The concept is simple. Cows give milk which is essential for babies whose mothers are not able to produce milk so they are considered sacred as in mothers are sacred. If you want the historical reasons behind it when the proto-Aryans first moved from the Iranian plateau into India and met up with the remnants of the Indus Valley Civilization (first civilization in world history to have cities with sewers which is ironic considering the state of sewers in India today) , they brought high yielding cows with them. However these cows did not take well to the heat of the subcontinent and had to be bred with local cattle to create a special breed which could survive and give enough milk in India. Hence cows became too valuable to be eating them and religious stricture came in making them sacred so that they are used only for milk.
All this does not justify cows roaming around in city streets. I am in favour of city governments catching any cow they find on a city street and taking it at least 100 Kms away and gifting it to a farmer or a milk cooperative.
Oh most educated HIndus will not drink water from the ganges. its really dirty. The govt is trying to clean it up via the Ganga Action Plan but its struggling to keep up with the large population. It seems as soon as you end up educating the current batch its not a good idea to throw stuff into rivers, another batch of migrants come from smaller villages far away from the river who have grown up on stories of how great the river is. And during the monsoon all the stuff does get washed away and for a month the river is actually clean enough to drink from. Hopefully Modi will have better luck at keeping the Ganga clean. What could help is diverting water from the Indus system into the Ganges system via the Yamuna. That would cause droughts in Pakistan but would solve the problem of keeping enough of a current in the Yamuna and Ganga to be able to deal with the pollution. Given recent pinpricks from Pakistan the Indian govt is seriously thinking of abrogating the Indus water sharing treaty and move in this direction.
Exactly. China has less land suitable for growing food and a higher population. If China has managed to make the transition from developing to newly developed there is hope for India yet. The only thing which could doom India is that by the time China is too expensive and its time to move the factories to India (most countries who have developed in the last 70 years have done it through cheap exports) ; automation might be cheap enough to avoid the move. China is going for a lot of robotics in its factories. If the factories never come to India, India will have to find a different route to development. They do have a good lead on outsourcing and call centers but that only a maximum of 1-2 million people. Without mass industiralization it is difficult for a country to go from developing to newly developed. That would be a challenge to which I don't have an answer.
Well if it was really evolution , the Indians who survive would be immune to bad air and could run all the dirty factories they want and outcompete Americans. No one wants dirty air- its a function of the level of development. When the choice is between a working factory which gvies 100 people jobs which they can use to feed their families (400 people) and the pollution from the factory will give 50 of those people a breathing ailment the ruthless evolutionary decision is its better for 50 to get sick and die than for 400 to starve and die. When you develop past the work or die state of society you can start caring for things like clean air and water. India has no social security - you work or you die (especially for the poor). For the middle class you will see one persons salary supporting an entire bunch of unemployed sons, daughter, nephews and cousins. Underemloyment is endemic and unemployment is fatal. In such a situation jobs come before the environment.
The problem is the federal structure of India. Delhi actually has very clean public transport with it being the first city in the world to go to all Natural gas public transport and a very large metro system (growing very fast with it projected to be bigger than the Tube in 4 years). Most of the smoke is coming from burning of farm waste in Punjab and Haryana which are 2 separate states whose govts dont really care if their burning is creating smog in Delhi. As their natural levels are much lower a little extra smoke doesnt hurt them. However with Delhi being a metropolis larger than Los Angeles in Size and with more population than New York there is always going to be some vehicular pollution. Most industries have already been shifted out of Delhi and power plants closed down and now Delhi buys its power from States 1000 kms away. But till everyone walks or bikes car smoke will be there. Another problem is the massive amount of construction going. A lot of the particulate matter is construction dust. Due to the scarcity of water in a city which is after all just 50 kms away from the Thar Desert construction companies tend to cut corners and not use liberal water sprinlling to keep the dust down during construction. Another massive problem is the homeless who tend to burn branches from all the trees in Delhi (Delhi has a higher green cover than New York but the parks have become places for homeless to hang out). If Delhi govt could move the homeless from the parks into homeless shelters it would help. Unlike China which can use heavyhanded measures , in India even the homeless vote so its not so easy to move them out. Nor can the Delhi govt force the Punjab and Haryana govts to go police every farm. Only educating the farmers will work, there are not simply enough police to actually try and enforce a ban. Unlike the US which has 1 security officer(local police, state police or federal security officer) for every 100 citizens , India has 1 security officer for every 5000 citizens. India is woefully underprepared to enforce anything through force.
