Sure it does. High energy radiation hits H2O, splits it into H2 and O, the H2, having a low molecular weight, leaks off into space faster than the O does. Multiply this effect over long time periods, and eventually you have no atmospheric water left.
The current interpretation of the commerce clause is an abomination.
Here, here. The commerce clause has been the fig leaf by which the statists (on both the left and the right) have done an end-around on the Constitution.
I agree we've had bureaucratic corporatism for a long time. I also agree that an unresponsive Fed is a big problem. Ideally, I'd like a Fed that was similar in scope to the EU.
The EU type of structure is NOT where I'd like to see us go, as it is even more of a nightmare of rule by petty (and unelected) bureaucrats.
I guess I'm a Republican when it comes to states rights. The current interpretation of the commerce clause is an abomination. But I'm a socialist at the state and particularly local levels.
I tend to be much more receptive to "socialist experimentation" at the local and state level where opportunities for direct voter participation are more readily available. It has the added advantage that if it fails miserably you can always move to another locality or state. Once the Federal government takes over, you are stuck.
Current scientific experiments in games theory have shown that your 'moral hazard' issue is more complex than you make out. Most people are perfectly capable of being either selfish or cooperative, depending on what they see people around them doing. A small percentage will always be cooperators, while an even smaller percentage (less than 5%) will always be selfish. Nobody likes being taken advantage of, so if people see selfishness rewarded and cooperators taken advantage of, they will be selfish. Therefore, a system that assumes people are selfish will actually encourage selfishness.
Unfortunately, our current political and economic system is, I think, a little more complicated than can be modeled on game theory. It doesn't help that we have a political party abetted by the media that constantly pushes the meme that the "rich don't pay their fair share"...when by and large they are the only real contributors of substance to our payroll tax system (full disclosure: I'm not rich, but my income does put me in the top 10% of wage earners in the US).
One axiom is that if you subsidize a behavior, you will get more of it. Welfare has functionally destroyed the black family as an organic unit, and it's presently eroding the Latino and white family structure as well (out of wedlock births to white females is where blacks were in the 1960s....around 36%) because it subsidizes unwed motherhood...which in turn increases inexorably the size of the welfare dependent population. You now have generational families whose entire economic experience is public assistance of one form or another, from mother to child of mother to child of child. Rather than forming a safety net, we've formed a garden lattice where dependency grows and flourishes.
And when you don't have a job, you've never had a job, and are constantly told from birth onwards that society or the rich owe you a safety net rather than you owing it to yourself, it is something that you internalize and start to believe.
Personally, I think someone wanting to keep as much of the money as they earn as possible is not selfish (it isn't generous either). I think that wanting to take money one person to give it to another person in pursuit of some ephemeral social good IS selfish. In some cases it's necessary, but that does not make it noble in the way that charity is noble. It is, at best, a necessary evil.
Finally, Obama is not my guy. I suspected he would be a corporate centrist
I don't think he's a corporate centrist in the mold that Clinton was. I think a lot of the guys in the New York investment banker class that supported him are having buyer's remorse right about now. He'll use who he needs to in order to achieve his objectives. Rubbing shoulders with corporate masters doesn't mean beholden to corporate masters. Obama didn't save GM and Chrysler, he "saved" the UAW. I put "saved" in quotes because I t
It's a little too early to tell. I think he's a pragmatic radical (as if that makes sense). His overarching agenda is radical, transformative even (lurching left), but he and Emanual (the true architect IMO) are approaching it in a pragmatic fashion.
Regarding socialism vs free market economies, even before the election of Obama, the US wasn't anything close to a "free market". Certain sectors are heavily socialized (25% of health care spending for example is socialized via Medicaid and Medicare).
Our current economic system (with Obama in charge, but we were moving in that direction well prior) is similar to a fascist one. Nominal private ownership but de facto government control and a functionally command economy. That's not to say we're a fascist country, just that our economic system resembles Italy or Germany circa 1936. This may be a stepping stone to a more socialistic system or it may just be exigent circumstances that demand such government involvement regardless of who happens to be in power.
For a long time we've have an economic system I've seen labeled as "bureaucratic corporatism" where the lines between government and powerful corporations is blurry, and it's difficult to see where one begins and the other ends (corporations violating the law with impunity, corporations writing laws to benefit them and harm competitors, corporations bribing politicians to get those favorable laws passed, etc).
