"They make peanuts compared to what they could make in virtually any other field with the same level of education." That depends. A bachelor's in engineering is NOT the same level of education as a bachelor's in education. There is a much larger supply of people able to teach than there are able to act as any sort of engineer, even factoring in union efforts to reduce the supply of teachers. You do not need a degree to teach kindergarten succesfully, but the union says you do. An english education degree is not as difficult as a math-education degree, but the unions treat them the same. Math-education is much simpler than a full math degree. I would contend that a fair number of teachers are either not capable of getting one of the more valuable degrees or don't think it's worth the effort.
When calculating pay, have you already factored in the summers they aren't working? When you look at hourly wages per actual hour worked, in at least my local area, teachers are well paid compared to the average employee, but not as much as one of the more difficult, specialized degrees. We still have a surplus of individuals getting education degrees at my local college.
If the test is a reasonable overview of the material, then it may be less effort to just teach to the test, but teaching a general understanding will also allow students to pass. There may be one or two students who will never achieve that general understanding but may be able to learn enough to pass the test, but teaching just the test is evidence of poor teaching and/or a poorly written test, not a flaw with standardized testing as a concept.
"Why the fuck else would they put up with working in the public school system?" because the pay is actually pretty decent when you factor in actual time worked compared to other fields, and it's a stable job which it will be difficult to remove you from once you make it to tenure. This may not hold everywhere, but it certainly holds where I live. There are those who feel personal satisfaction that they are personally responsible for the success of future generations, although they rarely have as much impact as they believe. And yes, many good teachers are in it for the love of it, but so are many bad teachers. The fact that someone has a sense of personal satisfaction has no bearing on whether they are actually good at what they do or not.
The list of powers immediately following the first line, which you skipped in your summary, were intended to consist of the whole list of powers granted to congress. If 'general welfare' could be used the way you are reading it, the enumeration of specific powers is meaningless, as is the 10th amendment.
More importantly, it applies only to taxes and expenditures, as it is part of that specific enumerated power. It does not provide congress with a blank check to enact any regulation it wants, but it can lay taxes to provide for the common defence and general welfare.
It is possible for congress to regulate interstate commerce involving drugs, and the USC has said in Raich and Wickard that even if something is manufactured or grown without the intent to transport it across state lines it is part of interstate commerce. I would argue that just because the USC says something doesn't make it so, but that is a much better argument for the drug laws being constitutional than the general welfare clause.
Desire may be constant, demand isn't. The whole demand curve has to shift upward if people are insulated from the price. You can't just wave this away. Medicare, by it's very nature, increases the number of people who will purchase something at a given price. That IS an increase in demand. If forced to pay for their own, some people would go without treatment, and some portion of those would suffer for it.
Yep, insurance companies have lots of paperwork too. But medicare is part of it, and has a much greater ability to get it's own way than private insurance does. A great deal of the paperwork involves supplemental insurance, which requires that the same procedure be billed to multiple entities. Would supplemental insurance even exist without employer and government one-size-fits-all healthcare?
How can you claim that there's been no increase in government regulation? Every time a new drug or treatment comes out, medicare has to decide how much they will or will not pay for it, and the FDA has to decide how available it's going to be. It's not generated by law, but by beareaucrats. It is still regulation. As a specific example of regulation that keeps prices higher than they would otherwise be, I have to get doctor's prescriptions for pharmaceuticals, regardless of the personal benefit to me or my choice in the matter. Even drugs generally recognized as safe, such as statins, are prescription only and require users to get periodic checkups to keep purchasing. Requiring additional checkups again increases the load on medical providers, which again increases prices.
As for the increase in insurance costs, medical costs have skyrocketed since 2000. Insurance costs are directly tied to it. It's not just that they could charge more money, but that they had to charge more money or go under. Yes, that means with a fixed percentage profit rate, their numerical profits go up. That's just the way things are.
That would be Bob Barr for the libertarians. A former republican who appears to have seen the error of his ways over the last 5 years or so. Including lobbying to overturn his own 'Barr amendment' which had prevented medical marijuana from being legalized in DC.
Unfortunately, liberal in the US indicates people who are vehemently opposed to economic freedom, so that definition has become somewhat defunct. Much like egalitarian now indicates someone who thinks everyone should be just as succesful, instead of having equal rights.
