Of course they are. But they're worse in the government, because a business, at least, has to eventually show a profit. A government can simply print more money or borrow to cover the shortfall.
Another AC making as if they are an authority on how government work actually gets done. Like you know from experience, and didn't just dream this nonsense up in the cellar of your imagination. Economists do try and understand these issues, and the actual amount of waste in government would surprise anyone who buys into the four-legs-good, government-bad narrative. Of course, those economists are just liberal elitists, and O'Reilly has better ratings anyway.
Once upon a time, conservatives actually had ideas, and listened to professors at universities, and, you know, had a clue about governing. Reagan was like that. He used to, for example, speak to the head of the EPA and ask questions like, "Why is there concern over the water?". Thatcher was the same. She grilled her science advisers, to make sure she herself understood important issues such as global warming. These people had brains. For the GOP, those days are long gone.
Add something meaningful. This wasn't because of Republicans. This entire fiasco is Government Bureaucracy screwing things up. It's that same kind of bureaucracy that just needs to go away. You can have regulations without bureaucracy.
From the church of libertarianism: the all-powerful all-wasteful government. I'm sure you never were part of an audit of a government to work out how much waste/cruft there is, and compared the results to, say, a fortune 500. Nah... you just *know* your right.
I'm slightly libertarian myself, but as a true conservative, I respect the fact that I don't know enough about society to architect a solution, and thus favour incremental change. Getting "buraeucracy to go away", as you put it, is the type of arrogant liberal clap-trap you hear when some wide-eyed youth tells you about getting rid of capitalism.
That is exactly what happened, and that is exactly what the GOP is about. You can't compromise with a brick wall. Read Lofgren's book... it should be an eye-opener for you that a senior GOP policy analyst with top-secret clearance, who worked on the hill for over 20 years quit in disgust. Of course, he's a "liberal" now. But he'll tell you, in his own words, the GOP became an apocalyptic cult.
You're right. Most private insurance plans are changed year-to-year (usually small adjustments), and they had to remain the same or be canceled. If you allowed them to change even a little, I'm sure people would have weaseled out of proper insurance, and then everyone else pays when they get sick. (Or you let them die, which isn't going to happen in America.)
My university used to mandate insurance, but now we are forced to by university health insurance. The reason is that people would cheap out and by junk, and then they don't have enough money to cover a broken ankle. The insurance companies liked it, because it was a market for them: people who had to get insurance who didn't want it. The students liked it because they were stupid, and believed that misfortune was something that happened to other people.
Obama shouldn't have used the language he did; however, the situation is predictable, and so is the insurance companies trying to take advantage of people's confusion to up-sell plans.
Haha, got to agree. US politics is truly a monstrosity. It's hilarious what victims the GOP faithful think they are, how self-righteous, and how reviled by most of the world. Every good story needs a villain. Australian/Canadian politics is so banal in comparison. I mean, they have majority rule there, so politicians can't obstruct and finger-point, and trust the faithful to generate psychotic delusions of victim-hood. We also don't have a conservative media complex fleecing the gullible. Rupert Murdoch and the resurrection of yellow journalism was the worst thing that happened to the USA.
How anyone can think the government can force people to hand money to private companies is simply insane.
Do you need insurance to drive your car? Where I live you do.
Besides, liberals wanted a single-payer system. Then there would be no handing money to private companies. The ACA was a conservative idea -- from the heritage foundation, supported by top conservatives up until Obama's election.
If the ACA is so bad, just remember, it's a conservative idea.
All I needed to know about Obamacare was that it is a form of price control.
The world is more nuanced than "all I needed to know about X". Like, in the rest of the developed world there isn't quite the same gaming of healthcare as in the USA, and more people have better outcomes. And everyone pays less, on average. A *lot* less. Free markets only work when they are efficient. You can't just map some abstract concept to everything and expect it to work.
Grandfathered in plans were not allowed to change at all since 2011,
Haha, I think we should create a loop-hole where the insurance companies can change existing plans (with the consent of their customers of course), and then not be subject to the basic standards the ACA enforces. In that way, the ACA wouldn't enforce any standards at all, and we'll have libetarian paradise, just like we did before the ACA was passed!!!
Yeah... the insurance companies are taking advantage of people to up-sell. Also, the plans that existed before 2010 really _are_ grandfathered in. So Obama wasn't lying when he said that you could keep your insurance, but the incentive structures for the insurance industry lined up to produce this bloody mess. And now every partisan wingnut is out there either decrying or defending the law, when we should really be focused on fixing the bloody mess.
