It's not a false choice, just an unpalatable one to most people. Granted that the 'do this or die' treatments are hard to refuse. If every other component of health care was cheaper, the total cost would still be lower than it is with the current system.
Remember, you can't just do one thing. If the pseudo insurance wasn't there, those amounts would NOT be what was charged. The existence of health maintenance in the insurance industry ratchest prices higher than they would otherwise be. Just like government guaranteed loans increase the demand for college degrees and raise tuition. Without the guarantee, no bank would be providing loans for a degree in 17th century french history...
Rights can't be granted. Entitlements and privileges can be, but only at the expense of someone else's rights. The only reason to claim otherwise is so people can feel good about using force to institute their preferred distribution. I may tolerate some amount of redistribution (i don't really care about medicare for instance), but no one has a right to force other people to help them.
This is an argument about definitions. The redistributors successfully got their redefinition of rights accepted a long time ago, but much like defining racism in terms of the group in power instead of making judgements based on race, it's inherently dishonest. Definitions matter.
The existing medical regulation is a huge part of why medical care is a byzantine process... including special tax breaks, HIPAA, licensing, medical schools... the AMA worked to reduce the supply of doctors because they thought there was going to be a surplus, which of course would mean lower pay for their members. If there was no one standing between customers and doctors, the whole damn system would be a hell of a lot simpler.
If I didn't have to see a doctor to get a prescription for just about every drug I might find beneficial, doctors visits would be a hell of a lot cheaper. Every single regulation that reduces the supply or increases the demand, even if it's justifiable for some reason, ALSO acts to raise prices.
Everyone paying for their own care would force people to actually care about costs. Right now, with a 10% co-pay, they don't. Medical professionals would not be able to charge as much as they do if there wasn't someone with deep pockets paying for it. The existence of the current insurance scheme pushes the demand curve up, which drives prices higher.
Actually, preventative care cuts down costs in specific cases. In aggregate, where you are applying preventative care to the majority who don't need it, it costs more. When a mammogram correctly identifies breast cancer early it saves money (that which is seen), but the tests applied to people with no lumps, the people who get a masectomy for a benign tumor, needless biopsies, all add up to more than the savings from early detection. (That which is NOT seen).
I think you will find that in almost all cases abusive monopolies have benefited from government intervention on their behalf. Copyrights and patents, eminent domain, zoning laws, etc. It's really not limited to the case at hand. Even regulations supposedly created to fight monopolies also serve to increase startup costs.
Those are unfortunately post hoc hypthesis. They didn't make those predictions until the UK started getting gold. After the fact explanations are not evidence of correctness.
"There are political movements spawned to fix many different problem.." one of the issues is that some of the groups that suggest solutions have been offering the same solution since before this issue was on the radar: an end to free markets, consumption, and a general reduction in economic activity. Those individuals are not worth listening too. I have a friend who, when discussing some of the issues with current climate change pushes, actually made the argument that the proposed solution is good regardless. Some of the supporters of various solutions are being opportunistic rather than being created to deal with the issue.
On the other hand, I'm sure the KKK agrees with me that 2+2=4. I'm not going to dismiss it as a concern just because I dislike or mistrust some of the people advocating solutions. What really puts me strongly in the skeptic camp is that when I checked the GHCN and USHCN, the adjsutments have a warming trend of their own. The USHCN shows a similar patter, with a warming trend greater than the trend in the raw data. As the USHCN adjusted values are used in all of NOAA's models, that's both relevant and deeply suspicious...
Ahh... another edition of blame Gramm-Leach-Blily. The problem is that it arguably softened the crisis, and the banks which diversified weathered the storm better.
Your argument about the needs of the many is 51 wolves and 49 sheep deciding what's for dinner. After 49 days, you just have starving wolves... There's only so long the cannibal pot solution can go on.
How about... TARP had no probably positive effects. The models which claim positive effects are the same models which predicted unemployment levels with no bailout which were lower than what we've actually gotten to...
Note that the person who did that had a plausible claim that he feared for Rand's safty, and was dismissed as the head of the local group of Rand Paul supporters for doing that.
Your own link claims it is based on W-CDMA. It's a hybrid tech. It's worth noting that CDMA was developed in the US because we didn't have an established standard and CDMA was superior to original GSM, not because it came before GSM. I've had a related discussion before.
