There is a lot of non-profit health care. You just don't hear about it because it doesn't fit with what the government wants to promote. Namely, more special interest money into politicians' coffers and cushy post-political careers as lobbyists.
Project Access is probably the best of the bunch, and provides free coverage for primary and specialty care for people who are unable to afford coverage on their own.
In many places in th eUS, you can be arrested if you cannot provide proof of means and residence. It's rarely challenged because those it affects do not have the means to challenge it.
Agree with the first statement; not so much the second.
The wealthy don't use the same health care options that the rest of the country does. They will continue to use the health care system in the way they currently do whether the changes stand or not.
Unless you're talking about military bases, there's no such thing. If you're talking about interstates, then the answer is "yes." Auto insurance is effected at the state level, as health care should be. There are states that do not have mandatory insurance requirements. Nice attempt at a car analogy, but as usual on/. it's a failed car analogy.
Also, not everyone opposed to national health care policies is ignorant, nor do they necessarily like insurance companies. The old model was shitty. The new model requires people to buy into what is nominally still the old model, which is shittier. Nice generalized ad hominem though.
It can and should be, but there are too many people who are enamored of the Federal government running absolutely everything they can get their sticky fingers into whether there are better models or not. The local healthcare in my city is top-notch, and provides coverage for absolutely everyone who is not capable of paying for primary, emergency, and/or specialty care themselves. All voluntarily, through a non-profit, non-governmental organization called Project Access, and there are branches of it in cities nationwide.
Despite how successful it is, it's almost entirely word-of-mouth. Governments won't talk about it and the media won't talk about it. It doesn't make money, and it doesn't help politicians gain political influence because there is no potential for it to make money. It's just people doing what's right for their neighbors in need.
I should amend this slightly, since it's the most likely objection to be brought up: education has national requirements, but they are almost universally intentionally vague and left up to states and local communities to implement. Those states and local communities are also free to opt out of almost every one of them at the cost of losing national education funding. They are still legally allowed to though.
In a national election, vote coercion and vote selling is not a concern that should be given a second thought by anyone who is arguing a) rationally and b) without some ulterior motive.
To do it on any sort of scale would almost guarantee the person or organization behind it would be caught. On a minor scale, it's a problem that the fix would be worse than the number of cases it occurs in. Nobody has ever described to me a non-abusive system that could not be compromised on a small scale or a rational system that could be compromised on a large scale.
It goes way beyond "supervision." It requires heavy-duty security of a machine from the moment it is vetted as being properly functional through to the end of the counting. Round-the-clock security that can be trusted to not be compromised in some way. That last part is a big concern, because if there's something that partisans like more than the spotlight it's money. A big payoff can turn lots of people into security leaks, regardless of party affiliation.
The same cannot be said of paper ballots. Much like mail-in rebates, pulling off a few is doable. When you get into massive amounts the work and people required gets pretty extreme.
Officers dressed in white shirts are usually of higher rank. White gets dirty easily, and wearing it shows they don't actually do much of the work in the trenches. They come out to play and act tough during big events. They're also usually politically connected to some degree, far above what a patrol cop could expect.
The rest are in actual work uniforms, because they actually work.
There is no way you could justify (morally, ethically, or legally) denying me my right to make a living and feed my family to protest something with which I have had no part in.
Sure there is. You have the right to choose how you attempt to make a living. You do not have a right to be free from impediments to making that living if those are not the result of illegal activity. There are many things in the world that can prevent you from making a living in a chosen trade. Your only right is to attempt to continue in that trade despite impediments you have no control over (and no right to exercise control over, or delegate others to exercise control over), or to move to a different trade.
If people protest that a product you make is horribly destructive, far in excess of its useful purposes, that product may be rightfully restricted or banned. You might lose your livelihood and have to change careers. There are plenty of examples where a protest can either directly disrupt your business, on purpose, or do so as a side effect. As long as they are not intentionally harming your trade in contravention of rational legal standards, you better just suck it up. If protests block your store long enough to cause you to go out of business, perhaps it's something you should actually be paying attention to.
If you don't like it, perhaps you should have bought property where the storefront wasn't butted up against a public space. Oh, wait, you benefit from that public space in good times, but bitch and complain that it's public when something happens there you don't like. You sound like a fucking rancher complaining about others using public lands that they graze cattle on. Only your use of the public space is acceptable, fuck everyone else. Sense of personal entitlement much?
permit (noun): a written order granting special permission to do something.