My comment was that places outside the megacities are emptier than Europe. This is because while Europe's population is spread across a large no of cities, India's is disproportionately concentrated in a few mega cities. 100 million+ in the top 8 cities. Take that out and the population density falls to France like levels. If you go 100 Km away from a major city you start reaching very idyllic countryside.
What you forget is land area is not everything otherwise Canadians would think USA is horribly overpopulated. Look at the CIA fact book and look at the arable land percentage. India has one of the highest percentage in the world- its a really fertile place which is why it has always supported a high population density throughout history. Historically the population of India has always been higher than the population of Europe. USA may be 3 times bigger but a lot of it is Desert, mountains and forests. If you look beyond the top few megacities in India which have a disproportionate amount of the population the villages and towns are not that crowded. Of course they also have no job opportunities hence the educated youth move to the cities for jobs (some in outsourcing) and the youth who grew up in the cities move to the US to get away from the crowds.
India has now hit replacement level 2.1 children per woman. Most of India is still pretty empty (at least emptier than Europe). The problem is in the megacities. Most of the jobs are being produced in only 3 cities Delhi, Bombay and Bangalore and over 1 million people migrate from smaller towns to these cities every year so its a continuous fight for infrastructure to catch up. What needs to be done is build more newer cities and job opportunities in them (cheaper outsourcing anyone?) so the infrastructure in the bigger cities gets a chance to catch up. BTW your quip on populating the less populated parts of the world like USA is unjustified. The Indian govt has been blasting the population control message for 2 generations now and the educated people who migrate to USA have 1 or 2 kids at most. On the other hand I have seen many white Christian or white Jewish families in the US with 3,4,5 even 6 children and these are people with Computer Engineering degrees not farmers. So if its a cultural or religious thing Hindus from India is not where you should be looking.
Cost of living in Delhi is rather high due to it being the capital. e.g. Its more expensive than Texas so outsourcing that happens to Delhi is not generally for cost.
Of course they entered illegally. Spain had claimed the entire Americas. Its just that the English did not give a twit about violating Spanish law. Also all the native tribes had local communal property laws where the land was held in trust for the entire tribe. The settlers just land grabbed whatever they could at the barrel of a gun. They were all illegal till the US finally made treaties with all its neighbours and put immigration laws into place around the end of the 19th century. So only people who came after the late 1800s could claim to have come legally. Everyone else was illegal and so are their descendants. The point I am trying to make is the law is not everything.
'Not to the person receiving it. Not to the person providing it.' Thats like saying education is personal to the person getting it and to the person providing it
Elective surgery should still be elective as in the patient and doctor discuss the pros and cons before they decide to go for it (say a knee replacement) However cost should not be part of the discussion if the surgery is going to actually improve health and productivity. Cosmetic surgery is different so is end of life expensive treatments which should be self funded
' Choosing to ride out a sickness rather than seeing a doctor. Not getting flu shots. Not using Bandaids(TM) or BenGay(TM).'
Choosing to ride out a sickness is what we want to prevent as not only is the person sick and unproductive, they get other people sick. Also if it is something which gets progressively worse it costs a lot more to treat at a later state than earlier hence increasing the burden on the medical system Regarding using branded on non-branded medicines that can be left as a choice where a non branded option exists but if no off brand options exist like for say EpiPens the cost needs to be regulated.
Bureaucrats can be extremely efficient more so than private sector employees driven by short term quarter to quarter goals. It depends on how the incentives are setup. If the incentives are setup for maximum healthy productive life for all citizens than the bureaucracy will do so. Blaming the bureaucracy is just a way of covering up for mistakes politicians did in setting up incorrect incentives.
I totally disagree with mail in ballots especially for those working overseas. Those working overseas are not affected by the decisions congress makes so they should not have a say in who goes to Congress. Same for mail in ballots. If you cannot be bothered to come to a polling station to vote than you don't care enough for democracy and your vote should not count. Same for old and invalid folks. They are no longer contributing to society so they will only vote for the ones who promise the most free giveaways at the cost of active members of society. We should make voting as hard as possible so people value their democracy. Maybe we should add a 50 question GED test and only if you can answer above 80% does your vote get counted. We could also add a 100 m sprint and a 10 target shooting course and only if you meet the minimum quals your vote counts. So that only those who will be able to fight for the country in times of need will get to decide on what the country does.
