So your premise is that if slavery is less profitable, there will be more of it?
Not at all, the opposite, in fact. My premise is that when there is more profit available, more people will prosper. Freedom requires access to resources. When resources are constrained, only the strongest prosper. This has been proven throughout history. It's how the dark ages ended and a middle class emerged: more open trade brought more prosperity, and serfs were able to escape serfdom.
Did sanctions on Iran make the Iranian people more free? Did it work in Iraq? Cuba? North Korea? I can think of only one counter-example where restricting trade eventually led to greater freedom, but even that produced greater violence at first.
True, but I don't see how that is an argument against being informed about it. The quality of life we stand to lose for having suboptimal capacitors is trivial, even embarassing, compared to the potential gain in quality of life for some of the people at the other end. And my main point was, I think this labelling is a good idea because then at least we can't claim ignorance.
To me, this entire argument misses the point. It makes the rather untenable assumption that if most people stopped buying tantalum or whatever from a specific source, that all the conflicts there would be resolved and the people would somehow decide that they're going to just hug it out and be friends. It's easier to make that assertion with diamonds - there's a lot of money chasing them and you can point to specific thugs killing people over them. Not so for most of these rare minerals and metals. In fact I would think if the market dried up, the warlords would just move their slaves to performing other tasks, and working them even harder since there's now less money overall to fight over. In other words it makes everyone worse off.
A lot of these issues are caused by the way organizations like the IMF, the World Bank, and USAID treat third world countries that want to trade commodities on the global market. They are treated like the serfs of the first world multinationals. Focusing on specific commodities in specific regions does no good at all. You end up right down to decided you're not going to buy anything from anywhere unless it's a completely peaceful colony of the US or China. Maybe that's the goal of the multinationals, I don't know. But if you really want to fix it, you'll have to get rid of the petro-dollar and force the US to stop trying to be the world police and let every country govern themselves how they want and trade with all of them equally. Good luck with that.
Education: "In 1987, public colleges and universities received 3.3 times as much in revenue from state and local governments as they did from students. They now receive about 1.1 times as much from states and localities as from students." cite [cbpp.org]
Public funding for education was not a New Deal program. It precedes New Deal, and continues after. Note what is left out in the above: They don't mention the increases in FEDERAL funding of higher education, nor the enormous increase in tuition charged by the schools. State and local funding has actually increased, just not as fast as the rise in tuition.
Pay: "The minimum wage of $1.60 an hour in 1968 would be $10.56 today when adjusted for inflation (cite [raisetheminimumwage.com]).
And at the time of the New Deal (1938), it was $0.25, which would be $4.02 today. In 1939 it was raised to $0.30 ($4.89), and in 1945 to $0.40 ($5.04). So, sure, you could pick the HIGHEST EVER minimum wage and say it was higher than today, but that's not even funding, just a mandate on businesses. So this does not come close to backing up your assertion either.
Federal Benefits: "As one can see, even single men, who get back the lowest amount of benefits for their Medicare contributions, receive almost three times what they pay in..." cite [nytimes.com].
Yes, because when the New Deal was implemented the average life span was 65, not 73. What's your point with this? It's NOT a roll back, it's bigger and more New Deal.
And finally, the Bottom Line: "The wealth gap between younger and older Americans has stretched to the widest on record, worsened by a prolonged economic downturn that has wiped out job opportunities for young adults and saddled them with housing and college debt.
Well duh. Again, part of the problem CAUSED by New Deal programs, NOT by "dismantling" them, which was your assertion. So you're still completely wrong.
I guess you triggered some groupthink warm-and-fuzzies with your completely bogus assertion, though, because your demonstrably bad assessment of a "dismantled" New Deal is now +5 Insightful. This post will now probably be modded as a troll since I have pointed out how wrong it was.
...the traction that outright communism was gaining after the Great Depression until some fairly mild measures in that direction (the New Deal) were adopted. Boomers enjoyed the benefits without acknowledging them, and dismantled them (through inadequate funding) in order to line their own pockets, at the expense of the millenials.
Just what New Deal measures have been dismantled? Social Security? Nope, it's bigger. Medicare? Nope, more funding than ever. Food Stamps and farm programs? Ditto, ditto. Unemployment Insurance is still fully funded and has been expanded beyond New Deal vision (EUC went to 99 weeks and the Senate is now working to expand that, too).
