Sometimes their good decisions make everyone richer. Sometimes their good decisions make them richer at the expense of everyone else. Your faith that every decision that increases individual wealth is good for society is ungrounded in reality. You're the one in fantasy land.
In a free market, if you get richer it's because other people choose to give you their money voluntarily and that means that they got richer as well.
The only way that getting richer hurts anybody is if someone gets richer by taking away other people's money involuntarily, through theft, rent seeking, or taxation. Unfortunately, that's precisely what the kind of policies people intent on reducing inequality advocate.
Rewarding choices that are good for only the rich is only good for the rich. That's the world we live in today.
Well, yes, in a sense: due to the policies progressives have imposed.
The kind of extreme inequality we see in America today is the same kind that we saw before the Great Depression.
Our inequality isn't "extreme". And the relative amount of wealth doesn't matter, it's the absolute amount of resources available to the poorest.
It's simply not OK for executives to destroy companies and recieve million dollar bonuses while hard working poor people die because they can't afford health care. But that's the world in which we live.
The US has had Medicare/Medicaid for many years plus a mandate on health care providers to provide care irrespective of need. Nobody who is poor has needed to go without health care (or go hungry or go without housing). Furthermore, even poor Americans are better off than poor almost anywhere else in the world.
And the economy isn't a zero-sum game: the fact that some executives get high bonuses doesn't make anybody else any poorer. You can enforce policies that reduce inequality and you can easily succeed with them. But the consequences inevitably are that everybody is worse off. That is, it won't help the poor, it will hurt them.
You "can" in the sense that there is a small number of providers that will do it if you try hard enough. But it's not a competitive, efficient, or free market.
Grazing mammals are probably the safest meat you can eat: fewest diseases, lowest accumulation of toxins and heavy metals, no intrinsic toxicity. Both insects and carnivores are far more susceptible to these problems.
Much safer to leave, which is what I am planning on in the next few years.
Good luck with that. I have lived abroad in several countries, and they were all far worse than the US in terms of disrespect for privacy and the rule of law.
And how exactly do you propose to convince them if not by broadcast TV, broadcast radio, print media, movies, advertisements, or political speeches?
All of these already represent a wide variety of opinions, from shrill denunciations of the NSA spying to wide-eyed adoration of it.
The situation is even worse when the people who do have the means to reach a mass audience 24/7 are the people who benefit most from status quo, and benefit most from pushing their ideology as far as it will go (even the mainstream right only lost 2008 because they out-righted their base).
Americans appear to like the status quo. I certainly do. I'd prefer to undo all the legislation and initiatives Obama has foisted upon the nation.
And it's even worse when unelected life-term officials fabricate laws from the bench through judicial activism, so that corporate 'people' are entitled to such 'speech' as unlimited campaign expenditures.
Each side keeps accusing the SCOTUS of "judicial activism" every time they don't like a judgment. Citizens United was, in fact, a traditional and liberal position. It is the attempts by government to regulate and restrict political speech that are scary.
That is due to inadequate regulation, not excessive. Until recently, the private insurance market had nearly no regulation on it and look how well that worked out!
That's ridiculous; the private insurance market was already highly regulated and strongly influenced by tax policies. In addition, it interacted in weird ways with Medicare/Medicaid.
If you can't buy medical services freely and competitively or buy insurance on the open market, then our market isn't open. I have lived in countries where you can do both.
I don't know what you mean by "you added". Do you mean the fact that the US added Obamacare means that prices go up? Yeah, they do, both for insurance and services.
No, our markets in health care are not open at all; they are tightly regulated and dominated by a large government insurance system. You can't self-insure even if you try (I have tried) because there are no prices and no market that you can buy in; many doctors don't even know what to charge you. The individual private insurance market is also dysfunctional. We have a collection of oligopolies that insurance companies, politicians, doctors, hospitals, drug companies, and employers each try to abuse for their own purposes.
Most Californians were against GMOs and supported labelling. Polls showed 70% support. Ballot measure failed. How do you have 70%+ support and the measure fail - FRAUD.
I generally support labeling, but not that law. I think a lot of people came around to that position in the end.
And many have voted but, what good is it when you are given a choice of two candidates, and both are for what you're against.
If there was a sufficiently large group of people sharing your views, one of the two candidates would switch their positions.
That's a nice fantasy, but it doesn't agree with reality. There is little difference between the rise in health care costs in partially regulated and fully regulated/nationalized systems. Therefore, there is no reason to believe that adding more regulation to the partially regulated US system is going to fix the problem.
