Not necessarily. We had a system which fit the state that the country was in decades ago. That's not the same system we should be using now. That's like the RIAA trying to still sell everyone vinyl records. Times have changed, needs have changed.
The laws should be fundamental and rarely need to be changed. The proper role of government, in my view, is to protect freedom. there's nothing that's changed that requires different laws from 70 years ago.
I've never stated anything which should cause you to think that I value government control over economic freedom.
You stated heatlhcare should be a right. that affects, quite significantly, economic freedom.
I have not read the hundreds of pages in the bill, so I frankly don't know what it says
I don't know the details of the bill either, but this is a pretty key point that i don't think is in dispute.
The constitution also didn't say that people had the right to free speech, nor the right to bear arms, nor the right to vote at 18, nor that people have the right not to be searched without a reason, etc etc etc. Why do you think the constitution has been amended 27 times? Times change, so do the needs of the country. Within 15 years of its creation the constitution had already been amended 10 times. The last time an amendment was proposed was 32 years ago. Maybe it's time for another one.
fine so amend it. it'll still be stupid, but it'll atleast be legal.
That's right, if there's one thing we know how to do, it's fuck up a system. That doesn't mean we can't eventually get it right, and it doesn't mean we should stop trying.
So, we had a decent system before government started meddling, and you want to do more meddling.
I never said universal healthcare will fail immediately. i've made the point that it takes time(just like everything we socialize does). I've also never said our current system is great either. Our current system is quite fucked up, and leads to the situation that happened with your friend.
The US has the highest GDP in the world, by a lot. We can do better than that.
and how did we get to that position? a thing called freedom. Freedom is all we really need, but it means freedom economically and socially. You don't want economic freedom, you want government control. It will not work. it will make our situation worse. This bill forces people to buy insurance. Take about an insurance company's dream.
Right, small countries like Germany and France which have the 4th and 5th largest economies in the world ranked by GDP, the largest 2 economies in the EU. Germany spends $3328 per capita on health care, or 10.4% of their GDP. France spends $3554 per capita, or 11.1%. Canada spends $3672 per capita, or 10.0%. The US spends $6714 per capita, or 15.3% of our GDP which is nearly as large as the entire GDP for Europe. Those numbers come from the WHO. We're spending twice as much per capita as many other countries and still can't even manage to help everyone like they do.
I'm really not familiar with germany or france's situations. So i won't comment on them.
Here's something fun to try: find someone from Canada, and ask them whether they would prefer the Canadian health system or the current US health system. See what they say.
been there done that.
canadian 1, what? there's no problem's with canada's healthcare system.
canadian 2 there's a shit ton of people waiting around for care
canadian 3 there's problems in some of the provinces
canadian 4 the problems will go away when we build more hispitals
i think the general trend is, yeah it's not so bad, if you're healthy. but it'll sure suck when your dad dies because he's waiting into an ICU after a heart attack.
Wow, that's a great argument. We shouldn't do something because the countries that are currently succeeding at it are going to fail at some undetermined point in the future. That's some iron-clad reasoning right there.
well you're right, it's not. but it's what'll happen. it's what happens when we over regulate/socialize stuff. see communist countries. It took 70 years for the USSR to collapse, it was unavoidable, but I don't think you could predict when it would happen.
No shit, that's exactly why it needs to be fixed. Costs have risen, care has declined. That can be fixed.
notice, how this has happened since the US started getting involved?
That's because the technology has improved, genius, not because it's privatized.
why hasn't healthcare costs in general fallen, genius? there's certainly been a lot of technological improvements elsewhere.
I do not believe that the government has an obligation to provide clothes and technology for its people. I do believe it has an obligation to provide medical care.
WHy not food? why not clothing? you need both? Why not water? (which often does come from _local_ governments)? WHy didn't our founders say that government had to provide healtchare? they had doctors back then. If government can make costs go down and quality go up, why the fuck not everything? sounds fine to me, if government could make prices go down and quality go up, bring on the government!
Really? Representative democracy and tyranny are formed the same way, and have the same effects? Pray tell, what exactly distinguishes them?
Like i've said a bazillion times, limited government is important.
