Since we have no shortage of energy but we have a desperate shortage of funds in the Treasury, these types of projects should not be funded. Let a less bankrupt country fund them.
These types of grants tend to be direct monetary payback for political support and campaign donations anyway.
If you say "you can choose to eat (and be fat) or be hungry", how many people are going to choose "constant hunger"? What if that choice becomes "modify your diet a bit so you can still eat the same amount, but of more nutritious food, and you won't be hungry?" Now all of a sudden it becomes way easier.
Funny, I picked hunger over having to eat the "nutritious food" that everyone tells you to eat. I was OK being hungry for a while knowing I could eat something I actually liked later.
If you actually like it, you have to be careful of "nutritious food". It's really easy to overeat and gain weight, even when you're eating "healthy" food. Meanwhile, the guy counting calories can eat pizza and cookies and lose weight. He just has to be careful to consistently keep his intake lower than his usage.
Can different foods affect the body in ways that will slow the metabolism?
Not really.
They can change it a little bit if you have a severe protein shortage or some other extreme diet, but otherwise, no. "Metabolism", or calories burned, is a function of mass, fat percentage, age, sex, and activity. And very little else. That's why all those diets that focus on "fat-burning foods" don't work.
I'm not a nutritionist, but I can tell you that "calories in - calories out" does jack shit to address that issue.
Except if you want to lose weight. Then you eat less to cut your calories in, and exercise more to increase your calories out. If this is done persistently, with a significant calorie deficit, it will always work.
Why do people eat so much?
Tasty food.
But part of it is just that it sucks being hungry. If you're hungry, you'll eat. And part of Lustig's argument is that increased sugar (fructose) intake affects your appetite... and surprise surprise, it makes you hungrier.
So "calories in - calories out" is precisely right... and yet pretty much unhelpful at the same time.
But you are a human, not an insect. You can choose to eat or not. You can choose to eat less. Or later. Or something with low energy vs volume (suggestion: strawberries).
The reason people talk about calories in > calories out is that there are 10,000 fake diets out there that tell you you can eat ice cream and chips all day and lose weight. Just buy my book or my pills or whatever. They don't work, and people don't like being swindled.
But eating less works. And all the people who lost weight by eating less get tired of hearing it's impossible.
In 2009 private health insurance expenses were already $801.2B. It was growing anywhere from 1.3-11.6% each year in the decade leading up to it, typically in the 7-10% range. It's close enough to a $TRILLION right now that quibbling is just acknowledging that your real point was wrong.
But you fail to subtract the huge percentage of the market that is handled by non-profit insurers. They don't make a profit.
Look, it's obvious that you don't have any facts, or any real familiarity with the insurance business.
I'm not the one making the false statements and repeatedly having to issue corrections.
No matter what choice a developer makes, someone is going to complain about it. If the North Koreans weren't unmistakably evil, critics would be complaining about a lack of motivation and calling the game racist for allowing non-whites to be shot.
Uncharted was called racist for having some Asian soldiers to shoot. So Uncharted 2 made all the enemies white (specifically Russian).
Cartoon worlds have cartoon enemies. Critics complain. And there's always someone around to label anything and everything racist.
In lots of states the health insurers are required by law to be non-profits. It is unlikely that the remaining for profit companies process even one $ Trillion in medical costs. But I haven't checked, so I don't know for sure.
Low single-digits profit margins are the motive for these companies to try to cut costs and be efficient. It's not high enough to attract many new competitors or investors. It's also not high enough to be a major factor in the rising cost of medical care. Most of us would not accept a 3% cut in insurance premiums if it also means we give up all choice over insurance coverage or providers -- and eventually we'll lose other, more important choices.
You might want to be more careful with the partisan talking points. They are misleading at best.
If you actually wanted to look into it instead of simply railing against profits (as if it were evil for someone to want a small return on the money and time and effort they've invested providing people with goods or services), you might come to understand the issue better.
Overall, the profit margin for health insurance companies was a modest 3.4 percent over the past year [2009], according to data provided by Morningstar. That ranks 87th out of 215 industries and slightly above the median of 2.2 percent.
Perhaps I was giving you the benefit of the doubt when it seemed to me like you were confused. Either way, I suggest making true statements instead of false ones.
And yet, no one is starting new health insurance companies, and health insurance companies that already exist are trying to shrink and insure fewer people. If there's so much money in it, why wouldn't lots of new companies be formed?
Maybe, just maybe, there's something going on that you don't understand.
Also, you seem to be confusing giveaways to non-workers (Medicare and Medicaid) with money that could be used for your own medical treatment.
And you also seem to be confusing insurance, which is a financial product meant to protect your finances in the unlikely event of a major expense (like a house fire or an expensive illness), with cash to spend directly on your routine health care. "I buy fire insurance, but it's not efficient because my house hasn't burned down yet."
Congrats on reaching your age without understanding these basic concepts.
