Health insurance hasn't been catastrophic insurance for decades, and that's the big problem.
I agree.
Right. And thats why I buy fire insurance, because I need to burn down my house. Or car insurance, because I need to ram my car into walls at high speeds.
The analagous situations (to someone with a serious condition shopping for health insurance) would be someone shopping around for fire insurance while his house is on fire, or for car insurance just after crashing his car.
There's a big problem in health insurance, but that isn't it.
I agree adverse selection itself is not a big problem.
Sports Crasher Monthly reports that stadiums are going to start getting tough with certain spectators. They are going to examine their person and check for a ticket -- any lack of one and they will check for proof of purchase. If you refuse, they will kick you out and call in the legal heavies.
Do you dispute that many market-failure allegations are phony on closer inspection?
1) Corporations offer people the opportunity to insure against catastrophic conditions. 2) Only people who know they're about to get those conditions sign up. 3) Health insurers pre-screen people to avoid this. 4) Government bans pre-screening or requires insurers to provide this coverage to all clients. 5) Insurers stop offering this service or offer it an insanely high prices. 6) Wise-ass economist: "See, in health insurance, there's a big problem called adverse selection: only people who will need it, buy the insurance. That's why it's impossible for anyone to buy insurance. This is called a 'market failure' because obviously markets can't handle this sort of thing." 7) Irrational zealot: "Actually, this was more due to banning pre-screening and regulating what an insurer can offer..." 8) You: "A brainwashed zealot. His mind is made up, don't confuse him with the facts. Truthiness! He feels it's true, with his gut. So don't waste time trying to convince the head with logic or example or reasoning." 9) Repeat for numerous examples.
[Note to nit-pickers: the point here is to show a case where failure of the market to provide reasonably priced catastrophic insurance was more due to invervention. Failure to provide health care for people that already have a condition could still be called a "market failure", if indeed, failing to buy insurance before it was revealed you would get this condition is the fault of the market.]
The GP explained a scenario where someone made a small loan and forgave it. He mistakenly called that a gift, when really it's loan forgiveness, which is reportable as income. This becomes a big issue if you ever have to sell your house for less than what's needed to pay the bank and the difference is forgiven.
That's an amazing idea. I really want to know why it wouldn't work, if indeed it wouldn't work. People who study taxes all day considered this problem, keep in mind.
How do you force them to recharacterize that "job" as pure compensation?
Even a tax lover is going to have to roll his eyes at that one.
Only a small fraction of taxes goes to providing the conditions necessary for an economy to function. The rest is rank favoritism: subsidies, wealth redistribution. What fraction it is, I'll leave up to you to figure out, but it's not 100% that goes to allowing the economy to function.
Taken to the extreme, your argument would apply just as well to the most corrupt nation possible: say they tax 95% of every exchange and spend 1% of the proceeds on (poorly) providing the "enforcement of law and public order, protection of property, economic infrastructure (roads, legal tender, enforcement of contracts, etc.), education systems, health care systems", and the other 99% on palaces for the dictator. Would you justify exaction of that level of taxation on the grounds that without it, the exchanges it was taxing would be impossible?
Remember, it's the level of taxation that spoiled the voyage, not the fact that there was taxation all.
Under the scenario you described, you would still be taxed. You'd have to sell the luxury car to get money (people wouldn't completely revert to barter) and that would have to be reported as taxable income. True, with a little work, exempting non-money compensation from taxation *could* gradually lead barter networks to form, but not in the scenario you've described.
That said, in order for the trip not to be free, they'd have to pay the $25,000 tax, then (as the summary notes) pay the tax on the $25,000 tax payment (since that's additional compensation), then the tax on the tax on the tax, etc. Luckily, the series converges!
More importantly, who decided that the trip was worth $138,000? Is there a liquid market in spaceflights? Why couldn't they declare it to be a special, "discount" trip worth $5? Note that this is similiar to the record industry declaring the "value" of "stolen" music -- how much would it really have sold for? And note that unlike the luxury car, this good is not transferrable.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem to matter all that much if you can't see the identity of the bidder. Isn't it pretty trivial to have some small network of people that agree to shill bid for each other?
The most important thing is consistency, don't flip flop between referring to it as singular and plural, pick one, and go with it (or them).
I plead guilty. I refer to a company by the singluar (Apple wants), but still use "they" as a pronoun, since whenever I say "they", I'm thinking of a group of people at that company.