That's funny, I've noticed the same except with my left-leaning friends (and extreme left-wing politics of course). I'm not trying to be facetious, it does seem that way to me. Perhaps it says more about us than them?
If you put a right-wing extremist and a left-wing extremist in a room together you'll find that they'll have a tremendous amount of agreement on a lot of issues. The US has gone so far off the rails that to a lot of people, only extreme solutions can fix it.
I have a problem with the business case for them choosing to be similar to Fox News.
Yet it's clearly a good strategy. Not for right-slanted bias, but the general appeal. Fox News has basically won the cable news network wars, the only battleground being who gets 2nd place. NBC news people won't go near MSNBC, CNN is going to a show format instead of news. The only real talent left to the competitors is Rachel Maddow.
So if Yahoo can duplicate that kind of success in web site news, it would be quite a coup.
Really? Then it's just our imagination that the levels of CO2 have been rising faster over the last 200 years than at any other time in the last 110,000 years? Or are you saying that the dramatic rise of atmospheric CO2 at the same time as humanity has started generating massive amounts of the stuff is just coincidental?
Your claim that "We put out far more CO2 then can be absorbed by the pre-industrial climate cycles." is pure conjecture. You have absolutely no evidence, nor the ability to conduct experiments, that would provide any support or refutation to this claim. About the closest you can get is to study periods immediately following a super-massive volcanic eruption, but since the ash and other factors from that have such a significant cooling effect, it's almost impossible to isolate the effects of the CO2 emitted over time.
"at a rate far far less than predicted by all your models."
Patently False. They aren't rising as fast as the worse case scenarios the media likes to report. They are rising within model predictions.
Actually, he is more right than you are. Let's compare, shall we? Plot the trend from 1990 - 2050, and compare with observations.The IPCC even revised their 2013 report from the 2nd quarter, downgrading their predictions from 0.13-0.33 per decade to 0.10-0.23 per decade. That's near the BOTTOM of the model's predictions, so it seems even the IPCC isn't buying that the models are accurate.
They claimed in AR5 that the observations were within the model predictions from AR4, but their OWN GRAPHIC tells a different story.
B) IF you are implying there is an increase in the energy output of the sun, we would know becasue we measure it pretty accuratly. The rising trend does NOT correlate with the Suns activity.
Actually, that's not accurate. True, it does not correlate with the sun's total solar irradiance but the models ignore anything else, such as spectral variability. There have been plenty of correlations made with solar activity, earth's orbit, Milankovitch cycles and cosmic rays. You might want to review a few of these papers on solar influence of climate change.
" Has a habit of touting every storm or weather incident (even earthquakes) as proof of global warming, "
um, that's the media, not scientists who are experts in that field of study. However, there will be an increase in the energy of events. This can be stronger storms, or more storms,. The bottom line: more energy expressed over time.
Well you can claim that if you want to, but in fact it's a compromised media and activist climatologists. Like the ones that made a trip to Antarctica as a marketing exercise and alarm people about the disappearing ice (it didn't work out for them), like James Hansen, like Michael Oppenheimer, like John Harte.
" Has a habit of touting every storm or weather incident (even earthquakes) as proof of global warming, "
um, that's the media, not scientists who are experts in that field of study. However, there will be an increase in the energy of events. This can be stronger storms, or more storms,. The bottom line: more energy expressed over time.
"No True Scotsman", then?
"We have also had some of the coldest incidents in recorded history in recent years as well."
As expect by climate change models, dumb ass. The term climate change is older the global warming, BTW.
Yes, as everything and nothing is all evidence of climate change. There are so many predictions, EVERY event is confirmation and NO event can shed dispersion upon it. Does that really sound like science to you?
4) We put out far more CO2 then can be absorbed by the pre-industrial climate cycles.
Pure conjecture. The FACT is that the correlation between increasing CO2 followed by increased warming is not very good.
I thought we'd been using tiny variations in gravity to detect Oil for 20 or so years now, fly over an area and map the underground caverns based off gravity variation.
Yea, this whole thing sounds really sketchy. Like the guy made a miscalculation when helping design the satellites, only discovered after reports of accuracy issues with the system, and now he's floating a balloon about some wild theory so he doesn't have to admit to making a stupid, multi-billion dollar mistake.
Nope, but they do press releases about their executive appointments, and the releases get posted to every site where their marketing contractor has an agreement. Now you just need to determine what company that is, and their arrangement with Dice Holdings, Inc.