If you can prove that socialized health care will result in a "drastic reduction of quality" for all concerned then we'll have a debate. I'm not going to debate a hypothetical situation or unproven assumption.
Look at canada, look at the UK, look at what socializing industries has done. nothing very hypothetical about it. the cases where it looks like socializing medicine has worked, are in small countries such as sweden and holland. and they'll implode within our life times anyways.
ne thing is a fact though: the US spends way more money on health care as a percentage of our GDP than the majority of other countries, yet our standard is lower. We spend more of our GDP than Germany, but Germany is still able to provide superior care to all of their citizens, even though we spend more and don't do that.
We provide pretty good care to most. there are a few that do fall through the cracks. Another fact, the US started getting involved in medical care not so long ago, and look what's happened? costs have risen, adjusting for inflation.
but look at lasik. not covered by insurance, not really regulated. quality has gone up, price has come down. look at food, look at clothing, look at technology. where we let free markets occur, prices go down, quality goes up.
you live in a tyranny because we vote on issues and there's always a side which loses the vote.
where did i say that? i quite specifically said, we don't. we still have a government that is somewhat limited. I did say some laws are tyrannical, such as our drug laws. I have repeated over and over, that we need limited government. And that democracy(of one form or the other) in and of itself, is not going to lead to freedom.
Because he's not even close. Ask an American socialist [sp-usa.org] if Obama is following their ideals. He's no more a socialist than he is a communist, so why all the bullshit rhetoric?
complaining about bullshit rhetoric in politics is kind of redundant.
Right, so it's fine if we've got hoards of protesters calling the government fascist and tyrannical. It's all the same, right? You know what two of the leading causes of death are? Car accidents, and cancer
You're not arguing about car accidents and cancer, you're arguing about 2 slightly different forms of cancer, that are formed in basically the same way, and have basically the same effects.
I especially like the posters which show Obama as Hitler, and call him a socialist.
I don't like comparing him to hitler. But then again comparing bush to hitler was the in thing to do, not so long ago. didn't lose any sleep over that, not gonna lose sleep over this.
As for calling him a socialist.. so what?
Clearly health care is a major threat to this nation and the constitution. That whole warrantless wiretapping thing done by the previous president and continued by the current, that's fine and dandy, there's no way in hell that something as innocent as eavesdropping on citizens without court approval could ever be used to infringe on our rights as Americans. Clearly the real danger is health care.
well i agree that we should be concerned about wiretapping, and i was hopefully obama wouldn't just continue bush's policies.. but that's all it was, was hope.
If you think that we're gonna to have socialized healthcare, and socialized heatlhcare means a drastic reduction in quality.. how is that not a threat? There's certainly no where in the constitution where it's allowed, but government doing things it's not supposed to is hardly new or unique to these last few decades.
Thanks for helping to progress the national debate, you're doing some fine work. Clearly the only reasonable goal to strive for is a system of government where not a single citizen ever feels oppressed. Since this government does not meet that criterion, then clearly the correct course of action is to remove the government and install a new one. I'm sure no one will feel oppressed or disenfranchised if that were to happen.
lol. i'm trying to have a discussion of sorts. you know, like civilized people are supposed to do? I never said i wanted to remove this government and install a new one, i said, i want to limit what government can do. You know, do what the constitution was created for. If you think democracy is all that's necessary, visit india. They have democracy there, and no, it's not because they're over populated.
lol ok dude. single entity, single person. whatever, if you want to differentiate between them, go for it. their effects are the same. Personally, i'm more concerned about the results than what you call it.
tyranny for the people who don't vote the same way as joe blow.
If they have absolute power by definition, then why do they need to vote?
if they voted that they wouldn't need the power then, i guess they wouldn't need to.
Is a group of people considered to be a single ruler?
i would say it's fairly indistinguishable as far as results go. Would you say, if you had 2 people that were tyrants, that's not tyranny? I would think it is.
you could, have 49% of the population exterminated, if 51% voted that way. That's tyranny of the majority.
government has an obligation to protect its people, then the only solution is regulation.
I do not believe, the government has the obligation to protect people from hurting themselves.
"Tyranny of the majority" is just another way of describing democracy while using the word tyranny. The fact is that he head of state of the United States is not a tyrant. Within our laws it's not even possible for the holder of that office to become a tyrant.