What thriving free market is this then? I was under the impression that government provided all sorts of payment for care via medicaid and medicare, thus driving up demand and increasing the price. And regulations about who can provide medical care, restricting the supply and also raising the price. And regulations which serve largely to increase paperwork, thus again driving costs up. Plus limited control over what sort of payments doctors accept (if you accept medicare from anyone, then you are not allowed to provide service to someone who is eligible for medicare for cash instead, unless you haven't accepted medicare for 2 years.) Insurance is subsidized to be employer provided, reducing the ability of insurance companies to tailor payment rates to the individual's risk factors or to exclude some employees. Theare are all sorts of government interference in the market, so don't pretend it's free so you can argue that government must take control. Government regulation always leads to further government regulation to fix the problems caused by the previous regulation.
No, because they are predominantly cynical pessimists, and good news doesn't actually sell all that well. As humans, they are also subject to confirmation bias just like everyone else (except me of course;) ). Since they are more likely to be liberal left wing than right wing, and thus truly believe right wing policies are poorly planned, they tend to focus on the negative when there is a conservative president. There is no conspiracy here, just a lot of people making similar decisions.
If you don't believe the media has an impact, check any recent poll. You will find that most people think that the economy is bad, but that their household is doing well. If most people are doing as well or better, then the economy isn't bad, but the reporting always leads off with the opinion about the economy in general. Since opinion of the economy in general is dependent on the media, a slight bias here suffers from feedback.
It must depend on the specific model. That has not been my experience except on relatively clean installs. Even on a clean install at work with a second hp printer also install, I had to download a patch to allow the computer to run the installer without crashing, in addition to updated drivers from the net as their CD drivers didn't like the system. AFAIK, every version, by default, installs a number of apps that you really don't need. When given a chance to install minimal drivers, I generally much happier with them, but it's not always my choice to make.
HP printer driver division Oh, god yes. I hate working with their drivers due to unforseen conflicts with, for instance, having more than one printer connected to a single machine, having them not work out of the box without some dll patch which I have to search for on their forums because it's not listed as an issue on their support page or included in the latest standard drivers, etc. Huge piles of included bloatware and slow load times. Their corporate, minimal drivers aren't as bad at least.
Please show me where I said it was? Well, how about "THEY ARE THE SAME. THE OTHER PERSON = SOCIETY". Since you didn't say "A SOCIETY" until your last pathetic attempt to prove you were right all along, the reasonable interpretation was that you meant the general society which that individual is part of. Nation, state, whatever. Moreover, a soceity requires at least 2 individuals, by definition.
There IS a functional difference between groups and individuals. It is entirely possible for a group to have traits that no individual within the group has. If there were no difference, any individual harming any other individual is just society harming itself, so we might as well just punish all of society, including the harmed person, for doing that in the first place.
I really shouldn't have responded, since you have proven yourself to be either a troll or unredeemably stupid.
One goose is not a flock. One person is not society. The problem lies not with my reading comprehension, but with your confusion of terms. I assumed, incorrectly, that you understood the distinction between a person and a collection of people. My mistake.
I think the problem arose when you said it was harm to society, and therefor society had a right to punish, with society emphasized. There is no need to appeal to screwing up society as a reason to punish. The mere fact that they are screwing up another person is justification in and of itself. The fact that you resorted to society as your justfication seemed to indicate that you think society is of primary importance, not the other person they are screwing up.
Not really. Any number of people, despite not being conservative, would nonetheless not choose to associate with homosexuals because they believe it to be against their religion. And neo-conservative refers mostly to an interventionst foreign policy, not to any particular reglious bigotry.
Frankly, it is a label with little actual value. It used to refer to a group of people who jumped from the left to the right in the 70's, but is now often used to refer to a group with any set of beliefs that the user doesn't like. Not always, and as wikipedia indicates there is a common issue on interventionism, but your post is a prime example of redefining terms to suit yourself.
I think we've just hit another point where you and I will never see eye to eye, although I do appreciate the response. As far as I can see, viewing society as a separate entity is a useful illusion at best. Every transaction made by society is really individuals within it making decisions. Trying to determine the needs and desires of society is inherently flawed, as you end up with society wanting things that no individual within it ever wants, or in some cases is capable of wanting. As an example, it is possible for a group of voters to prefer candiate A to B, B to C, and C to A, even if we assume that preferences are transitive for every individual involved. I think that's a reasonable assumption. I used to think it was a flaw with the various methods of trying to determine group choices, but I later concluded it was an inherent flaw in the attempt. Because you view society as a separate thing, it allows you to see society as something greater than me making choices for me, instead of other individuals asserting greater rights than I have. That is really no different than the divine right of kings as a concept, even though the justification is different. I have had an argument with someone about minimum wage, where even though not a single individual anywhere had is harmed by not having one (at worst they aren't helped as much as you would like) they discussed it as harm to society. It relied on both mistaking society as separate from the individuals, and treating not-helping the same as causing-harm.