From the 1st Amendment: the right of the people peaceably to assemble
Something requiring a permit cannot, by definition, be a right as well. Requiring a permit to do something is an acknowledgement that you consider it to be an activity that can be prevented at the whim of the permitting authority.
This is not touching on the case of actual laws being broken, other than those requiring a permit to peaceably assemble.
Absolutely nothing. I use both on a regular basis myself, and after the initial learning curve more than a decade ago it hasn't been a problem since.
I also don't get why anyone cares about the 1-2-3 on top. An insignificant amount of equipment uses it, and if you need to use that equipment so often it's a problem it shouldn't actually be a problem.
Some people pay a lot more. A small fraction pay enormous amounts, subsidizing those of us who feel no need to pay hundreds or thousands a month to play a game.
I've always found it interesting that time is counted only one way by the IRS: to increase tax payments.
If you trade your time for money, they consider your time to be worth nothing. When you trade your time for time, both parties are considered to have the income of the market value of the other's time, while their own cannot be deducted from income at that same market rate.
Either time has value, or it doesn't. The Federal government wants to have its cake and eat it too.
If time does have value though, it would make it far more difficult for them to tax wages, and that they will never allow regardless of how hypocritical it is to operate in the way they do.
The "fraud" part is where politicians call it something it's not, namely a retirement investment account. It is no more an investment or an account than a Ponzi scheme is. It has been described and sold that way for basically the entire history of the program though. The "account" balance is set, changed, or negated entirely at the whim of Congress, and if revenues are outstripped by payments all those "profits" will disappear.
At least you're honest about supporting "To each according to his needs, from each according to his means." Most people are not so willing to stand up quite so clearly for it.
It did strike me as a little odd that Apple's numbers for revenues were so much higher given the differentials in the classes of products the two makes, but apparently not odd enough for me to re-check that I read it correctly.
The most technologically superior device doesn't win in the US. The first decent device in an industry usually does (or the first decent device marketed at the right time). Sometimes those two things coincide. Sometimes they don't. It's usually easier to point out where they don't, though.
There are very few market leaders that dominate a market who don't fit that profile.
So what you're saying here is that, despite being a larger company, Apple is less diverse and requires nearly 3x the revenue of Samsung per year to make less net profit.
Samsung, on the other hand, makes basic technologies and innovations that allow companies like Apple to exist in the first place.
I can shoot someone in self defense, or I can shoot someone in a cold-blooded murder. That I shot someone is not in dispute, even though the fundamental reason I pulled the trigger is vastly different. Superficially, they may as well be the same thing.
Likewise, pulling money from current investors and spending it immediately (on old investors and then the rest on whatever) is the same in both systems. They are both billed as investments, when that is only true in the most superficial sense. Their aims are completely different, but a Ponzi scheme describes a means, not an end. There is no "account" in either one. Treasury bonds are not investments for the Federal government. They are investments for anyone but the Federal government. They are liabilities to the Fed, because they accrue interest that must be paid by the Fed.
Putting money from your left pocket into your right, an IOU from your right pocket into your left, and then spending the money in your right pocket does not an investment make. It may be beneficial for as long as income outweighs payments + interest, but if anything happens to income the bill will eventually come due in an amount larger than can be paid. When economic times are good, the safety net works. If there is any extended period of bad economic times, the safety net fails at the time it's needed most. That's the problem with the current Social Security system, and why it should not be set up as a Ponzi scheme if people want it to continue to function in extended bad times.
The Great Depression is what spawned it, and it was supposed to stop another one from impoverishing people at risk. The problem is, as currently constituted, that's exactly when Social Security would fail.
A Ponzi scheme is one where new enrollees pay out interest to old investees. It is advertised as something else, such as a investment instrument where the investor has an account that accrues interest over time. The entity running the scheme pays current dividends and spends the rest as it comes in. The value of the investment depends entirely on the income of the entity running the scheme to meet or exceed payouts, because no money is actually invested anywhere. It's 100% spent immediately.
Whether you support it or not is irrelevant. People don't like the term "Ponzi scheme" because it is used pejoratively. People attack the use of the term because it makes them feel bad, not because it doesn't apply. Stand up for what you believe in if you believe in it, but don't argue it's something it's not just because a perfectly applicable term makes you uncomfortable.
There is a lot of non-profit health care. You just don't hear about it because it doesn't fit with what the government wants to promote. Namely, more special interest money into politicians' coffers and cushy post-political careers as lobbyists.
