could be. but then you are saying you'd rather be european because you are healthier, not because healthcare is better. there is a difference and the confusion of the two is unfortunate.
furthermore, I'm not sure what primary care doctor prevents you from smoking or getting fat. Many Americans (keep in mind, 85% have insurance and going to a primary care doctor isn't expensive compared to insurance or the taxes Europeans pay) already have great access to primary care doctors. Everyone seems to think Americans are basically waiting to get sick and then going to very expensive specialist.
But even if that is the case, it's not because our insurance plans don't cover trips to the doctor. For example, at my work place, the low deductible plan has a 15 dollar copay for me to go to a primary care doctor and the high deductible plan pays 100% of the cost.
and no, I'm not for doctors leaving people to die. that is just a stupid comment. it turns out we didn't have people dying in the streets for lack of doctors before the 80's. There are many doctors who build practices with a centerpiece being low cost services to the poor and hospitals generally helped. But what I'd rather see is if society actually wants to provide healthcare to the poor, then to share that very specific burden (a la Medicaid) rather than force 100% of the burden on hospitals.
We used to have that kind of system and I argue that it's a more fair way to do these things. Sure, the old system maybe wasn't perfect but the idea of letting 100% of the burden fall on your local hospital and the idea that the emergency room is free just creates perverse incentives and can really put an unfair burden on hospitals that are open in lower income areas where offsetting business from the rest of the community isn't there.
well, fine, take stats, if I get cancer (Male), in teh US, I have a 60% chance to make it 5 years. I only have 45% in the UK. great system guys. Heart attack, I would die 10% fo the time here in the US vs almost 40% in the UK (110k deaths for 275k heart attacks in 2008). where is the improvement? I'm not even excluding people who don't have insurance. you have a far better chance to survive in the US. the difference is there is a bigger spread depending on income level in the US (teh really rich are more likely to live than the abjectly poor) but I'd rather take a better chance on average than a worse chance for everyone.....
but if you look at the statistics, americans have massively better health outcomes in those things that medical care does usually cover. Cancer and heart attacks are two I reference in an above post and in general, the survival rates are much much higher for cancer patients in the US. Our elderly also live longer (conditional probability so don't look at life expectancy at birth) so we must be doing something right. on the other hand, our higher rates of smoking and obesity make it a much harder country to come up with such great results vs. europe. I generally think we do pretty damn well. sure modular improvements can be great, but that is not what this change is about.
as I said above, the real solution is to separate the functions of a buyers cooperative (great by private sector) and absolute disaster insurance (generally requiring some govt intervention because of the unlikely chance a private entity can set aside enough capital to handle a real disaster).
What europe has is a govt mandated buyers cooperative and insurance and this is what we are doing. It's foolish because people can generally effectively form buyer's cooperatives in a more flexible manner to reflect everyone's desires.
what better results? the US leads in cancer survival rates by leaps and bounds. 60% for men vs 45% for that great UK system on a 5 year horizon. The US is number 1 in the world so I doubt you will burn too much time trying to find a country that beats this.
While the US does have a higher infant mortality rate than most other countries, a study just released attributes a vast vast majority of the difference to the US being more wiling to deliver and try to keep alive premature babies (who wants to guess we will find that a generally higiher birth rate and strong aversion to abortions in several poor populations possibly makes up the rest?). about 40% of those people who have a heart attack in teh UK die whereas the US death rate stands around 10% (on the 1 month horizon). (UK from Department of Health, US from Journal of the American Medical Association)
I'm just finding random stats. Europeans only have their jaws on the floor because for some reason they believe they receive better health care.
And keep in mind, health care is how you are treated once you are sick. If we corrected the the higher obesity and smoking rates in the US, I think the American medical system would look like a bunch of gods coming to work vs the care in the UK.
and for seniors, it looks even better for the US. if in the US you reach (I think), 70 years old, you now have the highest life expectancy of anyone in the world. In fact, this is quite surprising but reflects amazing end of life care in the US vs other countries.
I'm personally against socialized medicine or requirements for insurance. I'm also against the reagan era policy which says you have to treat people regardless if they can pay. Mainly, I hate the entire insurance system we have because it isn't insurance. insurance is a small premium paid against disaster, not the expectation that if you pay a small percent of your health care it suddenly all becomes free. people have spent so much time without having to take responsibility for their basic care that they have forgotten it is how everyone used to do things.
quoted from the WSJ: "What woman would buy a plan for an unplanned pregnancy?" said Ms. Rubiner of Planned Parenthood.
this was in regards to purchasing insurance. What idiot wouldn't buy insurance against the unexpected? that is what insurance is for. I don't buy insurance against the dealer getting blackjack when I KNOW he will get blackjack, I buy it to protect certain gains against the unexpected and unlikely occurrence.
And this is one of the big problems. The democrats that are crafting these policies don't understand what insurance is and what a buyer's cooperative is and they are mixing the two to the detriment of everyone.
