They actually do this for scientists, essentially. There are, in most scientific fields, very few spots for grad students compared to the number of people who want to go to grad school. Consequently, one big way to differentiate yourself from the pack is to have multiple internships during your undergrad.
When I was doing my undergrad I had 4 internships of 1 year each at 4 different labs. Each internship gave me a total of 6 credit hours for the year (out of 30 credits taken total for the year) but the cost of those credit hours was refunded. I also wound up getting a full scholarship after my first year because I was recommended for it by my internship professor. By the time I finished undergrad I was on half a dozen published papers, had done over a dozen presentations & posters, and had some very, very good connections and references.
Not only that, but I learned a STAGGERING amount about how research in my field (social psychology/public health) is done and how it could be much improved. When I applied to grad schools I got into every single program I applied for except for one - most people in my undergrad class were rejected by all but one of their schools.
I didn't have to pay for grad school, and as a career changer it got me off to a running start.
Internships can be FANTASTIC as long as you really make the most of them and don't behave like a doormat.
What I'm saying with the above (and I hit submit before I typed this, alas) is that AA individuals are disproportionately impoverished or low income/education in the US, and consequently will be overrepresented in statistics that are influenced heavily by economic factors.
Look at any public health issue and it's actually income and education that play the largest role in disparities, not race. To try and paint it solely as a racial picture without acknowledging the very real role economics plays avoids the real issues at play and also leads to "solutions" that don't actually address the underlying causes.
Well then, you have proven conclusively that the entirety of humanity is doomed, doomed, doomed and we should never, ever look into anything new.
Oh, wait - you've missed entirely the idea that a man falling from a very high place is basically bound by laws of physics we understand pretty well to continue accelerating until he impacts with the ground, likely fatally based on tons of evidence, unless there is some kind of miraculous intervention?
Can you tell me, please, what evidence we have - what laws exist, and what records we have - that prove that short of some kind of miraculous intervention, we are doomed based on our current course of action?
I understand the idea of being *cautious* when developing new things, but there's a difference between caution and alarmism. Simply throwing up your hands and saying "we're doomed" doesn't help. I'd much rather say "Oh, this new and interesting development could be used for all kinds of badness - let's try to find ways to make sure that we can take advantage of it while minimizing the risks."
One thing is productive and useful, the other is just pointless fearmongering.
Sure we can be trusted with it, just as we've been "trusted" (by whom, I wonder) with every other technology that has caused alarmists to predict the apocalypse.
Why would what we do prove anything about what some other hypothetical entity might have done?
Does the fact that I had stir-fry for dinner last night prove anything about what other people had for dinner last night? No. It simply means I, myself, had stir fry.
Similarly, the fact that we, an "intelligent" species are now sort of creating and designing life-forms says only that we, an "intelligent" species are now sort of creating and designing life-forms. It does not say we were created by an intelligent designer, it does not say that other living things were created by an intelligent designer, and it bears absolutely no relevance what-so-ever to the validity or invalidity of the concept of intelligent design as it is usually meant.
The only version of "intelligent design" this proves is the trivial and literal case: intelligent beings designing things. But we've been doing that, to one extent or another, as a species since we first began domesticating animals and crops. That trivial and literal case still does absolutely nothing to prove or disprove the usual meaning of intelligent design.
Giant nerdess I am, some of my fondest memories of childhood tech revolve around hex editing games and seeing strange behavior as a result.
Though, with Pool of Radiance (and I think all of the gold box games) you could set all of your abilities to 18 by just custom making your characters instead of rolling randomly. This was so that you could import your characters from the pen & paper game. The game also had dynamic difficulty (or claimed to) by saying that it would scale up the number and strength of enemies based on your stats.
The TOTAL cost of hiring Johnny over Jhina needs to be one in which Johnny comes out ahead or why bother?