"A government in which a single ruler (a tyrant) has absolute power."
Unrestricted democracy, is tyranny. if joe blow says that I can't dance on saturday nights(completely random example), and it so does the majority, bam it's voted, they win, that's tyranny. Which is my point, that government needed to be restricted. a democracy or a republic in and of itself is not good enough.
I don't think the president or congress is a tyrant. However, there are some tyrannical laws (such as drug laws)
No, most users are apparently clueless and stupid and government regulation is required to protect them since they won't do it themselves.
Maybe they just have different priorities or don't care or whatever. But it's easier for you to assume they're just not as smart as you. That said, if facebook did an about face on their privacy statements, that's probably fraud. No need for any additional laws.
The people who would argue with that are probably the same people who think that a democratically-elected group of legislators passing a bill which the majority agreed with means that we're living under a tyranny
tyranny of the majority, not that i'm arguing every bill/law is tyranny, just that what you said doesn't mean tyranny is impossible. which is why, government is supposed to be limited in what it can do. In the US constitution there is a list of things that congress is allowed to do, and if it's not on that list, it's quite clearly not allowed to do it. But this get abused, because apparently the general welfare clause, means that government can do whatever it wants. thus our founders wasted their time writing all the other items that our government may do.
I know this is hard to believe but sometimes you don't have a choice!
This is what people always say, and it's almost always wrong. I mean, especially in the case of fast food it's so wrong it's unbelievable. I just went on a 5000 mile road trip last year, damn near every little small city/town had atleast a mcdonalds and some other major fast food joint. Not all of course, but if you're working near a college, i really doubt you don't have other options.
When I was straight out of college I didn't have mommy and daddy to pay for everything until I found a $70k/year job so I took a job where I was working part-time (everyone but management was part-time, best to keep the slaves hungry and scared), after taxes I was making ~$950/month and every day was filled with examples of the employer abusing the employees while mostly not breaking the law (thankfully the union was pretty aggressive so when they tried to make people work insane shifts or fire someone for doing what they were told the union got involved and threatened with legal action).
And where did you not have a choice? there was no other place you could work? You chose to go to college. You chose to work where you did. You chose your own path, and it seemed to have worked out.
They often consider profit as the only drive for human action.
If you mean profit as solely increase in money, then no, that's not what I'm arguing.
These examples show that minimum wage and healthcare did not cause crisis.
I never said it caused a crisis. It probably would if we raised the min. wage to 50 dollars an hour tho. What I am saying, is it doesn't achieve the desired goals.
Healthcare, as in what we are going towards in the US does cause a crisis. Canada and the UK have many problems. they will get worse, and eventually become extremely problematic. But in the US things have been getting more expensive for the last 50 or so years, thanks to government trying to look out for me.
but pretending to be able to predict what will happen after the introduction of this or that measure is just preposterous.
Can i predict exactly what will happen and when? no.
But my basic point is you can't arbitrarily alter the pay of millions of employees without negative side effects. That's hardly getting out a crystal ball, any more than saying when i throw a ball up into the air it will come down.
You never worked for fast food. Entry level shit job managers care about nothing but the bottom line knowing if, you don't like what they make you do for how much they want to pay you there are 100s of applications waiting in there office with the numbers of desperate unemployed people willing to do your shit job for less (at least for awhile before the cycle starts again)
So you're not willing to do a job for a certain amount of money, so you leave. There's something wrong with this? The people working these jobs are making a trade. I've never personally worked fast food, But many people have, the majority of people i've met, don't speak so negatively about it. Some who had shitty managers do.
This argument was about min wage. not about any and all government regulation/spending. offtopic.
Funny, when I do that, I get modded down. YOu get modded up lol. But I'll respond anyways.
my computer
... based on technologies developed for government contracts...
that goes through the internet
... that used be called ARPAnet...
Both because of defense spending, which is a legitmate function of government. It's even in the constitution.
then i'll leave work
... at a company that relies on the courts to enforce its contracts...
enforcing contracts, another legitimate function of government.
drive in my car
... in a car that probably won't kill you because of DOT safety regulations, on roads built with public funds...
