But this doesn't fix the health care problem. It's not healcare reform. It's insurance reform.
Look at housing and college costs. What effect did pumping more money into those have? Higher costs and more shortages. We need less intervention, not more.
I believe that my worth to society is equal to the value I add to it. So I guess I'm the odd one here. That does explain a lot of the political views I see on Slashdot.
How about not being allowed to have more children than you can afford to take care of? I know so many people who stopped at one or two children because they can't afford more. But so many people who can't afford any have as many as the feel like. Or worse, they have more just to reap additional public assistance.
Or combine the two concepts into a bad horror movie where the people who have more children than they can afford are harvested for transplant organs to rich people who wear turtleneck sweaters.
Lets say he and I needed liver transplants at the same time. I'm a nobody. I add very little to the world compared to Jobs. Why shouldn't he get bumped up in the priority list? Even better, why couldn't Steve and I bid for the liver with the proceeds going to the family of the donor? Losing a loved one must be difficult and expensive. Why not let the family profit.
Is there a better metric than money? Should it be good looks? Charitable donations? Number of Facebook friends? Slashdot Karma?
Your drivers license became invalid when you moved and didn't change your address. Changing your address requires proof of residency. Thus, a valid drivers license is proof of legal residency.
There are state issued ID cards that serve the same function and are not drivers licenses. An adult without either will also be unable to make financial transactions, buy beer, use a credit card, stay in a hotel, work, drive, ride a motorcycle, borrow a tool, have a cellular phone, smoke a cigarette, etc, etc, etc.
As a white person, I have to show my state issued ID or drivers license to vote. Every time. No exceptions. So don't even bring up voter discrimination, because it's plain and simple bullshit.
Residency status is only questioned if the person has been arrested. They're not rounding up people off the street and demanding papers. Any 17 year old, or anybody else for that matter, is NOT going home until they have proven their identity. Any age. Any skin color. Any accent.
If I get pulled over and don't have my license, the cop is hauling my ass to jail until I can prove who I am. The only reason Arizona is a big deal is because they're attempting to enforce the national borders that the federal government is refusing to do (one of the only federal responsibilities that actually is in the constitution, but that's another discussion).
We have been at ware since early 2000's. It's not peacetime.
I grew up in the U.S. during the 80's. Yeah, we could board an airplane with our shoes on, but there was still a pretty good chance of getting nuked. I can't even imagine what it must have been like for people in the 60's. Go back just a little farther, and the threat of actual invasion was imminent.
I am a crazy right wing fox news reading religious lunatic, and I don't see why my Lord Almighty Savior of Mighty Omniscient Omnipotence would have any problem with a human liver grown in a lab. Anybody who thinks research can interfere with God's will believes in a pretty small God.
I also busted my ass and lived in squalor to graduate almost debt free. Honestly, I wish I'd signed on the dotted line and lived on loans to graduate three years earlier than I did. At this point of my life, it would have been worth it. Instead I missed the best years of the dot-com era, got reamed in the housing bust, and now I'm starting a family in my late 30's.
My college has doubled tuition in the decade since I graduated. All the 50 year old buildings that held my classes have been razed and replaced with state of the art brand new architecture. There are numerous new sports stadiums for teams nobody's ever heard of. They're paving the streets with marble - literally, marble. It's like they are struggling to find ways to spend all the money.
I think a large problem with current schools is the idea of fairness. Not all teachers are equal and certainly not all students, but all teachers are lumped together and students are generally taught to the lowest common denominator.
They don't teach to the lowest common denominator. Yes, nobody fails anymore. So every student is advanced to the next grade level. Then the teacher has to develop an individual lesson plan for each different group of kids. Which they do.
What Loughla said in the other reply also happens exactly like that. You might have one kid consuming 75% of the teacher's resources at the expense of all the others (and as a teacher's husband, at my expense too!).
I'd like to see kids promoted based on ability so that a teacher has a class full of kids of similar ability. You'd end up with a class in every grade full of the kids from the worst families, kids with disabilities, etc, and that would be considered unfair. Which it arguably is.
-- instead of teaching them how to actually think.
My wife is a second grade teacher and the whole teaching paradigm now is all about learning by discovery. Back in my day, we sat in rows and columns and memorized. If today's kids are struggling with reasoning skills more than yesterday's kids, it's not the teaching methods that are at fault. Unless being forced to memorize everything is actually the better way.
If you ask me, it's the TV shows they watch nowadays. No wonder they all have ADHD.
Pregnant wife and movie is one thing, but I learned shortly after seeing the baby poke at her belly the first time to NOT make any references to the Alien series movies. Prometheus brought that to an entirely different level. I thought she was going to lose it during the previously mentioned cesarean scene. That was about the same time some of the parents who brought their little kids (!) to see it started leaving the theater.
Slashdot Mirror
But this doesn't fix the health care problem. It's not healcare reform. It's insurance reform.
Look at housing and college costs. What effect did pumping more money into those have? Higher costs and more shortages. We need less intervention, not more.
Those in favor of all those provisions as long as somebody else pays for it: 100%.
(Or 110% if you include all registered democrats.)
This.
Drop health insurance. Pay the $280/month(?) fine for a family. It's a bargain!
Bank the savings and pay out-of-pocket for general care (shopping around for the best value - yay capitalism!!).
Then knock on Aetna's door when you get cancer. They have to take you back!!
My health insurance costs have already increased because of this. So I call fail on it already.
Unless the objective is to make the middle class pay for more of the share than it already does. It's pretty easy to spend someone else's money.