Project Access is probably the best of the bunch, and provides free coverage for primary and specialty care for people who are unable to afford coverage on their own.
Again, an example of laws that are under state discretion. The two are not comparable.
In many places in th eUS, you can be arrested if you cannot provide proof of means and residence. It's rarely challenged because those it affects do not have the means to challenge it.
Agree with the first statement; not so much the second.
The wealthy don't use the same health care options that the rest of the country does. They will continue to use the health care system in the way they currently do whether the changes stand or not.
The means matter more than both, combined.
Federal roads
Unless you're talking about military bases, there's no such thing. If you're talking about interstates, then the answer is "yes." Auto insurance is effected at the state level, as health care should be. There are states that do not have mandatory insurance requirements. Nice attempt at a car analogy, but as usual on /. it's a failed car analogy.
Also, not everyone opposed to national health care policies is ignorant, nor do they necessarily like insurance companies. The old model was shitty. The new model requires people to buy into what is nominally still the old model, which is shittier. Nice generalized ad hominem though.
It can and should be, but there are too many people who are enamored of the Federal government running absolutely everything they can get their sticky fingers into whether there are better models or not. The local healthcare in my city is top-notch, and provides coverage for absolutely everyone who is not capable of paying for primary, emergency, and/or specialty care themselves. All voluntarily, through a non-profit, non-governmental organization called Project Access, and there are branches of it in cities nationwide.
Despite how successful it is, it's almost entirely word-of-mouth. Governments won't talk about it and the media won't talk about it. It doesn't make money, and it doesn't help politicians gain political influence because there is no potential for it to make money. It's just people doing what's right for their neighbors in need.
I should amend this slightly, since it's the most likely objection to be brought up: education has national requirements, but they are almost universally intentionally vague and left up to states and local communities to implement. Those states and local communities are also free to opt out of almost every one of them at the cost of losing national education funding. They are still legally allowed to though.
Only one of those is nationally overseen, and it's not an actual product.
It was a problem back in the day because large organizations could control polling places through violence.
It is not a concern now, and if it becomes one again we'll be having armed insurrection.
In a national election, vote coercion and vote selling is not a concern that should be given a second thought by anyone who is arguing a) rationally and b) without some ulterior motive.
To do it on any sort of scale would almost guarantee the person or organization behind it would be caught. On a minor scale, it's a problem that the fix would be worse than the number of cases it occurs in. Nobody has ever described to me a non-abusive system that could not be compromised on a small scale or a rational system that could be compromised on a large scale.
It goes way beyond "supervision." It requires heavy-duty security of a machine from the moment it is vetted as being properly functional through to the end of the counting. Round-the-clock security that can be trusted to not be compromised in some way. That last part is a big concern, because if there's something that partisans like more than the spotlight it's money. A big payoff can turn lots of people into security leaks, regardless of party affiliation.
The same cannot be said of paper ballots. Much like mail-in rebates, pulling off a few is doable. When you get into massive amounts the work and people required gets pretty extreme.
Officers dressed in white shirts are usually of higher rank. White gets dirty easily, and wearing it shows they don't actually do much of the work in the trenches. They come out to play and act tough during big events. They're also usually politically connected to some degree, far above what a patrol cop could expect.
The rest are in actual work uniforms, because they actually work.
There is no way you could justify (morally, ethically, or legally) denying me my right to make a living and feed my family to protest something with which I have had no part in.
Sure there is. You have the right to choose how you attempt to make a living. You do not have a right to be free from impediments to making that living if those are not the result of illegal activity. There are many things in the world that can prevent you from making a living in a chosen trade. Your only right is to attempt to continue in that trade despite impediments you have no control over (and no right to exercise control over, or delegate others to exercise control over), or to move to a different trade.
If people protest that a product you make is horribly destructive, far in excess of its useful purposes, that product may be rightfully restricted or banned. You might lose your livelihood and have to change careers. There are plenty of examples where a protest can either directly disrupt your business, on purpose, or do so as a side effect. As long as they are not intentionally harming your trade in contravention of rational legal standards, you better just suck it up. If protests block your store long enough to cause you to go out of business, perhaps it's something you should actually be paying attention to.
If you don't like it, perhaps you should have bought property where the storefront wasn't butted up against a public space. Oh, wait, you benefit from that public space in good times, but bitch and complain that it's public when something happens there you don't like. You sound like a fucking rancher complaining about others using public lands that they graze cattle on. Only your use of the public space is acceptable, fuck everyone else. Sense of personal entitlement much?