* * *
The ultimate problem with socialism is the moral hazard problem. You take away too many people's skin in the game, and they no longer have any incentive to retard the unrestrained growth of benefits because those benefits accrue to them painlessly.
Additionally, the fear a lot of folks have, and not just conservatives, is we have a Federal government that is increasingly unresponsive to voters, and worse, to even the rule of law. The TARP bailout is a great example of this, where voter sentiment was overwhelmingly against the bailouts, but it was passed anyway, in haste, with absolutely no safeguards, and by all accounts is being run in a rogue fashion. This reinforces sentiment that our government is a rogue one. Liberals are mollified at the moment because "your guy" is in power, but functionally Obama is continuing a lot of the same policies that Bush was executing at the end of his term (which were functionally statist, anti-democratic, and not conservative at all).
Um, economic success isn't 9.4% U3 and 16.5% U6, regardless of what the stock market is doing. And that isn't speculation, that's hard concrete facts...which means that we're already overshot Obama's top notch economic teams projections of where unemployment would be even if Congress hadn't approved their marvelous pork laden re-elect Democrats without actually improving the economy in 2010 bill.
The bond market is imploding...
The Federal Reserve is having to print notes to buy 50% of the T-bills the Treasury is putting out because there aren't enough buyers for the debt that Obama and the Dem Congress is pushing.
Your Obama "recovery" is going to be damned short lived regardless of what I want or don't want because it's just more castles in the air. There's no there there besides smoke and mirrors.
I know you are probably busy reading Lenin's "What Is To Be Done?" right about now, but you might want to check and see how our Dear Leader's stimulus plan is working. Here's a nice graph for you:
Oh, one more thing...the rate at which this Obama economy is losing jobs (500,000+ per month), by the time next year when this thing is predicted by you to turn around, we'll be looking at 13% unemployment at a minimum. And that's if it turns around. Which it won't. You can't put out a fire by pouring gasoline on it.
One thing that didn't go up very fast under FDR's policies was employment. So while the rich banksters were making money (not unlike under your current hero Obama), the common man was getting the shaft.
Then Republicans convinced FDR to stop his 'socialist' policies and a mini recession happened.
How did they ever manage to do that considering the Democrats controlled Congress, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court (via Roosevelt's court packing threat)?
You'll be eating your words in a year when the economy turns around
You know, I'd be more than happy to eat my words if the economy turns around. But call me bitter for thinking that Obama's recipe of nationalizing everything and going into a stupendous level of debt to "stimulate" the economy combined with the "quantitative easing" policy of the Fed (also called "monetizing the debt", also called "hyperinflation here we come") isn't the recipe needed. A key indicator that Obama or any of the Democrats for that matter don't have a fucking clue is when they hold up FDR's policies during the Depression as something to emulate when it was FDR's policies that turned a garden variety Depression (one lasting 1-2 years for just about every other country) into a Great Depression lasting 12+ years in the United States.
Dude, you're the picture perfect definition of a troll. PS. You make a piss poor mind reader.
And this southern white man isn't going to bail your dumb socialist ass out when you and your cohorts send this country spiraling down further by giving away everyone else's money.
The left thinks that anyone that isn't for full scale socialism, abortion on demand, gay marriage, and French style surrender is an extreme right neo-con.
You imply that the two are related or due to socialized medicine. There are a lot of factors that affect aggregate health outcomes. I would dare say when it comes to life expectancy, diet and exercise play a much larger role than socialized medicine and per capita expenditures (beyond a certain point, anyway).
So you quote a blog post that says ignoring profits is a legitimate way to compare prices?
Fundamentally, you need to make sure you are measuring the same thing. Example: taxes paid by insurers. The government run insurance programs obviously don't pay them. So if you are trying to compare the relative efficiency of private vs government insurance, a fair comparison would be one that removed the government tax advantage.
My logic is a socialized system would be more likely to tell it as it is than to try to make the patient 'happy'
Your logic is flawed. The barrier to fixing this problem (from a cost perspective) in the private sector is removing the legal requirement for hospitals to treat indigent people and tort reform which would prevent the hospital from getting sued out of existence when they don't order up expensive tests like CAT scans when homeless bums come in complaining of headaches.
You're complaining about medicare growth? Have you seen the increase in private insurance premiums?