What they mean by an insurance exchange is really a poorly crafted buyers cooperative (like sam's club) which, by getting buyers together, can push for cheaper pricing. This is unfortunately what everyone thinks insurance is for. Insurance should be a separate issue where we buy protection against real health care disasters. The separation of these two would be the greatest reform imaginable (that, along with fixing a really crappy tax code that is almost incomprehensible beyond the most basic return). Requiring insurance sounds great against disaster, but disaster isn't a program that covers my annual physical or my allergy medication.
and I know I've rambled a lot, but I'm tired. forgive the lack of clarity.
except most of this money is used to either buy votes from certain middle class groups or wantonly give money to the poor.
we keep forgetting that most people get to where they are in life because of choices they made. we have public schools (which cost me a good bit even though I don't have kids) to try and level the playing field. we have government subsidized (and therefore, tax funded) student loans to go to college (and grants, and work study programs, all of which cost money).
at some point can a rich person tell a poor person to take some fucking personal responsibility and get a proper job? I live in Japan now and it's one of the things I love about it. there are lots of services out there to help those who end up unemployed or between jobs. but if you don't get off your lazy ass and get a job, you lose lots of these services, one of the more expensive of which is the national health care plan.
and if you have chosen in your life to not be responsible, not study, not take advantage of all the job programs, training, and schooling out there and therefore, have absolutely no skills to offer, I don't see why anyone should care about your lot in life or how tough it is. I've paid my dues to help you raise yourself up, you chose not to take advantage of all those opportunities and now you want a regular tribute from me? screw that.
now of course, there is a middle ground I am always happy to discuss and debate. how much in the way of services, medical care, etc is the "right" amount to offer your full time workers who don't make quite enough to get by but offer real skills. and I'll ante up for retraining and unemployment insurance to allow for a more fluid workforce.
but: simple hormonal imbalance with treatment methods known and expected recovery in 4 months is what is realeased.
in reality: scouring the US for the hospital with the shortest list for a liver transplant (getting one is incumbent on being extremely sick or else it goes to a sicker person).
guess what, he was the latter, not the former. announcing your key employee who is basically responsible for the success/strategic direction of your company is ok when he really isn't is the problem.
I don't care frankly about a cold he may have. But if you call it a cold and you knew it was the Ebola virus, you are misleading your shareholders. now , if his condition deteriorated in the last 3 months and testing revealed it to not be a simple hormonal imbalance, the fact you decided to get into details means you probably ought to be telling people it isn't that simple. if you had simply said steve jobs is taking a medical leave then you could only be held for omission of details, which is different than deliberately misleading people.
it's not a private company and company representatives disseminating patently false information for public consumption is manipulative of stock prices. not that I believe the SEC would actually take it upon itself to make sure that companies don't knowingly disseminate patently false information but it would be nice if they actually protected the interests of the investing public.
just because there is large variation within a race doesn't mean that there can't be determining factors we use to classify people. Since genetics determine the factors we use to describe the different races, it means it IS a scientific dividing line.
the looks you talk about are determined by genetics and therefore, fi we define races based on looks, we could create a high scientific definition regarding certain sections of DNA that lead to those looks.
not true at all, many graduates of medical school score low enough to not match with a residency and not be able to find one when they start looking for programs desperate for say, the proctocologist). you would not call this person anythign because they would simply have an MD but never gotten the training to become a doctor.
my point was simple, none of those countries show a predisposition for women at the very upper eschelons (you are no more likely to see a woman field's medalist in Korea or Europe compared to the US or Japan).
every discussion I've heard isn't why women can't do calculus at the high school level. anyone who thinks they can't is an idiot. the question is why aren't they winning Nobels and Fields medals for math related work (theoretical physics is very math intensive so I would argue a similar amount of math aptitude is required for a nobel in that as it is for a field's medal).
there may be strong cultural factors causing women who could do calculus to not do it but that doesn't explain why there are fewer women PhD. As I said, it's like saying because there are more women in the 80th to 90th percentile than men, women should have a great representation in the 99th. that is required by any amount of logic.
so if we are only concerned about women taking calc in high school, sure, this study is very relevant. if we are wondering why there aren't any women's field medalists, it's a completely different question that requires much more than just looking at averages. if you want to look at outliers, you need to study publication history, citations of work, and look for mathematicians opinions on the significance of work.
not logic, just pointing out that the study does not address what it seems to make conclusions about.
I call BS on a study that looks at test scores, (seemingly) for high school students, and says that the more women are in the 99% percentile so it's cultural.
that is idiotic. I was in the top 99th percentile my entire life in math (well, before college). Even in the intro college courses I was at the very top , but there were others. when we hit hte high level maths (proofs, abstract algebra, etc) I was trounced, just so absolutely outpaced it wasn't even close.
When you talk about the 99th percentile for high school math and try to draw some sort of line talking about those people who are actually at the top fo the math field, you are basically a moron.
what you care about when talking about math geniuses isn't the 99th percentile. you are looking for the 99th percentile fo teh 99th percentile of the 99th percentile. at that level, there are no tests other than fields medals, nobel prizes, citations in scholarly journals, professorships, ground breaking findings, etc, differences that have shown up over time in every culture.