You sound basically Utilitarian. The danger with that sort of approach, as I see it, is that happiness is a subjective preference. Allowing someone to arbritrarily say that more people are happy with their preferred choices, and force them to comply, is pretty much exactly what the fascists did, although in different areas than you personally would intervene. It also allows justification for slavery, as one example, as making them better off in the opionion of the slave owners. This isn't superficial, it's a basic defining trait that they share which is incompatible with individualism. Socialism, fascism, communism, communitarianism, multiculturalism, sexism, racism, sexuality-ism (ok, made up term but you know what it conveys probably), and nationalism are all dependent on treating people as groups instead of individuals.
The above is a little disjointed and repetitive. My apologies for that.
Your framing doesn't work, in part because medical care isn't nearly the basic need that food is. I hardly ever have to go to the doctor, but I eat all the time. My mere existence doesn't reduce people's responsibility for their own well being. If I come across a crime in progress, and do nothing about it, that doesn't make me responsible for the crime occuring. If someone is starving on the street, and I'm wealthy, that doesn't mean I'm at fault for them starving.
You used a false dichotomy. The choice isn't a) property being iviolate and b) taking care of those whose basic needs are not being reasonably met. It's possible to have property be inviolate AND take care of those basic needs. It's just that you have to spend your money, not someone else's. But historically, statists are unwilling to make personal sacrifices unless they can compel everyone else to sacrifice at least as much. There's a reason conservatives in the US generally give more to private charity than liberals. For the sake of argument, take as a given the known issues with dividing people along a single axis.
At a basic level, your system isn't compatible with freedom of choice. Mine is. I suspect you place some value on freedom of choice and equal rights, but that you place them below a right to life. Unfortunately, a right to live can become self refuting if it allows you to violently rob people or compel medical care, at the risk of their life, to provide someone else with life. That's why I only concede a right not to be killed, even though I will act personally to help other people live. And at that point we have very few principles in common, probably consisting only of "Helping others is a good thing". I'm not accusing you of being fascist, I just don't see how the system of government control you seem to prefer differs from fasicsm in kind. I'm quite happy to concede that it differs in quantity. Minor government oppression is much, much preferable to total government control. Just as an organized government welfare system is preferable to being mugged. That doesn't make either one right.
I long since came to the conclusion that Godel's theorem applies to moral systems as well as mathematical ones. Consistent, complete, or finite: pick any two. I'll take consistent and finite by preference.
Yes I understand the notion of opportunity cost, but for most people, they don't forgo work to do laundry. Therefore their work pay rate does not measure the opportunity cost of doing it. Even if they could instead be working and getting paid, if they wouldn't be doing that, then that isn't the opportunity cost either.
And yes, depending on how you measure time spent doing laundry, you can be doing something else. The process takes a couple of hours at most, but while the machine is washing or the dryer drying, you can easily be doing something else, especially if you own your own washer and dryer. If you only measure the time you actively spend loading, unloading, and sorting, then yes, you can't really do something else at the same time. Since you specified an hour, I don't think that's what you meant though.
The sad thing is, I largely agreed with your actual point and post. It's just that this particular analogy seemed flawed to me.
How much do you make an hour? Do you do your own laundry? The hour you spend doing laundry is worth however much you make an hour to pay someone else to do it instead. This isn't correct. For one thing, laundry is something I can do while doing something else. Work generally isn't. As a computer tech, I get paid well not for time or labor involved, but largely for understanding and knowledge that the vast majority of my coworkers simply don't have. The amount of labor involved does NOT define the worth of something. Doing something outside my specialty has non-monetary worth as well. It's a break from my job, it's proof that I'm capable of more than one thing, and it usually takes place when I wouldn't otherwise be making an hourly wage anyways.
Health care is rationed in all medical systems. In the nationalized ones, it's by some third party's estimation of ability to benefit. In free market-ish systems, it's by ability to pay. By what moral principle is the latter explicitly worse than the former? Why is it better to compel doctors to treat people at the governments whim, instead of letting them make their own choices? Please be specific. People assert that it is bad, but rarely explain exactly why. For most, I think it is an axiomatic belief.
