We're talking about charging people for things they have no control over.
I have no control over the increasing average weight of the population at large, but am currently being charged for it by all airlines other than Samoa Air.
Funny you should mention the long straight roads. Not too far away, there's a piece of Autobahn (the A44) that's very straight, concreted in the middle (with removable barriers), has trees trimmed back from it and has two very large parking areas at either end. Why is it like this? In case the Russians attacked. Planes would take off from the US. By the time they were ready to land in Germany, the barriers would have been removed from the median and the whole thing would have been set up as an emergency runway.
At least as I understand TFA, traffic circles as you know them are not the same as the roundabouts now being introduced. On a traditional traffic circle, circulating traffic should yield to entering traffic, whereas on a roundabout, it's the other way round. The Wikipedia article on traffic circles appears to confirm this view.
So it's capitalism, but you want the government to intervene to artificially increase losses by seizing assets? You believe in the free market, but don't believe it's able to punish companies who are fined or lose executives because of misbehavior?
I don't argue (and haven't argued) that the company shouldn't in some way be punished (the suggestion that the company loses all proceeds from a contract they won by kickbacks seems like a sensible starting point), only that rubycodez' suggestion that the company be liquidated was seriously ill-thought-through.
So, let's say you have a retirement fund. You pay in your $100/month or whatever. The fund manager invests some of the money in the fund in a company that's doing well, has a sound business model, etc. The executives of that company are, unbeknownst to the fund manager, paying kickbacks and engaging in other illegal behaviour. According to you and the OP, once this is found out, you lose a chunk of your retirement fund? How is that in any way related to any concept of justice? It doesn't matter whether the victims of the kickbacks are the taxpayers or anyone else, that's no good reason to create more victims by arbitrarily confiscating the assets of people who've done nothing more criminal than (in this example) saving for their retirement.
The people committing the crime should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. People who unwittingly provided the capital with which the crime was performed are innocent.
Not to mention that if only the executives know about it, the shareholders or owners suddenly lose their entire investment - even though, if they'd known about the behaviour in question, they might have immediately terminated the executives in question and notified the authorities.
Punishing the innocent is something I often think of as best avoided.
So what you're saying is that the market has chosen and its choice was that your steel should be more expensive due to lack of foreign competition as a result of the world's most obtuse protectionist obstacle to free trade?
I could be wrong, but I thing the GGP's "anything better to do" was sarcastic, pointing at the fact that the police have lots of better things to be doing, so why are we hiring them out to police private parties? I don't necessarily agree with him, just pointing out the alternative interpretation.
I'll take the Australian, German or French system any day over the abomination that is the NHS.
And having lived in the UK for 20 years and Germany for 10, I'll take the NHS. What do your personal preferences (or for that matter mine) have to do with the debate at hand?
Re:It is bad, wrong way to go about it
on
Health Care Reform
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· Score: 1
The US government spends a lot of money on foreign aid (although not nearly as much as most Americans think it does). That doesn't mean it's running foreign countries.
Re:post office ? highway system ? public schools ?
on
Health Care Reform
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· Score: 1
I'm English and live in Germany. I'm mostly amazed that, even if I'm misinformed about the odd thing here and there, I have a better grasp of the proposed reform than most of the Americans I speak to.
Incidentally, I think your post was more replying to the grandparent post, not to me.
Re:It is bad, wrong way to go about it
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 1
It costs money to get people health insurance. That doesn't mean that the government's going to be providing that insurance.
CBO and JCT estimate that enacting both pieces of legislation—H.R. 3590 and the reconciliation proposal— would produce a net reduction in federal deficits of $138 billion over the 2010–2019 period as result of changes in direct spending and revenue (see the top panel of Table 1 and subtitle A of title II on Table 5).
Re:It is bad, wrong way to go about it
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 1
All regulation of any kind is "running" the thing that is being regulated.
OK, so the person who writes the RFC on SMTP, saying what SMTP servers can and can't do, is then running all of the world's SMTP servers? You don't think you might be approaching this from a somewhat.. hardline perspective?