Exactly so. Private insurance ultimately is constrained by the consumer's ability to pay for it. Government provided benefits in conjunction with chronic deficit spending is constrained by nothing at all. It's always easier for the pols to promise additional benefits that will be paid by the sweat and labor of your children and grandchildren.
I'll summarize: Medicare "administrative costs" are within about 3-4% absolute points of private insurance administrative costs.
Additionally, fraud is rampant in Medicare, which ultimately costs more than a little bit of administrative overhead.
Finally, benefits for Medicare have been growing at an unsustainable rate since it's inception. I do not think you want a program that grows 3x faster than the rate of inflation as your benchmark program for long term medical costs reduction.
I'm doubtful that the next 'Republican cycle' will occur in my lifetime, given that, among other things, the Obama DOJ just greenlighted rampant voter fraud by denying Georgia to verify that voters are actually citizens and eligible to vote. Not surprising for a guy that rode to victory on the backs of Acorn voter fraud, but it doesn't bode well for a democratic process going forward.
Socialized health care saves money. Sure, the government pays for health care, but that money doesn't have to then come out of your pocket or your company's pocket.
Money for nothing! You mean I don't have to pay for any of this? Some other sucker will? Great, sign me up!
There are only two ways socialized health care can save money:
1) lower availability and quality of care
2) offer the same quality of care for less money through innovation and efficiencies delivered like magic by the Federal bureaucracy.
If you think #2 is going to happen, it's a fair bet you still believe in Santa Claus too.
Basically, you just called the majority of Americans idiots for voting for him.
Ah. I see the problem now...poor reading comprehension tinged with liberal bias. You are saying people aren't reacting to what I wrote, they are reacting what they think I meant to write.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure it does. High energy radiation hits H2O, splits it into H2 and O, the H2, having a low molecular weight, leaks off into space faster than the O does. Multiply this effect over long time periods, and eventually you have no atmospheric water left.
The current interpretation of the commerce clause is an abomination.
Here, here. The commerce clause has been the fig leaf by which the statists (on both the left and the right) have done an end-around on the Constitution.
I agree we've had bureaucratic corporatism for a long time. I also agree that an unresponsive Fed is a big problem. Ideally, I'd like a Fed that was similar in scope to the EU.
The EU type of structure is NOT where I'd like to see us go, as it is even more of a nightmare of rule by petty (and unelected) bureaucrats.
I guess I'm a Republican when it comes to states rights. The current interpretation of the commerce clause is an abomination. But I'm a socialist at the state and particularly local levels.
I tend to be much more receptive to "socialist experimentation" at the local and state level where opportunities for direct voter participation are more readily available. It has the added advantage that if it fails miserably you can always move to another locality or state. Once the Federal government takes over, you are stuck.
Current scientific experiments in games theory have shown that your 'moral hazard' issue is more complex than you make out. Most people are perfectly capable of being either selfish or cooperative, depending on what they see people around them doing. A small percentage will always be cooperators, while an even smaller percentage (less than 5%) will always be selfish. Nobody likes being taken advantage of, so if people see selfishness rewarded and cooperators taken advantage of, they will be selfish. Therefore, a system that assumes people are selfish will actually encourage selfishness.
Unfortunately, our current political and economic system is, I think, a little more complicated than can be modeled on game theory. It doesn't help that we have a political party abetted by the media that constantly pushes the meme that the "rich don't pay their fair share"...when by and large they are the only real contributors of substance to our payroll tax system (full disclosure: I'm not rich, but my income does put me in the top 10% of wage earners in the US).
One axiom is that if you subsidize a behavior, you will get more of it. Welfare has functionally destroyed the black family as an organic unit, and it's presently eroding the Latino and white family structure as well (out of wedlock births to white females is where blacks were in the 1960s....around 36%) because it subsidizes unwed motherhood...which in turn increases inexorably the size of the welfare dependent population. You now have generational families whose entire economic experience is public assistance of one form or another, from mother to child of mother to child of child. Rather than forming a safety net, we've formed a garden lattice where dependency grows and flourishes.
And when you don't have a job, you've never had a job, and are constantly told from birth onwards that society or the rich owe you a safety net rather than you owing it to yourself, it is something that you internalize and start to believe.
