Serious question, tho: what is the economic balance here? Is this actually a net profit, given the cost to develop and build the original bombs? At the current price of electricity, maybe it is. Anyone want to take a stab at the math?
Seems to me once social welfare becomes comfortable, it has gone too far. It needs to be UNcomfortable by design, so people do their damnedest to get up, out of, and beyond it, rather than slouching into it as a permanent way of life. It also needs to stop penalizing people who DO save and work to get out of it. (Frex, stuff like the limit on savings, commonly just $500, which isn't even a month's unsubsidized rent most places -- how the hell can you get out of public housing if you're not allowed to build up the funds to do so??)
In one of his books, Larry Elder writes of a Catholic mission that has a huge success rate on relatively little money, by requiring full effort from everyone in the program (pretty similar to how Booker T. ran Tuskegee back in the early days). Slackers get dumped, which is as it should be.
We can't save everyone, it's just not practical; and not everyone is worth saving, even from that standpoint of best net economic benefit to society. There's never been a perfect answer, at least not so long as there remains any personal choice, personal freedom, or fairness of impact. Egalitarian solutions just drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator.
A lot of people, myself included, are in a sort of limbo there -- we have enough assets that we're denied aid, yet we're cash-poor and don't make enough to afford insurance. Many small business owners and small investors are in that boat. Your choices will essentially be go out of business and go on welfare, sell your assets (which is probably your retirement fund), or go to jail.
Catastrophic care is always available through any hospital that takes federal funding, able to pay or not.
It occurs to me to wonder if those who have only catastrophic-event insurance will be forced to buy "full coverage" -- which is more expensive than doing small stuff out of your own pocket.
The problem is that social welfare never stops at giving 'em a *hand up*, "get people started on a better road" stage. It invariably becomes a *handout* instead -- "depend on us for everything", which has precisely the opposite effect -- it enforces poverty, because otherwise you don't get your handout. (The American deep south has been demonstrating this for 150 years -- if handouts worked so well, why is it still the poorest part of the country??)
It's like digging a ditch FOR someone, when instead you should have just loaned them a shovel.
Methinks required reading for all social welfare advocates should be Booker T. Washington's UP FROM SLAVERY, which is largely about this very issue.
Of course, marketing insurance as "total peace of mind" and "total care" didn't help that mindset. Generate fear (in this case, of being sick and unable to pay for it), and people will jump aboard so they can feel safe again, even if it's actually a bad idea. D'oh!!
Another problem with insurance for every little thing is that insurance demands itemized bills, and that drives charges up. I've watched this situation develop in "pet care insurance" from the beginning. Despite that only about 1% of pets are insured, insurance requirements now drive veterinary billing methods, which concomitantly are now over 10 times what they were before pet insurance, only 10 years ago (tho actual costs have merely roughly doubled). Follow:
10 years ago your bill would read:
SPAY $60
Now it'll read:
pre-op blood work - $75 pre-anaesthesia - $20 15 minutes anaesthesia @ $200/hour - $50 15 minutes surgery room time @$200/hour - $50 1 hour recovery room time @$65/hour - $65 autoclave supplies - $15 sharps disposal - $5 (actual cost, ONE CENT) sutures - $15 etc, etc, etc. GRAND TOTAL $600.
Insurance won't pay for anything that isn't itemized and identified. So every little incidental bit of overhead is now itemized, rather than being generalized as it was before. And this impacts everyone, not just those with insurance.
This is much akin to what happened to human hospital bills about the time insurance's billing requirements began impacting hospitals. No longer is it "hospitalized, one night, $200". Now they itemize charges for everything in sight, right down to that mini-pack of kleenix the nurse brought when you had to blow your nose.
Thanks for the useful info, which I've filched and posted to another discussion where the 10th Amendment is taking a serious trampling. Excellent reminder of what the Framers were thinking, and why.
That's how I read it too, straight out of the quote from the bill itself.
And explain to me how if I can't afford health insurance in the first place, being fined or sent to jail if I don't buy insurance will magically make me able to afford said insurance??
[Reality check: paying what health care I need out of pocket has cost, over my 54 year lifetime, about 0.2% of what the same care would have were it dependent on paying a monthly insurance premium. About $5000 vs. $210k or so, as it works out.]
Here's what I find fascinating: if I already can't afford to buy health insurance** -- how the fuck am I supposed to magically be able to buy this new health insurance, or pay the fine if I can't afford it in the first place?? What is this, a modern form of debtor's prison??!
** Which as you point out in another post, is not cost-effective for anything other than catastrophic events -- it's much cheaper to pay for minor care out of your own pocket. Remember when if you were sick, you could instantly find a family doctor and cough up $20 for an office visit? How is $500/month cheaper than $20 once in a blue moon??
