Did you not read where I stated my reasons were based on being humane?
Virtue signaling on Slashdot doesn't make you "humane". Neither does advocating policies that condemn Native Americans or Mexicans to continued poverty, as you do.
Maybe the natives should kick your sorry ass out. You can't seriously think that something as absurd as the Papal Bull on the "Doctrine of Discovery" gives the Pilgrims and other vermin such as the Spanish "Conquistadors" the right to claim already occupied land.
So? The people who those injustices were committed against are long dead, as are the perpetrators who committed those injustices. Kind of like my ancestors that lost their land and property repeatedly and were chased all over Europe. We don't go back centuries later and say "this land really belongs to us" because it would be foolish to do so, and because no civilized country ought to recognize such absurd claims.
Your kind of grievances based on ancient claims, race and ethnicity, has been at the many of the most destructive human conflicts in the world. It is utterly reprehensible. And hopefully, we can keep that evil from spreading in the US.
You have to know these people to know what they go through. Yes, some of it is clearly self-inflicted. But how do you convince them to stop it? Oh, right... education.
What good would an education do you on a reservation? You can't start a significant business and pretty much every effort you make goes back to the tribe as a whole, not to you as an individual. It's no wonder people don't bother getting an education and remain poor. The only use for an education is outside the reservation, meaning that it's only people who leave the reservation who bother getting one.
The real problem is the fact that the US federal government forces Native Americans on reservations to live in communal, collectivist societies with serious limits on business activities, property rights, and individual liberties. Let people who live on reservations reap the rewards of their individual efforts, and they will be very motivated to get an education.
In effect, reservations are a realization of the progressive and leftist dreams of collective ownership and back-to-nature living, and the results are predictable and awful.
but rather were just engaging in hyperbole and lets look at your Wikipedia page for the actual European countries you listed
That's comparable to the total per capita public health care spending in... The following is total per capita spending (public+private) in those countries:
I prefer we cover all humans (because I'm humane that way) not just US citizens
Well, that preference a good reason to kick out 10 million illegals and limit immigration, isn't it?
If you don't think it's harder for people with less money to move out, then you're not thinking at all. It doesn't mean it's impossible. It's still a barrier.
Great, we agree then: poverty is not an insurmountable barrier to moving out, it merely makes it harder to move out relative to some other people.
And that means that poverty by itself does not trap people in reservations, since poor people pick up and leave all over the world all the time, despite it being "hard".
What actually traps people in reservations is that they are making a rational decision under the set of perverse incentives and conditions that government has created for them.
And blaming them is simply trying to absolve responsibility from the people who did the dumping.
I didn't "blame them", I simply explained why you're seeing what you're seeing. And the people who "did the dumping" are long dead. The sorry state of reservations is due to current policies adopted by current administrations and politicians.
Instructing a group of people to be better humans than average is not a thing that will solve any problems.
I'm not "instructing" Native Americans to do anything. What I am saying is that they respond to incentives and government the same way everybody else does. Right now, the US government manages and imposes a system of collective governance, collective ownership, and perverse incentives on Native Americans in reservations, and the result that you get is a group of people living in abject poverty.
Until people like you understand that, you will continue to condemn these people to live in poverty and misery.
They could, technically, 'leave anytime,' sure. And be homeless somewhere. Most of them are unemployable
They are perfectly employable, for example in construction and agriculture. That doesn't require much education.
First off, you're wrong. They receive very little (a couple hundred/month if they enroll in a special welfare program.
I didn't say that they received large cash benefits, I said that they "are getting massive amounts of help". That is, the US federal government runs special programs for their education, health, land management, and numerous other aspects of their lives.
They're the tribe that ambushed Gen. Custer. They've never been seen as equals with the rest of America, and the bad situation 100 years ago has lead to the bad situation they live in today.
You need to stop thinking in those collective abstractions. The people who ambushed Gen. Custer are long dead. Who is living there now is a subset of their descendants who, for some reason, can't or don't want to leave.
But more to the point, I never said they needed Federal aid. As a libertarian, I believe strongly in private aid organizations (my favorite charity is a particular homeless shelter which is completely privately funded.)
The problem of Native Americans and reservations isn't a lack of private charity either. The problem of Native Americans on reservations have is that they are being treated like children by the federal government. That is, the federal government creates certain legal and economic conditions in reservations, and the population adapts to those conditions, both through selection and through changes in behavior. And the reason why we have those policies is because, ultimately, the rest of America always thinks of Native Americans as a distinct and separate group, with a separate culture and identity that ought to be maintained. Well, we are certainly maintaining it, and those people are nearly as poor as they were when they were hunter-gatherers.