Personally, I think someone wanting to keep as much of the money as they earn as possible is not selfish (it isn't generous either). I think that wanting to take money one person to give it to another person in pursuit of some ephemeral social good IS selfish. In some cases it's necessary, but that does not make it noble in the way that charity is noble. It is, at best, a necessary evil.
Finally, Obama is not my guy. I suspected he would be a corporate centrist
I don't think he's a corporate centrist in the mold that Clinton was. I think a lot of the guys in the New York investment banker class that supported him are having buyer's remorse right about now. He'll use who he needs to in order to achieve his objectives. Rubbing shoulders with corporate masters doesn't mean beholden to corporate masters. Obama didn't save GM and Chrysler, he "saved" the UAW. I put "saved" in quotes because I t
It's just, well, Obama is no socialist.
It's a little too early to tell. I think he's a pragmatic radical (as if that makes sense). His overarching agenda is radical, transformative even (lurching left), but he and Emanual (the true architect IMO) are approaching it in a pragmatic fashion.
Regarding socialism vs free market economies, even before the election of Obama, the US wasn't anything close to a "free market". Certain sectors are heavily socialized (25% of health care spending for example is socialized via Medicaid and Medicare).
Our current economic system (with Obama in charge, but we were moving in that direction well prior) is similar to a fascist one. Nominal private ownership but de facto government control and a functionally command economy. That's not to say we're a fascist country, just that our economic system resembles Italy or Germany circa 1936. This may be a stepping stone to a more socialistic system or it may just be exigent circumstances that demand such government involvement regardless of who happens to be in power.
For a long time we've have an economic system I've seen labeled as "bureaucratic corporatism" where the lines between government and powerful corporations is blurry, and it's difficult to see where one begins and the other ends (corporations violating the law with impunity, corporations writing laws to benefit them and harm competitors, corporations bribing politicians to get those favorable laws passed, etc).
* * *
The ultimate problem with socialism is the moral hazard problem. You take away too many people's skin in the game, and they no longer have any incentive to retard the unrestrained growth of benefits because those benefits accrue to them painlessly.
Additionally, the fear a lot of folks have, and not just conservatives, is we have a Federal government that is increasingly unresponsive to voters, and worse, to even the rule of law. The TARP bailout is a great example of this, where voter sentiment was overwhelmingly against the bailouts, but it was passed anyway, in haste, with absolutely no safeguards, and by all accounts is being run in a rogue fashion. This reinforces sentiment that our government is a rogue one. Liberals are mollified at the moment because "your guy" is in power, but functionally Obama is continuing a lot of the same policies that Bush was executing at the end of his term (which were functionally statist, anti-democratic, and not conservative at all).
A bit of a ramble, my apologies.
Yep. And just for the record, this is one instance where I hope you're right and I'm wrong.
Um, economic success isn't 9.4% U3 and 16.5% U6, regardless of what the stock market is doing. And that isn't speculation, that's hard concrete facts...which means that we're already overshot Obama's top notch economic teams projections of where unemployment would be even if Congress hadn't approved their marvelous pork laden re-elect Democrats without actually improving the economy in 2010 bill.
The bond market is imploding...
The Federal Reserve is having to print notes to buy 50% of the T-bills the Treasury is putting out because there aren't enough buyers for the debt that Obama and the Dem Congress is pushing.
Your Obama "recovery" is going to be damned short lived regardless of what I want or don't want because it's just more castles in the air. There's no there there besides smoke and mirrors.
I know you are probably busy reading Lenin's "What Is To Be Done?" right about now, but you might want to check and see how our Dear Leader's stimulus plan is working. Here's a nice graph for you:
http://michaelscomments.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/stimulus-vs-unemployment-may-corrected.gif?w=460&h=280
Right? I mean, if we can scrape together $4 billion taxpayer funds for Acorn, surely we can scrape together $100 million for NASA.
Acorn will be given a generous grant of $4 billion to get out the (Democratic) vote for 2010.
Oh, one more thing...the rate at which this Obama economy is losing jobs (500,000+ per month), by the time next year when this thing is predicted by you to turn around, we'll be looking at 13% unemployment at a minimum. And that's if it turns around. Which it won't. You can't put out a fire by pouring gasoline on it.
One thing that didn't go up very fast under FDR's policies was employment. So while the rich banksters were making money (not unlike under your current hero Obama), the common man was getting the shaft.