However, in my defense, I don't say any of the following:
"sock away" instead of "save" "divvy up" instead of "divide" "x cents on the dollar" instead of "x percent" "veggies" instead of "vegetables" "bennies" instead of "benefits" "paycheck" where there is no check involved "half a dozen" instead of "six"
Is there something personally wrong with me if I don't get excited about Zelda: Link to the Past?
I mean, I enjoyed it when I played it back in ~94, 95, somewhere around then. Great game. But I always hear people saying, in essence, "OMG ZELDA IS SO AWESOME" about any one in the serious, I feel like I'm missing something somehow.
Fun game? Sure. Drop everything for the chance to play it in a new format... I don't see it.
If google is now discounting the wording other people use to link to a page, then isn't google themselves becoming like old fashioned engine, ie only specifically accounting for information on the actual page and not based on what other people who link to this page thinK?
I think it's more sophisticated than that, and I don't think Google plans to reveal more about how it works than necessary, so as to maintain their algorithm's "security by obscurity". Someone will figure it out eventually, but at least its robustness will improve until then.
You threadjacked into a tangential rant about libertarians, in which you call them worse than Scientologists... and somehow, you got the nerve to call me a troll.
That's interesting, but please remind me what any of that has to do with your earlier claim that my complaint about "equating government funding of science with science" was a troll against stem cell research funding proponents.
Would you like to admit your error, or simply pontificate on the separate matter you just brought up?
Government wouldn't be able to control all of the journals due to money; with the internet, anyone can start a journal if they can afford the bandwidth. (Getting credibility is another matter...)
If the government mandates that you have to publish in something like PubMed, and the paid journals end up going out of business (because they can't compete with "free"), then the government ends up with a lot more power of the purse over what research gets done.
How would that be an imposition? "Okay, I'll put it in my favored journal *and* this public resource."
I agree that government can have a lot of control due to its choice of what research to fund, but it's pretty limited in terms of manipulating research through journal access.
(I know, I know, you weren't endorsing that argument, but I wanted to make sure it got addressed regardless, since someone else will.)
What a silly comparison. In the original, one thing (open access) is compared to its opposite (government censorship), while in your phrasing two similar things ("opposition to government funding of science" and "opposition to science") are compared.
True, but still:
1) Neither makes sense. 2) My comparison involves things which are *more* similar.
As the only context in which this minor distinction makes sense is that of stem-cell reseaerch, I'd say it is obvious you are trying to troll people who support stem cell research.
I'd say it's obvious your perspective is limited.
What about people who oppose all government grants to researchers on principle? Who think the space program was a sub-optimal use of funds? Why oppose government-run or government-funded schools (which by transition includes science classes)? What about people who merely think science funding shouldn't be increased as much as the other party wants? What about people who think NASA should only do experiments in space that don't require a human there?
But you are correct in that people who want the government to fund stem cell research characterize the opposition as "anti-science". My point is, that's ridiculous.
I think that if you want to combine your exercise with video gaming, DDR is the way to go. It got me off the couch and I lost 30 pounds in the first three months. (265 -> 235) Also, I got my parents hooked on the Eyetoy's Kinetic, and they liked it so much they've now gotten like four other people to play it. Yeah, that involves the PS2, but remember, the PS2 was from when Sony was still good. (I don't like hard pads, so I use the foam Red Octane Ignition, costs ~$80. If you want to do doubles mode, where you dance across two pads, buy a second and clip them together on the bottom with what are called "blanket pins" -- heavy-duty safety pins.)
Unfortunately, nothing for the Wii yet seems to be targeted toward exercise. There's a set of minigames on Rayman that are labled "workout", and they require moving as fast as possible with your arms, but they are kind of awkward and not really feasible for regular exercise.
I've been hoping for some game that involves you holstering a Wiimote into your legs, or legs and arms and then exploits the motion sensing and possibly also a dance pad, but haven't seen any plans for such a game. Any news on the homebrew side?
I love the Wii, but they're missing out on one of its uses.
If it does not help much (in terms of reducing congestion), then the tolls aren't high enough to be following my plan. Like I said in journal, the tolls would have to be on the order of $30 each way for a small car, not merely several dollars for a passage of 9 miles.
Slashdot Mirror
Health insurance hasn't been catastrophic insurance for decades, and that's the big problem.
I agree.
Right. And thats why I buy fire insurance, because I need to burn down my house. Or car insurance, because I need to ram my car into walls at high speeds.
The analagous situations (to someone with a serious condition shopping for health insurance) would be someone shopping around for fire insurance while his house is on fire, or for car insurance just after crashing his car.
There's a big problem in health insurance, but that isn't it.
I agree adverse selection itself is not a big problem.