This would work if instead of giving the receipt to the voter the receipt was put into a ballot box and the ballot boxes stored. If anyone disputes the electronic count as they find it not matching their expectation you file a challenge and the stored ballot boxes are counted manually. This also solves the issue of pushing the wrong button. As the vote is printed out the voter can see they pushed the worng button so they can cancel the vote and do another. Machine will store which votes were cancelled so during the recount the ballot would not be counted even if the voter puts both of the ballots into the box.
You could also get a receipt of the vote without the actual vote on it. You can still use the receipt to check if something suspicious happened but noone can check who you voted for by looking at the receipt.
He said great not rich. We are already rich. But not great. Why? Too many of those people are also rich... So we need a Turmp in the White House. BTW the President has hardly any power to do anything on domestic policy if Congress does not agree. He does have a lot of power on foreign policy so when electing a President you are electing more for what America's relationship with the world will be rather than Washington's relationship with you. And on that front we are SOL. We got Trump who wants to start trade wars with China and Hillary who wants to start real wars with Russia.
What is the benefit to Americans from policing the world? America spends billions on a worldwide military presence and a bloated State department. This in turn means that American corporations are not messed with all around the world. The benefit is to the corporations while the price is paid by the taxpayers. Lets take the example of Iraq. American taxpayers paid 2 trillions for a war in debt, taxes and foregone social spending. During the reconstruction corporations like Halliburton and KBB got billions in contracts from the new Iraqi govt but that only helps the shareholders of these corporations not all taxpayers. Also because America is the world cop, the USD is the world currency of trade. This means every country in the world needs USD and also needs to hold large USD reserves (to prevent attacks on their currency by Soros). What this means in practice is America can print all the money it wants to fund social spending and military spending without local inflation as the money is sucked out by other countries who need USD , keeping the money supply constant. This is an advantage (basically USA never has to worry about the national debt) but it would not be needed if the US was not playing global cop. US could balance the budget AND ramp up social spending such as free healthcare and free college if it stopped playing global cop. The only losers would be the shareholders of multinational American corporations who benefit from Pax Americana (and dont pay their fair share by hiding money overseas) and whichever sucker country decided to be the next global cop.
I propose that only those who have come in legally as in with a visa after 1965 or through Ellis Island before be allowed to keep their citizenship. Everyone else who came illegally like the original colonists and their descendants should have to give up their citizenship and get to the back of the line. Hillary is descended from the original illegal immigrants - the pilgrims. Donald's father came legally.
Most wines have a recommended serving temperature and some have to be served in chilled glasses. Its known that the temperature of the liquid will change the taste. Why else is Soda served chilled if not to make it sweeter.
As a diabetic I would love to be able to drink sweet stuff without worrying about sugar so I am looking forward to this mug hitting the market. In the meantime I will add ice.
I was quoting %age of GDP and you are quoting %age of federal budget. India's tax burden as a portion of GDP is much lesser than US. Please compare apples to apples.
You do realize that India is on a different tectonic plate than Asia but it is still not considered a continent while Europe is? As for North and South America they are not 2 plates - California is on a different plate so is the Carribean.
Because Obamacare is a devil's compromise. Back then the Democrats felt they could actually have a single payer system and extend medicare to all or even better have an NHS. Obamacare is a bandage. Yes it gets the uninsured covered but at the cost of enriching the insurance companies and raising premiums for the middle class while doing nothing about the price gouging and monopolies of the medical sector both Big hospitals and Big Pharma. Obama just wanted to get something passed to have a legacy so he compromised and he compromised till he ended up with a Republican plan.