Private charity isn't going to help these people. What is going to help them is to stop the insulting and parochial system of federal governance imposed on them and the expectation that they stay separate. What we need to do is give them the same system of legal rights and property rights that the rest of the US enjoys.
Well, I can only suggest you disconnect yourself from the Internet. It's the only sure way to be sure you won't be influenced by foreigners.
And let people like you spew your propaganda unopposed? I don't think so.
I'd like the US not to turn into Canada or Europe, which is why I need to speak up when people like you try brag about the superiority of your glorious state.
The USA forced them to live there, forced them into the ghetto -- and now they're too impoverished to ever leave.
They are US citizens and they can leave anytime. Furthermore, poverty is not a barrier to picking up and leaving. What's actually going on is that people with initiative and skills do leave the reservations and join mainstream society. That leaves behind the people who are incapable of leaving because they lack the skills, intelligence, or initiative. And that's what you're seeing.
The lifespan information should be used as an indicator of how badly communities need help.
These communities are already getting massive amounts of help. For example, per pupil spending is 50% higher (!) for Native Americans than US average, and the federal government interferes in almost every decision Native Americans on reservations make.
What these communities actually need is for the US government and the rest of the country to treat them like adult American citizens, with all the rights and obligations that entails, instead of trying to turn them in to a political cause or a cultural and linguistic museum exhibit, or to project hippie back-to-nature fantasies on them.
The U.S. counties with the longest life expectancy are places like Marin County, Calif., and Summit County, Colo. -- communities that are well-off and more highly educated. Counties with the shortest life expectancy tend to have communities that are poorer and less educated. The lowest is in Oglala Lakota County, S.D., which includes the Pine Ridge Native American reservation.
Simplistic discussions based on observing relationships between poverty, education, and life expectancy are not helpful in addressing these problems. Poverty and low education simply cannot explain low life expectancy because while they are correlated, they are not reliable predictors. Furthermore, government spending can't be used to alleviate poverty and low education in these communities because we tried that (e.g., the Federal Government is already spending massively on Native American students, with $15,391 per student, compared to $9,896 outside the reservations).
Why wouldn't you vote when you think the nuts are going to win?
Because I didn't like either Trump or Hillary and didn't care much who won.
After the election, my views changed moderately: I have a somewhat more positive view of Trump and the Republicans and an even more negative view of Hillary and the Democrats.
That comes to $3698 / person / year or about $3977 / citizen / year. That's comparable to the total per capita public health care spending in France, Japan, Iceland, the UK, Finland, New Zealand, Italy, Spain, Israel, etc. The following is total per capita spending (public+private) in those countries:
if you've been looking at the political landscape of the past several decades and drawing the conclusion that it's the *Democrats* who've become "nuttier & nastier*, I have to question your judgment.
Just as I question your judgment if you don't see how nutty and nasty Democrats have become.
An independent who doesn't vote? That's truly independent, I guess.
I didn't say "I don't vote", I said "I didn't vote". I'm sorry, maybe such subtleties of English are lost on you?
Why don't you simply infom yourself how healthcare in Europe works
I know exactly how healthcare works in Europe, having been covered by it for a large part of my life. You obviously harbor numerous delusions about it.
Close. I'm arguing for a policy in which I help pay for something that I want to see happen.
Unless you're in the top 80% of American income earners, you don't help pay for anything.
No, I'm not. Reread the studies that I linked to. Or just read about prison education studies
Giving prisoners an education tailored to their needs is not the same as giving a free education of their choice to middle-class kids; the studies don't apply.
Most of the folks who pick those programs because they hear it pays well end up dropping out or changing majors because they don't have the logical thinking ability to translate specifications into functioning code even at a basic level.
Which is why they shouldn't waste 2-4 years in college.
No, the main thing that is keeping the poor in poverty is the availability of excessive amounts of credit, which is mainly caused by lack of financial regulations.
Actually, the two causes of excessive credit are simple: kids aren't taught basic economics or personal finance in public schools, and financial regulations protect individuals from the consequences of their actions and force credit issuers to issue credit to high-risk customers.
They've been conned into spending more money than they can actually afford under the promise that they can buy now and pay later
Well, they have been "conned" by people with your kind of bizarre ideas about economics, people like you who think that spending 2-6 years on a free college degree in a useless field is an economically sound decision.
Except that in the real world, people have to eat. That's not materialistic. That's survival.
Which part of "beyond basic subsistence" do you not understand? No, a free college education is not "basic subsistence".
As for your argument that the poor already get grants, let me tell you that reality differs greatly from your world view.
My "world view" is based on actually working my way through college. And I don't see why kids today can't do the same thing.