If they had their permits
permit (noun): a written order granting special permission to do something.
From the 1st Amendment:
the right of the people peaceably to assemble
Something requiring a permit cannot, by definition, be a right as well. Requiring a permit to do something is an acknowledgement that you consider it to be an activity that can be prevented at the whim of the permitting authority.
This is not touching on the case of actual laws being broken, other than those requiring a permit to peaceably assemble.
Absolutely nothing. I use both on a regular basis myself, and after the initial learning curve more than a decade ago it hasn't been a problem since.
I also don't get why anyone cares about the 1-2-3 on top. An insignificant amount of equipment uses it, and if you need to use that equipment so often it's a problem it shouldn't actually be a problem.
Some people pay a lot more. A small fraction pay enormous amounts, subsidizing those of us who feel no need to pay hundreds or thousands a month to play a game.
I've always found it interesting that time is counted only one way by the IRS: to increase tax payments.
If you trade your time for money, they consider your time to be worth nothing. When you trade your time for time, both parties are considered to have the income of the market value of the other's time, while their own cannot be deducted from income at that same market rate.
Either time has value, or it doesn't. The Federal government wants to have its cake and eat it too.
If time does have value though, it would make it far more difficult for them to tax wages, and that they will never allow regardless of how hypocritical it is to operate in the way they do.
The "fraud" part is where politicians call it something it's not, namely a retirement investment account. It is no more an investment or an account than a Ponzi scheme is. It has been described and sold that way for basically the entire history of the program though. The "account" balance is set, changed, or negated entirely at the whim of Congress, and if revenues are outstripped by payments all those "profits" will disappear.
At least you're honest about supporting "To each according to his needs, from each according to his means." Most people are not so willing to stand up quite so clearly for it.
It did strike me as a little odd that Apple's numbers for revenues were so much higher given the differentials in the classes of products the two makes, but apparently not odd enough for me to re-check that I read it correctly.
Quite right. I confused the headers. That's what I get for posting while half asleep.
The most technologically superior device doesn't win in the US. The first decent device in an industry usually does (or the first decent device marketed at the right time). Sometimes those two things coincide. Sometimes they don't. It's usually easier to point out where they don't, though.
There are very few market leaders that dominate a market who don't fit that profile.
Whether Apple is "better" is irrelevant.
So what you're saying here is that, despite being a larger company, Apple is less diverse and requires nearly 3x the revenue of Samsung per year to make less net profit.
Samsung, on the other hand, makes basic technologies and innovations that allow companies like Apple to exist in the first place.
Gotcha.
I can shoot someone in self defense, or I can shoot someone in a cold-blooded murder. That I shot someone is not in dispute, even though the fundamental reason I pulled the trigger is vastly different. Superficially, they may as well be the same thing.
Likewise, pulling money from current investors and spending it immediately (on old investors and then the rest on whatever) is the same in both systems. They are both billed as investments, when that is only true in the most superficial sense. Their aims are completely different, but a Ponzi scheme describes a means, not an end. There is no "account" in either one. Treasury bonds are not investments for the Federal government. They are investments for anyone but the Federal government. They are liabilities to the Fed, because they accrue interest that must be paid by the Fed.
Putting money from your left pocket into your right, an IOU from your right pocket into your left, and then spending the money in your right pocket does not an investment make. It may be beneficial for as long as income outweighs payments + interest, but if anything happens to income the bill will eventually come due in an amount larger than can be paid. When economic times are good, the safety net works. If there is any extended period of bad economic times, the safety net fails at the time it's needed most. That's the problem with the current Social Security system, and why it should not be set up as a Ponzi scheme if people want it to continue to function in extended bad times.
The Great Depression is what spawned it, and it was supposed to stop another one from impoverishing people at risk. The problem is, as currently constituted, that's exactly when Social Security would fail.
A Ponzi scheme is one where new enrollees pay out interest to old investees. It is advertised as something else, such as a investment instrument where the investor has an account that accrues interest over time. The entity running the scheme pays current dividends and spends the rest as it comes in. The value of the investment depends entirely on the income of the entity running the scheme to meet or exceed payouts, because no money is actually invested anywhere. It's 100% spent immediately.
Whether you support it or not is irrelevant. People don't like the term "Ponzi scheme" because it is used pejoratively. People attack the use of the term because it makes them feel bad, not because it doesn't apply. Stand up for what you believe in if you believe in it, but don't argue it's something it's not just because a perfectly applicable term makes you uncomfortable.