I'm in the first group and I'm so far behind the group people talk about when they call someone a math genius it's stupid to care. it's like saying more women are in teh 50th - 60th percentile so more should be in the 99th percentile for high school tests. there is no reason that has to be the case.
name 1 study please then. if you are so sure, then you can certainly point to facts. I referenced (albeit indirectly) scholarly articles where the issues I brought up were addressed.
you just want to call any critic of your lack of evidence or unbiased testing or citations foolish. I'm saying you are probably just reading the very top line (like taking the average income of all people in a bombay slum while bill gates is there and saying the average income is high enough to live on therefore, everyone should be happy) and trying to draw falacious conclusions. you may end up right, but you have yet to point to any research that supports your position other than random averages.
and if you think in a long distance race blacks are superior, why are there no strong long distance black runners in the US? your foolish point falls flat on its face. In fact, while a superior cooling system would work well for long distance, it shoudl be irrelevant for quick sprints. Why is it all the strongest sprinters in the 100m and 200m distances are black AND from the western hemisphere?
and contrary to what you think my politics are, I strongly believe there are genetic differences for intelligence, athleticism, etc and these extend not only to different people but to the genders as well. but, unlike you, I'm not parading around my opinion as some foregone conclusion without evidence backing up my position. prove your odds,give me a scholarly study that supports this, preferably peer reviewed. then you will be getting somewhere. else, my point stands. you are merely speculating with very poor data to go on.
you are actually starting to sound like someone parading unsupported facts as the god's honest truth to validate racism. I can see why someone in a long conversation with you may assume that is your real motive.
the first place you question is if your correlation is valid. you have shown a correlation between IQ testing and race. let's assume it is significant. you have ignored several studies that say that minorities in the US perform worse on a test when it is an intelligence test. in fact, it has also been shown (statistically relevant) that african americans perform worse when simply asked what their race is before a test is given. These two factors have been shown to close (mean, of course) 80% of the performance gap between whites and blacks (for study citations, see the book "Blink" as I don't have it on hand). So starting their, your 20 points starts to look much closer to the difference you quoted for Asians and Americans. This says more about social training than anything else.
There could be many other global factors involved that can correct for this difference and before you make sweeping statements about genes that have not been isolated, it's probably more rigorous to pick your low hanging fruit.
as to economics, you are simply wrong. there is nothing else to say. averages don't matter. you can look up specialization, division of labor, theories behind why international trade is good for the welfare of either country (even if the other country forbids imports), etc. This is a long studied point and until you come back with something more rigorous that knee jerk averages that actually addresses 300 years of economics, I suggest you just let this one go.
wow, what a comment. my point is that not a single one of your views has any scientific backing. that dr. Watson says blacks are less intellegent proves what? That India and china regularly beat every western country at intelligence tests but are so far economically behind the west says what?
it is a foolish notion to think that just because some averages on tests stand at a certain level in a certain country we have determined anything. that is sociology, not biology. Watson said we "may" find genes for intelligence in the next 10 years.
you also fail in economics. migration is a great way to increase economic activity, lower prices for the vast majority of people, and allow for greater specialization in an economy. The less migration and diversity allowed, the less efficient your economy will be. A simple example would be international trade in capital (not money, means of production). at the end of the day, that is all people are and open borders allows for efficient flow of the most important form of capital, human capital. Any barriers you erect will inevitably harm global prosperity.
but I digress. my point was you lack any and all scientific research to back your claim. that doesn't make it false or unpalatable, just unproven and unsupported. IQ tests fail to be a reasonable indicator for several reasons, and truly your statistics are only correlation (ie meaningless) and not causation(what we would like to study because the data goads us with the correlations that it has).
again, it could be true, but there is no scientific research to make me believe your position any more than the PC position (and frankly, I don't believe either. I'm comfortably agnostic about this).
I wish I could provide solid citations but I no longer have access to my college database. but, go through standard entries in marathons or just look through the top 300 finishers in each (with a listing of country of origin). for example:
another completely not scientific example is Jamaica. As a predominantly black country, it is known for turning out extremely strong sprinters but only in the 100 and 200m distance. at 400 meter or greater, they are hardly a medal contender or put anyone forward. My best friend from Jamaica (who is an extremely strong short distance sprinter) said growing up there it was cultural for everyone to sprint against each other and very few people seriously ran anything longer than a short, straight sprint. Hence, a country renowned for turning out extremely good sprinters does not turn out anyone for the middle distances (but still 1 minute sprints). Why would it be that blacks would be strong 100m and 200m runners and yet the best 400m runners are white and Asian?
the fact that in the US, blacks dominate basically every sport is a fascinating case study. But the fact they do not dominate in certain sports (golf - tiger woods, swimming, cycling, long distance running, and so on) leads me to believe dominance is more cultural which led to breeding selection towards those people leading a specialization in those skills. I would love to study it or help fund a study of it but alas, it is not the most PC topic out there so it is hard to find people willing to study it.
you sure races are fundamentally different? IQ tests measure nothing more than a very limited scope of cognition. I have a much higher IQ than one of our family friends, but he can do more mechanics than I could hope to. In fact, most IQ tests simply measure how much you have learned by a certain age, not your capacity to learn. In fact, Ramanujan would have been a far lower scorer in an IQ test at most ages compared to a far less capable white person. Until IQ tests find a way to correct for access to education, it is not a valid way of measuring groups (unless you can point to a study that corrects for these factors adn still finds statistically significant differences in score).
There are almost no black long distance runners in the Americas and no black sprinters in Africa (at the top levels). In fact, blacks in Africa are far slower than white sprinters or Asian sprinters at the top levels.
I"m not saying there may not be significant genetic differences between the races. But your comments ignore rigorous scientific study to the same extent that your "democrat" does.