A true medical reform plan would have a few components -
1) Increase the number of Primary Care Doctors in the country so it becomes competitive and doctors actually start being available on weekends and nights. If going to the doctor needs time off from work you dont go for preventive care and you only go when you are sick hence increasing costs to society 2) Regulation of drug prices so that BIg pharma makes a reasonable profit but not so much profit that they spend Billions on marketing of unnecessary drugs to doctors and patients 3) Regulation of doctors and hospitals so that they have to present a menu of costs before hand rather than a bill after the fact. Restaurants manage it even though any pad thai has more components than a simple surgery. You dont need to price everything individually like 2 cents for pepper, 12 cents for raw noodles and so on which is how hospitals charge today. 4) Allow foreign doctors to practice in the US with a quick 1 year residency to increase competition in the medical sector 5) Either take 5% of salary and make it cover all Medical care (no copays,no deductibles,no coinsurance) or make all medical care expenses (premiums,copays,coinsurance,deductibles) tax exempt and allow such medical losses to be carried forward so that if you had a really bad year you may not pay taxes for the next 10 years or ever. Personaly I prefer the first option. 6) Allow creation of networks of doctors who have assigned patients and they are paid a fixed amount per patient each year. If they can keep the patients healthy and not consuming any medical services. If the patients fall sick and need a lot of medical care they lose money. Basically make it the doctors self interest to have healthy clients rather than sick clients. Today doctors make more money when their clients are sick, surgeons make the most. The aim should be to prevent the need for surgery and starve surgeons of work so more will go towards primary and preventive care than surgery. 7) Have local medical supervisory boards elected like school boards to supervise doctors instead of letting the AMA self regulate. Medical care is a public good. Its not something people have a choice in consuming. It cannot be left to the private sector.
The US has no enemies which can actually invade the US. It only needs a nuclear deterrent force. The rest of the Army,navy and air force is a jobs creation program so it makes total sense to use it the most efficiently that is spread the jobs over all districts.
How is this legal under the WTO? The US seems to be violating the WTO rules. It is probably getting away as it has a stranglehold on the banks which run the global economy. This is very similar to how the US is violating WTO rules by having an H1B cap of 65000 a year. When India and US signed the WTO , India agreed to let USA sell its Coca Cola, Caterpillar combines and bunch of other things in India which India was perfectly capable of producing. The quid pro quo was India can sell software services in the US and people could come over to sell the same. As the Green Card was an immigration visa the H1B was created but the US violated the spirit of the deal by putting a cap on it. Seems the US is able to get away with breaking free trade deals.
Slashdot Mirror
The concept is simple. Cows give milk which is essential for babies whose mothers are not able to produce milk so they are considered sacred as in mothers are sacred.
If you want the historical reasons behind it when the proto-Aryans first moved from the Iranian plateau into India and met up with the remnants of the Indus Valley Civilization (first civilization in world history to have cities with sewers which is ironic considering the state of sewers in India today) , they brought high yielding cows with them. However these cows did not take well to the heat of the subcontinent and had to be bred with local cattle to create a special breed which could survive and give enough milk in India. Hence cows became too valuable to be eating them and religious stricture came in making them sacred so that they are used only for milk.
All this does not justify cows roaming around in city streets. I am in favour of city governments catching any cow they find on a city street and taking it at least 100 Kms away and gifting it to a farmer or a milk cooperative.
Oh most educated HIndus will not drink water from the ganges. its really dirty. The govt is trying to clean it up via the Ganga Action Plan but its struggling to keep up with the large population. It seems as soon as you end up educating the current batch its not a good idea to throw stuff into rivers, another batch of migrants come from smaller villages far away from the river who have grown up on stories of how great the river is. And during the monsoon all the stuff does get washed away and for a month the river is actually clean enough to drink from. Hopefully Modi will have better luck at keeping the Ganga clean. What could help is diverting water from the Indus system into the Ganges system via the Yamuna. That would cause droughts in Pakistan but would solve the problem of keeping enough of a current in the Yamuna and Ganga to be able to deal with the pollution. Given recent pinpricks from Pakistan the Indian govt is seriously thinking of abrogating the Indus water sharing treaty and move in this direction.
Exactly. China has less land suitable for growing food and a higher population. If China has managed to make the transition from developing to newly developed there is hope for India yet. The only thing which could doom India is that by the time China is too expensive and its time to move the factories to India (most countries who have developed in the last 70 years have done it through cheap exports) ; automation might be cheap enough to avoid the move. China is going for a lot of robotics in its factories. If the factories never come to India, India will have to find a different route to development. They do have a good lead on outsourcing and call centers but that only a maximum of 1-2 million people. Without mass industiralization it is difficult for a country to go from developing to newly developed. That would be a challenge to which I don't have an answer.