Currently, one drug and one pesticide can get approval when tested as one drug and one pesticide, and the same for EM fields.
It doesn't help that the FDA in the US is now so heavily compromised. Much of their funding comes directly from the companies asking for approval of their products, which means that the FDA is now working directly for the manufacturers (they are signing the checks). This puts it in a similar situation to the big 3 "approved" rating agencies and their role in the US mortgage banking crisis. They were providing AAA ratings to bundles of mortgages loaded with sub-prime loans. It brought the entire banking system to crisis.
So what happens when the FDA is being paid by producers? We've already seen many drugs get approval, then pulled months or years later when it's discovered they are killing people. The FDA is now funding swat raids on farms selling raw milk while putting bans on cheap commodities like red yeast rice so pharmaceutical companies can make big money on patents for the same ingredients (lipitor, for one). It's much worse than just not knowing how to do the research, it's that there is no one willing to even try, since all the money for it is coming from the ones producing the products.
In the US, I think most people's copay is higher than $30 to see a GP.
Mine is still $20, but I have to pay $35 to see a "specialist". For Medicare, there really are no co-pays, but you generally have to pay 20% of the approved cost for most services, within the cap (depending on your income, there is a maximum amount you have to pay per year). Most people with Medicare get supplemental plans that pay the gaps. Medicaid (for low-income people) usually requires less payments from patients, but copayments and coinsurance varies from state to state.
Obamacare is changing all of this. You aren't allowed to not have insurance any more. At this point it looks like it's mainly going to drive up costs and reduce the available doctors. I can't imagine that full-blown socialized insurance, a.l.a. NHS could have possibly been any worse. The whole thing is going to get really bad, because the government and insurance companies are going to be sucking up vast amounts of money, and it's going to really stifle innovation. That's unfortunate, because most medical technology advances come out of the United States. There won't be any payback for risking everything on a new idea, so unless you're good at schmoozing the bureaucrats, there won't be any funding for your cure or treatment. Most of the ideas will just get tossed in the crapper, and only the very rich will have good treatments for expensive ailments.
Umm, there are plenty of countries outside of totalitarian regimes that give everyone access to decent medical care. Just look at any of the first world countries besides the US (UK, France, Germany, etc).
Everyone in the US has access to decent medical care, too. But that's different that everyone having equal access to medical care.
Since you don't seem to have a DDX or recommendations, you must be (by your definition) stupid.
Read my post again. I was pointing out your attitude that people can't make any decisions for themselves. That certainly seemed consistent with your position. I trust people to participate in their health care decisions, while you think all the stupid slaves should just to submit to whatever the present authority suggests.
What would your friends do if EVERY mechanic had no idea about the costs but insisted on a rather long list of things that must be done or they would likely die?
I suggest you find another doctor. Quacks are like that, not good doctors, and far from EVERY doctor. This is just a straw man (you seem to favor that type of fallacy).
If most people were able to have specialized knowledge of everything they might need to deal with in life, it wouldn't be specialized knowledge, now would it.
No, of course not. But it's still your body and you own it and have a right to be fully informed and make your own decision about what pills to take, what gets shoved into it, and who gets to cut it open and when.
Well my electricians license has expired, but yes, I do that in my own house, and yes, I do pretty much all my auto repairs because it's cheaper. 13 years and 140,000 miles later and it still drives like new. But you know what - everybody that I know that needs repairs done by a mechanic pretty much always asks "How much?" before they agree to have it done. Sometimes they'll even [GASP!] shop around! Weird, I know.
It demonstrably is not a straw man. 50% of hospital admissions [beckershos...review.com] come through the Emergency Department. If you think that is a tiny portion of hospital revenue then you are delusional.
This is the most tortured repeat of a straw man ever, as well as an illustration of why costs are so high. Hospital care is, far and away, the most expensive type of treatment, even though often it is not necessary. The whole point of your link is that people go to the emergency room unnecessarily. Hospitals make up over 30% of the cost of health care, yet only serve 17% of patient care.
People that have to look at their medical bills and actually pay them do not go to the emergency room unless it's a real emergency. Poor people without insurance that will never be able to pay the bill, they do.
Nope. Everyone gets the same coverage. Its paid by your employer, you never see that money on your payslip even. There are no tiers. Taxes are high, but we actually get good stuff for it.
Sorry, I was thinking of the Netherlands, not Sweden. Thank you for the correction.