People sometimes try to claim that free markets are amoral. But free markets are defined by the concept of voluntary exchange. That right there is a moral choice to forgo confiscation. There is no right to compel other people to act on your behalf. To claim otherwise is to believe in a right to initiate force. If you also claim to believe in equal rights, I would then also have the right to use force against you when ever I think you aren't living up to my principles with which you disagree. Free markets are the only system truly compatible with equal rights. Anything else devolves into might makes right.
There is a moral high ground. His system doesn't use force against you, at worst it will refrain from using force on your behalf to make someone pay for your care. Your system will use force against him, to make him pay for someone elses care. If your moral principles don't include non-initiation of force, you are no better than a thug on the street. You merely dress up in fancier clothes and pretend you aren't responsible for the goons who threaten to imprison him for not doing what you want him to.
Anecdotes don't beat data. The Harvard study was flawed. It may be that 50% are medical triggered, but if your debts for medical expenses are vastly swamped by other debts, you can't rightly claim medical expenses are the cause. Only 27% of bankruptcies had unpaid medical expenses exceeding $1000, and only 28.3% self identified as medically caused. It sounds like your case in particular was medically caused, but that is an exception, not the rule.
I have read the constitution, but I also remember Bush originally arguing that the original War on Terrorism resolutions included Iraq. He went back for a resolution specific to Iraq because of, or at least coincidental to, popular pressure. And believe it or not, they specifically said Saddam was not invovled with 9/11 whenever asked. They were very careful not to claim otherwise. The administration also claimed that he had reconstituted nuclear programs, except at one point in an interview where Cheney misspoke and said weapons, but 3 other times in the same interview specified programs.
Iraq paying the families of Palestinian suicide bombers was support for terrorism. We did not hand Gaza over to Hamas, because it wasn't ours to give. The US still doesn't recognize Hamas as a legitimate government as far as I know.
Incidentally, I don't think the palestinian terrorists were the primary reason we went to Iraq. They were just why Bush thought it was part of the GWoT. The other ongoing issues were why he chose them instead of one of the many other available targets. (Violating the cease fire agreement as well as UN resolutions, known desire for nuclear weapons, being a semi-socialist dictator, attempted assasination of Bush SR., etc.)
You're right. I misread your statement. However, I heard an awful lot from people opposed to the war, including extremely high figures about casualties, a "protracted ground offensive", and other results that did not happen. Very few of those opposed to the war focused on a prolonged insurgency, although that may have been the media's preference for sensationalism over realism. It was far easier to take the UN document and WHO estimates and run with them than to predict small areas of continuing ongoing violence, and that's what a majority of opponents did.
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"They make peanuts compared to what they could make in virtually any other field with the same level of education." That depends. A bachelor's in engineering is NOT the same level of education as a bachelor's in education. There is a much larger supply of people able to teach than there are able to act as any sort of engineer, even factoring in union efforts to reduce the supply of teachers. You do not need a degree to teach kindergarten succesfully, but the union says you do. An english education degree is not as difficult as a math-education degree, but the unions treat them the same. Math-education is much simpler than a full math degree. I would contend that a fair number of teachers are either not capable of getting one of the more valuable degrees or don't think it's worth the effort.
When calculating pay, have you already factored in the summers they aren't working? When you look at hourly wages per actual hour worked, in at least my local area, teachers are well paid compared to the average employee, but not as much as one of the more difficult, specialized degrees. We still have a surplus of individuals getting education degrees at my local college.
If the test is a reasonable overview of the material, then it may be less effort to just teach to the test, but teaching a general understanding will also allow students to pass. There may be one or two students who will never achieve that general understanding but may be able to learn enough to pass the test, but teaching just the test is evidence of poor teaching and/or a poorly written test, not a flaw with standardized testing as a concept.
"Why the fuck else would they put up with working in the public school system?" because the pay is actually pretty decent when you factor in actual time worked compared to other fields, and it's a stable job which it will be difficult to remove you from once you make it to tenure. This may not hold everywhere, but it certainly holds where I live. There are those who feel personal satisfaction that they are personally responsible for the success of future generations, although they rarely have as much impact as they believe. And yes, many good teachers are in it for the love of it, but so are many bad teachers. The fact that someone has a sense of personal satisfaction has no bearing on whether they are actually good at what they do or not.
