11th dimensional chess playing ability never fails to amaze me. He sure had me fooled with his sucking up to big pharma and big insurance. Bet he's got 'em right where he wants 'em, huh?
I completely agree. Obamacare is very business unfriendly. A Canadian style system where the employer bears no specific responsibility because healthcare is paid out of general taxes would be much more business friendly. Toyota, for one, certainly thought so when a major reason they put a plant in Canada instead of the US was Canadian healthcare. Republicans should also value maximizing the benefit for the money spent, and Canadian healthcare, which costs only 2/3 of the US, certainly qualifies as a savings.
So why aren't Republicans, with their concerns for business friendliness and cost effectiveness, pushing for Canadian style healthcare? It's an obvious win-win.
It's all for naught anyways. Our population and technology has out paced job growth. We need to realize there simply wont be any more jobs for the majority of the population as time marches forward.
Thank you, Ned Ludd. I know some people were skeptical because your earlier predictions were a few centuries premature. Nevertheless this time I'm sure the singularity is at hand.
Most people would think that five years is enough for someone's successor to begin to take responsibility for the state of things
So why didn't you ask about five years? Obama has been in office almost that long. Instead you asked about absurd numbers like ten or twenty. Why? And don't give me any bull about "I wanted to see what you thought was appropriate" nonsense. If that had been what you wanted to know, you could have asked. You're backpedaling.
However yes, Obama certainly has had an effect on the economy, by this point and for several years. He certainly could have done better (I'm not a big Obama fan, especially when it comes to economic matters), but I don't expect him to have cleaned up this whole mess by now. I also think it would have been worse with the 3rd coming of W, or McCain, or Romney.
The real irony of this whole stupid discussion is how little the president's influence on economic affairs even is. Trying to blame one guy who has very little control over something for the outcome of said something is the real dodge of the issue.
You can't blame or credit a president for everything, but to act as though he has little effect is disingenuous. The Treasury Dept., all the financial regulatory agencies and the DoJ are under him, he appoints the Fed chairman, and he has a lot of influence over legislation.
They lost because fewer and fewer people in this country are willing to take personal responsibility and have out sourced all such things to someone else, generally some level of government.
So they should have voted for Mitt Romney? Nothing more revoltingly hypocritical than someone who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth preaching the virtues of personal responsibility. If he's so opposed to government handouts, why don't you ask him why people have to pay higher taxes on their labor earnings than he does on capital gains, why the government subsidizes leveraged buyouts by allowing a company to deduct interest payments regardless of how irresponsibly leveraged they are, and why when they fail the investors are shielded from full personal responsibility for their actions.
Slashdot Mirror
...which would make sense, if collecting state-level stamp taxes had anything whatsoever to do with this problem.
1. There are also federal taxes on cigarettes.
2. States cover lots of medical expenses, so if the real concern was defraying the (imaginary) additional healthcare costs of smokers, all state cigarette taxes could be dedicated to healthcare expenditures instead of the general fund.
That's like the old joke:
Q: What do you call a bus filled with lawyers going off a cliff?
A: A good start.
If we killed off all the health insurance companies I guess we'd have to adopt something like the Canadian system and actually save some money (us pinkos are notorious tightwads).
Even stranger is that he used "bought a cheaper car without airbags" as an example. Airbags were a government mandate! If you want to complain about intrusive government, that would be a very good one to criticize. Especially as airbags do almost nothing to help people wearing seat belts, and actually make it more dangerous for smaller people (e.g. petite women).
It would make a lot more sense to complain about people who died because they skimped on medical care because the government required cars to have airbags.
Being a non-fan of big government solutions, I think charging people for the actual risk of insuring them is a step in the right direction
Makes sense, as long as you also reduce Medicare and Social Security taxes for smokers. They're puffing hard to use fewer of those benefits, so your principle of "charging people for the actual risk of insuring them" requires that they pay less for them.
So, no, sorry. Giving everyone a couple of packs of cigs per day isn't going to decrease health care expenses. Please try again.
Please explain why I should accept an analysis pulled from your posterior over, you know, actual facts and statistics.
The nordics are not socialist. They are social democrats with a mixed economy where the government assumes responsibility for some critical infrastructure while aggressively breaking up cartels and preventing (to some extent) collusion in an otherwise free market in order to keep the markets free.
Actually, the nordics are good examples of libertarian ideals.
Yes, of Left Libertarian ideals, but those are almost completely unknown, and probably anathema, to most American libertarians.
Then I invite you to look at Australia with a similar system and an economy not in the toilet.
That's because it's a resource-based economy selling megatons of crap to the Chinese. Wait for the China bubble to burst and tell us how well it's doing.
However badly Australia does when the Chinese bubble bursts, it would be worse if they had US style healthcare (either pre or post Obamacare) as it costs at least 50% more, while being no better, and not covering everyone. Say what you want about Australians with their kangaroos and funny accents, they're not dumb enough to adopt American style healthcare.
What is wrong with everyone quitting?
Nothing (to state the obvious), but the reason to quit smoking is for the sake of your own health, not minimize your healthcare costs. Your lifetime healthcare costs will probably be higher if you quit. Really want to screw the system? Live to be 100.
But those who do die from lung cancer tend to stop paying premiums.
Most of those who die from lung cancer have already stopped paying premiums because they're old enough to be on Medicare.
I just got back from Montana. No need to worry, all the zombies are just fine. We just let them loose from time to time to eat all the Californians that keep showing up..
Interesting idea. Can we borrow some of you zombies for my state?
It was updated. FTA:
According to an advisory from the company, most (but not all) of their customers have installed the updated firmware.