Programmers need to have excellent communication skills and by excellent I mean being able to speak fluent non-programmerese. Programmers need to really understand the industries they are working in, not just how to program basic tools for it. Programmers need to really understand the organizations they are working for. A programmer who has those three things adds a LOT of value - now they need to sell their clients on that.
I work currently developing tech for various kinds of psychological and social research teams. Not only am I quite adept at communicating tech to non-techies in a way that makes them feel comfortable (I used to teach career changers how to program) but I have my undergraduate and advanced degrees in fields other than CS that are more closely related to the research field. I also work very, very hard to understand the teams, departments and universities I consult with. Consequently, I get a lot of business and can charge a premium rate for my services.
If I just wanted a code monkey who could take a design document and turn it into something without deviating from it or questioning it, I'd go with the lowest bidder who was competent to handle that work. But if I wanted a team member (even a temporary one) who is capable of seeing ways to use tech to give me what I really NEED, then I want someone else, someone who just happens to be able to program but is so much more also.
If you liked BASIC for learning why not install an interpreter and use that? It isn't state of the art by any means, but it would be a very simple introduction to the concepts. Once someone has some feel for that then you could move on to something modern if you felt they couldn't handle that right away.
Alternatively, my university uses Java for our intro to programming classes for people with no programming experience at all. The environment we use for it is DrJava which is free and designed around being a learning tool. Better still, there are tons of CS 101 course syllabi out there that would give you a very good lesson plan to start with in that environment if you wanted to teach with that.
Personally, I'd say the tool to use depends on the student and the purpose. If it is someone just looking to understand a little bit about programming but won't be doing more, then let them play with BASIC since that is really easy to get into. If it's a child you are introducing to the concept or someone who wants to eventually get to advanced things, go with the DrJava route.
Harvesting labor is one of the smallest components of the final price of produce at the market. You could literally quintuple the pay for laborers doing the harvesting and it would only necessitate something like a 15-25% increase in the cost of produce at the store. Of course, people in the supply chain would use it as an excuse to jack prices up, but the fact is that farm labor is not a major component in the final price at market.
I won't pay $5 for a banana that I currently pay about 40 cents for, but I sure wouldn't have a problem paying 50 or 60 cents for one if it meant that people would make a living wage picking 'em, which would be closer to the actual necessary cost increase.
As for the whole "american" worker thing - I don't really care what nationality the people doing it are as long as they are treated well and paid fairly for it.
Holy shit, I cannot even begin to describe just how hard I am laughing at your last post - thank you for that! You really had me going for a bit, but then when I read that I realized that you couldn't be serious because nobody is THAT fucked in the head without being on meds sufficient to prevent them from being able to get online let alone post.
Don't overplay your hand next time - like, when you accuse someone of being a narcissist you can't then immediately start talking about how you are literally able to speak for all men ever. And when you claim to not hate women you can't then turn around and basically call us all gold-digging whores who serve no purpose but to drain male bank accounts. You need to space those out a bit so that it isn't quite as obvious, you know? You also can't just put all the real crazy shit into one post all at once because then you give the game away - like I said, anyone who actually believed the stuff you just wrote wouldn't be capable of going online to write it in the first place, so that just raises the whole "troll" flag.
I honestly don't know how to respond to any of that. Your statements are so counter to anything I have ever heard of that it's impossible to even begin to have a dialog.
Sorry your experiences have lead you to believe and feel the way you do - it sounds like a very lonely and bitter existence, but if it makes it easier for you to blame women for your situation, please, feel free to do so. Since all women are basically the same in your mindset, take my permission as the blessing of all womankind.
The plural of anecdote is not data. Your shitty experiences are not proof of a trend, just evidence of the generally low quality of people on such sites.
Going by the people on dating sites is not a good way to gauge anything about a general population. If it were, I could conclusively state that most men are unambitious, undereducated losers who have mommy issues. Not true, but you wouldn't know it from the guys on such sites.
