To reply directly to your analogy: it's wrong. Government spending isn't a household budget and anyone who tries to make that comparison is explicitly demonstrating their ignorance of economics.
I hear that often, and tend to believe it because I hear smart economists say that all the time. However, I really can't explain it to other people. I find articles like this: http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/new-roosevelt/federal-budget-not-household-budget-here-s-why
But after reading it, it is still unclear why, for example, debt is required/not required to make a Government budget work.
I don't know if it saved lives overall or not. I don't know if dropping it over the water, or on a military base would have shocked them enough to surrender. Who knows? It is hard to redo history as an experiment.
I do know that it most likely saved my Grandpa's life though. He was on a navy boat, days away from attempting to take a heavily fortified beach. The predicted casualties were around 60-70%.
When you make the label binary, then what you are really telling the consumer is that all that matters is whether there are GMOs in there or not, and that only makes any sense for people that just think that GMOs are bad in principle.
I think that is exactly what most pro-label people wanted. A binary choice out of principle.
Among people I talk to, and I don't know many that believe GMO's are unhealthy. The main concerns I heard were stuff about patenting food being a bad idea, GMO's leading to higher use of pesticide, corporate control over non-seeding plants, mono-culture crops having increased chance of mass die off if a new disease or pest infects them, etc...
So very much an "in principle" label.
Most people that are serious about sustainable food already know that labels like 'organic' don't mean much without some extra research. GMO would just be one more label. Just a starting place. If you want the specifics about whether GMO X is good/bad, you better do some reading.
There are certain types of creative goods and services that it makes no sense to patent. Patents in certain areas hinder new ideas, especially if that good or service is one that favors evolutionary ideas...generational growth and interbreeding / crossbreeding.
Like fashion. There are no patents on any designs in fashion. People are free to 'steal', mix/match, build on others works, etc.. Yet the fashion industry is still huge. And good designers still make a ton of money.
I think agriculture should have a similar free exchange of ideas. Maybe not 100% patent free, but definitely much less locked down than it is today. If that means that companies like Monsanto spend less on researching new GMO's, so be it. If society wants it, society can put more money into Universities and other institutes of basic research. I think that is a much better situation than handing our food future over to companies that want to produce seeds that grow into seedless plants.
Saving seeds, cross breeding, etc.. are a core part of agriculture. I would hate to see a world were every farm is just a clone of the next farm over, and all 100% dependent on patented seeds, with no variety in our produce.
Someone posted above that by 2025, 50kWh batteries will be 8,000 dollars. That isn't very much per household. Heck, 25,000 dollars per household (the current cost of 50kWh battery) isn't that expensive as a ratio to the house cost where I live right now. Mandating that all new homes must have a 50kWh battery closet, for use by the owner, or the electricity provider, to store energy, would be a good step towards a complete storage system.
But it would be a lot more efficient if the energy providers would have mandates to start building out storage. Right now I don't think there are any renewable mandates that dictate anything about storage. There are a lot of companies working on large scale energy storage right now. It is going to become one of the next big booming businesses. It is basically a given assumption that grid storage is the future. The question is just how long it will take. http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2013/12/f5/Grid%20Energy%20Storage%20December%202013.pdf
This guy's liquid metal grid batteries have been getting a bunch of hype. http://www.donaldsadoway.com/ds_projects/grid-level-electricity-storage/
Ideally, energy producers should be working on installing more and more energy storage, but I don't see why your electric car, plugged into your garage, shouldn't also be able to power your house when you get home if the wind/sun stops shining.
I can think of several major social structure differences between the history of black Americans and asian Americans. I just wrote half a book explaining it. Then deleted it. If you are curious you can figure it out yourself.
most journalists* little more than Democratic party operatives
You do know that the largest most viewed news channel in the US is Fox right? And you know that by far the vast majority of talk radio is conservative, right?
You must be referring to journalists that research lengthy pieces, study material in depth, and write long articles for organizations like the New York Times or Rolling Stone I assume? The tiny tiny percent of the modern news industry....
I'll grant you that most modern culture (Hollywood, etc..) has a progressive/liberal predominance. But whose fault is that? Assuming we aren't entering conspiracy land here, why do you think Hollywood is "left"? How did it get that way, and why does it remain that way? I'd be curious to hear your opinion.
That is an argument why the news should have additional regulations about political coverage, especially with regards to libel and slander laws, not why random billionaires should continue to be able to influence elections with unlimited unregulated advertisements.
If we forced candidates to only use a set amount of public funds for elections, they were only given a set amount of public air time, required to attend X public debates... and they didn't have to compete with billions of dollars flooding tv/radio, their actual messages would be a lot clearer to the American people, regardless of what the news and media was reporting.