Ahh here we go. I would be for privatizing highways/freeways. But, oh the deadliest thing we encounter on our day to day lives, and one of the biggest sources of frustration, and also the biggest involvement with government in our day to day lives. hardly coincidental. But then, atleast congress is allowed to create postal roads, so it's legitimate.
to my apartment
... that would be an unsafe rat-trap if not for housing regulations, and where you have a reasonable assurance that you'll be able to continue living because the government won't let your landlord throw you out on the street any time he feels like it...
eat some nice food
... that's been certified by the FDA...
Gee, i'll get right into moving into that rat nest place, and eating food that will kill me. Good thing those government agencies are protecting me! Except, they're not. The fact that no one would return to a grocery story that consistently served spoiled food, keeps that from happening. The fact that no one wants to live in a horrible apartment, keeps the apartments nice. But hey, i did sign a lease, and breaking of a contract, would be a place for government to get involved.
... well, okay, clearly there are some failings in your education, but that's probably your fault, not the fault of the underpaid and overworked public school teachers who tried to drum some knowledge into your thick skull. The rest of it, you enjoy courtesy of your local, state, and federal government whether you are capable of understanding this or not.
Obviously, I bow down to your superior intellect. But hey, government schools are doing so well, let's keep them! oh wait, another case of government run stuff, failing. Wait let's give them more money, that will fix the problems! except it's been tried, and doesn't.
That's what you think it does. But do you have any hard evidence to this effect? GPP provided actual data; you're providing a model. If there's a conflict between model and data, then it's probably not the data that's wrong.
where did GPP provide data?
So feel free to provide some. Of course the problem is, these sorts of things are always really murky. And there are plenty of other external factors potentially in play.
Minimum wage doesn't cost jobs, it just makes those governed by minimum wage ineligible for employment below that wage. The sub-minimum wage jobs still exist, just not where the minimum wage applies.
OK it took me a few times, but I think i finally understand what you're saying, which is that basically the jobs don't disappear they go overseas.
But it's still costing us jobs, since we live where the min wage rules apply (well I do, and i'm assuming you do).
No, it means that the business will have the same 5 workers at $7.50 instead of $0.03 per hour. Would you really want to have companies with the ability to keep pay rates the same for 60 years with nobody forcing them to pace with inflation?
Well gee, i can imagine all the employees you'll have offering 3 cents an hour! lol. Of course, if you offered other benefits(such as the case of an internship), you might get some. But then the pay wouldn't really just be 3 cents an hour.
Assume that we got rid of min wage, and according to your argument instead of hiring one person at min wage the business could get away at hiring 2 people at half minimum wage (it would never happen in the real world. ITRW a business would just cut wages and keep the employment the same; keeping the resultant increase in efficiency for themselves but whatever)
You're saying that if a buisness could cut the wages of employees, keep the employees, it would then keep the money for itself, and all that would happen is the buisness would make more money? You're making a lot of huge assumptions there, that ITRW, would not happen.
Those two people would be earning much less and could only realistically afford to live in shanty-towns with barely enough money left over to feed themselves, much less add any utility to the greater economy.
And unless economic conditions were horrible, they would leave, or their production would fall. Or you truly believe you can get something for nothing, so easily? Hey why don't you start a buisness, you can hire only women as they only make 2/3s of what men make, you can make a killing and become rich. That obviously will not work, just like your situation.
Keep believing that the free market fairy will come and magically make things right; leaving goodies under your pillow as you sleep.
no need for any fairies. I'll type this on my computer that goes through the internet, then i'll leave work, drive in my car, to my apartment, eat some nice food, ect ect. Why? because of the market. Not because of some stupid belief that we can regulate success and a better life. Free markets are not perfect, but they are far better than anything else we've tried.
It's an increase in cost that has to be paid. whether that's not hiring an additional worker, firing a current one, increasing prices to customers or whatever. it certainly does cost jobs.
So you're gonna sue someone, every time they say something wrong? Who determines the facts anyways? Should people have gotten sued if they published that the earth was round/flat when that was debated(if it was, I'm not sure on the history of that)? What About the people that believe the earth is 6000 years old? what about the scientists who think something right now, but are later found to be way off?