Then tell everyone to spare us the individual pronouncements about how they're personally willing to pay more. We know what they really mean: "I'll pay $10 if I can have $10 million spent on my priorities".
My priorities are to get meddling government busybodies to butt out of everyone's life and to go find a productive job. This requires that they have less money to spend. The side benefit is that we can pay lower taxes.
If you want to advocate for higher taxes, start by going to that page, following the instructions, and sending the government a check. Then come back and talk to us about paying higher taxes.
Why do we need to compete with regimes which use abusively low wages and poor labour conditions, support repressive regimes, and destroy the environment?
If we make a product for $10 and they make a product for $5, and we are both trying to sell to the same customer, then we compete. It's not a question of need. It's a description of reality.
Forcing the customer to buy from you at gunpoint is competition too. It's the mobster/gangster/government kind.
I don't think we want to be the country that leads in forcing unwilling customers to buy overpriced products. Maybe you do. Why give the customer a product in return at all if you want to rob him? You'll have a higher profit margin if you simplify the robbery. Producing goods for such an exchange is just a needless complication of that sort of transaction.
Some people can't produce $40/hour worth of value.
We ought to have a society where people who can only do "cheap" labor can still afford to live and work. But that would require fewer expensive government programs, fewer environmental requirements, and basically less of everything that makes products and services more expensive. When you can only afford "inferior" items, it's important that those products are not outlawed because they're not "efficient" enough.
Poor people shouldn't have to buy a $2 light bulb when they want a $0.20 light bulb.
I'd probably pin the decline of the US on a number of factors:
1: The view that engineers, mathematicians, and computer scientists are "nerds"...
The right answer is only ever the most comfortable answer by sheer coincidence. So while it may be appealing to jump to that conclusion, it's a poor methodology if you actually want the right answers.
Since you are so worldly, maybe you can link to a show on Amazon that costs about $3 per episode to download and would therefore be more than $100 per season?
Slashdot Mirror
Since we have no shortage of energy but we have a desperate shortage of funds in the Treasury, these types of projects should not be funded. Let a less bankrupt country fund them.
These types of grants tend to be direct monetary payback for political support and campaign donations anyway.
Your food choices do not affect your metabolism.
If you say "you can choose to eat (and be fat) or be hungry", how many people are going to choose "constant hunger"? What if that choice becomes "modify your diet a bit so you can still eat the same amount, but of more nutritious food, and you won't be hungry?" Now all of a sudden it becomes way easier.
Funny, I picked hunger over having to eat the "nutritious food" that everyone tells you to eat. I was OK being hungry for a while knowing I could eat something I actually liked later.
If you actually like it, you have to be careful of "nutritious food". It's really easy to overeat and gain weight, even when you're eating "healthy" food. Meanwhile, the guy counting calories can eat pizza and cookies and lose weight. He just has to be careful to consistently keep his intake lower than his usage.
Can different foods affect the body in ways that will slow the metabolism?
Not really.
They can change it a little bit if you have a severe protein shortage or some other extreme diet, but otherwise, no. "Metabolism", or calories burned, is a function of mass, fat percentage, age, sex, and activity. And very little else. That's why all those diets that focus on "fat-burning foods" don't work.
I'm not a nutritionist, but I can tell you that "calories in - calories out" does jack shit to address that issue.
Except if you want to lose weight. Then you eat less to cut your calories in, and exercise more to increase your calories out. If this is done persistently, with a significant calorie deficit, it will always work.
Why do people eat so much?
Tasty food.
But part of it is just that it sucks being hungry. If you're hungry, you'll eat. And part of Lustig's argument is that increased sugar (fructose) intake affects your appetite... and surprise surprise, it makes you hungrier.
So "calories in - calories out" is precisely right... and yet pretty much unhelpful at the same time.
But you are a human, not an insect. You can choose to eat or not. You can choose to eat less. Or later. Or something with low energy vs volume (suggestion: strawberries).
The reason people talk about calories in > calories out is that there are 10,000 fake diets out there that tell you you can eat ice cream and chips all day and lose weight. Just buy my book or my pills or whatever. They don't work, and people don't like being swindled.
But eating less works. And all the people who lost weight by eating less get tired of hearing it's impossible.
In 2009 private health insurance expenses were already $801.2B. It was growing anywhere from 1.3-11.6% each year in the decade leading up to it, typically in the 7-10% range. It's close enough to a $TRILLION right now that quibbling is just acknowledging that your real point was wrong.
But you fail to subtract the huge percentage of the market that is handled by non-profit insurers. They don't make a profit.
Look, it's obvious that you don't have any facts, or any real familiarity with the insurance business.
I'm not the one making the false statements and repeatedly having to issue corrections.
No matter what choice a developer makes, someone is going to complain about it. If the North Koreans weren't unmistakably evil, critics would be complaining about a lack of motivation and calling the game racist for allowing non-whites to be shot.
Uncharted was called racist for having some Asian soldiers to shoot. So Uncharted 2 made all the enemies white (specifically Russian).