If I could wave a magic wand, I would limit all election related donations to individuals, and limit the amount. Like 100 dollars per person per year. Warren Buffet, Koch Brothers, anyone. 100 dollars per year directly to a candidate or political party. No TV or radio ads allowed beyond the set public funding dollars and amount raised through the small 100 dollar donations.
"You buy the camera, many times you open a port on a router, but you fail to change the password. I am not going to blame the manufacturer for that."
If a large segment of people, for the last 10 years, have continually forgotten to change default passwords, I am ready to blame the manufacturer(s). Make it so the camera won't turn on/work if the password isn't changed. Maybe generate a random password for each device...
Yeah the people not changing passwords are irresponsible... but if 50% of your customers have been irresponsible for a decade, maybe it is time to admit that the users are not going to change. That means technology is the solution, not changing user behavior.
If you found a physical piece of mail in your mail box, with a hand typed letter stating in detail how you were going to get raped and murdered tonight, you wouldn't take it seriously?
How is an anonymous online message, stating your home address, any different? I have an answer: because we've let it become different. Somehow it is acceptable for kids (and lots of adults) to behave online completely differently than they would in real life.
And maybe in this new age of the internet we will just have to learn how to live with 12 year olds cursing like sailors, but I think it is a very dangerous world if we start allowing death/rape threats to go unanswered.
Switching to electricity generated outside the home using natural gas or even coal dramatically improves the lives of the world’s poor.
So would switching to electricity generated outside the home via renewables, or on the home itself using solar...
At this point, anyone claiming that renewables causes "energy prices to soar" really needs to prove it. Because countries all around the world have been increasing renewable use without seeing "soaring prices". And solar and other green technologies are getting cheaper every day.
And wind farms, wave farms, geothermal, solar, etc.. certainly would employ more local people to build and maintain them then if the poor country was just importing coal.
I'm talking about the ones we don't share. That is the concern. Taking wildly foreign genes from species that would never co-mingle, and have zero common ancestors.
I'm not saying GMO's are bad, just that we can't kid ourselves that genetic engineering is equivalent to cross breeding/selective trait breeding.
I just went to https://www.coveroregon.com out of curiosity. I pretended to be a family of 4 with a 45,000 dollar income. There were a bunch of plans to choose from, including ones with 1,500 dollar deductibles. I think that one looked like it covered 35% of costs after the 1,500, but like all plans, caps the total amount you would ever have to spend per year to cover emergencies. Like, you would never get stuck with 35% of a 100,000 dollar bill. The cap is something like 10k or 12k.
Any self-respecting conservative knows all too well that McKinsey is immune from attack as an organization committed to presenting a left leaning political slant as it remains a bastion of business advice and a company that simply cannot be painted with a blue brush.
When was the last time we saw insurance premiums experience an annual increase of less than 5 percent? I cannot remember such a time and doubt that you can either.
All in all, it is going to be quite a stretch for Obamacare opponents to turn this data into bad news. Increased competition among insurers means better prices and better policies. An increase in the number of policies one can choose from also means improvements in policy quality and premium costs.
I find the meme about poor states = conservative to be a bit annoying and misleading
Income vs cost of living - spending power, is just one aspect of defining some area as 'poorer' than another. The other metric that people most often use is the fact that more Federal dollars (food stamps, etc..) flows into red states, than comes out of them.
A lot of times, Blue state people summarize this fact with simple sentences like "red states are poorer" or "red states are moochers, blue states are the providers".
Big industrious urban areas just plain pump out way more tax dollars than smaller rural states. But you really should look into the social spending (food stamps, various other benefits, like vet benefits): I am pretty sure that it is a fact that a higher percent of the red state populations are taking government benefits and subsidies than the blue states.
In a 'for profit' health care system, like any other service in a free market, every step along the supply chain someone is taking their cut. And each of those steps from source (like, making a scapel) to final product (like, a surgery) is constantly seeking to maximize profit. The very concept of making a profit while someone is dying.... doesn't that just feel wrong on so many levels?
The only way that costs are kept in check in a free market are 1) an informed consumer and 2) competition.
1 and 2 are nearly impossible to do well in healthcare. Anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't really thought the issue through, or talked with hospitals and other healthcare infrastructure that has to deal with service coverage areas and understand how much of healthcare services are basically natural monopolies that form around community need. (As opposed to say, having 6 competing hospitals built in one small town, and 1 hospital ends up "winning" the free market war, and 5 hospitals shut down. It just doesn't work that way).
Price gouging, fraud and EMTALA are the main culprits.