The kind of radiology procedures you talk about are not day-to-day healthcare. And where they are needed, they can easily be handled by a small, specific IT system, not an all-encompassing IT behemoth. Digital data can also easily be carried around on DVD or memory stick.
I have been to a variety of health care systems over the world, and seen several doctors and clinics go digital, and in each case, patient care, privacy, and control have gotten worse the more IT got involved.
They bitch because they are forced by rules and regulations to use those servers, so when they go down, it gets even even more in the way of patient care than when they are working.
Health care has been heavily regulated for decades and costs have spiraled out of control. Obviously, regulation isn't working, and hence we should have less of it, not more. In different, the problem is overregulation.
You know I am sick and tired of everyone blaming doctors for the cost of healthcare in the US. When in fact, doctors salaries are a miniscule portion of US healthcare, especially compared to drugs and device costs and hospital CEO pay! Doctors should be paid MORE
Everybody makes these arguments: "we should be paying more for drugs, they save so much money on doctors", "we should be paying more for CEOs, they can save so much money", etc. The problem is: nobody knows how much any of these "should" be paid, and if you leave this to committees and planners to decide, costs spiral out of control. The only way to have people paid what they "should" be paid is to have a fairly free and unregulated market.
True. But that doesn't change the fact that the current situation is confusing and causes serious problems. Somehow something needs to be done: either application package management systems need to learn how to deal with OS package management systems (by installing OS version-appropriate add-on packages), or OS package management systems need to figure out how to defer to application package management systems.
As for Feline Herd, even as a heavy Emacs user, I find it extremely rare that there is a package that I need that isn't in Ubuntu.
Oh, right, because as we all know, like everybody spends all their time listening to broadcast television.
Face it, regrettably, while about half of Americans don't like the NSA spying very much, even that half simply doesn't care enough to do anything about it. And that's why politicians don't care either.
You haven't been arguing this, these are talking points of the progressive left: "We haven't taken over the country by storm even though we are sooo righteous because evil rich people manipulate the minds of stupid voters."
Economic power is equivalent to political power, and wealth attracts more wealth. Without strong checks on the growth of wealth, we will find economic inequality just as oppressive as a corrupt government.
That's the progressive fantasy land. There is no real-world evidence that this is a significant effect: voters largely don't give a sh*t about what wealthy people tell them, wealthy people by and large do not operate out of political self-interest but rather out of some misguided sense of civic responsibility, and their political views are extremely diverse.
No, they've been doing fairly well in keeping mainstream preferences in line with what the parties want. They frame the debates, they propagandize, they collude with the media to exclude alternative voices.
Absolutely right. And instead of hoping that there is some magical fix for this, you need to realize that this is the best form of government we can ever hope for: a bunch of selfish, frequently incompetent, and occasionally corrupt politicians and civil servants. Once you realize that government is never going to be more than a necessary evil, you can concentrate on how to limit the damage it can do by keeping it as small as possible.
There might be a few outliers that speak out against these policies but the major players argue among each other for their interests and not for the citizens
Oh, I think our politicians represent roughly what the mainstream of Americans want. Mainstream America simply doesn't conform to your political goals (or mine, but at least I understand why and don't subscribe to conspiracy theories).
You want changes on NSA spying or the environment? Convince mainstream America to vote your way.
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In a free market, if you get richer it's because other people choose to give you their money voluntarily and that means that they got richer as well.
The only way that getting richer hurts anybody is if someone gets richer by taking away other people's money involuntarily, through theft, rent seeking, or taxation. Unfortunately, that's precisely what the kind of policies people intent on reducing inequality advocate.
Well, yes, in a sense: due to the policies progressives have imposed.
Our inequality isn't "extreme". And the relative amount of wealth doesn't matter, it's the absolute amount of resources available to the poorest.
The US has had Medicare/Medicaid for many years plus a mandate on health care providers to provide care irrespective of need. Nobody who is poor has needed to go without health care (or go hungry or go without housing). Furthermore, even poor Americans are better off than poor almost anywhere else in the world.
And the economy isn't a zero-sum game: the fact that some executives get high bonuses doesn't make anybody else any poorer. You can enforce policies that reduce inequality and you can easily succeed with them. But the consequences inevitably are that everybody is worse off. That is, it won't help the poor, it will hurt them.
You "can" in the sense that there is a small number of providers that will do it if you try hard enough. But it's not a competitive, efficient, or free market.
Grazing mammals are probably the safest meat you can eat: fewest diseases, lowest accumulation of toxins and heavy metals, no intrinsic toxicity. Both insects and carnivores are far more susceptible to these problems.
Good luck with that. I have lived abroad in several countries, and they were all far worse than the US in terms of disrespect for privacy and the rule of law.