Cartoon worlds have cartoon enemies. Critics complain. And there's always someone around to label anything and everything racist.
In lots of states the health insurers are required by law to be non-profits. It is unlikely that the remaining for profit companies process even one $ Trillion in medical costs. But I haven't checked, so I don't know for sure.
Low single-digits profit margins are the motive for these companies to try to cut costs and be efficient. It's not high enough to attract many new competitors or investors. It's also not high enough to be a major factor in the rising cost of medical care. Most of us would not accept a 3% cut in insurance premiums if it also means we give up all choice over insurance coverage or providers -- and eventually we'll lose other, more important choices.
You might want to be more careful with the partisan talking points. They are misleading at best.
If you actually wanted to look into it instead of simply railing against profits (as if it were evil for someone to want a small return on the money and time and effort they've invested providing people with goods or services), you might come to understand the issue better.
It might be interesting to hear what you think "might work" means. If it "works", do we get a utopia?
Short of that, why should I expect that making myself poorer by paying more will result in some sort of improvement for me?
And when I want improvements for others, I donate to charity.
Except anyone can use Google and find out this is false:
Perhaps I was giving you the benefit of the doubt when it seemed to me like you were confused. Either way, I suggest making true statements instead of false ones.
And yet, no one is starting new health insurance companies, and health insurance companies that already exist are trying to shrink and insure fewer people. If there's so much money in it, why wouldn't lots of new companies be formed?
Maybe, just maybe, there's something going on that you don't understand.
Also, you seem to be confusing giveaways to non-workers (Medicare and Medicaid) with money that could be used for your own medical treatment.
And you also seem to be confusing insurance, which is a financial product meant to protect your finances in the unlikely event of a major expense (like a house fire or an expensive illness), with cash to spend directly on your routine health care. "I buy fire insurance, but it's not efficient because my house hasn't burned down yet."
Congrats on reaching your age without understanding these basic concepts.
Very low consumption taxes to support a very limited government don't unfairly hurt the poor. Any tax hurts, but very low taxes do not hurt unfairly.
Then tell everyone to spare us the individual pronouncements about how they're personally willing to pay more. We know what they really mean: "I'll pay $10 if I can have $10 million spent on my priorities".
My priorities are to get meddling government busybodies to butt out of everyone's life and to go find a productive job. This requires that they have less money to spend. The side benefit is that we can pay lower taxes.
Obviously. That's why gasoline only costs 80 cents a gallon.
You, and anyone else who likes paying taxes, are welcome to pay more. Here's the page that tells you how.
If you want to advocate for higher taxes, start by going to that page, following the instructions, and sending the government a check. Then come back and talk to us about paying higher taxes.
A small fraction goes to "infrastructure". Some of that actually is "a bargain".
Most of the rest is directly or indirectly transferred to people who have more political power than you.
Why do we need to compete with regimes which use abusively low wages and poor labour conditions, support repressive regimes, and destroy the environment?
If we make a product for $10 and they make a product for $5, and we are both trying to sell to the same customer, then we compete. It's not a question of need. It's a description of reality.
Forcing the customer to buy from you at gunpoint is competition too. It's the mobster/gangster/government kind.
I don't think we want to be the country that leads in forcing unwilling customers to buy overpriced products. Maybe you do. Why give the customer a product in return at all if you want to rob him? You'll have a higher profit margin if you simplify the robbery. Producing goods for such an exchange is just a needless complication of that sort of transaction.
And by "justice", you specifically mean stealing from people you envy.
Some people can't produce $40/hour worth of value.
We ought to have a society where people who can only do "cheap" labor can still afford to live and work. But that would require fewer expensive government programs, fewer environmental requirements, and basically less of everything that makes products and services more expensive. When you can only afford "inferior" items, it's important that those products are not outlawed because they're not "efficient" enough.
Poor people shouldn't have to buy a $2 light bulb when they want a $0.20 light bulb.
"It is not fair, we can't compete with X" is not the right attitude if you need to compete with X.
Hiding and putting up walls is not the answer.
I'd probably pin the decline of the US on a number of factors:
1: The view that engineers, mathematicians, and computer scientists are "nerds" ...
The right answer is only ever the most comfortable answer by sheer coincidence. So while it may be appealing to jump to that conclusion, it's a poor methodology if you actually want the right answers.
Why do you think the key to greatness is class envy?
And if you can't afford to live near a library, fuck you!
If you can't go to the library, go over to a friend's house.
How about don't tell the poor what they need and don't need?
Beggars can't be choosers.
don't buy it then?
To stop being poor, learn not to spend money you don't have on luxuries you can't afford.
I just searched on Amazon and couldn't find it.
Since you are so worldly, maybe you can link to a show on Amazon that costs about $3 per episode to download and would therefore be more than $100 per season?
We're waiting.
"In Treatment" can be watched on Amazon for $1.39 per episode.
How much is shipping and handling on a download? Or tax from Amazon (remember, it was Amazon).