If you really want to push your issue forward, I really don't think filing a lawsuit is the answer. You should debate them and challenge them.
Slashdot Mirror
fuck the law, we'll do what we want
pretty sure portal didn't cost 40..
You dropped EE because you disagreed with the prof's opinion on a person? Did you bother to ask why he felt that way?
Slashdot has become like this
That implies, it at some point wasn't. Which.. well.. maybe it was before they introduced mods..
Not necessarily. We had a system which fit the state that the country was in decades ago. That's not the same system we should be using now. That's like the RIAA trying to still sell everyone vinyl records. Times have changed, needs have changed.
The laws should be fundamental and rarely need to be changed. The proper role of government, in my view, is to protect freedom. there's nothing that's changed that requires different laws from 70 years ago.
I've never stated anything which should cause you to think that I value government control over economic freedom.
You stated heatlhcare should be a right. that affects, quite significantly, economic freedom.
I have not read the hundreds of pages in the bill, so I frankly don't know what it says
I don't know the details of the bill either, but this is a pretty key point that i don't think is in dispute.
The constitution also didn't say that people had the right to free speech, nor the right to bear arms, nor the right to vote at 18, nor that people have the right not to be searched without a reason, etc etc etc. Why do you think the constitution has been amended 27 times? Times change, so do the needs of the country. Within 15 years of its creation the constitution had already been amended 10 times. The last time an amendment was proposed was 32 years ago. Maybe it's time for another one.
fine so amend it. it'll still be stupid, but it'll atleast be legal.
That's right, if there's one thing we know how to do, it's fuck up a system. That doesn't mean we can't eventually get it right, and it doesn't mean we should stop trying.
So, we had a decent system before government started meddling, and you want to do more meddling.
I never said universal healthcare will fail immediately. i've made the point that it takes time(just like everything we socialize does). I've also never said our current system is great either. Our current system is quite fucked up, and leads to the situation that happened with your friend.
The US has the highest GDP in the world, by a lot. We can do better than that.
and how did we get to that position? a thing called freedom. Freedom is all we really need, but it means freedom economically and socially. You don't want economic freedom, you want government control. It will not work. it will make our situation worse. This bill forces people to buy insurance. Take about an insurance company's dream.
Right, small countries like Germany and France which have the 4th and 5th largest economies in the world ranked by GDP, the largest 2 economies in the EU. Germany spends $3328 per capita on health care, or 10.4% of their GDP. France spends $3554 per capita, or 11.1%. Canada spends $3672 per capita, or 10.0%. The US spends $6714 per capita, or 15.3% of our GDP which is nearly as large as the entire GDP for Europe. Those numbers come from the WHO. We're spending twice as much per capita as many other countries and still can't even manage to help everyone like they do.
I'm really not familiar with germany or france's situations. So i won't comment on them.
Here's something fun to try: find someone from Canada, and ask them whether they would prefer the Canadian health system or the current US health system. See what they say.
been there done that.
canadian 1, what? there's no problem's with canada's healthcare system.
canadian 2 there's a shit ton of people waiting around for care
canadian 3 there's problems in some of the provinces
canadian 4 the problems will go away when we build more hispitals
i think the general trend is, yeah it's not so bad, if you're healthy. but it'll sure suck when your dad dies because he's waiting into an ICU after a heart attack.
Wow, that's a great argument. We shouldn't do something because the countries that are currently succeeding at it are going to fail at some undetermined point in the future. That's some iron-clad reasoning right there.
well you're right, it's not. but it's what'll happen. it's what happens when we over regulate/socialize stuff. see communist countries. It took 70 years for the USSR to collapse, it was unavoidable, but I don't think you could predict when it would happen.
No shit, that's exactly why it needs to be fixed. Costs have risen, care has declined. That can be fixed.
notice, how this has happened since the US started getting involved?
That's because the technology has improved, genius, not because it's privatized.
why hasn't healthcare costs in general fallen, genius? there's certainly been a lot of technological improvements elsewhere.
I do not believe that the government has an obligation to provide clothes and technology for its people. I do believe it has an obligation to provide medical care.