99% of internet viewers, not internet devices. and they specify desktops, not handheld devices. if they were specifying people who have been on the internet, then I bet 99% is accurate because how many iphone users don't have a computer at home or at work that can get flash objects?
anyways, at least 4 of those iphones have gone through my sister because they can't seem to keep working when they get dropped, etc.
school safety officers are on campus during all school hours. they are there to provide quick law enforcement response and to help in handling tough to discipline students. not by force (though I have seen it used when a student attacked the cop while he tried to break up a fight) but as a stronger authority figure.
more likely than not, the cop was patrolling the halls and the front office called him and asked him to help out a teacher who couldn't get a student to comply after repeated warnings. It's not like they took her to the precinct and strip searched her.
all thsoe years catching virii in the wild has made the gates man strong. he has built immunity to the simple and slow evolving human diseases with constant exposure to the more virulent kind he was forced to face.
the coddled Jobs boy finds himself incapable of facing off with an even small disease because he lacks in the hard won immunity of the microsoft world.
no we didn't! we moved from colonial backwater to superpower by:
1) being isolated from any major military threat 2) having more natural resources available and easily obtained vs any other country out there 3) a constant drive since the civil war to do everything and anything possible to increase the available markets for our goods and assist business and the elite, we have been building for this for 230 years, this economic crisis is just one more
protectionism started dying away back then. Tariffs to protect local industry were still around, but we mobilized our army to make sure we had access to as many major markets as possible. At the end, why did the US control the Philippines? The reasons given by our president at the time was because negroes couldn't be trusted to govern themselves and it would provide access to China for US goods. Cuba was required to give us naval ports, open up for US investment, and give us coal mines if we were to withdraw our troops from Cuba (and this is when our part in the war was so minimal that we only involved ourselves when it was obvious the Cuban rebels would win).
If anything, our history has been marked by the constant attempts to expand our economic influence and with government protection extended mainly to those businesses that can help in that.
We have NEVER been a nativist or xenophobic country in our policies simply because our capital owners have always wanted access to cheaper labor. The standard method to break strikes in the 19th century (the height of the American school's influence) was to use federal troops and militia to arrest or kill strikers and provide protection for foreign workers to come in and replace the workers who had walked out.
Now if you are only referring to protecting our domestic industries from foreign competition, you are right that we have the lowest tariffs and local subsidies of our history but that isn't the type of protectionism people are complaining about here (it seems by your example you are referring to protection of local industry but of course we are against that now because we want others to not put them in place. on a level playing ground we can beat the world consistently).
what are you talking about? securities and investment banking hardly leave you time for personal things on the weekend and if you are in the IT department, you generally have to work a lot of weekends and national holidays to implement new infrastructure changes. you don't get paid 80-150k for nothing, you're expected to work 60-100 hours a week (depending on division, etc).
granted, the pay is more than enough to live comfortably in any city in the world, but you definitely put your hours in for it. on an hourly basis, you would make a lot more just going to work at a steel mill or auto plant.
I disagree. My father, who uses his computer for 4 purposes: browsing, email, free cell, and internet checkers complained about Vista (and he is Obessive about buying the top speed computer so his computer at home is faster than mine at work (and my job is computer speed sensitive).
Vista is so bad he asked if I could install XP on his new computer because he can't handle it when the graphics drag while he is playing free cell.
I have experience messing around with his computer for a week when I was at home and I have to agree, it is horrible compared to XP (in many of the same ways my mac is inferior to XP). It looks really nice and sounds cool but it's freaking slow as hell on very modern hardware.
I don't have the money to burn on Vista when it can't even satify my dad's requirements in a smooth fashion (these complaints date to last thanksgiving). So you are right, I haven't tried it extensively, but then, I don't feel like wasting money on an OS that was so bad it got my dad to complain about it.
you highly underestimate those of us in the financial industry. there is a reason starting salaries for 22 year olds is over 100k ( and at lehman, sat at 240k equivalent for your first year of work, 120k earned in 6 months).
no one in this industry would bend down for a nickel, much less care to go through the effort of bending you over for one. you need to increase your scale by several magnitudes to even get close to what it takes to get a finance person excited.
hell, in my department making or losing less than a quarter million in a day is considered insignificant. at one point, we had divisions that looked at plus or minus 5 million USD in those terms.
oh, and those previously rich and powerful are still really rich(yeah, I missed the bull market in doing this, but I enjoy the work so I don't really care, if not this, then maybe professional gambler?). they want to get richer by putting the hand out and saying you will screw everyone else if you don't give us money. amazing what you can do when one of your own controls the purse strings (both at the fed and at the head of the financial services committee in the house).
now for some truth, I agree with what you are saying and this is from someone in the industry. but I will stay because I like to gamble (poker style, not roulette style). I have basically missed the stupid payouts and bull run up but will keep at it because it's fun (I would rather teach if it paid enough to properly raise a family).
Anyways, I'm sure the payouts are still out there, just only for people who know the right people (for example, a Thain buddy from GS was paid about 80mm by ML/BofA for 3 months of work because he knew the right man, thain). know the right people, and even if the company is on its last breath, you can get the payouts.