We've tried less. Compared to any other 1st world country, we have less intervention. That's why our per-capita healthcare cost is the highest in the world but our quality of care is somewhere between 16th and 32nd.
[sigh]
This is the unfortunate view of people that don't know history.
After WW2, there were many FDR policies in place that set wages for workers in many industries. That meant that companies had to be creative to attract the best workers. With so many people with families, what caught on was employer-based health care benefits. It soon became the norm, and government incentives and tax breaks for companies and employees using employer-based health insurance became an expectation. That means that 80% of the population has had a 3rd-party paying for their health care since the 1950s. All this was brought about through government intervention.
This whole idea that we have had some "free market" for health care is false. It's the 3rd party payer that has allowed health care costs to skyrocket (among other government-supported policies, such as the internship program that limits the number of doctors that can be licensed). Nobody over 65 has paid for their own health care since 1965.
That's why our per-capita healthcare cost is the highest in the world but our quality of care is somewhere between 16th and 32nd.
Another false meme. Yes, our costs are the highest and out of control. But only 20% of care is anything like free-market based, and your "quality of care" comparison is not - you're comparing overall health to health care. These are not the same thing. For most people, your health is determined mostly by your lifestyle. Health care is how effective the interventions are when you have a medical problem.
Shopping around won't even begin to address the issue. You're asking people who know nothing about medicine and have no aptitude for it to decide if the doctor who says they might die if they don't get a CT right now is just trying to pad the bill or not (sometime he is, sometimes not).
Yes, the stupid people cannot be trusted with their own health - they need "licensed professionals" and government bureaucrats to make those decisions for them, right? Look, "shopping" is not this straw man that you are creating. It's if your doctor recommends a test or procedure, you ask how much it costs. Ever done that? No, because somebody else pays the bill so why do you care? People without insurance do ask, and usually the doctor doesn't know. Good ones (that have about 20% of their patients without insurance) will then go call around and find out. They get wildly varying prices and can then recommend the best price. This happens all the time. Ask any doctor that sees patients with either no insurance or very basic (catastrophic) insurance. If you need a procedure, wouldn't you shop for the best doctor? Many people do. There are web sites that will rate hospitals and doctors so you can check them out. Why not get a price, too?
Meanwhile, China is communist in name only. In reality it's a cutthroat capitalist system in many ways.
It's silly to use China and North Korea as your only examples. Scandinavia has much more equal access to health care, we use less money on it both in terms of total per capita spending and health care as percentage of GDP, and our average outcome is better. It is true that the fantastically well-off are best served in the USA, but most people are better served in Scandinavia.
The Scandinavian system works for Scandinavia, but it's paid for by one of the highest tax rates in the world. I believe Sweden actually has a tiered system, where you are required to purchase a basic level of health insurance, and if you can afford it you can optionally purchase better coverage. Of course these countries also have a homogeneous population with relatively healthy lifestyles, and the wealth do pay for private health care - they don't wait in line with the rest of the folks.
perhaps we could get the masses equal access to decent medical care
There is no such thing outside of totalitarian regimes like North Korea. Even in communist China different people get vastly different quality of health care. And the attempts to control medical care by the federal government is doing nothing but leading to efforts like Medical VIP clubs where all the good doctors are taking care of well-to-do patients that can afford to pay a little extra. It hasn't helped to equalize health care at all, in fact it will only increase the disparity.
What's needed is less government intervention and more people shopping for normal health care to help drive down the costs. Of course the typical collectivist response to this is "OMG you can't shop around when you're bleeding to death." Which is nothing but a straw man, because emergency and trauma care is a much smaller proportion. Even shopping around for the best price on a procedure would put tremendous amount of price pressure on the providers if more people did it. Why would pharmacies compete on price when everybody is going to pay their $30 co-pay anyway. That's why you can find a 200% - 3000% difference in the cost of certain medications - most of the people buying it are getting the bill paid by somebody else.
Slashdot Mirror
They hate how the Coloradians (-ers? -oans?) pronounce the name.
It's spelled Coloradans. SB (From Colorado)
Are you sure it's not just "Coloreds"?
So your premise is that if slavery is less profitable, there will be more of it?
Not at all, the opposite, in fact. My premise is that when there is more profit available, more people will prosper. Freedom requires access to resources. When resources are constrained, only the strongest prosper. This has been proven throughout history. It's how the dark ages ended and a middle class emerged: more open trade brought more prosperity, and serfs were able to escape serfdom.