Seriously, check out the ads by men on those sites. Under 30 they read like a bunch of bros, over 40 they read like something out of a cliched midlife crisis, and in-between they sound like a lot of guys cheating on their wives. And all of them seem terrified by a woman who is genuinely intelligent and accomplished. It isn't true, but one could not be blamed for thinking it based on the evidence on sites like that.
As a woman, I liked the sims not because of the social elements, but for the fun of building a beautiful home with white picket fences, lovely artwork, gorgeous finishings, and a well manicured lawn and garden, 50 bar-b-q grills, populating it entirely with a family of children, and then removing all the doors to see what happens.
What the hell are you talking about 50% of girls don't have hobbies? Your ass must be incredibly sore after pulling that one out.
I'm a woman, I know many women, I have known many women throughout my life, and I honestly cannot think of one woman over the age of 5 who legitimately does not have a hobby of some sort or another.
And actually, as someone who has perused a few dating sites, I can safely say (at least as safely as you could) that at least 50% of men don't have hobbies unless you count beer pong or drinking natty life with their bros.
Maybe it isn't that people don't have hobbies, but that people on dating sites who are trying to attract people are just presenting an image of themselves as being all about fun etc. rather than "geeky" things like hobbies. Young people especially. They are looking to hook up and have fun, in most cases, not find a soul mate. If you wanna get drunk and party with random people, why would you bother talking about your real interests?
Smokers pay taxes. Why do you think the tubes of paper and leaves are so expensive? Smokers already pay a premium.
Everyone in the US pays taxes in one way or another - sales, income or otherwise.
Getting to the larger picture, let me explain to you why your point is a bad one:
Do you live a life of perfect virtue? Do you ALWAYS get sufficient sleep? Do you NEVER overconsume food? Do you ALWAYS get 30 minutes of vigorous exercise per day? Do you ALWAYS obey every single guideline for better health? Do you ALWAYS minimize or eliminate ANY risk of injury from any activity you do?
See - there will always be someone else who does one of those things better than you and that person would then just turn around and say "Well why should *I* pay for that stdarg guy who - you know, he doesn't get more than 6 hours of sleep a night, and he doesn't take his anti-oxidants and..."
Things work out in the balance. You might not smoke, but maybe you're heavy. Or you have crappy genes that will ultimately result in your body turning on you. Or maybe you're a little heavy on the gas pedal, or maybe you drink a little too much, or maybe you don't know how to relax or, or, or.
Smoking is a foul, filthy, disgusting habit, and one I am glad I gave up years ago. But despite the fact that I can smile and point to my moral superiority for not being a smoker any more, I am not so much a hypocrite that I can't see that there are tons of other things I do that are likewise none-too-good for my health, and I can extrapolate that to other people who are not me and say, "Gee, maybe I should cut them some slack, because I'd really hope they'd do the same for me!"
People are not asking for health care to be free. People ARE asking for health care to be taken care of with taxes, as it is in most other first world countries.
Everyone in the US - legally, illegally, working or unemployed - pays taxes in some form or another.
As to your question about "why should someone else pay for your health care" - it already happens!!! Who do you think is paying for your health care when you get sick and only have to pay the deductible when insurance covers the rest? The other people who are paying for insurance. When they get sick, you're paying for it, when you get sick, they're paying for it.
And because insurers look for ways to cut coverage for people for any reason they can. A co-worker of mine was refused coverage for the removal of several cancerous skin lesions because she had been burnt in a house fire years back and the insurer claimed it was a pre-existing condition that lead to the skin cancer. She's fighting it, but she shouldn't have to, and what about the people who don't know how to fight it? What about the people who go bankrupt just trying to get coverage that they already paid for?
And there's also one other rather big reason:
Because we are a civilized people, and we should be ashamed of ourselves for allowing so many people to go under because they had the bad luck to get sick with something expensive.