Re:It is bad, wrong way to go about it
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 1
Did you, or are you going by what Glenn Beck is saying?
Re:It is bad, wrong way to go about it
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 1
Go to the actual proposal on whitehouse.gov [whitehouse.gov] and read it for yourself.
I don't see anything about an expansion of Medicare there - it proposes closing the donut hole and other tightening. You're right that it expands Medicaid - but more in the nature of a tweak than anything significant.
Re:It is bad, wrong way to go about it
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 1
Page 116:
TITLE II—EDUCATION AND
2 HEALTH
3 Subtitle A—Education
4 SEC. 2001. SHORT TITLE; REFERENCES.
5 (a) SHORT TITLE.—This subtitle may be cited as the
6 ‘‘SAFRA Act’’.
Perhaps you ought to read through a newer version of the bill.
Re:It is bad, wrong way to go about it
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 1
Medicare and medicaid... will be expanded to cover something like 15-20 million additional Americans
Do you have a source for that?
Everyone else gets mandated employer insurance
There's an individual mandate, but nobody has said that it has to be via your employer.
Re:It is bad, wrong way to go about it
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Um, if it doesn't initially have a single payer setup, it eventually will.
And that will be a different debate. When that debate's being had, your point will be germane (although still not helpful). That's not the debate that we're having today.
"After controlling for enabling and need characteristics in logistic regression models, Veterans Administration (VA)-only users were 2 to 8 times more satisfied with their outpatient care than were VA nonusers on 5 out of 10 satisfaction measures.". Oh, and I have a source. You appear to have a mysterious "Someone in Congress".
Also, the proposed health care bill doesn't set up anything even slightly like the VA. VA -> single provider of health care, like the NHS in Britain. The proposed public option would have been a step toward having a single payer, but still with multiple independent providers. The proposed bill doesn't introduce either.
Re:It is bad, wrong way to go about it
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Is there anything that the government runs that really functions correctly/efficiently?
Is there anything about the proposed act that is government-run? If there is, I'd missed it. It mandates a bunch of things that private insurance companies are required to do, but it doesn't set up a public option (aka government-run health care).
A probably won't be able to keep working 60 hour weeks, since there's now significantly more housework that A needs to do...
I'm not saying that A needs to support B totally or in perpetuity, but there's surely some sort of compensation needed from A to B to deal with the decision that they made together which negatively affected B's job prospects and positively developed A's.
B definitely now needs to go to work. My argument is that if A doesn't supplement B's wage, then B has very much got the short end of this deal.
There's no laziness involved here. I know a couple (still together) who fit the roles of A and B. In my opinion, B in that case works just as hard as A.
Also note that I don't care which gender A and B are (can be the same gender for all I care). The fact that B is often female is neither here nor there.
And the example has nothing to say about who gets custody of the child. That's a separate matter.
Think about this case: A and B are both working. Then they have a child. At that point, they decide that B will stay at home to look after that child. A goes to work, but is now working 60-hour weeks to bring in enough money to cover B not working. This turns out to work quite well and after a while, A is bringing in money - but still working long hours. The child is old enough for Kindergarten now and B doesn't really need to stay home any more. But doing so keeps the home running, the laundry washed, the place clean, the grocery shopping done and means there's someone there for the child when kindergarten is done. A works hard to bring money, but doesn't need to do anything at all around the house. B works hard to keep the domestic side going, but doesn't do any money-bringing work.
After ten years of doing this, A and B divorce. B's chances in the job market are now much reduced from what they were. A is still raking in money.
Is it really equitable that A has no responsibiliity to support B? At least for a time?
You're missing the point of the comment about his daughter leaving. Her PC use and TV time is mainly in the evening, meaning that the power used for that is mainly coming from the grid and not from solar. So the net effect of his daughter going to college, power-wise, is that the proportion of power supplied by his solar panels will be increased from where it otherwise would have been - even though the total amount involved may drop.