Well, here's the thing. Income share is absolutely meaningless. If our income is up after inflation is adjusted for, then we have more purchasing power. We are better off, even if the richest are better off by a larger amount. So you shifted your argument from a meaningful but wrong one to a meaningless one. Of course, you didn't acknowledge that the actual theoretical justification was NOT the one you presented in your previous post.
I agree with you that lots of people will claim that we are on the downward slope of the curve without any evidence. Which is why I pointed out that after the 8 years of Reagan, taxe rates were down and revenue was up. This suggests that we really were on the downward slope. It's weak evidence, but it's more evidence than you provided to the contrary.
Oddly enough, technological improvements are great at reducing the number of hammer swings required to make something. Often by replacing a human hamer swinger with a mechanical one. This sucks for the hammer swinger, but is great for everyone else, who vastly out number hammer swingers. If every tech improvement has a detrimental effect on a few with beneficial effect for everyone else, the sum of all beneficial effects outweights the detrimental effects. Of course, if you really think it's wise to focus on jobs rather than output, I suppose we try making it illegal to use backhoes in the place of humans with shovels when bulding roads... what a great boon to the economy that would be!
Given your comments so far, I suspect you have fallen prey to the fixed lump of wealth falsehood. Just a guess.
The sad thing is, the role of world policeman used to be a democrat policy, but the neo-conservatives (in the original usage) brought it into the republican party with them.
Here is the theoretical justification for the laffer curve: At a 0% tax rate, no revenue is generated. At a 100% tax rate, no one works. Somewhere in between is higher, therefore someone in the middle it must have a downward slope.
It may not be a remotely clean curve. The effects on people's purchasing and work effort are gradual at best while the reduced tax is immediate. But historically it has not demonstratably failed.
Something else worth considering. A miniscule increase in year to year economic growth accumulates geometrically over time. Eventually the additional growth will produce a GDP such that the lower rate of the modified GDP will exceed the higher rate of the lower GDP. Depedning on numbers it may take a long time, but it will happen
Except... unemployment using the same models was predicted to be lower without the bailouts than it got to with the bailouts. They plugged the same numbers into the same models and got the same results... proving nothing since their models were proven wrong already.
Trickle down gets a bad rap, or at least the laffer curve. Consider, just for example, Reagan. At the end of his term, government revenue as a percent of gdp was lower than at the start of it. Government revenue per capita after correcting for inflation was higher. The economy did grow enough to eventually make up the difference. It's not provable whether the tax cuts led to higher growth... but it certainly doesn't support the claim that it didn't work.
I checked the number using values from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, who utterly failed to comprehend that examing what percent of the economy the government is taking is meaningless by itself. The idea of the tax cuts leading to increased revenue is to get more by taking a smaller slice of a larger pie. It seemed to take about 6 years for economic growth to overwhelm the reduced rates... so it would have taken even longer to pay off accumulated additional debt. The discussion of whether goverment policy should be centered on maximising revenue is beyond the scope of this comment.
Glass-Steagall's removal allowed diversification, and diverse institutions were the ones that suffered the least in the collapse. Despite what the left likes to believe, Gramm-Leach-Blily did not lead to the financial crisis. It was also a bipartisan, and passed under a Democrat president.
I'm a bit dubious about that after GM took government money from one source to pay off their other debt to the government, and claimed they had paid off their bailout, and also ignored the funds that weren't a loan in the first place.
And it has, in the areas where such technology is available. Medical technology especially. Of course, if you treat poverty as some sort of relative position, there will always be a poorest 20% even if they live better than kings did a hundred years before...
It's kind of sad what you assume about my life and upbringing, and actual feelings about people in bad situations. If you had called me on a 'tu quoque' fallacy, i would have had at least a little respect for you. But no, you had to double down on your claim that conservativism is equivalent to antisocial personality disorder. There are certain things which conservatives usually do not consider rights, but that does not make it a definining characteristic as the same damn thing happens with progressives as well. Conservatives at least recognize some rights which the left in this country doesn't recognize as rights at all.
From my personal experience, all of the individuals in poor families who remain poor that I personally know made different choices than those who got out. Choices with predictably bad outcomes if they thought ahead sufficiently far. Making those choices is not just a matter of chance.
All rights are illusions, but positive rights are incompatible with equal rights. They rely on force. Force is inherently inequitable. Any system of rights that is inequitable is not worth supporting.
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It's not a false choice, just an unpalatable one to most people. Granted that the 'do this or die' treatments are hard to refuse. If every other component of health care was cheaper, the total cost would still be lower than it is with the current system.