I just left one job for another that starts in 2 months and for me, a single female in my 30's with no medical issues what-so-ever, keeping my insurance would cost over $850 per month. And the insurance wasn't even that good!
Most people were able to find part-time, minimum wage jobs that didn't offer benefits. Probably 75% of the people in the program were able to do that.
About 10% - and ALWAYS only the people who were college educated prior to their incarceration and who hadn't developed severe pathology or deep substance abuse after being released - were able to get employment that I would consider pretty marginal, considering their qualifications. By "marginal" I mean at best $10 an hour, usually 2/3rds time, no benefits.
The other issue was stability - most of these people were being hired by not-for-profit organizations, and many of those organizations were incredibly unstable due to funding cuts. Even people who had never been homeless, never been incarcerated and who had graduate degrees (usually MSW degrees) were making about 10-15$ an hour at the organizations.
Most of the people we worked with wound up doing piece-work off the books to supplement their income: washing cars, unlicensed contract stuff, street vendors. Lots would volunteer to help at organizations that would take them (many organizations wouldn't). These were people who wanted to work, wanted to get back on their feet, but just would get ground down and eventually give up entirely.
Actually, many in the US are homeless not because of mental health issues, but because of the justice system, and then leads to mental health issues.
Go to jail, do not ever find a real job again unless you are staggeringly unlucky. What else have you got other than going back to jail or living on the street?
I used to work with an organization that trained homeless in useful work skills and tried to find them jobs and get them on their feet. Overwhelmingly these were men, overwhelmingly they had followed a trajectory similar to "had a good job, went to jail (almost always for drug offenses, and almost always for ridiculously small quantities), got out and nobody would hire them because of their record"
Not to say that your larger point is not dead on - we have SOME poor people in this country, but the vast majority considered poor by our standards are quite well off compared to real poverty.
Does your percent of the economy that the government "consumes" also include services the government provides? I would assume it would have to as 40% of our economy is a staggeringly huge amount to spend on office supplies and that your point that the US is as bad/inefficient as many African countries is bullshit and an intellectually dishonest attempt to prop up some kind of libertarian view.
One may disagree on what a government should provide and do, but one should also at least not use simplistic measures when discussing it, and one should also be intellectually honest about it. Simply saying the US and some African nations governments spend 40% of their total economy is both simplistic and intellectually dishonest.
Personally, I'm of the mind that the government of a nation should strive to meet the NEEDS of it's people (as opposed to wants) where capable and reasonable and where it is not likely or possible for private enterprise to do it.
No, but we recognize that it's more important to keep our minds on wrangling a multi-thousand lb. vehicle going at speeds sufficient to cause grievous bodily harm or death while also navigating around many other people doing the same, than it is to know that zomg Kimmie is totally calling with tix to see the Beibs!!!
And it's not just trivial calls you can ignore - it's important ones too. I have missed extremely important calls while driving and in every case, saying to the person, once I am no longer driving and now in a place to make a return call, "Sorry, I was on the road," it's been perfectly fine.
It isn't walking on water - it's being an adult, taking the responsibility of driving seriously, and exercising a basic level of impulse control. The fact that you would equate something like "keeping your eyes on the road, not your ringing phone" to something like a miracle is exactly why I'm so vigilant when I drive - people like you not behaving responsibly on the road.
When driving it is actually quite easy to not answer your phone when it rings: Turn off the ringer. Or if you forget, simply don't answer it.
If you lack the self-control necessary to resist the siren song of the ringer, then you shouldn't be driving - you should be somewhere safe where other people, people with normal levels of impulse control and cognitive faculty, can take care of you and prevent you from being a complete fucking idiot to the detriment of yourself and others.
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They actually do this for scientists, essentially. There are, in most scientific fields, very few spots for grad students compared to the number of people who want to go to grad school. Consequently, one big way to differentiate yourself from the pack is to have multiple internships during your undergrad.