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could be. but then you are saying you'd rather be european because you are healthier, not because healthcare is better. there is a difference and the confusion of the two is unfortunate.
furthermore, I'm not sure what primary care doctor prevents you from smoking or getting fat. Many Americans (keep in mind, 85% have insurance and going to a primary care doctor isn't expensive compared to insurance or the taxes Europeans pay) already have great access to primary care doctors. Everyone seems to think Americans are basically waiting to get sick and then going to very expensive specialist.
But even if that is the case, it's not because our insurance plans don't cover trips to the doctor. For example, at my work place, the low deductible plan has a 15 dollar copay for me to go to a primary care doctor and the high deductible plan pays 100% of the cost.
and no, I'm not for doctors leaving people to die. that is just a stupid comment. it turns out we didn't have people dying in the streets for lack of doctors before the 80's. There are many doctors who build practices with a centerpiece being low cost services to the poor and hospitals generally helped. But what I'd rather see is if society actually wants to provide healthcare to the poor, then to share that very specific burden (a la Medicaid) rather than force 100% of the burden on hospitals.
We used to have that kind of system and I argue that it's a more fair way to do these things. Sure, the old system maybe wasn't perfect but the idea of letting 100% of the burden fall on your local hospital and the idea that the emergency room is free just creates perverse incentives and can really put an unfair burden on hospitals that are open in lower income areas where offsetting business from the rest of the community isn't there.
well, fine, take stats, if I get cancer (Male), in teh US, I have a 60% chance to make it 5 years. I only have 45% in the UK. great system guys. Heart attack, I would die 10% fo the time here in the US vs almost 40% in the UK (110k deaths for 275k heart attacks in 2008). where is the improvement? I'm not even excluding people who don't have insurance. you have a far better chance to survive in the US. the difference is there is a bigger spread depending on income level in the US (teh really rich are more likely to live than the abjectly poor) but I'd rather take a better chance on average than a worse chance for everyone.....
but if you look at the statistics, americans have massively better health outcomes in those things that medical care does usually cover. Cancer and heart attacks are two I reference in an above post and in general, the survival rates are much much higher for cancer patients in the US. Our elderly also live longer (conditional probability so don't look at life expectancy at birth) so we must be doing something right. on the other hand, our higher rates of smoking and obesity make it a much harder country to come up with such great results vs. europe. I generally think we do pretty damn well. sure modular improvements can be great, but that is not what this change is about.
as I said above, the real solution is to separate the functions of a buyers cooperative (great by private sector) and absolute disaster insurance (generally requiring some govt intervention because of the unlikely chance a private entity can set aside enough capital to handle a real disaster).
What europe has is a govt mandated buyers cooperative and insurance and this is what we are doing. It's foolish because people can generally effectively form buyer's cooperatives in a more flexible manner to reflect everyone's desires.
what better results?
the US leads in cancer survival rates by leaps and bounds. 60% for men vs 45% for that great UK system on a 5 year horizon. The US is number 1 in the world so I doubt you will burn too much time trying to find a country that beats this.
While the US does have a higher infant mortality rate than most other countries, a study just released attributes a vast vast majority of the difference to the US being more wiling to deliver and try to keep alive premature babies (who wants to guess we will find that a generally higiher birth rate and strong aversion to abortions in several poor populations possibly makes up the rest?). about 40% of those people who have a heart attack in teh UK die whereas the US death rate stands around 10% (on the 1 month horizon). (UK from Department of Health, US from Journal of the American Medical Association)
I'm just finding random stats. Europeans only have their jaws on the floor because for some reason they believe they receive better health care.
And keep in mind, health care is how you are treated once you are sick. If we corrected the the higher obesity and smoking rates in the US, I think the American medical system would look like a bunch of gods coming to work vs the care in the UK.
and for seniors, it looks even better for the US. if in the US you reach (I think), 70 years old, you now have the highest life expectancy of anyone in the world. In fact, this is quite surprising but reflects amazing end of life care in the US vs other countries.
I'm personally against socialized medicine or requirements for insurance. I'm also against the reagan era policy which says you have to treat people regardless if they can pay. Mainly, I hate the entire insurance system we have because it isn't insurance. insurance is a small premium paid against disaster, not the expectation that if you pay a small percent of your health care it suddenly all becomes free. people have spent so much time without having to take responsibility for their basic care that they have forgotten it is how everyone used to do things.
quoted from the WSJ: "What woman would buy a plan for an unplanned pregnancy?" said Ms. Rubiner of Planned Parenthood.
this was in regards to purchasing insurance. What idiot wouldn't buy insurance against the unexpected? that is what insurance is for. I don't buy insurance against the dealer getting blackjack when I KNOW he will get blackjack, I buy it to protect certain gains against the unexpected and unlikely occurrence.
And this is one of the big problems. The democrats that are crafting these policies don't understand what insurance is and what a buyer's cooperative is and they are mixing the two to the detriment of everyone.