All of these already represent a wide variety of opinions, from shrill denunciations of the NSA spying to wide-eyed adoration of it.
Americans appear to like the status quo. I certainly do. I'd prefer to undo all the legislation and initiatives Obama has foisted upon the nation.
Each side keeps accusing the SCOTUS of "judicial activism" every time they don't like a judgment. Citizens United was, in fact, a traditional and liberal position. It is the attempts by government to regulate and restrict political speech that are scary.
Rich people making good choices also makes everybody else wealthier. It's not a question of "rising tides" it's a question of rewarding good choices.
And there is nothing wrong with inequality.
That's ridiculous; the private insurance market was already highly regulated and strongly influenced by tax policies. In addition, it interacted in weird ways with Medicare/Medicaid.
If you can't buy medical services freely and competitively or buy insurance on the open market, then our market isn't open. I have lived in countries where you can do both.
They are not separate issues; nationalization is the ultimate in regulation.
I don't know what you mean by "you added". Do you mean the fact that the US added Obamacare means that prices go up? Yeah, they do, both for insurance and services.
No, our markets in health care are not open at all; they are tightly regulated and dominated by a large government insurance system. You can't self-insure even if you try (I have tried) because there are no prices and no market that you can buy in; many doctors don't even know what to charge you. The individual private insurance market is also dysfunctional. We have a collection of oligopolies that insurance companies, politicians, doctors, hospitals, drug companies, and employers each try to abuse for their own purposes.
I generally support labeling, but not that law. I think a lot of people came around to that position in the end.
If there was a sufficiently large group of people sharing your views, one of the two candidates would switch their positions.
Rich people who make bad choices for what to do with their wealth don't stay rich for long.
That's a nice fantasy, but it doesn't agree with reality. There is little difference between the rise in health care costs in partially regulated and fully regulated/nationalized systems. Therefore, there is no reason to believe that adding more regulation to the partially regulated US system is going to fix the problem.
The kind of radiology procedures you talk about are not day-to-day healthcare. And where they are needed, they can easily be handled by a small, specific IT system, not an all-encompassing IT behemoth. Digital data can also easily be carried around on DVD or memory stick.
I have been to a variety of health care systems over the world, and seen several doctors and clinics go digital, and in each case, patient care, privacy, and control have gotten worse the more IT got involved.
They bitch because they are forced by rules and regulations to use those servers, so when they go down, it gets even even more in the way of patient care than when they are working.
Health care has been heavily regulated for decades and costs have spiraled out of control. Obviously, regulation isn't working, and hence we should have less of it, not more. In different, the problem is overregulation.
The reality is also that all that IT contributes little to day-to-day healthcare.
Everybody makes these arguments: "we should be paying more for drugs, they save so much money on doctors", "we should be paying more for CEOs, they can save so much money", etc. The problem is: nobody knows how much any of these "should" be paid, and if you leave this to committees and planners to decide, costs spiral out of control. The only way to have people paid what they "should" be paid is to have a fairly free and unregulated market.
True. But that doesn't change the fact that the current situation is confusing and causes serious problems. Somehow something needs to be done: either application package management systems need to learn how to deal with OS package management systems (by installing OS version-appropriate add-on packages), or OS package management systems need to figure out how to defer to application package management systems.
As for Feline Herd, even as a heavy Emacs user, I find it extremely rare that there is a package that I need that isn't in Ubuntu.
Oh, right, because as we all know, like everybody spends all their time listening to broadcast television.
Face it, regrettably, while about half of Americans don't like the NSA spying very much, even that half simply doesn't care enough to do anything about it. And that's why politicians don't care either.
You haven't been arguing this, these are talking points of the progressive left: "We haven't taken over the country by storm even though we are sooo righteous because evil rich people manipulate the minds of stupid voters."
That's the progressive fantasy land. There is no real-world evidence that this is a significant effect: voters largely don't give a sh*t about what wealthy people tell them, wealthy people by and large do not operate out of political self-interest but rather out of some misguided sense of civic responsibility, and their political views are extremely diverse.
Absolutely right. And instead of hoping that there is some magical fix for this, you need to realize that this is the best form of government we can ever hope for: a bunch of selfish, frequently incompetent, and occasionally corrupt politicians and civil servants. Once you realize that government is never going to be more than a necessary evil, you can concentrate on how to limit the damage it can do by keeping it as small as possible.
Oh, I think our politicians represent roughly what the mainstream of Americans want. Mainstream America simply doesn't conform to your political goals (or mine, but at least I understand why and don't subscribe to conspiracy theories).
You want changes on NSA spying or the environment? Convince mainstream America to vote your way.