When I was doing my undergrad I had 4 internships of 1 year each at 4 different labs. Each internship gave me a total of 6 credit hours for the year (out of 30 credits taken total for the year) but the cost of those credit hours was refunded. I also wound up getting a full scholarship after my first year because I was recommended for it by my internship professor. By the time I finished undergrad I was on half a dozen published papers, had done over a dozen presentations & posters, and had some very, very good connections and references.
Not only that, but I learned a STAGGERING amount about how research in my field (social psychology/public health) is done and how it could be much improved. When I applied to grad schools I got into every single program I applied for except for one - most people in my undergrad class were rejected by all but one of their schools.
I didn't have to pay for grad school, and as a career changer it got me off to a running start.
Internships can be FANTASTIC as long as you really make the most of them and don't behave like a doormat.
What I'm saying with the above (and I hit submit before I typed this, alas) is that AA individuals are disproportionately impoverished or low income/education in the US, and consequently will be overrepresented in statistics that are influenced heavily by economic factors.
Look at any public health issue and it's actually income and education that play the largest role in disparities, not race. To try and paint it solely as a racial picture without acknowledging the very real role economics plays avoids the real issues at play and also leads to "solutions" that don't actually address the underlying causes.
And no factors other than race are at play?
Is it 36% of all AA individuals regardless of income and education levels?
Well then, you have proven conclusively that the entirety of humanity is doomed, doomed, doomed and we should never, ever look into anything new.
Oh, wait - you've missed entirely the idea that a man falling from a very high place is basically bound by laws of physics we understand pretty well to continue accelerating until he impacts with the ground, likely fatally based on tons of evidence, unless there is some kind of miraculous intervention?
Can you tell me, please, what evidence we have - what laws exist, and what records we have - that prove that short of some kind of miraculous intervention, we are doomed based on our current course of action?
I understand the idea of being *cautious* when developing new things, but there's a difference between caution and alarmism. Simply throwing up your hands and saying "we're doomed" doesn't help. I'd much rather say "Oh, this new and interesting development could be used for all kinds of badness - let's try to find ways to make sure that we can take advantage of it while minimizing the risks."
One thing is productive and useful, the other is just pointless fearmongering.
Is Ms. Sanger still running Planned Parenthood?
Should we assume all organizations currently in existence are being run with the goals of their original founders in mind?
Sure we can be trusted with it, just as we've been "trusted" (by whom, I wonder) with every other technology that has caused alarmists to predict the apocalypse.
We're still here.
Why would what we do prove anything about what some other hypothetical entity might have done?
Does the fact that I had stir-fry for dinner last night prove anything about what other people had for dinner last night? No. It simply means I, myself, had stir fry.
Similarly, the fact that we, an "intelligent" species are now sort of creating and designing life-forms says only that we, an "intelligent" species are now sort of creating and designing life-forms. It does not say we were created by an intelligent designer, it does not say that other living things were created by an intelligent designer, and it bears absolutely no relevance what-so-ever to the validity or invalidity of the concept of intelligent design as it is usually meant.
The only version of "intelligent design" this proves is the trivial and literal case: intelligent beings designing things. But we've been doing that, to one extent or another, as a species since we first began domesticating animals and crops. That trivial and literal case still does absolutely nothing to prove or disprove the usual meaning of intelligent design.
Giant nerdess I am, some of my fondest memories of childhood tech revolve around hex editing games and seeing strange behavior as a result.
Though, with Pool of Radiance (and I think all of the gold box games) you could set all of your abilities to 18 by just custom making your characters instead of rolling randomly. This was so that you could import your characters from the pen & paper game. The game also had dynamic difficulty (or claimed to) by saying that it would scale up the number and strength of enemies based on your stats.
You have it exactly.
The TOTAL cost of hiring Johnny over Jhina needs to be one in which Johnny comes out ahead or why bother?