What they mean by an insurance exchange is really a poorly crafted buyers cooperative (like sam's club) which, by getting buyers together, can push for cheaper pricing. This is unfortunately what everyone thinks insurance is for. Insurance should be a separate issue where we buy protection against real health care disasters. The separation of these two would be the greatest reform imaginable (that, along with fixing a really crappy tax code that is almost incomprehensible beyond the most basic return). Requiring insurance sounds great against disaster, but disaster isn't a program that covers my annual physical or my allergy medication.
and I know I've rambled a lot, but I'm tired. forgive the lack of clarity.
except most of this money is used to either buy votes from certain middle class groups or wantonly give money to the poor.
we keep forgetting that most people get to where they are in life because of choices they made. we have public schools (which cost me a good bit even though I don't have kids) to try and level the playing field. we have government subsidized (and therefore, tax funded) student loans to go to college (and grants, and work study programs, all of which cost money).
at some point can a rich person tell a poor person to take some fucking personal responsibility and get a proper job? I live in Japan now and it's one of the things I love about it. there are lots of services out there to help those who end up unemployed or between jobs. but if you don't get off your lazy ass and get a job, you lose lots of these services, one of the more expensive of which is the national health care plan.
and if you have chosen in your life to not be responsible, not study, not take advantage of all the job programs, training, and schooling out there and therefore, have absolutely no skills to offer, I don't see why anyone should care about your lot in life or how tough it is. I've paid my dues to help you raise yourself up, you chose not to take advantage of all those opportunities and now you want a regular tribute from me? screw that.
now of course, there is a middle ground I am always happy to discuss and debate. how much in the way of services, medical care, etc is the "right" amount to offer your full time workers who don't make quite enough to get by but offer real skills. and I'll ante up for retraining and unemployment insurance to allow for a more fluid workforce.
but:
simple hormonal imbalance with treatment methods known and expected recovery in 4 months is what is realeased.
in reality: scouring the US for the hospital with the shortest list for a liver transplant (getting one is incumbent on being extremely sick or else it goes to a sicker person).
guess what, he was the latter, not the former. announcing your key employee who is basically responsible for the success/strategic direction of your company is ok when he really isn't is the problem.
I don't care frankly about a cold he may have. But if you call it a cold and you knew it was the Ebola virus, you are misleading your shareholders. now , if his condition deteriorated in the last 3 months and testing revealed it to not be a simple hormonal imbalance, the fact you decided to get into details means you probably ought to be telling people it isn't that simple. if you had simply said steve jobs is taking a medical leave then you could only be held for omission of details, which is different than deliberately misleading people.
it's not a private company and company representatives disseminating patently false information for public consumption is manipulative of stock prices. not that I believe the SEC would actually take it upon itself to make sure that companies don't knowingly disseminate patently false information but it would be nice if they actually protected the interests of the investing public.
no no, they know the metric system, since 1 mile is equal to 1.6 km, 1 square mile must be equal to 1.6 square kilometers.
your real title should be:
"Learn how to do basic goddamn unit conversions ffs"
just because there is large variation within a race doesn't mean that there can't be determining factors we use to classify people. Since genetics determine the factors we use to describe the different races, it means it IS a scientific dividing line.
the looks you talk about are determined by genetics and therefore, fi we define races based on looks, we could create a high scientific definition regarding certain sections of DNA that lead to those looks.
not true at all, many graduates of medical school score low enough to not match with a residency and not be able to find one when they start looking for programs desperate for say, the proctocologist).
you would not call this person anythign because they would simply have an MD but never gotten the training to become a doctor.
my point was simple, none of those countries show a predisposition for women at the very upper eschelons (you are no more likely to see a woman field's medalist in Korea or Europe compared to the US or Japan).
every discussion I've heard isn't why women can't do calculus at the high school level. anyone who thinks they can't is an idiot. the question is why aren't they winning Nobels and Fields medals for math related work (theoretical physics is very math intensive so I would argue a similar amount of math aptitude is required for a nobel in that as it is for a field's medal).
there may be strong cultural factors causing women who could do calculus to not do it but that doesn't explain why there are fewer women PhD. As I said, it's like saying because there are more women in the 80th to 90th percentile than men, women should have a great representation in the 99th. that is required by any amount of logic.
so if we are only concerned about women taking calc in high school, sure, this study is very relevant. if we are wondering why there aren't any women's field medalists, it's a completely different question that requires much more than just looking at averages. if you want to look at outliers, you need to study publication history, citations of work, and look for mathematicians opinions on the significance of work.
not logic, just pointing out that the study does not address what it seems to make conclusions about.
do you hear the sound of the joke flying over your head?
I call BS on a study that looks at test scores, (seemingly) for high school students, and says that the more women are in the 99% percentile so it's cultural.
that is idiotic. I was in the top 99th percentile my entire life in math (well, before college). Even in the intro college courses I was at the very top , but there were others. when we hit hte high level maths (proofs, abstract algebra, etc) I was trounced, just so absolutely outpaced it wasn't even close.
When you talk about the 99th percentile for high school math and try to draw some sort of line talking about those people who are actually at the top fo the math field, you are basically a moron.
what you care about when talking about math geniuses isn't the 99th percentile. you are looking for the 99th percentile fo teh 99th percentile of the 99th percentile. at that level, there are no tests other than fields medals, nobel prizes, citations in scholarly journals, professorships, ground breaking findings, etc, differences that have shown up over time in every culture.