Correction, it's like the Roman Empire's government opertated after things started going to hell. After centuries of relative personal freedom and stability (as best one could find it in the ancient world), by about 250AD, thanks to new policies functionally identical to those being pushed by modern liberals, Rome was right where we are now: swamped by fast-growing public assistance costs; citizens' freedoms being negated by invasive regulations; gov't services awash in corruption; rising taxes and expanding government.
And I'd like to shake your mom's hand for raising a kid with the sense to recognise what's going on in America today, cuz otherwise your post is dead-on.
Remember the notion that "self-esteem" could and should be taught? This infected the school systems without ever being researched, or having its validity even seriously examined. When (much more recently) someone decided to actually study "self-esteem" they found that the highest level of self-esteem was found among -- CRIMINALS!! (especially career criminals) Well, of course -- people who think their shit don't stink and that they are superior to everyone else, and don't care who they hurt -- seems obvious, once you think about it.
That's an interesting point -- the idea that the *less* accurate a detection device is, the better excuse you have to sweep broadly through your potential targets.
I'm reminded that throwing dynamite into a pond is NOT a legal method of fishing....
Much simpler -- just don't bathe for a month. Accumulate enough natural odors that the machine becomes either confused or overwhelmed. As a side benefit, you'll get brownie points for your geek badge.;)
Agreed. This is why my main everyday machine, whose main innards are at 11 years old and counting, is in no serious danger of being replaced for being "obsolete". It still does everything I require of it -- frankly the only place it can't keep up anymore is ill-tempered scripts on web pages, and I count that more as a Mozilla problem than an aging-PC problem.
And I'd like it to support more disk space... oh well, that's what networked storage is for!
Slashdot Mirror
Try looking at their diets first. Phytoestrogen content in flaxseed meal and soy products are much more likely to blame.
http://www.soyonlineservice.co.nz/04malehealth.htm
Flaxseed meal has THREE TIMES as much phytoestrogen as soy, and is MUCH more biologically available (being far more digestible than soy).
I think you have an extra letter in there ;)
Ha, that's true... always most economical to get someone else to pay for the R&D, as much as possible ;)
Yeah -- who knew a Cold War could be so useful??
Serious question, tho: what is the economic balance here? Is this actually a net profit, given the cost to develop and build the original bombs? At the current price of electricity, maybe it is. Anyone want to take a stab at the math?
Looks like the main drawback is the liquid sodium coolant, because sodium is so reactive. What other metals might work?
Otherwise, I don't see a downside here, at least not compared to traditional reactors. If there is one, someone kindly pipe up.
Seems to me once social welfare becomes comfortable, it has gone too far. It needs to be UNcomfortable by design, so people do their damnedest to get up, out of, and beyond it, rather than slouching into it as a permanent way of life. It also needs to stop penalizing people who DO save and work to get out of it. (Frex, stuff like the limit on savings, commonly just $500, which isn't even a month's unsubsidized rent most places -- how the hell can you get out of public housing if you're not allowed to build up the funds to do so??)
In one of his books, Larry Elder writes of a Catholic mission that has a huge success rate on relatively little money, by requiring full effort from everyone in the program (pretty similar to how Booker T. ran Tuskegee back in the early days). Slackers get dumped, which is as it should be.
We can't save everyone, it's just not practical; and not everyone is worth saving, even from that standpoint of best net economic benefit to society. There's never been a perfect answer, at least not so long as there remains any personal choice, personal freedom, or fairness of impact. Egalitarian solutions just drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator.
A lot of people, myself included, are in a sort of limbo there -- we have enough assets that we're denied aid, yet we're cash-poor and don't make enough to afford insurance. Many small business owners and small investors are in that boat. Your choices will essentially be go out of business and go on welfare, sell your assets (which is probably your retirement fund), or go to jail.
Catastrophic care is always available through any hospital that takes federal funding, able to pay or not.
It occurs to me to wonder if those who have only catastrophic-event insurance will be forced to buy "full coverage" -- which is more expensive than doing small stuff out of your own pocket.
Okay, point, but ....
The problem is that social welfare never stops at giving 'em a *hand up*, "get people started on a better road" stage. It invariably becomes a *handout* instead -- "depend on us for everything", which has precisely the opposite effect -- it enforces poverty, because otherwise you don't get your handout. (The American deep south has been demonstrating this for 150 years -- if handouts worked so well, why is it still the poorest part of the country??)
It's like digging a ditch FOR someone, when instead you should have just loaned them a shovel.
Methinks required reading for all social welfare advocates should be Booker T. Washington's UP FROM SLAVERY, which is largely about this very issue.
Really good article. Saved for reference!