If you want to question his logic, a more fruitful point might be to consider that while his ROI is whatever%, this is after tying himself in to a (say) 15-year investment. A T-Note taken at the same time last year would get him 10 years of interest at 4.168% - and if he needed to get out of it due to a change in circumstances, he could sell the note on (potentially absorbing a minor loss). His only realistic choice with the panels is to sell the house they're attached to.
Slashdot Mirror
We're talking about charging people for things they have no control over.
I have no control over the increasing average weight of the population at large, but am currently being charged for it by all airlines other than Samoa Air.
Funny you should mention the long straight roads. Not too far away, there's a piece of Autobahn (the A44) that's very straight, concreted in the middle (with removable barriers), has trees trimmed back from it and has two very large parking areas at either end. Why is it like this? In case the Russians attacked. Planes would take off from the US. By the time they were ready to land in Germany, the barriers would have been removed from the median and the whole thing would have been set up as an emergency runway.
there are plenty of roundabouts all over Europe.
Whilst there are a few in the area I live in, there are very few roundabouts in Germany.
At least as I understand TFA, traffic circles as you know them are not the same as the roundabouts now being introduced. On a traditional traffic circle, circulating traffic should yield to entering traffic, whereas on a roundabout, it's the other way round. The Wikipedia article on traffic circles appears to confirm this view.
So it's capitalism, but you want the government to intervene to artificially increase losses by seizing assets? You believe in the free market, but don't believe it's able to punish companies who are fined or lose executives because of misbehavior?
I don't argue (and haven't argued) that the company shouldn't in some way be punished (the suggestion that the company loses all proceeds from a contract they won by kickbacks seems like a sensible starting point), only that rubycodez' suggestion that the company be liquidated was seriously ill-thought-through.
So, let's say you have a retirement fund. You pay in your $100/month or whatever. The fund manager invests some of the money in the fund in a company that's doing well, has a sound business model, etc. The executives of that company are, unbeknownst to the fund manager, paying kickbacks and engaging in other illegal behaviour. According to you and the OP, once this is found out, you lose a chunk of your retirement fund? How is that in any way related to any concept of justice? It doesn't matter whether the victims of the kickbacks are the taxpayers or anyone else, that's no good reason to create more victims by arbitrarily confiscating the assets of people who've done nothing more criminal than (in this example) saving for their retirement.
The people committing the crime should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. People who unwittingly provided the capital with which the crime was performed are innocent.
Not to mention that if only the executives know about it, the shareholders or owners suddenly lose their entire investment - even though, if they'd known about the behaviour in question, they might have immediately terminated the executives in question and notified the authorities.
Punishing the innocent is something I often think of as best avoided.
So what you're saying is that the market has chosen and its choice was that your steel should be more expensive due to lack of foreign competition as a result of the world's most obtuse protectionist obstacle to free trade?
HIs brain's warped, but not by MySQL, which supports this just fine, even with MyISAM.
I could be wrong, but I thing the GGP's "anything better to do" was sarcastic, pointing at the fact that the police have lots of better things to be doing, so why are we hiring them out to police private parties? I don't necessarily agree with him, just pointing out the alternative interpretation.
I'll take the Australian, German or French system any day over the abomination that is the NHS.
And having lived in the UK for 20 years and Germany for 10, I'll take the NHS. What do your personal preferences (or for that matter mine) have to do with the debate at hand?
The US government spends a lot of money on foreign aid (although not nearly as much as most Americans think it does). That doesn't mean it's running foreign countries.
I'm English and live in Germany. I'm mostly amazed that, even if I'm misinformed about the odd thing here and there, I have a better grasp of the proposed reform than most of the Americans I speak to.
Incidentally, I think your post was more replying to the grandparent post, not to me.
It costs money to get people health insurance. That doesn't mean that the government's going to be providing that insurance.
Where do you get a trillion dollars from? The CBO has this to say:
All regulation of any kind is "running" the thing that is being regulated.
OK, so the person who writes the RFC on SMTP, saying what SMTP servers can and can't do, is then running all of the world's SMTP servers? You don't think you might be approaching this from a somewhat.. hardline perspective?