I'm in the first group and I'm so far behind the group people talk about when they call someone a math genius it's stupid to care. it's like saying more women are in teh 50th - 60th percentile so more should be in the 99th percentile for high school tests. there is no reason that has to be the case.
name 1 study please then. if you are so sure, then you can certainly point to facts. I referenced (albeit indirectly) scholarly articles where the issues I brought up were addressed.
you just want to call any critic of your lack of evidence or unbiased testing or citations foolish. I'm saying you are probably just reading the very top line (like taking the average income of all people in a bombay slum while bill gates is there and saying the average income is high enough to live on therefore, everyone should be happy) and trying to draw falacious conclusions. you may end up right, but you have yet to point to any research that supports your position other than random averages.
and if you think in a long distance race blacks are superior, why are there no strong long distance black runners in the US? your foolish point falls flat on its face. In fact, while a superior cooling system would work well for long distance, it shoudl be irrelevant for quick sprints. Why is it all the strongest sprinters in the 100m and 200m distances are black AND from the western hemisphere?
and contrary to what you think my politics are, I strongly believe there are genetic differences for intelligence, athleticism, etc and these extend not only to different people but to the genders as well. but, unlike you, I'm not parading around my opinion as some foregone conclusion without evidence backing up my position. prove your odds,give me a scholarly study that supports this, preferably peer reviewed. then you will be getting somewhere. else, my point stands. you are merely speculating with very poor data to go on.
you are actually starting to sound like someone parading unsupported facts as the god's honest truth to validate racism. I can see why someone in a long conversation with you may assume that is your real motive.
you are wrong that those are the only 3 options.
the first place you question is if your correlation is valid. you have shown a correlation between IQ testing and race. let's assume it is significant. you have ignored several studies that say that minorities in the US perform worse on a test when it is an intelligence test. in fact, it has also been shown (statistically relevant) that african americans perform worse when simply asked what their race is before a test is given. These two factors have been shown to close (mean, of course) 80% of the performance gap between whites and blacks (for study citations, see the book "Blink" as I don't have it on hand). So starting their, your 20 points starts to look much closer to the difference you quoted for Asians and Americans. This says more about social training than anything else.
There could be many other global factors involved that can correct for this difference and before you make sweeping statements about genes that have not been isolated, it's probably more rigorous to pick your low hanging fruit.
as to economics, you are simply wrong. there is nothing else to say. averages don't matter. you can look up specialization, division of labor, theories behind why international trade is good for the welfare of either country (even if the other country forbids imports), etc. This is a long studied point and until you come back with something more rigorous that knee jerk averages that actually addresses 300 years of economics, I suggest you just let this one go.
wow, what a comment. my point is that not a single one of your views has any scientific backing. that dr. Watson says blacks are less intellegent proves what? That India and china regularly beat every western country at intelligence tests but are so far economically behind the west says what?
it is a foolish notion to think that just because some averages on tests stand at a certain level in a certain country we have determined anything. that is sociology, not biology. Watson said we "may" find genes for intelligence in the next 10 years.
here is real science on that very search:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=searching-for-intelligence-in-our-genes
you also fail in economics. migration is a great way to increase economic activity, lower prices for the vast majority of people, and allow for greater specialization in an economy. The less migration and diversity allowed, the less efficient your economy will be. A simple example would be international trade in capital (not money, means of production). at the end of the day, that is all people are and open borders allows for efficient flow of the most important form of capital, human capital. Any barriers you erect will inevitably harm global prosperity.
but I digress. my point was you lack any and all scientific research to back your claim. that doesn't make it false or unpalatable, just unproven and unsupported. IQ tests fail to be a reasonable indicator for several reasons, and truly your statistics are only correlation (ie meaningless) and not causation(what we would like to study because the data goads us with the correlations that it has).
again, it could be true, but there is no scientific research to make me believe your position any more than the PC position (and frankly, I don't believe either. I'm comfortably agnostic about this).
I wish I could provide solid citations but I no longer have access to my college database. but, go through standard entries in marathons or just look through the top 300 finishers in each (with a listing of country of origin). for example:
http://www.bostonmarathon.org/2008/cf/public/TopFinishers.htm
another completely not scientific example is Jamaica. As a predominantly black country, it is known for turning out extremely strong sprinters but only in the 100 and 200m distance. at 400 meter or greater, they are hardly a medal contender or put anyone forward. My best friend from Jamaica (who is an extremely strong short distance sprinter) said growing up there it was cultural for everyone to sprint against each other and very few people seriously ran anything longer than a short, straight sprint. Hence, a country renowned for turning out extremely good sprinters does not turn out anyone for the middle distances (but still 1 minute sprints). Why would it be that blacks would be strong 100m and 200m runners and yet the best 400m runners are white and Asian?
the fact that in the US, blacks dominate basically every sport is a fascinating case study. But the fact they do not dominate in certain sports (golf - tiger woods, swimming, cycling, long distance running, and so on) leads me to believe dominance is more cultural which led to breeding selection towards those people leading a specialization in those skills. I would love to study it or help fund a study of it but alas, it is not the most PC topic out there so it is hard to find people willing to study it.
you sure races are fundamentally different? IQ tests measure nothing more than a very limited scope of cognition. I have a much higher IQ than one of our family friends, but he can do more mechanics than I could hope to. In fact, most IQ tests simply measure how much you have learned by a certain age, not your capacity to learn. In fact, Ramanujan would have been a far lower scorer in an IQ test at most ages compared to a far less capable white person. Until IQ tests find a way to correct for access to education, it is not a valid way of measuring groups (unless you can point to a study that corrects for these factors adn still finds statistically significant differences in score).
There are almost no black long distance runners in the Americas and no black sprinters in Africa (at the top levels). In fact, blacks in Africa are far slower than white sprinters or Asian sprinters at the top levels.