The best single change the US could make right now would be to let Medicare and Medicaid negotiate with drug companies over prices, like the single payer systems in Europe can. Until that happens, very little will change healthcare costs in America.
That would be one good change. Another good change would be to give individuals the same tax breaks for insurance as employers.
Note how Obama's ACA does neither of those. Instead, Obama's ACA tries to lock people into overpriced health care plans with effectively no ability to negotiate.
Competition cannot work for these services, because the people in need of those services cannot realistically price shop or choose to delay care until the cost is less.
You're just saying that the demand for medical services is highly inelastic. That's actually debatable, but even if it were true, it has nothing to do with competition: if I need some important procedure, I'll still shop around among providers, and those providers will still want to compete for my business through lowering their prices.
medical care is an essential service—something that in many cases people quite literally cannot live without
And no matter how you slice it, all medical systems at some point make a cost/benefit tradeoff and let people die. Single payer systems will not pay a million bucks for a life-saving procedure on a sickly 80-year-old. Free market health care systems at least give individuals some control over those tradeoffs.
Slashdot Mirror
Virtue signaling on Slashdot doesn't make you "humane". Neither does advocating policies that condemn Native Americans or Mexicans to continued poverty, as you do.
So? The people who those injustices were committed against are long dead, as are the perpetrators who committed those injustices. Kind of like my ancestors that lost their land and property repeatedly and were chased all over Europe. We don't go back centuries later and say "this land really belongs to us" because it would be foolish to do so, and because no civilized country ought to recognize such absurd claims.
Your kind of grievances based on ancient claims, race and ethnicity, has been at the many of the most destructive human conflicts in the world. It is utterly reprehensible. And hopefully, we can keep that evil from spreading in the US.
What good would an education do you on a reservation? You can't start a significant business and pretty much every effort you make goes back to the tribe as a whole, not to you as an individual. It's no wonder people don't bother getting an education and remain poor. The only use for an education is outside the reservation, meaning that it's only people who leave the reservation who bother getting one.
The real problem is the fact that the US federal government forces Native Americans on reservations to live in communal, collectivist societies with serious limits on business activities, property rights, and individual liberties. Let people who live on reservations reap the rewards of their individual efforts, and they will be very motivated to get an education.
In effect, reservations are a realization of the progressive and leftist dreams of collective ownership and back-to-nature living, and the results are predictable and awful.
Got you to look at the data, didn't it?
That's comparable to the total per capita public health care spending in ... The following is total per capita spending (public+private) in those countries:
Well, that preference a good reason to kick out 10 million illegals and limit immigration, isn't it?
Well, guess what, Americans don't give a f*ck about what you would be happy about.
Great, we agree then: poverty is not an insurmountable barrier to moving out, it merely makes it harder to move out relative to some other people.
And that means that poverty by itself does not trap people in reservations, since poor people pick up and leave all over the world all the time, despite it being "hard".
What actually traps people in reservations is that they are making a rational decision under the set of perverse incentives and conditions that government has created for them.
I'm not disputing that poor education, poverty, and low life expectancy correlate. But that doesn't mean that the former causes the latter.
Family and personal experience.
I didn't "blame them", I simply explained why you're seeing what you're seeing. And the people who "did the dumping" are long dead. The sorry state of reservations is due to current policies adopted by current administrations and politicians.
I'm not "instructing" Native Americans to do anything. What I am saying is that they respond to incentives and government the same way everybody else does. Right now, the US government manages and imposes a system of collective governance, collective ownership, and perverse incentives on Native Americans in reservations, and the result that you get is a group of people living in abject poverty.
Until people like you understand that, you will continue to condemn these people to live in poverty and misery.
Does being a gay immigrant count?
They are perfectly employable, for example in construction and agriculture. That doesn't require much education.
I didn't say that they received large cash benefits, I said that they "are getting massive amounts of help". That is, the US federal government runs special programs for their education, health, land management, and numerous other aspects of their lives.
You need to stop thinking in those collective abstractions. The people who ambushed Gen. Custer are long dead. Who is living there now is a subset of their descendants who, for some reason, can't or don't want to leave.
The problem of Native Americans and reservations isn't a lack of private charity either. The problem of Native Americans on reservations have is that they are being treated like children by the federal government. That is, the federal government creates certain legal and economic conditions in reservations, and the population adapts to those conditions, both through selection and through changes in behavior. And the reason why we have those policies is because, ultimately, the rest of America always thinks of Native Americans as a distinct and separate group, with a separate culture and identity that ought to be maintained. Well, we are certainly maintaining it, and those people are nearly as poor as they were when they were hunter-gatherers.