Programmers need to have excellent communication skills and by excellent I mean being able to speak fluent non-programmerese. Programmers need to really understand the industries they are working in, not just how to program basic tools for it. Programmers need to really understand the organizations they are working for. A programmer who has those three things adds a LOT of value - now they need to sell their clients on that.
I work currently developing tech for various kinds of psychological and social research teams. Not only am I quite adept at communicating tech to non-techies in a way that makes them feel comfortable (I used to teach career changers how to program) but I have my undergraduate and advanced degrees in fields other than CS that are more closely related to the research field. I also work very, very hard to understand the teams, departments and universities I consult with. Consequently, I get a lot of business and can charge a premium rate for my services.
If I just wanted a code monkey who could take a design document and turn it into something without deviating from it or questioning it, I'd go with the lowest bidder who was competent to handle that work. But if I wanted a team member (even a temporary one) who is capable of seeing ways to use tech to give me what I really NEED, then I want someone else, someone who just happens to be able to program but is so much more also.
If you liked BASIC for learning why not install an interpreter and use that? It isn't state of the art by any means, but it would be a very simple introduction to the concepts. Once someone has some feel for that then you could move on to something modern if you felt they couldn't handle that right away.
Alternatively, my university uses Java for our intro to programming classes for people with no programming experience at all. The environment we use for it is DrJava which is free and designed around being a learning tool. Better still, there are tons of CS 101 course syllabi out there that would give you a very good lesson plan to start with in that environment if you wanted to teach with that.
Personally, I'd say the tool to use depends on the student and the purpose. If it is someone just looking to understand a little bit about programming but won't be doing more, then let them play with BASIC since that is really easy to get into. If it's a child you are introducing to the concept or someone who wants to eventually get to advanced things, go with the DrJava route.
Harvesting labor is one of the smallest components of the final price of produce at the market. You could literally quintuple the pay for laborers doing the harvesting and it would only necessitate something like a 15-25% increase in the cost of produce at the store. Of course, people in the supply chain would use it as an excuse to jack prices up, but the fact is that farm labor is not a major component in the final price at market.
I won't pay $5 for a banana that I currently pay about 40 cents for, but I sure wouldn't have a problem paying 50 or 60 cents for one if it meant that people would make a living wage picking 'em, which would be closer to the actual necessary cost increase.
As for the whole "american" worker thing - I don't really care what nationality the people doing it are as long as they are treated well and paid fairly for it.
Holy shit, I cannot even begin to describe just how hard I am laughing at your last post - thank you for that! You really had me going for a bit, but then when I read that I realized that you couldn't be serious because nobody is THAT fucked in the head without being on meds sufficient to prevent them from being able to get online let alone post.
Don't overplay your hand next time - like, when you accuse someone of being a narcissist you can't then immediately start talking about how you are literally able to speak for all men ever. And when you claim to not hate women you can't then turn around and basically call us all gold-digging whores who serve no purpose but to drain male bank accounts. You need to space those out a bit so that it isn't quite as obvious, you know? You also can't just put all the real crazy shit into one post all at once because then you give the game away - like I said, anyone who actually believed the stuff you just wrote wouldn't be capable of going online to write it in the first place, so that just raises the whole "troll" flag.
Still, for the laugh, I give you kudos.
I honestly don't know how to respond to any of that. Your statements are so counter to anything I have ever heard of that it's impossible to even begin to have a dialog.
Sorry your experiences have lead you to believe and feel the way you do - it sounds like a very lonely and bitter existence, but if it makes it easier for you to blame women for your situation, please, feel free to do so. Since all women are basically the same in your mindset, take my permission as the blessing of all womankind.
The plural of anecdote is not data. Your shitty experiences are not proof of a trend, just evidence of the generally low quality of people on such sites.
Going by the people on dating sites is not a good way to gauge anything about a general population. If it were, I could conclusively state that most men are unambitious, undereducated losers who have mommy issues. Not true, but you wouldn't know it from the guys on such sites.