WHy not food? why not clothing? you need both? Why not water? (which often does come from _local_ governments)? WHy didn't our founders say that government had to provide healtchare? they had doctors back then. If government can make costs go down and quality go up, why the fuck not everything? sounds fine to me, if government could make prices go down and quality go up, bring on the government!
Really? Representative democracy and tyranny are formed the same way, and have the same effects? Pray tell, what exactly distinguishes them?
Like i've said a bazillion times, limited government is important.
If you can prove that socialized health care will result in a "drastic reduction of quality" for all concerned then we'll have a debate. I'm not going to debate a hypothetical situation or unproven assumption.
Look at canada, look at the UK, look at what socializing industries has done. nothing very hypothetical about it. the cases where it looks like socializing medicine has worked, are in small countries such as sweden and holland. and they'll implode within our life times anyways.
ne thing is a fact though: the US spends way more money on health care as a percentage of our GDP than the majority of other countries, yet our standard is lower. We spend more of our GDP than Germany, but Germany is still able to provide superior care to all of their citizens, even though we spend more and don't do that.
We provide pretty good care to most. there are a few that do fall through the cracks. Another fact, the US started getting involved in medical care not so long ago, and look what's happened? costs have risen, adjusting for inflation.
but look at lasik. not covered by insurance, not really regulated. quality has gone up, price has come down. look at food, look at clothing, look at technology. where we let free markets occur, prices go down, quality goes up.
you live in a tyranny because we vote on issues and there's always a side which loses the vote.
where did i say that? i quite specifically said, we don't. we still have a government that is somewhat limited. I did say some laws are tyrannical, such as our drug laws. I have repeated over and over, that we need limited government. And that democracy(of one form or the other) in and of itself, is not going to lead to freedom.
Because he's not even close. Ask an American socialist [sp-usa.org] if Obama is following their ideals. He's no more a socialist than he is a communist, so why all the bullshit rhetoric?
complaining about bullshit rhetoric in politics is kind of redundant.
Right, so it's fine if we've got hoards of protesters calling the government fascist and tyrannical. It's all the same, right? You know what two of the leading causes of death are? Car accidents, and cancer
You're not arguing about car accidents and cancer, you're arguing about 2 slightly different forms of cancer, that are formed in basically the same way, and have basically the same effects.
I especially like the posters which show Obama as Hitler, and call him a socialist.
I don't like comparing him to hitler. But then again comparing bush to hitler was the in thing to do, not so long ago. didn't lose any sleep over that, not gonna lose sleep over this.
As for calling him a socialist.. so what?
Clearly health care is a major threat to this nation and the constitution. That whole warrantless wiretapping thing done by the previous president and continued by the current, that's fine and dandy, there's no way in hell that something as innocent as eavesdropping on citizens without court approval could ever be used to infringe on our rights as Americans. Clearly the real danger is health care.
well i agree that we should be concerned about wiretapping, and i was hopefully obama wouldn't just continue bush's policies.. but that's all it was, was hope.
If you think that we're gonna to have socialized healthcare, and socialized heatlhcare means a drastic reduction in quality.. how is that not a threat? There's certainly no where in the constitution where it's allowed, but government doing things it's not supposed to is hardly new or unique to these last few decades.
Thanks for helping to progress the national debate, you're doing some fine work. Clearly the only reasonable goal to strive for is a system of government where not a single citizen ever feels oppressed. Since this government does not meet that criterion, then clearly the correct course of action is to remove the government and install a new one. I'm sure no one will feel oppressed or disenfranchised if that were to happen.
lol. i'm trying to have a discussion of sorts. you know, like civilized people are supposed to do? I never said i wanted to remove this government and install a new one, i said, i want to limit what government can do. You know, do what the constitution was created for. If you think democracy is all that's necessary, visit india. They have democracy there, and no, it's not because they're over populated.
lol ok dude. single entity, single person. whatever, if you want to differentiate between them, go for it. their effects are the same. Personally, i'm more concerned about the results than what you call it.
Tyranny for whom, for Joe Blow?
tyranny for the people who don't vote the same way as joe blow.
If they have absolute power by definition, then why do they need to vote?
if they voted that they wouldn't need the power then, i guess they wouldn't need to.