Well if it was really evolution , the Indians who survive would be immune to bad air and could run all the dirty factories they want and outcompete Americans. No one wants dirty air- its a function of the level of development. When the choice is between a working factory which gvies 100 people jobs which they can use to feed their families (400 people) and the pollution from the factory will give 50 of those people a breathing ailment the ruthless evolutionary decision is its better for 50 to get sick and die than for 400 to starve and die. When you develop past the work or die state of society you can start caring for things like clean air and water. India has no social security - you work or you die (especially for the poor). For the middle class you will see one persons salary supporting an entire bunch of unemployed sons, daughter, nephews and cousins. Underemloyment is endemic and unemployment is fatal. In such a situation jobs come before the environment.
The problem is the federal structure of India. Delhi actually has very clean public transport with it being the first city in the world to go to all Natural gas public transport and a very large metro system (growing very fast with it projected to be bigger than the Tube in 4 years). Most of the smoke is coming from burning of farm waste in Punjab and Haryana which are 2 separate states whose govts dont really care if their burning is creating smog in Delhi. As their natural levels are much lower a little extra smoke doesnt hurt them. However with Delhi being a metropolis larger than Los Angeles in Size and with more population than New York there is always going to be some vehicular pollution. Most industries have already been shifted out of Delhi and power plants closed down and now Delhi buys its power from States 1000 kms away. But till everyone walks or bikes car smoke will be there. Another problem is the massive amount of construction going. A lot of the particulate matter is construction dust. Due to the scarcity of water in a city which is after all just 50 kms away from the Thar Desert construction companies tend to cut corners and not use liberal water sprinlling to keep the dust down during construction. Another massive problem is the homeless who tend to burn branches from all the trees in Delhi (Delhi has a higher green cover than New York but the parks have become places for homeless to hang out). If Delhi govt could move the homeless from the parks into homeless shelters it would help. Unlike China which can use heavyhanded measures , in India even the homeless vote so its not so easy to move them out. Nor can the Delhi govt force the Punjab and Haryana govts to go police every farm. Only educating the farmers will work, there are not simply enough police to actually try and enforce a ban. Unlike the US which has 1 security officer(local police, state police or federal security officer) for every 100 citizens , India has 1 security officer for every 5000 citizens. India is woefully underprepared to enforce anything through force.
My comment was that places outside the megacities are emptier than Europe. This is because while Europe's population is spread across a large no of cities, India's is disproportionately concentrated in a few mega cities. 100 million+ in the top 8 cities. Take that out and the population density falls to France like levels. If you go 100 Km away from a major city you start reaching very idyllic countryside.
What you forget is land area is not everything otherwise Canadians would think USA is horribly overpopulated. Look at the CIA fact book and look at the arable land percentage. India has one of the highest percentage in the world- its a really fertile place which is why it has always supported a high population density throughout history. Historically the population of India has always been higher than the population of Europe. USA may be 3 times bigger but a lot of it is Desert, mountains and forests. If you look beyond the top few megacities in India which have a disproportionate amount of the population the villages and towns are not that crowded. Of course they also have no job opportunities hence the educated youth move to the cities for jobs (some in outsourcing) and the youth who grew up in the cities move to the US to get away from the crowds.
India has now hit replacement level 2.1 children per woman. Most of India is still pretty empty (at least emptier than Europe). The problem is in the megacities. Most of the jobs are being produced in only 3 cities Delhi, Bombay and Bangalore and over 1 million people migrate from smaller towns to these cities every year so its a continuous fight for infrastructure to catch up.
What needs to be done is build more newer cities and job opportunities in them (cheaper outsourcing anyone?) so the infrastructure in the bigger cities gets a chance to catch up.
BTW your quip on populating the less populated parts of the world like USA is unjustified. The Indian govt has been blasting the population control message for 2 generations now and the educated people who migrate to USA have 1 or 2 kids at most. On the other hand I have seen many white Christian or white Jewish families in the US with 3,4,5 even 6 children and these are people with Computer Engineering degrees not farmers. So if its a cultural or religious thing Hindus from India is not where you should be looking.
Cost of living in Delhi is rather high due to it being the capital. e.g. Its more expensive than Texas so outsourcing that happens to Delhi is not generally for cost.
Of course they entered illegally. Spain had claimed the entire Americas. Its just that the English did not give a twit about violating Spanish law.