Did sanctions on Iran make the Iranian people more free? Did it work in Iraq? Cuba? North Korea? I can think of only one counter-example where restricting trade eventually led to greater freedom, but even that produced greater violence at first.
They could have just gone ahead and called it "Skynet".
True, but I don't see how that is an argument against being informed about it. The quality of life we stand to lose for having suboptimal capacitors is trivial, even embarassing, compared to the potential gain in quality of life for some of the people at the other end. And my main point was, I think this labelling is a good idea because then at least we can't claim ignorance.
To me, this entire argument misses the point. It makes the rather untenable assumption that if most people stopped buying tantalum or whatever from a specific source, that all the conflicts there would be resolved and the people would somehow decide that they're going to just hug it out and be friends. It's easier to make that assertion with diamonds - there's a lot of money chasing them and you can point to specific thugs killing people over them. Not so for most of these rare minerals and metals. In fact I would think if the market dried up, the warlords would just move their slaves to performing other tasks, and working them even harder since there's now less money overall to fight over. In other words it makes everyone worse off.
A lot of these issues are caused by the way organizations like the IMF, the World Bank, and USAID treat third world countries that want to trade commodities on the global market. They are treated like the serfs of the first world multinationals. Focusing on specific commodities in specific regions does no good at all. You end up right down to decided you're not going to buy anything from anywhere unless it's a completely peaceful colony of the US or China. Maybe that's the goal of the multinationals, I don't know. But if you really want to fix it, you'll have to get rid of the petro-dollar and force the US to stop trying to be the world police and let every country govern themselves how they want and trade with all of them equally. Good luck with that.
The only genuinely useful one: the Civilian Conservation Corps.
Agreed. Except it's not dismantled, it just became the "Peace Corps".
We do it only in foreign countries now, because the US is completely fixed. Right? Right?
Education: "In 1987, public colleges and universities received 3.3 times as much in revenue from state and local governments as they did from students. They now receive about 1.1 times as much from states and localities as from students." cite [cbpp.org]
Public funding for education was not a New Deal program. It precedes New Deal, and continues after. Note what is left out in the above: They don't mention the increases in FEDERAL funding of higher education, nor the enormous increase in tuition charged by the schools. State and local funding has actually increased, just not as fast as the rise in tuition.
Pay: "The minimum wage of $1.60 an hour in 1968 would be $10.56 today when adjusted for inflation (cite [raisetheminimumwage.com]).
And at the time of the New Deal (1938), it was $0.25, which would be $4.02 today. In 1939 it was raised to $0.30 ($4.89), and in 1945 to $0.40 ($5.04). So, sure, you could pick the HIGHEST EVER minimum wage and say it was higher than today, but that's not even funding, just a mandate on businesses. So this does not come close to backing up your assertion either.
Federal Benefits: "As one can see, even single men, who get back the lowest amount of benefits for their Medicare contributions, receive almost three times what they pay in..." cite [nytimes.com].
Yes, because when the New Deal was implemented the average life span was 65, not 73. What's your point with this? It's NOT a roll back, it's bigger and more New Deal.
And finally, the Bottom Line: "The wealth gap between younger and older Americans has stretched to the widest on record, worsened by a prolonged economic downturn that has wiped out job opportunities for young adults and saddled them with housing and college debt.
Well duh. Again, part of the problem CAUSED by New Deal programs, NOT by "dismantling" them, which was your assertion. So you're still completely wrong.
I guess you triggered some groupthink warm-and-fuzzies with your completely bogus assertion, though, because your demonstrably bad assessment of a "dismantled" New Deal is now +5 Insightful. This post will now probably be modded as a troll since I have pointed out how wrong it was.
If you want a good news site that is shockingly not biased, try VOANews.com.
Doesn't anybody but me use my way news?
...the traction that outright communism was gaining after the Great Depression until some fairly mild measures in that direction (the New Deal) were adopted. Boomers enjoyed the benefits without acknowledging them, and dismantled them (through inadequate funding) in order to line their own pockets, at the expense of the millenials.
Just what New Deal measures have been dismantled? Social Security? Nope, it's bigger. Medicare? Nope, more funding than ever. Food Stamps and farm programs? Ditto, ditto. Unemployment Insurance is still fully funded and has been expanded beyond New Deal vision (EUC went to 99 weeks and the Senate is now working to expand that, too).