Remember, you can't just do one thing. If the pseudo insurance wasn't there, those amounts would NOT be what was charged. The existence of health maintenance in the insurance industry ratchest prices higher than they would otherwise be. Just like government guaranteed loans increase the demand for college degrees and raise tuition. Without the guarantee, no bank would be providing loans for a degree in 17th century french history...
Rights can't be granted. Entitlements and privileges can be, but only at the expense of someone else's rights. The only reason to claim otherwise is so people can feel good about using force to institute their preferred distribution. I may tolerate some amount of redistribution (i don't really care about medicare for instance), but no one has a right to force other people to help them.
This is an argument about definitions. The redistributors successfully got their redefinition of rights accepted a long time ago, but much like defining racism in terms of the group in power instead of making judgements based on race, it's inherently dishonest. Definitions matter.
The existing medical regulation is a huge part of why medical care is a byzantine process... including special tax breaks, HIPAA, licensing, medical schools... the AMA worked to reduce the supply of doctors because they thought there was going to be a surplus, which of course would mean lower pay for their members. If there was no one standing between customers and doctors, the whole damn system would be a hell of a lot simpler.
If I didn't have to see a doctor to get a prescription for just about every drug I might find beneficial, doctors visits would be a hell of a lot cheaper. Every single regulation that reduces the supply or increases the demand, even if it's justifiable for some reason, ALSO acts to raise prices.
Everyone paying for their own care would force people to actually care about costs. Right now, with a 10% co-pay, they don't. Medical professionals would not be able to charge as much as they do if there wasn't someone with deep pockets paying for it. The existence of the current insurance scheme pushes the demand curve up, which drives prices higher.
Actually, preventative care cuts down costs in specific cases. In aggregate, where you are applying preventative care to the majority who don't need it, it costs more. When a mammogram correctly identifies breast cancer early it saves money (that which is seen), but the tests applied to people with no lumps, the people who get a masectomy for a benign tumor, needless biopsies, all add up to more than the savings from early detection. (That which is NOT seen).
I think you will find that in almost all cases abusive monopolies have benefited from government intervention on their behalf. Copyrights and patents, eminent domain, zoning laws, etc. It's really not limited to the case at hand. Even regulations supposedly created to fight monopolies also serve to increase startup costs.
Those are unfortunately post hoc hypthesis. They didn't make those predictions until the UK started getting gold. After the fact explanations are not evidence of correctness.
"There are political movements spawned to fix many different problem.." one of the issues is that some of the groups that suggest solutions have been offering the same solution since before this issue was on the radar: an end to free markets, consumption, and a general reduction in economic activity. Those individuals are not worth listening too. I have a friend who, when discussing some of the issues with current climate change pushes, actually made the argument that the proposed solution is good regardless. Some of the supporters of various solutions are being opportunistic rather than being created to deal with the issue.
On the other hand, I'm sure the KKK agrees with me that 2+2=4. I'm not going to dismiss it as a concern just because I dislike or mistrust some of the people advocating solutions. What really puts me strongly in the skeptic camp is that when I checked the GHCN and USHCN, the adjsutments have a warming trend of their own. The USHCN shows a similar patter, with a warming trend greater than the trend in the raw data. As the USHCN adjusted values are used in all of NOAA's models, that's both relevant and deeply suspicious...
Ahh... another edition of blame Gramm-Leach-Blily. The problem is that it arguably softened the crisis, and the banks which diversified weathered the storm better.
Your argument about the needs of the many is 51 wolves and 49 sheep deciding what's for dinner. After 49 days, you just have starving wolves... There's only so long the cannibal pot solution can go on.
How about... TARP had no probably positive effects. The models which claim positive effects are the same models which predicted unemployment levels with no bailout which were lower than what we've actually gotten to...
GM used other bailout funds to repay the loan. It's not exactly a shining example of responsible behavior.
Yeah, except bush wasn't actually lying about yellowcake. There is no evidence that he altered a report there. Try again.
Note that the person who did that had a plausible claim that he feared for Rand's safty, and was dismissed as the head of the local group of Rand Paul supporters for doing that.
What are you smoking that makes it possible to believe that china has fewer regulations than the USA?
Your own link claims it is based on W-CDMA. It's a hybrid tech. It's worth noting that CDMA was developed in the US because we didn't have an established standard and CDMA was superior to original GSM, not because it came before GSM. I've had a related discussion before.