The problem is getting customers to do the update. In typical egocentric Slashdot fashion, many posters will sanctimoniously say that they do daily checks for security updates or whatever. The problem is that they forget that broadcasters, and many other folks, have a lot of things to worry about in addition to Internet security. Maybe the answer is just to take stuff like this off the Internet. They had ways of handling this before it was popular to connect everything including your toaster to the Internet. Which reminds me, I keep getting burnt toast and I'm trying to trace down a Chinese IP address ...
if the progressives had their way and there with universal health care (instead of the republican RomneyCare plan) then the hiring and firing employees would be that much simpler; a whole category of paperwork and costs... gone.
Better dead than red (or Canadian).
Companies hire part-time workers and temps [forbes.com], avoid the onerous mandate.
Companies have been pulling this perma-temp crap since the early 90's, but suddenly it's Obamacare that's causing it?
benefits without the risks ... free lunch ... You are a thief.
Are there any more cliches you could add? Please explain how wanting an open and transparent market is being a thief.
It is called being a smart-ass.
No problem, I like smart-assery, but turnabout is fair play.
to blame economic events on any single person or reason is powerfully misguided
No problem, I blame congress and plenty of other douche bags. Most importantly I rarely blame a single president. W was pretty bad, but many of his predecessors, including Clinton, had a hand in this.
At the end of the day, markets go up and also down... sadly they go down, and for incredibly complex, possibly inexplicable, usually compound, always global, reasons.
Of course they always go up and down. The important question is how far do they go down. The regulation we had from the Great Depression did an amazingly good job of keeping the downs from being catastrophic crashes. That was very different from the previous history of the US where crashes (panics as they used to call them) happened with frightening regulatory. The Depression Era regulation was actually the best thing that could have happened to capitalism, but eventually people with too much money decide they should be able to eat ice cream for dinner and stay up as late as they want. The regulation wasn't dismantled in a day, but the progressive dismantling of it reared its ugly head. Financial markets need to be regulated, just as we need laws against fraud (not much difference really).
Sorry, I didn't it was a complete coincidence that your saying why they lost was because people don't want to take personal responsibility, had nothing to do with the fact that that was a favorite theme of their losing candidate.
I think they're betting that it will piss off enough of the working poor for them to demand a real single-payer system.
Obama's 11th dimensional chess playing ability never fails to amaze me. He sure had me fooled with his sucking up to big pharma and big insurance. Bet he's got 'em right where he wants 'em, huh?
I completely agree. Obamacare is very business unfriendly. A Canadian style system where the employer bears no specific responsibility because healthcare is paid out of general taxes would be much more business friendly. Toyota, for one, certainly thought so when a major reason they put a plant in Canada instead of the US was Canadian healthcare. Republicans should also value maximizing the benefit for the money spent, and Canadian healthcare, which costs only 2/3 of the US, certainly qualifies as a savings.
So why aren't Republicans, with their concerns for business friendliness and cost effectiveness, pushing for Canadian style healthcare? It's an obvious win-win.
I like the irony. I am shocked — shocked— to find that gambling is going on in here!
Careful, the cognitive dissonance cause by the sudden introduction of "facts and figures" can be injurious to an ideologue's brain.
It's all for naught anyways. Our population and technology has out paced job growth. We need to realize there simply wont be any more jobs for the majority of the population as time marches forward.
Thank you, Ned Ludd. I know some people were skeptical because your earlier predictions were a few centuries premature. Nevertheless this time I'm sure the singularity is at hand.
It was meant ironically.
Here is a NYT headline from 1970; "Sluggish S.E.C. Is Facing A Pile of Unsettled Issues; Many of Critics in Securities Industry Blame Chairman Budge."
Wow, criticism of a government agency. Stop the presses! One headline is clear proof that the SEC was completely ineffective.
I read the Madoff investigation transcripts.
Really? All of them? Suffer from insomnia much?
BTW, the Madoff case does backup the "Reagan started the decline" idea, since they started investigating Madoff in '92.
No lack of money.
The SEC has been progressively defunded over the years.
There's nobody home. A bunch of empty suits.
So you're saying we need a stronger, more effective SEC? I agree.
Most people would think that five years is enough for someone's successor to begin to take responsibility for the state of things
So why didn't you ask about five years? Obama has been in office almost that long. Instead you asked about absurd numbers like ten or twenty. Why? And don't give me any bull about "I wanted to see what you thought was appropriate" nonsense. If that had been what you wanted to know, you could have asked. You're backpedaling.
However yes, Obama certainly has had an effect on the economy, by this point and for several years. He certainly could have done better (I'm not a big Obama fan, especially when it comes to economic matters), but I don't expect him to have cleaned up this whole mess by now. I also think it would have been worse with the 3rd coming of W, or McCain, or Romney.
The real irony of this whole stupid discussion is how little the president's influence on economic affairs even is. Trying to blame one guy who has very little control over something for the outcome of said something is the real dodge of the issue.
You can't blame or credit a president for everything, but to act as though he has little effect is disingenuous. The Treasury Dept., all the financial regulatory agencies and the DoJ are under him, he appoints the Fed chairman, and he has a lot of influence over legislation.
They lost because fewer and fewer people in this country are willing to take personal responsibility and have out sourced all such things to someone else, generally some level of government.
So they should have voted for Mitt Romney? Nothing more revoltingly hypocritical than someone who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth preaching the virtues of personal responsibility. If he's so opposed to government handouts, why don't you ask him why people have to pay higher taxes on their labor earnings than he does on capital gains, why the government subsidizes leveraged buyouts by allowing a company to deduct interest payments regardless of how irresponsibly leveraged they are, and why when they fail the investors are shielded from full personal responsibility for their actions.