I"m not saying there may not be significant genetic differences between the races. But your comments ignore rigorous scientific study to the same extent that your "democrat" does.
99% of internet viewers, not internet devices. and they specify desktops, not handheld devices. if they were specifying people who have been on the internet, then I bet 99% is accurate because how many iphone users don't have a computer at home or at work that can get flash objects?
anyways, at least 4 of those iphones have gone through my sister because they can't seem to keep working when they get dropped, etc.
school safety officers are on campus during all school hours. they are there to provide quick law enforcement response and to help in handling tough to discipline students. not by force (though I have seen it used when a student attacked the cop while he tried to break up a fight) but as a stronger authority figure.
more likely than not, the cop was patrolling the halls and the front office called him and asked him to help out a teacher who couldn't get a student to comply after repeated warnings. It's not like they took her to the precinct and strip searched her.
all thsoe years catching virii in the wild has made the gates man strong. he has built immunity to the simple and slow evolving human diseases with constant exposure to the more virulent kind he was forced to face.
the coddled Jobs boy finds himself incapable of facing off with an even small disease because he lacks in the hard won immunity of the microsoft world.
no we didn't! we moved from colonial backwater to superpower by:
1) being isolated from any major military threat
2) having more natural resources available and easily obtained vs any other country out there
3) a constant drive since the civil war to do everything and anything possible to increase the available markets for our goods and assist business and the elite, we have been building for this for 230 years, this economic crisis is just one more
protectionism started dying away back then. Tariffs to protect local industry were still around, but we mobilized our army to make sure we had access to as many major markets as possible. At the end, why did the US control the Philippines? The reasons given by our president at the time was because negroes couldn't be trusted to govern themselves and it would provide access to China for US goods. Cuba was required to give us naval ports, open up for US investment, and give us coal mines if we were to withdraw our troops from Cuba (and this is when our part in the war was so minimal that we only involved ourselves when it was obvious the Cuban rebels would win).
If anything, our history has been marked by the constant attempts to expand our economic influence and with government protection extended mainly to those businesses that can help in that.
We have NEVER been a nativist or xenophobic country in our policies simply because our capital owners have always wanted access to cheaper labor. The standard method to break strikes in the 19th century (the height of the American school's influence) was to use federal troops and militia to arrest or kill strikers and provide protection for foreign workers to come in and replace the workers who had walked out.
Now if you are only referring to protecting our domestic industries from foreign competition, you are right that we have the lowest tariffs and local subsidies of our history but that isn't the type of protectionism people are complaining about here (it seems by your example you are referring to protection of local industry but of course we are against that now because we want others to not put them in place. on a level playing ground we can beat the world consistently).
what are you talking about?
securities and investment banking hardly leave you time for personal things on the weekend and if you are in the IT department, you generally have to work a lot of weekends and national holidays to implement new infrastructure changes. you don't get paid 80-150k for nothing, you're expected to work 60-100 hours a week (depending on division, etc).
granted, the pay is more than enough to live comfortably in any city in the world, but you definitely put your hours in for it. on an hourly basis, you would make a lot more just going to work at a steel mill or auto plant.
I disagree. My father, who uses his computer for 4 purposes: browsing, email, free cell, and internet checkers complained about Vista (and he is Obessive about buying the top speed computer so his computer at home is faster than mine at work (and my job is computer speed sensitive).
Vista is so bad he asked if I could install XP on his new computer because he can't handle it when the graphics drag while he is playing free cell.
I have experience messing around with his computer for a week when I was at home and I have to agree, it is horrible compared to XP (in many of the same ways my mac is inferior to XP). It looks really nice and sounds cool but it's freaking slow as hell on very modern hardware.
I don't have the money to burn on Vista when it can't even satify my dad's requirements in a smooth fashion (these complaints date to last thanksgiving). So you are right, I haven't tried it extensively, but then, I don't feel like wasting money on an OS that was so bad it got my dad to complain about it.
you highly underestimate those of us in the financial industry. there is a reason starting salaries for 22 year olds is over 100k ( and at lehman, sat at 240k equivalent for your first year of work, 120k earned in 6 months).
no one in this industry would bend down for a nickel, much less care to go through the effort of bending you over for one. you need to increase your scale by several magnitudes to even get close to what it takes to get a finance person excited.
hell, in my department making or losing less than a quarter million in a day is considered insignificant. at one point, we had divisions that looked at plus or minus 5 million USD in those terms.
oh, and those previously rich and powerful are still really rich(yeah, I missed the bull market in doing this, but I enjoy the work so I don't really care, if not this, then maybe professional gambler?). they want to get richer by putting the hand out and saying you will screw everyone else if you don't give us money. amazing what you can do when one of your own controls the purse strings (both at the fed and at the head of the financial services committee in the house).
now for some truth, I agree with what you are saying and this is from someone in the industry. but I will stay because I like to gamble (poker style, not roulette style). I have basically missed the stupid payouts and bull run up but will keep at it because it's fun (I would rather teach if it paid enough to properly raise a family).
Anyways, I'm sure the payouts are still out there, just only for people who know the right people (for example, a Thain buddy from GS was paid about 80mm by ML/BofA for 3 months of work because he knew the right man, thain). know the right people, and even if the company is on its last breath, you can get the payouts.