Also all the native tribes had local communal property laws where the land was held in trust for the entire tribe. The settlers just land grabbed whatever they could at the barrel of a gun. They were all illegal till the US finally made treaties with all its neighbours and put immigration laws into place around the end of the 19th century. So only people who came after the late 1800s could claim to have come legally. Everyone else was illegal and so are their descendants.
The point I am trying to make is the law is not everything.
'Not to the person receiving it. Not to the person providing it.'
Thats like saying education is personal to the person getting it and to the person providing it
Elective surgery should still be elective as in the patient and doctor discuss the pros and cons before they decide to go for it (say a knee replacement)
However cost should not be part of the discussion if the surgery is going to actually improve health and productivity.
Cosmetic surgery is different so is end of life expensive treatments which should be self funded
' Choosing to ride out a sickness rather than seeing a doctor. Not getting flu shots. Not using Bandaids(TM) or BenGay(TM).'
Choosing to ride out a sickness is what we want to prevent as not only is the person sick and unproductive, they get other people sick. Also if it is something which gets progressively worse it costs a lot more to treat at a later state than earlier hence increasing the burden on the medical system
Regarding using branded on non-branded medicines that can be left as a choice where a non branded option exists but if no off brand options exist like for say EpiPens the cost needs to be regulated.
Bureaucrats can be extremely efficient more so than private sector employees driven by short term quarter to quarter goals. It depends on how the incentives are setup. If the incentives are setup for maximum healthy productive life for all citizens than the bureaucracy will do so. Blaming the bureaucracy is just a way of covering up for mistakes politicians did in setting up incorrect incentives.
I totally disagree with mail in ballots especially for those working overseas. Those working overseas are not affected by the decisions congress makes so they should not have a say in who goes to Congress. Same for mail in ballots. If you cannot be bothered to come to a polling station to vote than you don't care enough for democracy and your vote should not count. Same for old and invalid folks. They are no longer contributing to society so they will only vote for the ones who promise the most free giveaways at the cost of active members of society. We should make voting as hard as possible so people value their democracy. Maybe we should add a 50 question GED test and only if you can answer above 80% does your vote get counted. We could also add a 100 m sprint and a 10 target shooting course and only if you meet the minimum quals your vote counts. So that only those who will be able to fight for the country in times of need will get to decide on what the country does.
This would work if instead of giving the receipt to the voter the receipt was put into a ballot box and the ballot boxes stored. If anyone disputes the electronic count as they find it not matching their expectation you file a challenge and the stored ballot boxes are counted manually. This also solves the issue of pushing the wrong button. As the vote is printed out the voter can see they pushed the worng button so they can cancel the vote and do another. Machine will store which votes were cancelled so during the recount the ballot would not be counted even if the voter puts both of the ballots into the box.
You could also get a receipt of the vote without the actual vote on it. You can still use the receipt to check if something suspicious happened but noone can check who you voted for by looking at the receipt.
He said great not rich. We are already rich. But not great. Why? Too many of those people are also rich... So we need a Turmp in the White House. BTW the President has hardly any power to do anything on domestic policy if Congress does not agree. He does have a lot of power on foreign policy so when electing a President you are electing more for what America's relationship with the world will be rather than Washington's relationship with you. And on that front we are SOL.
We got Trump who wants to start trade wars with China and Hillary who wants to start real wars with Russia.
What is the benefit to Americans from policing the world? America spends billions on a worldwide military presence and a bloated State department. This in turn means that American corporations are not messed with all around the world. The benefit is to the corporations while the price is paid by the taxpayers. Lets take the example of Iraq. American taxpayers paid 2 trillions for a war in debt, taxes and foregone social spending. During the reconstruction corporations like Halliburton and KBB got billions in contracts from the new Iraqi govt but that only helps the shareholders of these corporations not all taxpayers.
Also because America is the world cop, the USD is the world currency of trade. This means every country in the world needs USD and also needs to hold large USD reserves (to prevent attacks on their currency by Soros). What this means in practice is America can print all the money it wants to fund social spending and military spending without local inflation as the money is sucked out by other countries who need USD , keeping the money supply constant. This is an advantage (basically USA never has to worry about the national debt) but it would not be needed if the US was not playing global cop. US could balance the budget AND ramp up social spending such as free healthcare and free college if it stopped playing global cop. The only losers would be the shareholders of multinational American corporations who benefit from Pax Americana (and dont pay their fair share by hiding money overseas) and whichever sucker country decided to be the next global cop.