It is vastly more complex than your three reasons.
But it can all be simplified down to two words: "for profit".
If you can't shop around for the best heart doctor, while you are having a heart attack, a free market solution to health care is not possible. Using market forces to shape things like preventative care might be possible, but that market would have to be completely separated from the emergency care market (everything, like supply chains, supplies of doctors and nurses, wages, etc.. ), which isn't really feasible.
It is interesting, but not surprising, that the liberal talking points are heavily embedded, a clear flag that the study has an inherent bias. The "poorest states" being conservative sounds counter to only the picture that liberals try to paint of conservatives, not to reality for anyone who pays any attention. Hard working rural America has always been conservative. More often than not, it is the large urban populations that shift state's support bias to liberal, and it is those same urban areas that hold the most desperate and dependent populations of the truly underprivileged.
"poorest states" being conservative is accurate. Last time I checked, more federal tax dollars (spent on social support) flows into red states than goes into blue states. Blue states are 'richer' and tend to take care of their population more, but also have overall higher wages and less unemployment.
TL:DR - The 'big urban' areas make a lot of money. A lot more than rural areas. Rural areas are tax moochers, urban areas are tax generators.
Share, as in we all, right now, have genes in common with lots of animals and plants because of common ancestors. I understand that. But how exactly would a Jelly Fish share genes with a Rabbit?
Are you talking about some multi step path that could conceivably transfer a Jelly Fish 'glow' gene into a rabbit like:
Jelly Fish gets eaten by fish, fish eaten by bear, bear poo fertilizes a plant, rabbit eats the plant?
Share, as in we all, right now, have genes in common with lots of animals and plants because of common ancestors. I understand that. But how exactly would a Jelly Fish share genes with a Rabbit?
Slashdot Mirror
that's $30,000 per year your family will have to pay back sooner or later.
Government budgets are not like household budgets.
To reply directly to your analogy: it's wrong. Government spending isn't a household budget and anyone who tries to make that comparison is explicitly demonstrating their ignorance of economics.
I hear that often, and tend to believe it because I hear smart economists say that all the time. However, I really can't explain it to other people. I find articles like this:
http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/new-roosevelt/federal-budget-not-household-budget-here-s-why
But after reading it, it is still unclear why, for example, debt is required/not required to make a Government budget work.
I don't know if it saved lives overall or not. I don't know if dropping it over the water, or on a military base would have shocked them enough to surrender. Who knows? It is hard to redo history as an experiment.
I do know that it most likely saved my Grandpa's life though. He was on a navy boat, days away from attempting to take a heavily fortified beach. The predicted casualties were around 60-70%.
When you make the label binary, then what you are really telling the consumer is that all that matters is whether there are GMOs in there or not, and that only makes any sense for people that just think that GMOs are bad in principle.
I think that is exactly what most pro-label people wanted. A binary choice out of principle.
Among people I talk to, and I don't know many that believe GMO's are unhealthy. The main concerns I heard were stuff about patenting food being a bad idea, GMO's leading to higher use of pesticide, corporate control over non-seeding plants, mono-culture crops having increased chance of mass die off if a new disease or pest infects them, etc...
So very much an "in principle" label.
Most people that are serious about sustainable food already know that labels like 'organic' don't mean much without some extra research. GMO would just be one more label. Just a starting place. If you want the specifics about whether GMO X is good/bad, you better do some reading.
There are certain types of creative goods and services that it makes no sense to patent. Patents in certain areas hinder new ideas, especially if that good or service is one that favors evolutionary ideas...generational growth and interbreeding / crossbreeding.
Like fashion. There are no patents on any designs in fashion. People are free to 'steal', mix/match, build on others works, etc.. Yet the fashion industry is still huge. And good designers still make a ton of money.
I think agriculture should have a similar free exchange of ideas. Maybe not 100% patent free, but definitely much less locked down than it is today. If that means that companies like Monsanto spend less on researching new GMO's, so be it. If society wants it, society can put more money into Universities and other institutes of basic research. I think that is a much better situation than handing our food future over to companies that want to produce seeds that grow into seedless plants.
Saving seeds, cross breeding, etc.. are a core part of agriculture. I would hate to see a world were every farm is just a clone of the next farm over, and all 100% dependent on patented seeds, with no variety in our produce.
Someone posted above that by 2025, 50kWh batteries will be 8,000 dollars. That isn't very much per household. Heck, 25,000 dollars per household (the current cost of 50kWh battery) isn't that expensive as a ratio to the house cost where I live right now. Mandating that all new homes must have a 50kWh battery closet, for use by the owner, or the electricity provider, to store energy, would be a good step towards a complete storage system.