Is a group of people considered to be a single ruler?
i would say it's fairly indistinguishable as far as results go. Would you say, if you had 2 people that were tyrants, that's not tyranny? I would think it is.
you could, have 49% of the population exterminated, if 51% voted that way. That's tyranny of the majority.
government has an obligation to protect its people, then the only solution is regulation.
I do not believe, the government has the obligation to protect people from hurting themselves.
"Tyranny of the majority" is just another way of describing democracy while using the word tyranny. The fact is that he head of state of the United States is not a tyrant. Within our laws it's not even possible for the holder of that office to become a tyrant.
"A government in which a single ruler (a tyrant) has absolute power."
Unrestricted democracy, is tyranny. if joe blow says that I can't dance on saturday nights(completely random example), and it so does the majority, bam it's voted, they win, that's tyranny. Which is my point, that government needed to be restricted. a democracy or a republic in and of itself is not good enough.
I don't think the president or congress is a tyrant. However, there are some tyrannical laws (such as drug laws)
No, most users are apparently clueless and stupid and government regulation is required to protect them since they won't do it themselves.
Maybe they just have different priorities or don't care or whatever. But it's easier for you to assume they're just not as smart as you. That said, if facebook did an about face on their privacy statements, that's probably fraud. No need for any additional laws.
The people who would argue with that are probably the same people who think that a democratically-elected group of legislators passing a bill which the majority agreed with means that we're living under a tyranny
tyranny of the majority, not that i'm arguing every bill/law is tyranny, just that what you said doesn't mean tyranny is impossible. which is why, government is supposed to be limited in what it can do. In the US constitution there is a list of things that congress is allowed to do, and if it's not on that list, it's quite clearly not allowed to do it. But this get abused, because apparently the general welfare clause, means that government can do whatever it wants. thus our founders wasted their time writing all the other items that our government may do.
I know this is hard to believe but sometimes you don't have a choice!
This is what people always say, and it's almost always wrong. I mean, especially in the case of fast food it's so wrong it's unbelievable. I just went on a 5000 mile road trip last year, damn near every little small city/town had atleast a mcdonalds and some other major fast food joint. Not all of course, but if you're working near a college, i really doubt you don't have other options.
When I was straight out of college I didn't have mommy and daddy to pay for everything until I found a $70k/year job so I took a job where I was working part-time (everyone but management was part-time, best to keep the slaves hungry and scared), after taxes I was making ~$950/month and every day was filled with examples of the employer abusing the employees while mostly not breaking the law (thankfully the union was pretty aggressive so when they tried to make people work insane shifts or fire someone for doing what they were told the union got involved and threatened with legal action).
And where did you not have a choice? there was no other place you could work? You chose to go to college. You chose to work where you did. You chose your own path, and it seemed to have worked out.
They often consider profit as the only drive for human action.
If you mean profit as solely increase in money, then no, that's not what I'm arguing.
These examples show that minimum wage and healthcare did not cause crisis.
I never said it caused a crisis. It probably would if we raised the min. wage to 50 dollars an hour tho. What I am saying, is it doesn't achieve the desired goals.
Healthcare, as in what we are going towards in the US does cause a crisis. Canada and the UK have many problems. they will get worse, and eventually become extremely problematic. But in the US things have been getting more expensive for the last 50 or so years, thanks to government trying to look out for me.
but pretending to be able to predict what will happen after the introduction of this or that measure is just preposterous.
Can i predict exactly what will happen and when? no.
But my basic point is you can't arbitrarily alter the pay of millions of employees without negative side effects. That's hardly getting out a crystal ball, any more than saying when i throw a ball up into the air it will come down.
You never worked for fast food. Entry level shit job managers care about nothing but the bottom line knowing if, you don't like what they make you do for how much they want to pay you there are 100s of applications waiting in there office with the numbers of desperate unemployed people willing to do your shit job for less (at least for awhile before the cycle starts again)
So you're not willing to do a job for a certain amount of money, so you leave. There's something wrong with this? The people working these jobs are making a trade. I've never personally worked fast food, But many people have, the majority of people i've met, don't speak so negatively about it. Some who had shitty managers do.
This argument was about min wage. not about any and all government regulation/spending. offtopic.
Funny, when I do that, I get modded down. YOu get modded up lol. But I'll respond anyways.