IOW, I don't know WTF you're talking about.
That's funny, I've noticed the same except with my left-leaning friends (and extreme left-wing politics of course). I'm not trying to be facetious, it does seem that way to me. Perhaps it says more about us than them?
If you put a right-wing extremist and a left-wing extremist in a room together you'll find that they'll have a tremendous amount of agreement on a lot of issues. The US has gone so far off the rails that to a lot of people, only extreme solutions can fix it.
I have a problem with the business case for them choosing to be similar to Fox News.
Yet it's clearly a good strategy. Not for right-slanted bias, but the general appeal. Fox News has basically won the cable news network wars, the only battleground being who gets 2nd place. NBC news people won't go near MSNBC, CNN is going to a show format instead of news. The only real talent left to the competitors is Rachel Maddow.
So if Yahoo can duplicate that kind of success in web site news, it would be quite a coup.
Pure conjecture.
Really? Then it's just our imagination that the levels of CO2 have been rising faster over the last 200 years than at any other time in the last 110,000 years? Or are you saying that the dramatic rise of atmospheric CO2 at the same time as humanity has started generating massive amounts of the stuff is just coincidental?
Your claim that "We put out far more CO2 then can be absorbed by the pre-industrial climate cycles." is pure conjecture. You have absolutely no evidence, nor the ability to conduct experiments, that would provide any support or refutation to this claim. About the closest you can get is to study periods immediately following a super-massive volcanic eruption, but since the ash and other factors from that have such a significant cooling effect, it's almost impossible to isolate the effects of the CO2 emitted over time.
"at a rate far far less than predicted by all your models." Patently False. They aren't rising as fast as the worse case scenarios the media likes to report. They are rising within model predictions.
Actually, he is more right than you are. Let's compare, shall we? Plot the trend from 1990 - 2050, and compare with observations.The IPCC even revised their 2013 report from the 2nd quarter, downgrading their predictions from 0.13-0.33 per decade to 0.10-0.23 per decade. That's near the BOTTOM of the model's predictions, so it seems even the IPCC isn't buying that the models are accurate.
They claimed in AR5 that the observations were within the model predictions from AR4, but their OWN GRAPHIC tells a different story.
B) IF you are implying there is an increase in the energy output of the sun, we would know becasue we measure it pretty accuratly. The rising trend does NOT correlate with the Suns activity.
Actually, that's not accurate. True, it does not correlate with the sun's total solar irradiance but the models ignore anything else, such as spectral variability. There have been plenty of correlations made with solar activity, earth's orbit, Milankovitch cycles and cosmic rays. You might want to review a few of these papers on solar influence of climate change.
" Has a habit of touting every storm or weather incident (even earthquakes) as proof of global warming, " um, that's the media, not scientists who are experts in that field of study. However, there will be an increase in the energy of events. This can be stronger storms, or more storms,. The bottom line: more energy expressed over time.
Well you can claim that if you want to, but in fact it's a compromised media and activist climatologists. Like the ones that made a trip to Antarctica as a marketing exercise and alarm people about the disappearing ice (it didn't work out for them), like James Hansen, like Michael Oppenheimer, like John Harte.
" Has a habit of touting every storm or weather incident (even earthquakes) as proof of global warming, " um, that's the media, not scientists who are experts in that field of study. However, there will be an increase in the energy of events. This can be stronger storms, or more storms,. The bottom line: more energy expressed over time.
"No True Scotsman", then?
"We have also had some of the coldest incidents in recorded history in recent years as well." As expect by climate change models, dumb ass. The term climate change is older the global warming, BTW.
Yes, as everything and nothing is all evidence of climate change. There are so many predictions, EVERY event is confirmation and NO event can shed dispersion upon it. Does that really sound like science to you?
4) We put out far more CO2 then can be absorbed by the pre-industrial climate cycles.
Pure conjecture. The FACT is that the correlation between increasing CO2 followed by increased warming is not very good.
I thought we'd been using tiny variations in gravity to detect Oil for 20 or so years now, fly over an area and map the underground caverns based off gravity variation.
Yea, this whole thing sounds really sketchy. Like the guy made a miscalculation when helping design the satellites, only discovered after reports of accuracy issues with the system, and now he's floating a balloon about some wild theory so he doesn't have to admit to making a stupid, multi-billion dollar mistake.