Haha, that's an interesting take on history. I think then senator Olympia Snowe would disagree. The wingnuts walked away from negotiations in an attempt to bloody Obama's nose, and throw meat at their based. The template for the law was originally put forward by the heritage foundation, and was supported by top conservatives (such as Gingritch) up until 2008. Guess the GOP didn't know how to declare victory and walk away. I mean, if Obama is for it, then every "true" conservative must fight the SOCIALIST TYRANNY.
With the current political climate: good luck with that. You have the "JOB CREATOR" defenders (sorry, I meant FREEDOM) who will do everything they can to give tax breaks to the very rich, and cry about how the media is just biased against them, and that everyone should pay less tax anyway, because tax cuts just magically pay for themselves in hughly unrealistic economic growth that is just waiting to explode when the government just shuts down the IRS.
As a conservative, I support tax reform, and I appreciate that most liberals want a fairer and simpler tax system. The political incentives are set for the GOP to simply cry about tyranny whilst fighting for Larry Ellison's carried interest tax break.
And it's not "laissez-faire" to think that government has no business decided how much people get paid by private companies. It's just common sense capitalism.
That would only be true if the labour market itself were perfectly efficient. This is so far from the reality of the labour market that you cannot even pretend it is. The community market is pretty close to an efficient labour market, and as such, should be left alone. Working at McDonalds is anything but.
Think about this problem: for 1 hour of work, a McDonalds worker can by 2.5 big-mac value meals, in Norway. It is possible to run a profitable McDonalds under those labour constraints. Here in the USA, were we have more "free market wages" (i.e., low minimum wage), we find McDonalds workers dependent on the government for a basic standard of living. If you took away the social services, those people would starve and freeze, and you would have a strong incentive for crime. So really we have a huge case of crony capitalism, where social services subsidize McDonalds shareholders, and all in the name of FREEDOM.
This happens because the labour market is not efficient.
Currently wind power _costs_ less than coal. That means coal could not compete on price if you removed all subsidies and taxes. Future wind power will be even cheaper. Much cheaper. The grid will be upgraded, because money is smart, and not doing so it stupid.
Thankfully engineers work on these problems, and not "libertarian" philosophers, who really just hate the idea that renewable energy may be a good idea.
Yes there have been some novel developments in ways to catch the wind but what part of that is so vastly changing the cost?
The amount of power generated is proportional to the square of the blade length (and thus windmill height). Also, the windmills only last a certain amount of time, so technology goes into making them more durable. Double the life-span, and the amount of energy produced is (about) double. You also want to improve the maintenance cycle. Future windmills will be *huge*, but we don't yet have all the engineering details pinned down to build them.
You can, of course, figure all this out on your own.
You cannot go with something that might be cheaper in a few years.
I know this is slashdot, but if you _look_ at the link, and _follow_ the references, you'll see that wind is _already_ cheaper. And besides, saying that wind won't be cheaper in the future is besides the point. The situation is analogous to computers. They will be faster in the future, but existing computers don't magically get faster just because new designs are faster. I was just making the point that the fossil fuel industry is screwed -- they can't corrupt the public discourse or political processes for ever when the benefits hit the wallet so directly.
Perhaps? Well yes, but do you really think that engineers don't try to factor everything in, and in a way that is as principled as possible? Engineering isn't armchair philosophy. The price of wind power is coming down _fast_, and that includes solving the significant infrastructure issues. Solar power is coming down just as fast (but is a little behind), and very soon we'll see all the big box stores and data centres running on renewables, because NOT doing that is just throwing money away. The consumer will follow a few years later, since most people don't have the cash to buy 20 years of electricity all at once. The consumer will only be behind by a _few_ years, because a new finance industry is springing up to handling the credit issue.
Creative destruction is coming to a fossil-fuel plant near you, and there is nothing that you or Koch can do about it. The government shouldn't be picking winners and losers, and fossil-fuel interests shouldn't be pressuring the political system with blatant misinformation. But it really doesn't matter, because money smart.
And that's _without_ considering the cost of carbon pollution. Allowing power companies to make extra profit by shifting externalities onto the commons is the very _definition_ of crony capitalism.