I propose that only those who have come in legally as in with a visa after 1965 or through Ellis Island before be allowed to keep their citizenship. Everyone else who came illegally like the original colonists and their descendants should have to give up their citizenship and get to the back of the line. Hillary is descended from the original illegal immigrants - the pilgrims. Donald's father came legally.
Most wines have a recommended serving temperature and some have to be served in chilled glasses. Its known that the temperature of the liquid will change the taste. Why else is Soda served chilled if not to make it sweeter.
As a diabetic I would love to be able to drink sweet stuff without worrying about sugar so I am looking forward to this mug hitting the market. In the meantime I will add ice.
I was quoting %age of GDP and you are quoting %age of federal budget. India's tax burden as a portion of GDP is much lesser than US. Please compare apples to apples.
You do realize that India is on a different tectonic plate than Asia but it is still not considered a continent while Europe is?
As for North and South America they are not 2 plates - California is on a different plate so is the Carribean.
lets just say a scantily clad blackhole
Because Obamacare is a devil's compromise. Back then the Democrats felt they could actually have a single payer system and extend medicare to all or even better have an NHS. Obamacare is a bandage. Yes it gets the uninsured covered but at the cost of enriching the insurance companies and raising premiums for the middle class while doing nothing about the price gouging and monopolies of the medical sector both Big hospitals and Big Pharma. Obama just wanted to get something passed to have a legacy so he compromised and he compromised till he ended up with a Republican plan.
A true medical reform plan would have a few components -
1) Increase the number of Primary Care Doctors in the country so it becomes competitive and doctors actually start being available on weekends and nights. If going to the doctor needs time off from work you dont go for preventive care and you only go when you are sick hence increasing costs to society
2) Regulation of drug prices so that BIg pharma makes a reasonable profit but not so much profit that they spend Billions on marketing of unnecessary drugs to doctors and patients
3) Regulation of doctors and hospitals so that they have to present a menu of costs before hand rather than a bill after the fact. Restaurants manage it even though any pad thai has more components than a simple surgery. You dont need to price everything individually like 2 cents for pepper, 12 cents for raw noodles and so on which is how hospitals charge today.
4) Allow foreign doctors to practice in the US with a quick 1 year residency to increase competition in the medical sector
5) Either take 5% of salary and make it cover all Medical care (no copays,no deductibles,no coinsurance) or make all medical care expenses (premiums,copays,coinsurance,deductibles) tax exempt and allow such medical losses to be carried forward so that if you had a really bad year you may not pay taxes for the next 10 years or ever. Personaly I prefer the first option.
6) Allow creation of networks of doctors who have assigned patients and they are paid a fixed amount per patient each year. If they can keep the patients healthy and not consuming any medical services. If the patients fall sick and need a lot of medical care they lose money. Basically make it the doctors self interest to have healthy clients rather than sick clients. Today doctors make more money when their clients are sick, surgeons make the most. The aim should be to prevent the need for surgery and starve surgeons of work so more will go towards primary and preventive care than surgery.
7) Have local medical supervisory boards elected like school boards to supervise doctors instead of letting the AMA self regulate. Medical care is a public good. Its not something people have a choice in consuming. It cannot be left to the private sector.
The US has no enemies which can actually invade the US. It only needs a nuclear deterrent force. The rest of the Army,navy and air force is a jobs creation program so it makes total sense to use it the most efficiently that is spread the jobs over all districts.
How long before we get Adobe DNA editor where DNA sequences from blood found at the crime scene can be edited to match the DNA of the suspect?
Well this will just lead to all audio evidence being thrown out and only eyewitness accounts being considered evidence.
How is this legal under the WTO? The US seems to be violating the WTO rules. It is probably getting away as it has a stranglehold on the banks which run the global economy. This is very similar to how the US is violating WTO rules by having an H1B cap of 65000 a year. When India and US signed the WTO , India agreed to let USA sell its Coca Cola, Caterpillar combines and bunch of other things in India which India was perfectly capable of producing. The quid pro quo was India can sell software services in the US and people could come over to sell the same. As the Green Card was an immigration visa the H1B was created but the US violated the spirit of the deal by putting a cap on it. Seems the US is able to get away with breaking free trade deals.