The list of powers immediately following the first line, which you skipped in your summary, were intended to consist of the whole list of powers granted to congress. If 'general welfare' could be used the way you are reading it, the enumeration of specific powers is meaningless, as is the 10th amendment.
More importantly, it applies only to taxes and expenditures, as it is part of that specific enumerated power. It does not provide congress with a blank check to enact any regulation it wants, but it can lay taxes to provide for the common defence and general welfare.
It is possible for congress to regulate interstate commerce involving drugs, and the USC has said in Raich and Wickard that even if something is manufactured or grown without the intent to transport it across state lines it is part of interstate commerce. I would argue that just because the USC says something doesn't make it so, but that is a much better argument for the drug laws being constitutional than the general welfare clause.
Desire may be constant, demand isn't. The whole demand curve has to shift upward if people are insulated from the price. You can't just wave this away. Medicare, by it's very nature, increases the number of people who will purchase something at a given price. That IS an increase in demand. If forced to pay for their own, some people would go without treatment, and some portion of those would suffer for it.
Yep, insurance companies have lots of paperwork too. But medicare is part of it, and has a much greater ability to get it's own way than private insurance does. A great deal of the paperwork involves supplemental insurance, which requires that the same procedure be billed to multiple entities. Would supplemental insurance even exist without employer and government one-size-fits-all healthcare?
How can you claim that there's been no increase in government regulation? Every time a new drug or treatment comes out, medicare has to decide how much they will or will not pay for it, and the FDA has to decide how available it's going to be. It's not generated by law, but by beareaucrats. It is still regulation. As a specific example of regulation that keeps prices higher than they would otherwise be, I have to get doctor's prescriptions for pharmaceuticals, regardless of the personal benefit to me or my choice in the matter. Even drugs generally recognized as safe, such as statins, are prescription only and require users to get periodic checkups to keep purchasing. Requiring additional checkups again increases the load on medical providers, which again increases prices.
As for the increase in insurance costs, medical costs have skyrocketed since 2000. Insurance costs are directly tied to it. It's not just that they could charge more money, but that they had to charge more money or go under. Yes, that means with a fixed percentage profit rate, their numerical profits go up. That's just the way things are.
That would be Bob Barr for the libertarians. A former republican who appears to have seen the error of his ways over the last 5 years or so. Including lobbying to overturn his own 'Barr amendment' which had prevented medical marijuana from being legalized in DC.
Unfortunately, liberal in the US indicates people who are vehemently opposed to economic freedom, so that definition has become somewhat defunct. Much like egalitarian now indicates someone who thinks everyone should be just as succesful, instead of having equal rights.
What thriving free market is this then? I was under the impression that government provided all sorts of payment for care via medicaid and medicare, thus driving up demand and increasing the price. And regulations about who can provide medical care, restricting the supply and also raising the price. And regulations which serve largely to increase paperwork, thus again driving costs up. Plus limited control over what sort of payments doctors accept (if you accept medicare from anyone, then you are not allowed to provide service to someone who is eligible for medicare for cash instead, unless you haven't accepted medicare for 2 years.) Insurance is subsidized to be employer provided, reducing the ability of insurance companies to tailor payment rates to the individual's risk factors or to exclude some employees. Theare are all sorts of government interference in the market, so don't pretend it's free so you can argue that government must take control. Government regulation always leads to further government regulation to fix the problems caused by the previous regulation.
No, because they are predominantly cynical pessimists, and good news doesn't actually sell all that well. As humans, they are also subject to confirmation bias just like everyone else (except me of course ;) ). Since they are more likely to be liberal left wing than right wing, and thus truly believe right wing policies are poorly planned, they tend to focus on the negative when there is a conservative president. There is no conspiracy here, just a lot of people making similar decisions.
If you don't believe the media has an impact, check any recent poll. You will find that most people think that the economy is bad, but that their household is doing well. If most people are doing as well or better, then the economy isn't bad, but the reporting always leads off with the opinion about the economy in general. Since opinion of the economy in general is dependent on the media, a slight bias here suffers from feedback.
It must depend on the specific model. That has not been my experience except on relatively clean installs. Even on a clean install at work with a second hp printer also install, I had to download a patch to allow the computer to run the installer without crashing, in addition to updated drivers from the net as their CD drivers didn't like the system. AFAIK, every version, by default, installs a number of apps that you really don't need. When given a chance to install minimal drivers, I generally much happier with them, but it's not always my choice to make.