Co3 isn't even a notable company.
Nope, but they do press releases about their executive appointments, and the releases get posted to every site where their marketing contractor has an agreement. Now you just need to determine what company that is, and their arrangement with Dice Holdings, Inc.
Currently, one drug and one pesticide can get approval when tested as one drug and one pesticide, and the same for EM fields.
It doesn't help that the FDA in the US is now so heavily compromised. Much of their funding comes directly from the companies asking for approval of their products, which means that the FDA is now working directly for the manufacturers (they are signing the checks). This puts it in a similar situation to the big 3 "approved" rating agencies and their role in the US mortgage banking crisis. They were providing AAA ratings to bundles of mortgages loaded with sub-prime loans. It brought the entire banking system to crisis.
So what happens when the FDA is being paid by producers? We've already seen many drugs get approval, then pulled months or years later when it's discovered they are killing people. The FDA is now funding swat raids on farms selling raw milk while putting bans on cheap commodities like red yeast rice so pharmaceutical companies can make big money on patents for the same ingredients (lipitor, for one). It's much worse than just not knowing how to do the research, it's that there is no one willing to even try, since all the money for it is coming from the ones producing the products.
an international team of researchers has found that the parents of a Neandertal woman from Siberia were as closely related as half-siblings
So pretty much like the European royal families, huh?
In the US, I think most people's copay is higher than $30 to see a GP.
Mine is still $20, but I have to pay $35 to see a "specialist". For Medicare, there really are no co-pays, but you generally have to pay 20% of the approved cost for most services, within the cap (depending on your income, there is a maximum amount you have to pay per year). Most people with Medicare get supplemental plans that pay the gaps. Medicaid (for low-income people) usually requires less payments from patients, but copayments and coinsurance varies from state to state.
Obamacare is changing all of this. You aren't allowed to not have insurance any more. At this point it looks like it's mainly going to drive up costs and reduce the available doctors. I can't imagine that full-blown socialized insurance, a.l.a. NHS could have possibly been any worse. The whole thing is going to get really bad, because the government and insurance companies are going to be sucking up vast amounts of money, and it's going to really stifle innovation. That's unfortunate, because most medical technology advances come out of the United States. There won't be any payback for risking everything on a new idea, so unless you're good at schmoozing the bureaucrats, there won't be any funding for your cure or treatment. Most of the ideas will just get tossed in the crapper, and only the very rich will have good treatments for expensive ailments.
Umm, there are plenty of countries outside of totalitarian regimes that give everyone access to decent medical care. Just look at any of the first world countries besides the US (UK, France, Germany, etc).
Everyone in the US has access to decent medical care, too. But that's different that everyone having equal access to medical care.
Since you don't seem to have a DDX or recommendations, you must be (by your definition) stupid.
Read my post again. I was pointing out your attitude that people can't make any decisions for themselves. That certainly seemed consistent with your position. I trust people to participate in their health care decisions, while you think all the stupid slaves should just to submit to whatever the present authority suggests.
What would your friends do if EVERY mechanic had no idea about the costs but insisted on a rather long list of things that must be done or they would likely die?
I suggest you find another doctor. Quacks are like that, not good doctors, and far from EVERY doctor. This is just a straw man (you seem to favor that type of fallacy).
If most people were able to have specialized knowledge of everything they might need to deal with in life, it wouldn't be specialized knowledge, now would it.
No, of course not. But it's still your body and you own it and have a right to be fully informed and make your own decision about what pills to take, what gets shoved into it, and who gets to cut it open and when.
u mad, bro?
Do you also do wiring and auto repairs?
Well my electricians license has expired, but yes, I do that in my own house, and yes, I do pretty much all my auto repairs because it's cheaper. 13 years and 140,000 miles later and it still drives like new. But you know what - everybody that I know that needs repairs done by a mechanic pretty much always asks "How much?" before they agree to have it done. Sometimes they'll even [GASP!] shop around! Weird, I know.
It demonstrably is not a straw man. 50% of hospital admissions [beckershos...review.com] come through the Emergency Department. If you think that is a tiny portion of hospital revenue then you are delusional.
This is the most tortured repeat of a straw man ever, as well as an illustration of why costs are so high. Hospital care is, far and away, the most expensive type of treatment, even though often it is not necessary. The whole point of your link is that people go to the emergency room unnecessarily. Hospitals make up over 30% of the cost of health care, yet only serve 17% of patient care.