Did you, or are you going by what Glenn Beck is saying?
Go to the actual proposal on whitehouse.gov [whitehouse.gov] and read it for yourself.
I don't see anything about an expansion of Medicare there - it proposes closing the donut hole and other tightening. You're right that it expands Medicaid - but more in the nature of a tweak than anything significant.
You may prefer to look at the current text of the bill.
Page 116:
TITLE II—EDUCATION AND
2 HEALTH
3 Subtitle A—Education
4 SEC. 2001. SHORT TITLE; REFERENCES.
5 (a) SHORT TITLE.—This subtitle may be cited as the
6 ‘‘SAFRA Act’’.
Perhaps you ought to read through a newer version of the bill.
Medicare and medicaid ... will be expanded to cover something like 15-20 million additional Americans
Do you have a source for that?
Everyone else gets mandated employer insurance
There's an individual mandate, but nobody has said that it has to be via your employer.
Um, if it doesn't initially have a single payer setup, it eventually will.
And that will be a different debate. When that debate's being had, your point will be germane (although still not helpful). That's not the debate that we're having today.
"After controlling for enabling and need characteristics in logistic regression models, Veterans Administration (VA)-only users were 2 to 8 times more satisfied with their outpatient care than were VA nonusers on 5 out of 10 satisfaction measures.". Oh, and I have a source. You appear to have a mysterious "Someone in Congress".
Also, the proposed health care bill doesn't set up anything even slightly like the VA. VA -> single provider of health care, like the NHS in Britain. The proposed public option would have been a step toward having a single payer, but still with multiple independent providers. The proposed bill doesn't introduce either.
Is there anything that the government runs that really functions correctly/efficiently?
Is there anything about the proposed act that is government-run? If there is, I'd missed it. It mandates a bunch of things that private insurance companies are required to do, but it doesn't set up a public option (aka government-run health care).
A probably won't be able to keep working 60 hour weeks, since there's now significantly more housework that A needs to do...
I'm not saying that A needs to support B totally or in perpetuity, but there's surely some sort of compensation needed from A to B to deal with the decision that they made together which negatively affected B's job prospects and positively developed A's.
B definitely now needs to go to work. My argument is that if A doesn't supplement B's wage, then B has very much got the short end of this deal.
There's no laziness involved here. I know a couple (still together) who fit the roles of A and B. In my opinion, B in that case works just as hard as A.
Also note that I don't care which gender A and B are (can be the same gender for all I care). The fact that B is often female is neither here nor there.
And the example has nothing to say about who gets custody of the child. That's a separate matter.
Think about this case: A and B are both working. Then they have a child. At that point, they decide that B will stay at home to look after that child. A goes to work, but is now working 60-hour weeks to bring in enough money to cover B not working. This turns out to work quite well and after a while, A is bringing in money - but still working long hours. The child is old enough for Kindergarten now and B doesn't really need to stay home any more. But doing so keeps the home running, the laundry washed, the place clean, the grocery shopping done and means there's someone there for the child when kindergarten is done. A works hard to bring money, but doesn't need to do anything at all around the house. B works hard to keep the domestic side going, but doesn't do any money-bringing work.
After ten years of doing this, A and B divorce. B's chances in the job market are now much reduced from what they were. A is still raking in money.
Is it really equitable that A has no responsibiliity to support B? At least for a time?
You're missing the point of the comment about his daughter leaving. Her PC use and TV time is mainly in the evening, meaning that the power used for that is mainly coming from the grid and not from solar. So the net effect of his daughter going to college, power-wise, is that the proportion of power supplied by his solar panels will be increased from where it otherwise would have been - even though the total amount involved may drop.
If you want to question his logic, a more fruitful point might be to consider that while his ROI is whatever%, this is after tying himself in to a (say) 15-year investment. A T-Note taken at the same time last year would get him 10 years of interest at 4.168% - and if he needed to get out of it due to a change in circumstances, he could sell the note on (potentially absorbing a minor loss). His only realistic choice with the panels is to sell the house they're attached to.