Of course, marketing insurance as "total peace of mind" and "total care" didn't help that mindset. Generate fear (in this case, of being sick and unable to pay for it), and people will jump aboard so they can feel safe again, even if it's actually a bad idea. D'oh!!
Another problem with insurance for every little thing is that insurance demands itemized bills, and that drives charges up. I've watched this situation develop in "pet care insurance" from the beginning. Despite that only about 1% of pets are insured, insurance requirements now drive veterinary billing methods, which concomitantly are now over 10 times what they were before pet insurance, only 10 years ago (tho actual costs have merely roughly doubled). Follow:
10 years ago your bill would read:
SPAY $60
Now it'll read:
pre-op blood work - $75
pre-anaesthesia - $20
15 minutes anaesthesia @ $200/hour - $50
15 minutes surgery room time @$200/hour - $50
1 hour recovery room time @$65/hour - $65
autoclave supplies - $15
sharps disposal - $5 (actual cost, ONE CENT)
sutures - $15
etc, etc, etc.
GRAND TOTAL $600.
Insurance won't pay for anything that isn't itemized and identified. So every little incidental bit of overhead is now itemized, rather than being generalized as it was before. And this impacts everyone, not just those with insurance.
This is much akin to what happened to human hospital bills about the time insurance's billing requirements began impacting hospitals. No longer is it "hospitalized, one night, $200". Now they itemize charges for everything in sight, right down to that mini-pack of kleenix the nurse brought when you had to blow your nose.
Seriously, how do you figure that?
Thanks for the useful info, which I've filched and posted to another discussion where the 10th Amendment is taking a serious trampling. Excellent reminder of what the Framers were thinking, and why.
That's how I read it too, straight out of the quote from the bill itself.
And explain to me how if I can't afford health insurance in the first place, being fined or sent to jail if I don't buy insurance will magically make me able to afford said insurance??
[Reality check: paying what health care I need out of pocket has cost, over my 54 year lifetime, about 0.2% of what the same care would have were it dependent on paying a monthly insurance premium. About $5000 vs. $210k or so, as it works out.]
Your children better start saving now -- since they'll be expected to pay it off.
Here's what I find fascinating: if I already can't afford to buy health insurance** -- how the fuck am I supposed to magically be able to buy this new health insurance, or pay the fine if I can't afford it in the first place?? What is this, a modern form of debtor's prison??!
** Which as you point out in another post, is not cost-effective for anything other than catastrophic events -- it's much cheaper to pay for minor care out of your own pocket. Remember when if you were sick, you could instantly find a family doctor and cough up $20 for an office visit? How is $500/month cheaper than $20 once in a blue moon??
Correction, it's like the Roman Empire's government opertated after things started going to hell. After centuries of relative personal freedom and stability (as best one could find it in the ancient world), by about 250AD, thanks to new policies functionally identical to those being pushed by modern liberals, Rome was right where we are now: swamped by fast-growing public assistance costs; citizens' freedoms being negated by invasive regulations; gov't services awash in corruption; rising taxes and expanding government.
And I'd like to shake your mom's hand for raising a kid with the sense to recognise what's going on in America today, cuz otherwise your post is dead-on.
Likely so. Tho some of these kids seem to have nothing better to do!
Depends how secure it is and how good you are at figuring out usernames and passwords :)
To use Dashboard, you cannot remain anonymous.
Occurs to me that you could also use it to learn what the system knows about *other* people...
Remember the notion that "self-esteem" could and should be taught? This infected the school systems without ever being researched, or having its validity even seriously examined. When (much more recently) someone decided to actually study "self-esteem" they found that the highest level of self-esteem was found among -- CRIMINALS!! (especially career criminals) Well, of course -- people who think their shit don't stink and that they are superior to everyone else, and don't care who they hurt -- seems obvious, once you think about it.
"The reason given can be as ridiculous as 'He had terrorist looking hair' and still be valid."
Ahem... why aren't you wearing your turban??!
That's an interesting point -- the idea that the *less* accurate a detection device is, the better excuse you have to sweep broadly through your potential targets.
I'm reminded that throwing dynamite into a pond is NOT a legal method of fishing....
Much simpler -- just don't bathe for a month. Accumulate enough natural odors that the machine becomes either confused or overwhelmed. As a side benefit, you'll get brownie points for your geek badge. ;)
Just think how safe you are from terrorists! :D
Agreed. This is why my main everyday machine, whose main innards are at 11 years old and counting, is in no serious danger of being replaced for being "obsolete". It still does everything I require of it -- frankly the only place it can't keep up anymore is ill-tempered scripts on web pages, and I count that more as a Mozilla problem than an aging-PC problem.
And I'd like it to support more disk space... oh well, that's what networked storage is for!
Buy it or not, I'm still not turning my computers on and off 50 times a day. The thermal stress isn't worth it.