Seriously, check out the ads by men on those sites. Under 30 they read like a bunch of bros, over 40 they read like something out of a cliched midlife crisis, and in-between they sound like a lot of guys cheating on their wives. And all of them seem terrified by a woman who is genuinely intelligent and accomplished. It isn't true, but one could not be blamed for thinking it based on the evidence on sites like that.
As a woman, I liked the sims not because of the social elements, but for the fun of building a beautiful home with white picket fences, lovely artwork, gorgeous finishings, and a well manicured lawn and garden, 50 bar-b-q grills, populating it entirely with a family of children, and then removing all the doors to see what happens.
What the hell are you talking about 50% of girls don't have hobbies? Your ass must be incredibly sore after pulling that one out.
I'm a woman, I know many women, I have known many women throughout my life, and I honestly cannot think of one woman over the age of 5 who legitimately does not have a hobby of some sort or another.
And actually, as someone who has perused a few dating sites, I can safely say (at least as safely as you could) that at least 50% of men don't have hobbies unless you count beer pong or drinking natty life with their bros.
Maybe it isn't that people don't have hobbies, but that people on dating sites who are trying to attract people are just presenting an image of themselves as being all about fun etc. rather than "geeky" things like hobbies. Young people especially. They are looking to hook up and have fun, in most cases, not find a soul mate. If you wanna get drunk and party with random people, why would you bother talking about your real interests?
Smokers pay taxes. Why do you think the tubes of paper and leaves are so expensive? Smokers already pay a premium.
Everyone in the US pays taxes in one way or another - sales, income or otherwise.
Getting to the larger picture, let me explain to you why your point is a bad one:
Do you live a life of perfect virtue? Do you ALWAYS get sufficient sleep? Do you NEVER overconsume food? Do you ALWAYS get 30 minutes of vigorous exercise per day? Do you ALWAYS obey every single guideline for better health? Do you ALWAYS minimize or eliminate ANY risk of injury from any activity you do?
See - there will always be someone else who does one of those things better than you and that person would then just turn around and say "Well why should *I* pay for that stdarg guy who - you know, he doesn't get more than 6 hours of sleep a night, and he doesn't take his anti-oxidants and..."
Things work out in the balance. You might not smoke, but maybe you're heavy. Or you have crappy genes that will ultimately result in your body turning on you. Or maybe you're a little heavy on the gas pedal, or maybe you drink a little too much, or maybe you don't know how to relax or, or, or.
Smoking is a foul, filthy, disgusting habit, and one I am glad I gave up years ago. But despite the fact that I can smile and point to my moral superiority for not being a smoker any more, I am not so much a hypocrite that I can't see that there are tons of other things I do that are likewise none-too-good for my health, and I can extrapolate that to other people who are not me and say, "Gee, maybe I should cut them some slack, because I'd really hope they'd do the same for me!"
People are not asking for health care to be free. People ARE asking for health care to be taken care of with taxes, as it is in most other first world countries.
Everyone in the US - legally, illegally, working or unemployed - pays taxes in some form or another.
As to your question about "why should someone else pay for your health care" - it already happens!!! Who do you think is paying for your health care when you get sick and only have to pay the deductible when insurance covers the rest? The other people who are paying for insurance. When they get sick, you're paying for it, when you get sick, they're paying for it.
And because insurers look for ways to cut coverage for people for any reason they can. A co-worker of mine was refused coverage for the removal of several cancerous skin lesions because she had been burnt in a house fire years back and the insurer claimed it was a pre-existing condition that lead to the skin cancer. She's fighting it, but she shouldn't have to, and what about the people who don't know how to fight it? What about the people who go bankrupt just trying to get coverage that they already paid for?
And there's also one other rather big reason:
Because we are a civilized people, and we should be ashamed of ourselves for allowing so many people to go under because they had the bad luck to get sick with something expensive.
What you said.