People that have to look at their medical bills and actually pay them do not go to the emergency room unless it's a real emergency. Poor people without insurance that will never be able to pay the bill, they do.
Nope. Everyone gets the same coverage. Its paid by your employer, you never see that money on your payslip even. There are no tiers. Taxes are high, but we actually get good stuff for it.
Sorry, I was thinking of the Netherlands, not Sweden. Thank you for the correction.
We've tried less. Compared to any other 1st world country, we have less intervention. That's why our per-capita healthcare cost is the highest in the world but our quality of care is somewhere between 16th and 32nd.
[sigh]
This is the unfortunate view of people that don't know history.
After WW2, there were many FDR policies in place that set wages for workers in many industries. That meant that companies had to be creative to attract the best workers. With so many people with families, what caught on was employer-based health care benefits. It soon became the norm, and government incentives and tax breaks for companies and employees using employer-based health insurance became an expectation. That means that 80% of the population has had a 3rd-party paying for their health care since the 1950s. All this was brought about through government intervention.
This whole idea that we have had some "free market" for health care is false. It's the 3rd party payer that has allowed health care costs to skyrocket (among other government-supported policies, such as the internship program that limits the number of doctors that can be licensed). Nobody over 65 has paid for their own health care since 1965.
That's why our per-capita healthcare cost is the highest in the world but our quality of care is somewhere between 16th and 32nd.
Another false meme. Yes, our costs are the highest and out of control. But only 20% of care is anything like free-market based, and your "quality of care" comparison is not - you're comparing overall health to health care. These are not the same thing. For most people, your health is determined mostly by your lifestyle. Health care is how effective the interventions are when you have a medical problem.
Shopping around won't even begin to address the issue. You're asking people who know nothing about medicine and have no aptitude for it to decide if the doctor who says they might die if they don't get a CT right now is just trying to pad the bill or not (sometime he is, sometimes not).
Yes, the stupid people cannot be trusted with their own health - they need "licensed professionals" and government bureaucrats to make those decisions for them, right? Look, "shopping" is not this straw man that you are creating. It's if your doctor recommends a test or procedure, you ask how much it costs. Ever done that? No, because somebody else pays the bill so why do you care? People without insurance do ask, and usually the doctor doesn't know. Good ones (that have about 20% of their patients without insurance) will then go call around and find out. They get wildly varying prices and can then recommend the best price. This happens all the time. Ask any doctor that sees patients with either no insurance or very basic (catastrophic) insurance. If you need a procedure, wouldn't you shop for the best doctor? Many people do. There are web sites that will rate hospitals and doctors so you can check them out. Why not get a price, too?
Meanwhile, China is communist in name only. In reality it's a cutthroat capitalist system in many ways.
Yes, in many ways. Not in health care, though.
It's silly to use China and North Korea as your only examples. Scandinavia has much more equal access to health care, we use less money on it both in terms of total per capita spending and health care as percentage of GDP, and our average outcome is better. It is true that the fantastically well-off are best served in the USA, but most people are better served in Scandinavia.
The Scandinavian system works for Scandinavia, but it's paid for by one of the highest tax rates in the world. I believe Sweden actually has a tiered system, where you are required to purchase a basic level of health insurance, and if you can afford it you can optionally purchase better coverage. Of course these countries also have a homogeneous population with relatively healthy lifestyles, and the wealth do pay for private health care - they don't wait in line with the rest of the folks.
perhaps we could get the masses equal access to decent medical care
There is no such thing outside of totalitarian regimes like North Korea. Even in communist China different people get vastly different quality of health care. And the attempts to control medical care by the federal government is doing nothing but leading to efforts like Medical VIP clubs where all the good doctors are taking care of well-to-do patients that can afford to pay a little extra. It hasn't helped to equalize health care at all, in fact it will only increase the disparity.
What's needed is less government intervention and more people shopping for normal health care to help drive down the costs. Of course the typical collectivist response to this is "OMG you can't shop around when you're bleeding to death." Which is nothing but a straw man, because emergency and trauma care is a much smaller proportion. Even shopping around for the best price on a procedure would put tremendous amount of price pressure on the providers if more people did it. Why would pharmacies compete on price when everybody is going to pay their $30 co-pay anyway. That's why you can find a 200% - 3000% difference in the cost of certain medications - most of the people buying it are getting the bill paid by somebody else.