Then Republicans convinced FDR to stop his 'socialist' policies and a mini recession happened.
How did they ever manage to do that considering the Democrats controlled Congress, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court (via Roosevelt's court packing threat)?
I've done the research, it's obvious you haven't.
Uh huh. I hate to break it to you, but Das Kapital doesn't quality Comrade.
You'll be eating your words in a year when the economy turns around
You know, I'd be more than happy to eat my words if the economy turns around. But call me bitter for thinking that Obama's recipe of nationalizing everything and going into a stupendous level of debt to "stimulate" the economy combined with the "quantitative easing" policy of the Fed (also called "monetizing the debt", also called "hyperinflation here we come") isn't the recipe needed. A key indicator that Obama or any of the Democrats for that matter don't have a fucking clue is when they hold up FDR's policies during the Depression as something to emulate when it was FDR's policies that turned a garden variety Depression (one lasting 1-2 years for just about every other country) into a Great Depression lasting 12+ years in the United States.
Dude, you're the picture perfect definition of a troll. PS. You make a piss poor mind reader.
And this southern white man isn't going to bail your dumb socialist ass out when you and your cohorts send this country spiraling down further by giving away everyone else's money.
The left thinks that anyone that isn't for full scale socialism, abortion on demand, gay marriage, and French style surrender is an extreme right neo-con.
You imply that the two are related or due to socialized medicine. There are a lot of factors that affect aggregate health outcomes. I would dare say when it comes to life expectancy, diet and exercise play a much larger role than socialized medicine and per capita expenditures (beyond a certain point, anyway).
So you quote a blog post that says ignoring profits is a legitimate way to compare prices?
Fundamentally, you need to make sure you are measuring the same thing. Example: taxes paid by insurers. The government run insurance programs obviously don't pay them. So if you are trying to compare the relative efficiency of private vs government insurance, a fair comparison would be one that removed the government tax advantage.
was all that was necessary to predict our current economic crisis.
My logic is a socialized system would be more likely to tell it as it is than to try to make the patient 'happy'
Your logic is flawed. The barrier to fixing this problem (from a cost perspective) in the private sector is removing the legal requirement for hospitals to treat indigent people and tort reform which would prevent the hospital from getting sued out of existence when they don't order up expensive tests like CAT scans when homeless bums come in complaining of headaches.
You're complaining about medicare growth? Have you seen the increase in private insurance premiums?
Exactly so. Private insurance ultimately is constrained by the consumer's ability to pay for it. Government provided benefits in conjunction with chronic deficit spending is constrained by nothing at all. It's always easier for the pols to promise additional benefits that will be paid by the sweat and labor of your children and grandchildren.
http://healthcare-economist.com/2006/07/27/medicares-true-administrative-costs/
I'll summarize: Medicare "administrative costs" are within about 3-4% absolute points of private insurance administrative costs.
Additionally, fraud is rampant in Medicare, which ultimately costs more than a little bit of administrative overhead.
Finally, benefits for Medicare have been growing at an unsustainable rate since it's inception. I do not think you want a program that grows 3x faster than the rate of inflation as your benchmark program for long term medical costs reduction.
I'm doubtful that the next 'Republican cycle' will occur in my lifetime, given that, among other things, the Obama DOJ just greenlighted rampant voter fraud by denying Georgia to verify that voters are actually citizens and eligible to vote. Not surprising for a guy that rode to victory on the backs of Acorn voter fraud, but it doesn't bode well for a democratic process going forward.
Socialized health care saves money. Sure, the government pays for health care, but that money doesn't have to then come out of your pocket or your company's pocket.
Money for nothing! You mean I don't have to pay for any of this? Some other sucker will? Great, sign me up!
There are only two ways socialized health care can save money:
1) lower availability and quality of care
2) offer the same quality of care for less money through innovation and efficiencies delivered like magic by the Federal bureaucracy.
If you think #2 is going to happen, it's a fair bet you still believe in Santa Claus too.
Basically, you just called the majority of Americans idiots for voting for him.
Ah. I see the problem now...poor reading comprehension tinged with liberal bias. You are saying people aren't reacting to what I wrote, they are reacting what they think I meant to write.
Someone needs to read up on the moderator guidelines. Last time I looked, statements of fact don't fall under the category of "troll".