Coal is by far cheapest and most economical however,
This is simply not true. Not only is it untrue, but solar/wind will be much cheaper than coal in just a few years. The technology is really moving that fast.
That is an interesting point of view. (Interesting as in barking wrong.) As of 2013, wind power is now cheaper than coal power, and that is true even when you ignore the cost of carbon pollution. Obviously this policy is more about heading of crony capitalism... lobbyists doing favours to get coal power plants built that will buy their companies products for 50 years.
Actually, the total cost of a coal power-plant is in the ballpark of wind energy as of 2013. That's the price _excluding_ the cost of carbon pollution. The price of coal will probably go up in the future, and wind will definitely continue to decrease in price. So it's really not such a big deal for the communities using the electricity. The policy will make it harder for the fossil-fuel lobby to get power-stations built that will buy their products for 50 years.
My only strong belief here is that any party or coalition that tries to reduce government spending
The Dems tried to reduce the size of government in the 2011 budget "fight". The media didn't call them a bunch of crazy racists with no credibility. The GOP establishment was ready for a big win, but the Tea Party base couldn't take yes for an answer, because Obama is a slick conman, and as soon as he supports something (statistically) that is its death.
Academics think the tea party has no credibility because what they say is incoherent to those who actually study the issues involved.
If you are/really/ interested in reducing the size of government, then I recommend paying closer attention to all angles of the political debate, both in the USA and overseas. It might surprise you to find that liberals are, on average, better at keeping the books in order, and conservatives are huge advocates of increasing the size of government for programs that they like. The political branding is just that: branding. In the case of politics, the maximum "nothing is as it seems" is true for the ideologue, and "everything is as it seems" is true for the outside observer.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course they are. But they're worse in the government, because a business, at least, has to eventually show a profit. A government can simply print more money or borrow to cover the shortfall.
Another AC making as if they are an authority on how government work actually gets done. Like you know from experience, and didn't just dream this nonsense up in the cellar of your imagination. Economists do try and understand these issues, and the actual amount of waste in government would surprise anyone who buys into the four-legs-good, government-bad narrative. Of course, those economists are just liberal elitists, and O'Reilly has better ratings anyway.
Once upon a time, conservatives actually had ideas, and listened to professors at universities, and, you know, had a clue about governing. Reagan was like that. He used to, for example, speak to the head of the EPA and ask questions like, "Why is there concern over the water?". Thatcher was the same. She grilled her science advisers, to make sure she herself understood important issues such as global warming. These people had brains. For the GOP, those days are long gone.
Add something meaningful. This wasn't because of Republicans. This entire fiasco is Government Bureaucracy screwing things up. It's that same kind of bureaucracy that just needs to go away. You can have regulations without bureaucracy.
From the church of libertarianism: the all-powerful all-wasteful government. I'm sure you never were part of an audit of a government to work out how much waste/cruft there is, and compared the results to, say, a fortune 500. Nah... you just *know* your right.
I'm slightly libertarian myself, but as a true conservative, I respect the fact that I don't know enough about society to architect a solution, and thus favour incremental change. Getting "buraeucracy to go away", as you put it, is the type of arrogant liberal clap-trap you hear when some wide-eyed youth tells you about getting rid of capitalism.
In an unbelievably cynical move, the GOP is actively destroying government, and then complaining that it doesn't work, and "rebels" like yourself buy it. I'll be sitting on the fence until the conservative movement gets its act together, and start, you know, doing something productive.
Chris Christie 2016.
Read this. Just the opinion of a GOP insider who knows more about what happens on the hill than you do.
That is exactly what happened, and that is exactly what the GOP is about. You can't compromise with a brick wall. Read Lofgren's book... it should be an eye-opener for you that a senior GOP policy analyst with top-secret clearance, who worked on the hill for over 20 years quit in disgust. Of course, he's a "liberal" now. But he'll tell you, in his own words, the GOP became an apocalyptic cult.
You're right. Most private insurance plans are changed year-to-year (usually small adjustments), and they had to remain the same or be canceled. If you allowed them to change even a little, I'm sure people would have weaseled out of proper insurance, and then everyone else pays when they get sick. (Or you let them die, which isn't going to happen in America.)
My university used to mandate insurance, but now we are forced to by university health insurance. The reason is that people would cheap out and by junk, and then they don't have enough money to cover a broken ankle. The insurance companies liked it, because it was a market for them: people who had to get insurance who didn't want it. The students liked it because they were stupid, and believed that misfortune was something that happened to other people.