There IS a functional difference between groups and individuals. It is entirely possible for a group to have traits that no individual within the group has. If there were no difference, any individual harming any other individual is just society harming itself, so we might as well just punish all of society, including the harmed person, for doing that in the first place.
I really shouldn't have responded, since you have proven yourself to be either a troll or unredeemably stupid.
One goose is not a flock. One person is not society. The problem lies not with my reading comprehension, but with your confusion of terms. I assumed, incorrectly, that you understood the distinction between a person and a collection of people. My mistake.
I think the problem arose when you said it was harm to society, and therefor society had a right to punish, with society emphasized. There is no need to appeal to screwing up society as a reason to punish. The mere fact that they are screwing up another person is justification in and of itself. The fact that you resorted to society as your justfication seemed to indicate that you think society is of primary importance, not the other person they are screwing up.
Not really. Any number of people, despite not being conservative, would nonetheless not choose to associate with homosexuals because they believe it to be against their religion. And neo-conservative refers mostly to an interventionst foreign policy, not to any particular reglious bigotry.
Frankly, it is a label with little actual value. It used to refer to a group of people who jumped from the left to the right in the 70's, but is now often used to refer to a group with any set of beliefs that the user doesn't like. Not always, and as wikipedia indicates there is a common issue on interventionism, but your post is a prime example of redefining terms to suit yourself.
Not allowing homsexual members != Neo-Conservative.
Assholes with a superiority complex? Seems to fit the tone of your parent post.
I think we've just hit another point where you and I will never see eye to eye, although I do appreciate the response. As far as I can see, viewing society as a separate entity is a useful illusion at best. Every transaction made by society is really individuals within it making decisions. Trying to determine the needs and desires of society is inherently flawed, as you end up with society wanting things that no individual within it ever wants, or in some cases is capable of wanting. As an example, it is possible for a group of voters to prefer candiate A to B, B to C, and C to A, even if we assume that preferences are transitive for every individual involved. I think that's a reasonable assumption. I used to think it was a flaw with the various methods of trying to determine group choices, but I later concluded it was an inherent flaw in the attempt. Because you view society as a separate thing, it allows you to see society as something greater than me making choices for me, instead of other individuals asserting greater rights than I have. That is really no different than the divine right of kings as a concept, even though the justification is different. I have had an argument with someone about minimum wage, where even though not a single individual anywhere had is harmed by not having one (at worst they aren't helped as much as you would like) they discussed it as harm to society. It relied on both mistaking society as separate from the individuals, and treating not-helping the same as causing-harm.
You sound basically Utilitarian. The danger with that sort of approach, as I see it, is that happiness is a subjective preference. Allowing someone to arbritrarily say that more people are happy with their preferred choices, and force them to comply, is pretty much exactly what the fascists did, although in different areas than you personally would intervene. It also allows justification for slavery, as one example, as making them better off in the opionion of the slave owners. This isn't superficial, it's a basic defining trait that they share which is incompatible with individualism. Socialism, fascism, communism, communitarianism, multiculturalism, sexism, racism, sexuality-ism (ok, made up term but you know what it conveys probably), and nationalism are all dependent on treating people as groups instead of individuals.
The above is a little disjointed and repetitive. My apologies for that.
Your framing doesn't work, in part because medical care isn't nearly the basic need that food is. I hardly ever have to go to the doctor, but I eat all the time. My mere existence doesn't reduce people's responsibility for their own well being. If I come across a crime in progress, and do nothing about it, that doesn't make me responsible for the crime occuring. If someone is starving on the street, and I'm wealthy, that doesn't mean I'm at fault for them starving.
You used a false dichotomy. The choice isn't a) property being iviolate and b) taking care of those whose basic needs are not being reasonably met. It's possible to have property be inviolate AND take care of those basic needs. It's just that you have to spend your money, not someone else's. But historically, statists are unwilling to make personal sacrifices unless they can compel everyone else to sacrifice at least as much. There's a reason conservatives in the US generally give more to private charity than liberals. For the sake of argument, take as a given the known issues with dividing people along a single axis.