Private charity isn't going to help these people. What is going to help them is to stop the insulting and parochial system of federal governance imposed on them and the expectation that they stay separate. What we need to do is give them the same system of legal rights and property rights that the rest of the US enjoys.
And let people like you spew your propaganda unopposed? I don't think so.
I'd like the US not to turn into Canada or Europe, which is why I need to speak up when people like you try brag about the superiority of your glorious state.
They are US citizens and they can leave anytime. Furthermore, poverty is not a barrier to picking up and leaving. What's actually going on is that people with initiative and skills do leave the reservations and join mainstream society. That leaves behind the people who are incapable of leaving because they lack the skills, intelligence, or initiative. And that's what you're seeing.
These communities are already getting massive amounts of help. For example, per pupil spending is 50% higher (!) for Native Americans than US average, and the federal government interferes in almost every decision Native Americans on reservations make.
What these communities actually need is for the US government and the rest of the country to treat them like adult American citizens, with all the rights and obligations that entails, instead of trying to turn them in to a political cause or a cultural and linguistic museum exhibit, or to project hippie back-to-nature fantasies on them.
Simplistic discussions based on observing relationships between poverty, education, and life expectancy are not helpful in addressing these problems. Poverty and low education simply cannot explain low life expectancy because while they are correlated, they are not reliable predictors. Furthermore, government spending can't be used to alleviate poverty and low education in these communities because we tried that (e.g., the Federal Government is already spending massively on Native American students, with $15,391 per student, compared to $9,896 outside the reservations).
Because I didn't like either Trump or Hillary and didn't care much who won.
After the election, my views changed moderately: I have a somewhat more positive view of Trump and the Republicans and an even more negative view of Hillary and the Democrats.
Medicare/Medicaid spending was about $1191 billion in 2015.
https://www.cms.gov/research-s...
The US population was 322 million in 2015, or about 302 million citizens.
https://www.census.gov/popcloc...
That comes to $3698 / person / year or about $3977 / citizen / year. That's comparable to the total per capita public health care spending in France, Japan, Iceland, the UK, Finland, New Zealand, Italy, Spain, Israel, etc. The following is total per capita spending (public+private) in those countries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You'd be amazed at all the things Europeans believe that aren't actually true.
Just as I question your judgment if you don't see how nutty and nasty Democrats have become.
I didn't say "I don't vote", I said "I didn't vote". I'm sorry, maybe such subtleties of English are lost on you?
Not just "in my mind". Social media messaging is one of the major components of "foreign interference".
I know exactly how healthcare works in Europe, having been covered by it for a large part of my life. You obviously harbor numerous delusions about it.
I don't need to "come to Europe", I've lived in half a dozen European countries (including yours) before immigrating to the US.
Yeah, European cities are all gussied up for the tourists. Sorry, that's not a proper way to evaluate a country.
Unless you're in the top 80% of American income earners, you don't help pay for anything.
Giving prisoners an education tailored to their needs is not the same as giving a free education of their choice to middle-class kids; the studies don't apply.
Which is why they shouldn't waste 2-4 years in college.
Actually, the two causes of excessive credit are simple: kids aren't taught basic economics or personal finance in public schools, and financial regulations protect individuals from the consequences of their actions and force credit issuers to issue credit to high-risk customers.
Well, they have been "conned" by people with your kind of bizarre ideas about economics, people like you who think that spending 2-6 years on a free college degree in a useless field is an economically sound decision.
Which part of "beyond basic subsistence" do you not understand? No, a free college education is not "basic subsistence".
My "world view" is based on actually working my way through college. And I don't see why kids today can't do the same thing.
That would be one good change. Another good change would be to give individuals the same tax breaks for insurance as employers.
Note how Obama's ACA does neither of those. Instead, Obama's ACA tries to lock people into overpriced health care plans with effectively no ability to negotiate.
Well, foreign interference in US politics is unacceptable, whether it comes from Russia, Saudi Arabia, or Canada.
You're Canadian, are you not?
You're just saying that the demand for medical services is highly inelastic. That's actually debatable, but even if it were true, it has nothing to do with competition: if I need some important procedure, I'll still shop around among providers, and those providers will still want to compete for my business through lowering their prices.
And no matter how you slice it, all medical systems at some point make a cost/benefit tradeoff and let people die. Single payer systems will not pay a million bucks for a life-saving procedure on a sickly 80-year-old. Free market health care systems at least give individuals some control over those tradeoffs.
For some definition of "well", yes: Europeans keep health care costs low through price controls and rationing.
Our government "sucks" in some ways, and European governments "suck" in many other ways. Generally, Americans are getting the better deal.