Obama shouldn't have used the language he did; however, the situation is predictable, and so is the insurance companies trying to take advantage of people's confusion to up-sell plans.
Haha, got to agree. US politics is truly a monstrosity. It's hilarious what victims the GOP faithful think they are, how self-righteous, and how reviled by most of the world. Every good story needs a villain. Australian/Canadian politics is so banal in comparison. I mean, they have majority rule there, so politicians can't obstruct and finger-point, and trust the faithful to generate psychotic delusions of victim-hood. We also don't have a conservative media complex fleecing the gullible. Rupert Murdoch and the resurrection of yellow journalism was the worst thing that happened to the USA.
How anyone can think the government can force people to hand money to private companies is simply insane.
Do you need insurance to drive your car? Where I live you do.
Besides, liberals wanted a single-payer system. Then there would be no handing money to private companies. The ACA was a conservative idea -- from the heritage foundation, supported by top conservatives up until Obama's election.
If the ACA is so bad, just remember, it's a conservative idea.
All I needed to know about Obamacare was that it is a form of price control.
The world is more nuanced than "all I needed to know about X". Like, in the rest of the developed world there isn't quite the same gaming of healthcare as in the USA, and more people have better outcomes. And everyone pays less, on average. A *lot* less. Free markets only work when they are efficient. You can't just map some abstract concept to everything and expect it to work.
Grandfathered in plans were not allowed to change at all since 2011,
Haha, I think we should create a loop-hole where the insurance companies can change existing plans (with the consent of their customers of course), and then not be subject to the basic standards the ACA enforces. In that way, the ACA wouldn't enforce any standards at all, and we'll have libetarian paradise, just like we did before the ACA was passed!!!
Yeah... the insurance companies are taking advantage of people to up-sell. Also, the plans that existed before 2010 really _are_ grandfathered in. So Obama wasn't lying when he said that you could keep your insurance, but the incentive structures for the insurance industry lined up to produce this bloody mess. And now every partisan wingnut is out there either decrying or defending the law, when we should really be focused on fixing the bloody mess.
Haha, that's an interesting take on history. I think then senator Olympia Snowe would disagree. The wingnuts walked away from negotiations in an attempt to bloody Obama's nose, and throw meat at their based. The template for the law was originally put forward by the heritage foundation, and was supported by top conservatives (such as Gingritch) up until 2008. Guess the GOP didn't know how to declare victory and walk away. I mean, if Obama is for it, then every "true" conservative must fight the SOCIALIST TYRANNY.
Haha, yeah, I bet all you know about the law you learned reading RedState and watching Fox news.
If the law is unfair, then get the law changed.
With the current political climate: good luck with that. You have the "JOB CREATOR" defenders (sorry, I meant FREEDOM) who will do everything they can to give tax breaks to the very rich, and cry about how the media is just biased against them, and that everyone should pay less tax anyway, because tax cuts just magically pay for themselves in hughly unrealistic economic growth that is just waiting to explode when the government just shuts down the IRS.
Then you get a bunch of billionaires running "grassroots" conservative websites, encouraging alternative realities, to gum up government so they can continue to underpay and pollute, and the party faithful will tear around the country claiming to be victims of tyranny, and for some reason they think they are rebels.
As a conservative, I support tax reform, and I appreciate that most liberals want a fairer and simpler tax system. The political incentives are set for the GOP to simply cry about tyranny whilst fighting for Larry Ellison's carried interest tax break.
And it's not "laissez-faire" to think that government has no business decided how much people get paid by private companies. It's just common sense capitalism.
That would only be true if the labour market itself were perfectly efficient. This is so far from the reality of the labour market that you cannot even pretend it is. The community market is pretty close to an efficient labour market, and as such, should be left alone. Working at McDonalds is anything but.
Think about this problem: for 1 hour of work, a McDonalds worker can by 2.5 big-mac value meals, in Norway. It is possible to run a profitable McDonalds under those labour constraints. Here in the USA, were we have more "free market wages" (i.e., low minimum wage), we find McDonalds workers dependent on the government for a basic standard of living. If you took away the social services, those people would starve and freeze, and you would have a strong incentive for crime. So really we have a huge case of crony capitalism, where social services subsidize McDonalds shareholders, and all in the name of FREEDOM.