I just left one job for another that starts in 2 months and for me, a single female in my 30's with no medical issues what-so-ever, keeping my insurance would cost over $850 per month. And the insurance wasn't even that good!
It depends on how you define success.
Most people were able to find part-time, minimum wage jobs that didn't offer benefits. Probably 75% of the people in the program were able to do that.
About 10% - and ALWAYS only the people who were college educated prior to their incarceration and who hadn't developed severe pathology or deep substance abuse after being released - were able to get employment that I would consider pretty marginal, considering their qualifications. By "marginal" I mean at best $10 an hour, usually 2/3rds time, no benefits.
The other issue was stability - most of these people were being hired by not-for-profit organizations, and many of those organizations were incredibly unstable due to funding cuts. Even people who had never been homeless, never been incarcerated and who had graduate degrees (usually MSW degrees) were making about 10-15$ an hour at the organizations.
Most of the people we worked with wound up doing piece-work off the books to supplement their income: washing cars, unlicensed contract stuff, street vendors. Lots would volunteer to help at organizations that would take them (many organizations wouldn't). These were people who wanted to work, wanted to get back on their feet, but just would get ground down and eventually give up entirely.
Atomic browser for iPad let's you do that. There are others, but I got this for 99 cents and it meets my needs for a browser.
Enjoy your fragmented marketplace, horribly overpriced tablets with underperforming hardware and broken functionality and apps rife with malware!
Actually, many in the US are homeless not because of mental health issues, but because of the justice system, and then leads to mental health issues.
Go to jail, do not ever find a real job again unless you are staggeringly unlucky. What else have you got other than going back to jail or living on the street?
I used to work with an organization that trained homeless in useful work skills and tried to find them jobs and get them on their feet. Overwhelmingly these were men, overwhelmingly they had followed a trajectory similar to "had a good job, went to jail (almost always for drug offenses, and almost always for ridiculously small quantities), got out and nobody would hire them because of their record"
Not to say that your larger point is not dead on - we have SOME poor people in this country, but the vast majority considered poor by our standards are quite well off compared to real poverty.
Does your percent of the economy that the government "consumes" also include services the government provides? I would assume it would have to as 40% of our economy is a staggeringly huge amount to spend on office supplies and that your point that the US is as bad/inefficient as many African countries is bullshit and an intellectually dishonest attempt to prop up some kind of libertarian view.
One may disagree on what a government should provide and do, but one should also at least not use simplistic measures when discussing it, and one should also be intellectually honest about it. Simply saying the US and some African nations governments spend 40% of their total economy is both simplistic and intellectually dishonest.
Personally, I'm of the mind that the government of a nation should strive to meet the NEEDS of it's people (as opposed to wants) where capable and reasonable and where it is not likely or possible for private enterprise to do it.
No, but we recognize that it's more important to keep our minds on wrangling a multi-thousand lb. vehicle going at speeds sufficient to cause grievous bodily harm or death while also navigating around many other people doing the same, than it is to know that zomg Kimmie is totally calling with tix to see the Beibs!!!
And it's not just trivial calls you can ignore - it's important ones too. I have missed extremely important calls while driving and in every case, saying to the person, once I am no longer driving and now in a place to make a return call, "Sorry, I was on the road," it's been perfectly fine.
It isn't walking on water - it's being an adult, taking the responsibility of driving seriously, and exercising a basic level of impulse control. The fact that you would equate something like "keeping your eyes on the road, not your ringing phone" to something like a miracle is exactly why I'm so vigilant when I drive - people like you not behaving responsibly on the road.
When driving it is actually quite easy to not answer your phone when it rings: Turn off the ringer. Or if you forget, simply don't answer it.
If you lack the self-control necessary to resist the siren song of the ringer, then you shouldn't be driving - you should be somewhere safe where other people, people with normal levels of impulse control and cognitive faculty, can take care of you and prevent you from being a complete fucking idiot to the detriment of yourself and others.