I just got an email from corporate HR stating that my cost for health insurance is going up over the next two years because of this ruling.
1. Government makes decision.
2. Money leaves my pocket.
How is this not a tax? We can nit pick the details about what level it comes out of, but a tax is a tax is a tax. Nothing's free!
None of that changes the fact that Steve Jobs would get a liver transplant before you.
I believe that my worth to society is equal to the value I add to it. So I guess I'm the odd one here. That does explain a lot of the political views I see on Slashdot.
How about not being allowed to have more children than you can afford to take care of? I know so many people who stopped at one or two children because they can't afford more. But so many people who can't afford any have as many as the feel like. Or worse, they have more just to reap additional public assistance.
Or combine the two concepts into a bad horror movie where the people who have more children than they can afford are harvested for transplant organs to rich people who wear turtleneck sweaters.
Why shouldn't Steve Jobs get better treatment?
Lets say he and I needed liver transplants at the same time. I'm a nobody. I add very little to the world compared to Jobs. Why shouldn't he get bumped up in the priority list? Even better, why couldn't Steve and I bid for the liver with the proceeds going to the family of the donor? Losing a loved one must be difficult and expensive. Why not let the family profit.
Is there a better metric than money? Should it be good looks? Charitable donations? Number of Facebook friends? Slashdot Karma?
Your drivers license became invalid when you moved and didn't change your address. Changing your address requires proof of residency. Thus, a valid drivers license is proof of legal residency.
There are state issued ID cards that serve the same function and are not drivers licenses. An adult without either will also be unable to make financial transactions, buy beer, use a credit card, stay in a hotel, work, drive, ride a motorcycle, borrow a tool, have a cellular phone, smoke a cigarette, etc, etc, etc.
As a white person, I have to show my state issued ID or drivers license to vote. Every time. No exceptions. So don't even bring up voter discrimination, because it's plain and simple bullshit.
Residency status is only questioned if the person has been arrested. They're not rounding up people off the street and demanding papers. Any 17 year old, or anybody else for that matter, is NOT going home until they have proven their identity. Any age. Any skin color. Any accent.
If I get pulled over and don't have my license, the cop is hauling my ass to jail until I can prove who I am. The only reason Arizona is a big deal is because they're attempting to enforce the national borders that the federal government is refusing to do (one of the only federal responsibilities that actually is in the constitution, but that's another discussion).
We have been at ware since early 2000's. It's not peacetime.
I grew up in the U.S. during the 80's. Yeah, we could board an airplane with our shoes on, but there was still a pretty good chance of getting nuked. I can't even imagine what it must have been like for people in the 60's. Go back just a little farther, and the threat of actual invasion was imminent.
You're bashing the U.S. on Slashdot. My point is proven.
It's also trendy to bash anything U.S. on Slashdot.
Ray: You mean you never even had a Slinky?
Egon: We had part of a Slinky. But I straightened it.
Coors light.
I am a crazy right wing fox news reading religious lunatic, and I don't see why my Lord Almighty Savior of Mighty Omniscient Omnipotence would have any problem with a human liver grown in a lab. Anybody who thinks research can interfere with God's will believes in a pretty small God.
I also busted my ass and lived in squalor to graduate almost debt free. Honestly, I wish I'd signed on the dotted line and lived on loans to graduate three years earlier than I did. At this point of my life, it would have been worth it. Instead I missed the best years of the dot-com era, got reamed in the housing bust, and now I'm starting a family in my late 30's.
In hindsight, it wasn't really a head start.
They could roll back tuition quite easily.
My college has doubled tuition in the decade since I graduated. All the 50 year old buildings that held my classes have been razed and replaced with state of the art brand new architecture. There are numerous new sports stadiums for teams nobody's ever heard of. They're paving the streets with marble - literally, marble. It's like they are struggling to find ways to spend all the money.
Same professors and same classes.
I think a large problem with current schools is the idea of fairness. Not all teachers are equal and certainly not all students, but all teachers are lumped together and students are generally taught to the lowest common denominator.
They don't teach to the lowest common denominator. Yes, nobody fails anymore. So every student is advanced to the next grade level. Then the teacher has to develop an individual lesson plan for each different group of kids. Which they do.
What Loughla said in the other reply also happens exactly like that. You might have one kid consuming 75% of the teacher's resources at the expense of all the others (and as a teacher's husband, at my expense too!).
I'd like to see kids promoted based on ability so that a teacher has a class full of kids of similar ability. You'd end up with a class in every grade full of the kids from the worst families, kids with disabilities, etc, and that would be considered unfair. Which it arguably is.
-- instead of teaching them how to actually think.
My wife is a second grade teacher and the whole teaching paradigm now is all about learning by discovery. Back in my day, we sat in rows and columns and memorized. If today's kids are struggling with reasoning skills more than yesterday's kids, it's not the teaching methods that are at fault. Unless being forced to memorize everything is actually the better way.
If you ask me, it's the TV shows they watch nowadays. No wonder they all have ADHD.
I tried to watch Transformers 2 on DVD and had to turn it off after about 5 minutes. 3D in the theater would probably give me a seizure.
Who? You might as well finish your post.
Pregnant wife and movie is one thing, but I learned shortly after seeing the baby poke at her belly the first time to NOT make any references to the Alien series movies. Prometheus brought that to an entirely different level. I thought she was going to lose it during the previously mentioned cesarean scene. That was about the same time some of the parents who brought their little kids (!) to see it started leaving the theater.