Both because of defense spending, which is a legitmate function of government. It's even in the constitution.
enforcing contracts, another legitimate function of government.
Ahh here we go. I would be for privatizing highways/freeways. But, oh the deadliest thing we encounter on our day to day lives, and one of the biggest sources of frustration, and also the biggest involvement with government in our day to day lives. hardly coincidental. But then, atleast congress is allowed to create postal roads, so it's legitimate.
eat some nice food
Gee, i'll get right into moving into that rat nest place, and eating food that will kill me. Good thing those government agencies are protecting me! Except, they're not. The fact that no one would return to a grocery story that consistently served spoiled food, keeps that from happening. The fact that no one wants to live in a horrible apartment, keeps the apartments nice. But hey, i did sign a lease, and breaking of a contract, would be a place for government to get involved.
Obviously, I bow down to your superior intellect. But hey, government schools are doing so well, let's keep them! oh wait, another case of government run stuff, failing. Wait let's give them more money, that will fix the problems! except it's been tried, and doesn't.
That's what you think it does. But do you have any hard evidence to this effect? GPP provided actual data; you're providing a model. If there's a conflict between model and data, then it's probably not the data that's wrong.
where did GPP provide data?
So feel free to provide some. Of course the problem is, these sorts of things are always really murky. And there are plenty of other external factors potentially in play.
here's an opinion expressed far better than i can http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca8Z__o52sk
Minimum wage doesn't cost jobs, it just makes those governed by minimum wage ineligible for employment below that wage. The sub-minimum wage jobs still exist, just not where the minimum wage applies.
OK it took me a few times, but I think i finally understand what you're saying, which is that basically the jobs don't disappear they go overseas.
But it's still costing us jobs, since we live where the min wage rules apply (well I do, and i'm assuming you do).
OK you can just increase the costs of business, and there are no side effects!
No, it means that the business will have the same 5 workers at $7.50 instead of $0.03 per hour. Would you really want to have companies with the ability to keep pay rates the same for 60 years with nobody forcing them to pace with inflation?
Well gee, i can imagine all the employees you'll have offering 3 cents an hour! lol. Of course, if you offered other benefits(such as the case of an internship), you might get some. But then the pay wouldn't really just be 3 cents an hour.
Assume that we got rid of min wage, and according to your argument instead of hiring one person at min wage the business could get away at hiring 2 people at half minimum wage (it would never happen in the real world. ITRW a business would just cut wages and keep the employment the same; keeping the resultant increase in efficiency for themselves but whatever)
You're saying that if a buisness could cut the wages of employees, keep the employees, it would then keep the money for itself, and all that would happen is the buisness would make more money? You're making a lot of huge assumptions there, that ITRW, would not happen.
Those two people would be earning much less and could only realistically afford to live in shanty-towns with barely enough money left over to feed themselves, much less add any utility to the greater economy.
And unless economic conditions were horrible, they would leave, or their production would fall. Or you truly believe you can get something for nothing, so easily? Hey why don't you start a buisness, you can hire only women as they only make 2/3s of what men make, you can make a killing and become rich. That obviously will not work, just like your situation.
Keep believing that the free market fairy will come and magically make things right; leaving goodies under your pillow as you sleep.
no need for any fairies. I'll type this on my computer that goes through the internet, then i'll leave work, drive in my car, to my apartment, eat some nice food, ect ect. Why? because of the market. Not because of some stupid belief that we can regulate success and a better life. Free markets are not perfect, but they are far better than anything else we've tried.
Minimum wage does not cost jobs.
umm yes it does.
It's an increase in cost that has to be paid. whether that's not hiring an additional worker, firing a current one, increasing prices to customers or whatever. it certainly does cost jobs.
So you're gonna sue someone, every time they say something wrong? Who determines the facts anyways? Should people have gotten sued if they published that the earth was round/flat when that was debated(if it was, I'm not sure on the history of that)? What About the people that believe the earth is 6000 years old? what about the scientists who think something right now, but are later found to be way off?
If you really want to push your issue forward, I really don't think filing a lawsuit is the answer. You should debate them and challenge them.
yeah just what we need 50234502340230423042304023 lawsuits about people publishing 'false' information.