But it would be a lot more efficient if the energy providers would have mandates to start building out storage. Right now I don't think there are any renewable mandates that dictate anything about storage. There are a lot of companies working on large scale energy storage right now. It is going to become one of the next big booming businesses. It is basically a given assumption that grid storage is the future. The question is just how long it will take. http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2013/12/f5/Grid%20Energy%20Storage%20December%202013.pdf
This guy's liquid metal grid batteries have been getting a bunch of hype.
http://www.donaldsadoway.com/ds_projects/grid-level-electricity-storage/
Ideally, energy producers should be working on installing more and more energy storage, but I don't see why your electric car, plugged into your garage, shouldn't also be able to power your house when you get home if the wind/sun stops shining.
http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2013/12/f5/Grid%20Energy%20Storage%20December%202013.pdf
http://www.donaldsadoway.com/ds_projects/grid-level-electricity-storage/
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v514/n7522/full/nature13700.html
http://greeneconomypost.com/fifteen-grid-scale-energy-storage-solutions-watch-15924.htm
Is that projected cost taking into account Tesla's new battery factory? Where did the $8,000 by 2025 come from?
Or increased grid energy storage as technology allows.
http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2013/12/f5/Grid%20Energy%20Storage%20December%202013.pdf
http://www.donaldsadoway.com/ds_projects/grid-level-electricity-storage/
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v514/n7522/full/nature13700.html
http://greeneconomypost.com/fifteen-grid-scale-energy-storage-solutions-watch-15924.htm
I can think of several major social structure differences between the history of black Americans and asian Americans. I just wrote half a book explaining it. Then deleted it. If you are curious you can figure it out yourself.
Veganism is a lot more extreme than just being a vegetarian. Vegetarianism is common in many parts of the world. But veganism certainly is not.
most journalists* little more than Democratic party operatives
You do know that the largest most viewed news channel in the US is Fox right? And you know that by far the vast majority of talk radio is conservative, right?
You must be referring to journalists that research lengthy pieces, study material in depth, and write long articles for organizations like the New York Times or Rolling Stone I assume? The tiny tiny percent of the modern news industry....
I'll grant you that most modern culture (Hollywood, etc..) has a progressive/liberal predominance. But whose fault is that? Assuming we aren't entering conspiracy land here, why do you think Hollywood is "left"? How did it get that way, and why does it remain that way? I'd be curious to hear your opinion.
That is an argument why the news should have additional regulations about political coverage, especially with regards to libel and slander laws, not why random billionaires should continue to be able to influence elections with unlimited unregulated advertisements.
If we forced candidates to only use a set amount of public funds for elections, they were only given a set amount of public air time, required to attend X public debates... and they didn't have to compete with billions of dollars flooding tv/radio, their actual messages would be a lot clearer to the American people, regardless of what the news and media was reporting.
If I could wave a magic wand, I would limit all election related donations to individuals, and limit the amount. Like 100 dollars per person per year. Warren Buffet, Koch Brothers, anyone. 100 dollars per year directly to a candidate or political party. No TV or radio ads allowed beyond the set public funding dollars and amount raised through the small 100 dollar donations.
"You buy the camera, many times you open a port on a router, but you fail to change the password. I am not going to blame the manufacturer for that."
If a large segment of people, for the last 10 years, have continually forgotten to change default passwords, I am ready to blame the manufacturer(s). Make it so the camera won't turn on/work if the password isn't changed. Maybe generate a random password for each device...
Yeah the people not changing passwords are irresponsible... but if 50% of your customers have been irresponsible for a decade, maybe it is time to admit that the users are not going to change. That means technology is the solution, not changing user behavior.
If you found a physical piece of mail in your mail box, with a hand typed letter stating in detail how you were going to get raped and murdered tonight, you wouldn't take it seriously?
How is an anonymous online message, stating your home address, any different? I have an answer: because we've let it become different. Somehow it is acceptable for kids (and lots of adults) to behave online completely differently than they would in real life.
And maybe in this new age of the internet we will just have to learn how to live with 12 year olds cursing like sailors, but I think it is a very dangerous world if we start allowing death/rape threats to go unanswered.
Switching to electricity generated outside the home using natural gas or even coal dramatically improves the lives of the world’s poor.
So would switching to electricity generated outside the home via renewables, or on the home itself using solar...
At this point, anyone claiming that renewables causes "energy prices to soar" really needs to prove it. Because countries all around the world have been increasing renewable use without seeing "soaring prices". And solar and other green technologies are getting cheaper every day.