At a basic level, your system isn't compatible with freedom of choice. Mine is. I suspect you place some value on freedom of choice and equal rights, but that you place them below a right to life. Unfortunately, a right to live can become self refuting if it allows you to violently rob people or compel medical care, at the risk of their life, to provide someone else with life. That's why I only concede a right not to be killed, even though I will act personally to help other people live. And at that point we have very few principles in common, probably consisting only of "Helping others is a good thing". I'm not accusing you of being fascist, I just don't see how the system of government control you seem to prefer differs from fasicsm in kind. I'm quite happy to concede that it differs in quantity. Minor government oppression is much, much preferable to total government control. Just as an organized government welfare system is preferable to being mugged. That doesn't make either one right.
I long since came to the conclusion that Godel's theorem applies to moral systems as well as mathematical ones. Consistent, complete, or finite: pick any two. I'll take consistent and finite by preference.
Yes I understand the notion of opportunity cost, but for most people, they don't forgo work to do laundry. Therefore their work pay rate does not measure the opportunity cost of doing it. Even if they could instead be working and getting paid, if they wouldn't be doing that, then that isn't the opportunity cost either.
And yes, depending on how you measure time spent doing laundry, you can be doing something else. The process takes a couple of hours at most, but while the machine is washing or the dryer drying, you can easily be doing something else, especially if you own your own washer and dryer. If you only measure the time you actively spend loading, unloading, and sorting, then yes, you can't really do something else at the same time. Since you specified an hour, I don't think that's what you meant though.
The sad thing is, I largely agreed with your actual point and post. It's just that this particular analogy seemed flawed to me.
Health care is rationed in all medical systems. In the nationalized ones, it's by some third party's estimation of ability to benefit. In free market-ish systems, it's by ability to pay. By what moral principle is the latter explicitly worse than the former? Why is it better to compel doctors to treat people at the governments whim, instead of letting them make their own choices? Please be specific. People assert that it is bad, but rarely explain exactly why. For most, I think it is an axiomatic belief.
People sometimes try to claim that free markets are amoral. But free markets are defined by the concept of voluntary exchange. That right there is a moral choice to forgo confiscation. There is no right to compel other people to act on your behalf. To claim otherwise is to believe in a right to initiate force. If you also claim to believe in equal rights, I would then also have the right to use force against you when ever I think you aren't living up to my principles with which you disagree. Free markets are the only system truly compatible with equal rights. Anything else devolves into might makes right.
There is a moral high ground. His system doesn't use force against you, at worst it will refrain from using force on your behalf to make someone pay for your care. Your system will use force against him, to make him pay for someone elses care. If your moral principles don't include non-initiation of force, you are no better than a thug on the street. You merely dress up in fancier clothes and pretend you aren't responsible for the goons who threaten to imprison him for not doing what you want him to.
Anecdotes don't beat data. The Harvard study was flawed. It may be that 50% are medical triggered, but if your debts for medical expenses are vastly swamped by other debts, you can't rightly claim medical expenses are the cause. Only 27% of bankruptcies had unpaid medical expenses exceeding $1000, and only 28.3% self identified as medically caused. It sounds like your case in particular was medically caused, but that is an exception, not the rule.
I have read the constitution, but I also remember Bush originally arguing that the original War on Terrorism resolutions included Iraq. He went back for a resolution specific to Iraq because of, or at least coincidental to, popular pressure. And believe it or not, they specifically said Saddam was not invovled with 9/11 whenever asked. They were very careful not to claim otherwise. The administration also claimed that he had reconstituted nuclear programs, except at one point in an interview where Cheney misspoke and said weapons, but 3 other times in the same interview specified programs.
Iraq paying the families of Palestinian suicide bombers was support for terrorism. We did not hand Gaza over to Hamas, because it wasn't ours to give. The US still doesn't recognize Hamas as a legitimate government as far as I know.
Incidentally, I don't think the palestinian terrorists were the primary reason we went to Iraq. They were just why Bush thought it was part of the GWoT. The other ongoing issues were why he chose them instead of one of the many other available targets. (Violating the cease fire agreement as well as UN resolutions, known desire for nuclear weapons, being a semi-socialist dictator, attempted assasination of Bush SR., etc.)
You're right. I misread your statement. However, I heard an awful lot from people opposed to the war, including extremely high figures about casualties, a "protracted ground offensive", and other results that did not happen. Very few of those opposed to the war focused on a prolonged insurgency, although that may have been the media's preference for sensationalism over realism. It was far easier to take the UN document and WHO estimates and run with them than to predict small areas of continuing ongoing violence, and that's what a majority of opponents did.