Well, here's the thing. Income share is absolutely meaningless. If our income is up after inflation is adjusted for, then we have more purchasing power. We are better off, even if the richest are better off by a larger amount. So you shifted your argument from a meaningful but wrong one to a meaningless one. Of course, you didn't acknowledge that the actual theoretical justification was NOT the one you presented in your previous post.
I agree with you that lots of people will claim that we are on the downward slope of the curve without any evidence. Which is why I pointed out that after the 8 years of Reagan, taxe rates were down and revenue was up. This suggests that we really were on the downward slope. It's weak evidence, but it's more evidence than you provided to the contrary.
Oddly enough, technological improvements are great at reducing the number of hammer swings required to make something. Often by replacing a human hamer swinger with a mechanical one. This sucks for the hammer swinger, but is great for everyone else, who vastly out number hammer swingers. If every tech improvement has a detrimental effect on a few with beneficial effect for everyone else, the sum of all beneficial effects outweights the detrimental effects. Of course, if you really think it's wise to focus on jobs rather than output, I suppose we try making it illegal to use backhoes in the place of humans with shovels when bulding roads... what a great boon to the economy that would be!
Given your comments so far, I suspect you have fallen prey to the fixed lump of wealth falsehood. Just a guess.
The sad thing is, the role of world policeman used to be a democrat policy, but the neo-conservatives (in the original usage) brought it into the republican party with them.
the inflation-adjusted median income has gone down by 17%
No, it hasn't.
Here is the theoretical justification for the laffer curve: At a 0% tax rate, no revenue is generated. At a 100% tax rate, no one works. Somewhere in between is higher, therefore someone in the middle it must have a downward slope.
It may not be a remotely clean curve. The effects on people's purchasing and work effort are gradual at best while the reduced tax is immediate. But historically it has not demonstratably failed.
Something else worth considering. A miniscule increase in year to year economic growth accumulates geometrically over time. Eventually the additional growth will produce a GDP such that the lower rate of the modified GDP will exceed the higher rate of the lower GDP. Depedning on numbers it may take a long time, but it will happen
Except... unemployment using the same models was predicted to be lower without the bailouts than it got to with the bailouts. They plugged the same numbers into the same models and got the same results... proving nothing since their models were proven wrong already.
Trickle down gets a bad rap, or at least the laffer curve. Consider, just for example, Reagan. At the end of his term, government revenue as a percent of gdp was lower than at the start of it. Government revenue per capita after correcting for inflation was higher. The economy did grow enough to eventually make up the difference. It's not provable whether the tax cuts led to higher growth... but it certainly doesn't support the claim that it didn't work.
I checked the number using values from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, who utterly failed to comprehend that examing what percent of the economy the government is taking is meaningless by itself. The idea of the tax cuts leading to increased revenue is to get more by taking a smaller slice of a larger pie. It seemed to take about 6 years for economic growth to overwhelm the reduced rates... so it would have taken even longer to pay off accumulated additional debt. The discussion of whether goverment policy should be centered on maximising revenue is beyond the scope of this comment.
Glass-Steagall's removal allowed diversification, and diverse institutions were the ones that suffered the least in the collapse. Despite what the left likes to believe, Gramm-Leach-Blily did not lead to the financial crisis. It was also a bipartisan, and passed under a Democrat president.
I'm a bit dubious about that after GM took government money from one source to pay off their other debt to the government, and claimed they had paid off their bailout, and also ignored the funds that weren't a loan in the first place.
And it has, in the areas where such technology is available. Medical technology especially. Of course, if you treat poverty as some sort of relative position, there will always be a poorest 20% even if they live better than kings did a hundred years before...
It's kind of sad what you assume about my life and upbringing, and actual feelings about people in bad situations. If you had called me on a 'tu quoque' fallacy, i would have had at least a little respect for you. But no, you had to double down on your claim that conservativism is equivalent to antisocial personality disorder. There are certain things which conservatives usually do not consider rights, but that does not make it a definining characteristic as the same damn thing happens with progressives as well. Conservatives at least recognize some rights which the left in this country doesn't recognize as rights at all.
From my personal experience, all of the individuals in poor families who remain poor that I personally know made different choices than those who got out. Choices with predictably bad outcomes if they thought ahead sufficiently far. Making those choices is not just a matter of chance.
All rights are illusions, but positive rights are incompatible with equal rights. They rely on force. Force is inherently inequitable. Any system of rights that is inequitable is not worth supporting.