This happens because the labour market is not efficient.
Human nature dictates that those in control take the lions share of resources.
Currently wind power _costs_ less than coal. That means coal could not compete on price if you removed all subsidies and taxes. Future wind power will be even cheaper. Much cheaper. The grid will be upgraded, because money is smart, and not doing so it stupid.
Thankfully engineers work on these problems, and not "libertarian" philosophers, who really just hate the idea that renewable energy may be a good idea.
Yes there have been some novel developments in ways to catch the wind but what part of that is so vastly changing the cost?
The amount of power generated is proportional to the square of the blade length (and thus windmill height). Also, the windmills only last a certain amount of time, so technology goes into making them more durable. Double the life-span, and the amount of energy produced is (about) double. You also want to improve the maintenance cycle. Future windmills will be *huge*, but we don't yet have all the engineering details pinned down to build them.
You can, of course, figure all this out on your own.
You cannot go with something that might be cheaper in a few years.
I know this is slashdot, but if you _look_ at the link, and _follow_ the references, you'll see that wind is _already_ cheaper. And besides, saying that wind won't be cheaper in the future is besides the point. The situation is analogous to computers. They will be faster in the future, but existing computers don't magically get faster just because new designs are faster. I was just making the point that the fossil fuel industry is screwed -- they can't corrupt the public discourse or political processes for ever when the benefits hit the wallet so directly.
Perhaps, but only in very specific regions
Perhaps? Well yes, but do you really think that engineers don't try to factor everything in, and in a way that is as principled as possible? Engineering isn't armchair philosophy. The price of wind power is coming down _fast_, and that includes solving the significant infrastructure issues. Solar power is coming down just as fast (but is a little behind), and very soon we'll see all the big box stores and data centres running on renewables, because NOT doing that is just throwing money away. The consumer will follow a few years later, since most people don't have the cash to buy 20 years of electricity all at once. The consumer will only be behind by a _few_ years, because a new finance industry is springing up to handling the credit issue.
Creative destruction is coming to a fossil-fuel plant near you, and there is nothing that you or Koch can do about it. The government shouldn't be picking winners and losers, and fossil-fuel interests shouldn't be pressuring the political system with blatant misinformation. But it really doesn't matter, because money smart.
And that's _without_ considering the cost of carbon pollution. Allowing power companies to make extra profit by shifting externalities onto the commons is the very _definition_ of crony capitalism.
Wind Power is not cheaper than coal power. Since the wind doesn't blow all the time either storage or alternative generation is required.
Thank God Almighty that we have engineers to understand these problems, and not just armchair philosophers.
Coal is by far cheapest and most economical however,
This is simply not true. Not only is it untrue, but solar/wind will be much cheaper than coal in just a few years. The technology is really moving that fast.
Wind is cheaper than coal. Just thought I'd drop that in there.
That is an interesting point of view. (Interesting as in barking wrong.) As of 2013, wind power is now cheaper than coal power, and that is true even when you ignore the cost of carbon pollution. Obviously this policy is more about heading of crony capitalism... lobbyists doing favours to get coal power plants built that will buy their companies products for 50 years.
Actually, the total cost of a coal power-plant is in the ballpark of wind energy as of 2013. That's the price _excluding_ the cost of carbon pollution. The price of coal will probably go up in the future, and wind will definitely continue to decrease in price. So it's really not such a big deal for the communities using the electricity. The policy will make it harder for the fossil-fuel lobby to get power-stations built that will buy their products for 50 years.
My only strong belief here is that any party or coalition that tries to reduce government spending
The Dems tried to reduce the size of government in the 2011 budget "fight". The media didn't call them a bunch of crazy racists with no credibility. The GOP establishment was ready for a big win, but the Tea Party base couldn't take yes for an answer, because Obama is a slick conman, and as soon as he supports something (statistically) that is its death.
/really/ interested in reducing the size of government, then I recommend paying closer attention to all angles of the political debate, both in the USA and overseas. It might surprise you to find that liberals are, on average, better at keeping the books in order, and conservatives are huge advocates of increasing the size of government for programs that they like. The political branding is just that: branding. In the case of politics, the maximum "nothing is as it seems" is true for the ideologue, and "everything is as it seems" is true for the outside observer.
Academics think the tea party has no credibility because what they say is incoherent to those who actually study the issues involved.
If you are