And wind farms, wave farms, geothermal, solar, etc.. certainly would employ more local people to build and maintain them then if the poor country was just importing coal.
I'm talking about the ones we don't share. That is the concern. Taking wildly foreign genes from species that would never co-mingle, and have zero common ancestors.
I'm not saying GMO's are bad, just that we can't kid ourselves that genetic engineering is equivalent to cross breeding/selective trait breeding.
I just went to https://www.coveroregon.com out of curiosity. I pretended to be a family of 4 with a 45,000 dollar income. There were a bunch of plans to choose from, including ones with 1,500 dollar deductibles. I think that one looked like it covered 35% of costs after the 1,500, but like all plans, caps the total amount you would ever have to spend per year to cover emergencies. Like, you would never get stuck with 35% of a 100,000 dollar bill. The cap is something like 10k or 12k.
Or we can stop with the anecdotes and look at a study: McKinsey Center for U.S. Health annual report
Some quotes from the Forbes article:
Any self-respecting conservative knows all too well that McKinsey is immune from attack as an organization committed to presenting a left leaning political slant as it remains a bastion of business advice and a company that simply cannot be painted with a blue brush.
When was the last time we saw insurance premiums experience an annual increase of less than 5 percent? I cannot remember such a time and doubt that you can either.
All in all, it is going to be quite a stretch for Obamacare opponents to turn this data into bad news. Increased competition among insurers means better prices and better policies. An increase in the number of policies one can choose from also means improvements in policy quality and premium costs.
I find the meme about poor states = conservative to be a bit annoying and misleading
Income vs cost of living - spending power, is just one aspect of defining some area as 'poorer' than another. The other metric that people most often use is the fact that more Federal dollars (food stamps, etc..) flows into red states, than comes out of them.
A lot of times, Blue state people summarize this fact with simple sentences like "red states are poorer" or "red states are moochers, blue states are the providers".
Big industrious urban areas just plain pump out way more tax dollars than smaller rural states. But you really should look into the social spending (food stamps, various other benefits, like vet benefits): I am pretty sure that it is a fact that a higher percent of the red state populations are taking government benefits and subsidies than the blue states.
In a 'for profit' health care system, like any other service in a free market, every step along the supply chain someone is taking their cut. And each of those steps from source (like, making a scapel) to final product (like, a surgery) is constantly seeking to maximize profit. The very concept of making a profit while someone is dying.... doesn't that just feel wrong on so many levels?
The only way that costs are kept in check in a free market are 1) an informed consumer and 2) competition.
1 and 2 are nearly impossible to do well in healthcare. Anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't really thought the issue through, or talked with hospitals and other healthcare infrastructure that has to deal with service coverage areas and understand how much of healthcare services are basically natural monopolies that form around community need. (As opposed to say, having 6 competing hospitals built in one small town, and 1 hospital ends up "winning" the free market war, and 5 hospitals shut down. It just doesn't work that way).
Price gouging, fraud and EMTALA are the main culprits.
It is vastly more complex than your three reasons.
But it can all be simplified down to two words: "for profit".
If you can't shop around for the best heart doctor, while you are having a heart attack, a free market solution to health care is not possible. Using market forces to shape things like preventative care might be possible, but that market would have to be completely separated from the emergency care market (everything, like supply chains, supplies of doctors and nurses, wages, etc.. ), which isn't really feasible.
It is interesting, but not surprising, that the liberal talking points are heavily embedded, a clear flag that the study has an inherent bias. The "poorest states" being conservative sounds counter to only the picture that liberals try to paint of conservatives, not to reality for anyone who pays any attention. Hard working rural America has always been conservative. More often than not, it is the large urban populations that shift state's support bias to liberal, and it is those same urban areas that hold the most desperate and dependent populations of the truly underprivileged.
"poorest states" being conservative is accurate. Last time I checked, more federal tax dollars (spent on social support) flows into red states than goes into blue states. Blue states are 'richer' and tend to take care of their population more, but also have overall higher wages and less unemployment.
TL:DR - The 'big urban' areas make a lot of money. A lot more than rural areas. Rural areas are tax moochers, urban areas are tax generators.
Share, as in we all, right now, have genes in common with lots of animals and plants because of common ancestors. I understand that. But how exactly would a Jelly Fish share genes with a Rabbit?
Are you talking about some multi step path that could conceivably transfer a Jelly Fish 'glow' gene into a rabbit like:
Jelly Fish gets eaten by fish, fish eaten by bear, bear poo fertilizes a plant, rabbit eats the plant?
Share, as in we all, right now, have genes in common with lots of animals and plants because of common ancestors. I understand that. But how exactly would a Jelly Fish share genes with a Rabbit?