Sports Crasher Monthly reports that stadiums are going to start getting tough with certain spectators. They are going to examine their person and check for a ticket -- any lack of one and they will check for proof of purchase. If you refuse, they will kick you out and call in the legal heavies.
Do you dispute that many market-failure allegations are phony on closer inspection?
1) Corporations offer people the opportunity to insure against catastrophic conditions.
2) Only people who know they're about to get those conditions sign up.
3) Health insurers pre-screen people to avoid this.
4) Government bans pre-screening or requires insurers to provide this coverage to all clients.
5) Insurers stop offering this service or offer it an insanely high prices.
6) Wise-ass economist: "See, in health insurance, there's a big problem called adverse selection: only people who will need it, buy the insurance. That's why it's impossible for anyone to buy insurance. This is called a 'market failure' because obviously markets can't handle this sort of thing."
7) Irrational zealot: "Actually, this was more due to banning pre-screening and regulating what an insurer can offer..."
8) You: "A brainwashed zealot. His mind is made up, don't confuse him with the facts. Truthiness! He feels it's true, with his gut. So don't waste time trying to convince the head with logic or example or reasoning."
9) Repeat for numerous examples.
[Note to nit-pickers: the point here is to show a case where failure of the market to provide reasonably priced catastrophic insurance was more due to invervention. Failure to provide health care for people that already have a condition could still be called a "market failure", if indeed, failing to buy insurance before it was revealed you would get this condition is the fault of the market.]
The GP explained a scenario where someone made a small loan and forgave it. He mistakenly called that a gift, when really it's loan forgiveness, which is reportable as income. This becomes a big issue if you ever have to sell your house for less than what's needed to pay the bank and the difference is forgiven.
That's an amazing idea. I really want to know why it wouldn't work, if indeed it wouldn't work. People who study taxes all day considered this problem, keep in mind.
How do you force them to recharacterize that "job" as pure compensation?
Even a tax lover is going to have to roll his eyes at that one.
Only a small fraction of taxes goes to providing the conditions necessary for an economy to function. The rest is rank favoritism: subsidies, wealth redistribution. What fraction it is, I'll leave up to you to figure out, but it's not 100% that goes to allowing the economy to function.
Taken to the extreme, your argument would apply just as well to the most corrupt nation possible: say they tax 95% of every exchange and spend 1% of the proceeds on (poorly) providing the "enforcement of law and public order, protection of property, economic infrastructure (roads, legal tender, enforcement of contracts, etc.), education systems, health care systems", and the other 99% on palaces for the dictator. Would you justify exaction of that level of taxation on the grounds that without it, the exchanges it was taxing would be impossible?
Remember, it's the level of taxation that spoiled the voyage, not the fact that there was taxation all.
Under the scenario you described, you would still be taxed. You'd have to sell the luxury car to get money (people wouldn't completely revert to barter) and that would have to be reported as taxable income. True, with a little work, exempting non-money compensation from taxation *could* gradually lead barter networks to form, but not in the scenario you've described.
That said, in order for the trip not to be free, they'd have to pay the $25,000 tax, then (as the summary notes) pay the tax on the $25,000 tax payment (since that's additional compensation), then the tax on the tax on the tax, etc. Luckily, the series converges!
More importantly, who decided that the trip was worth $138,000? Is there a liquid market in spaceflights? Why couldn't they declare it to be a special, "discount" trip worth $5? Note that this is similiar to the record industry declaring the "value" of "stolen" music -- how much would it really have sold for? And note that unlike the luxury car, this good is not transferrable.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem to matter all that much if you can't see the identity of the bidder. Isn't it pretty trivial to have some small network of people that agree to shill bid for each other?
Is there a "nice", polite, socially-acceptable way to leaflet? What if I simply circled a block with my arm outstretched, holding a leaflet?
The most important thing is consistency, don't flip flop between referring to it as singular and plural, pick one, and go with it (or them).
I plead guilty. I refer to a company by the singluar (Apple wants), but still use "they" as a pronoun, since whenever I say "they", I'm thinking of a group of people at that company.
However, in my defense, I don't say any of the following:
"sock away" instead of "save"
"divvy up" instead of "divide"
"x cents on the dollar" instead of "x percent"
"veggies" instead of "vegetables"
"bennies" instead of "benefits"
"paycheck" where there is no check involved
"half a dozen" instead of "six"
So, I think it evens out in the end.
That's quite an even-handed question for a formula troll...
Is there something personally wrong with me if I don't get excited about Zelda: Link to the Past?
... I don't see it.
I mean, I enjoyed it when I played it back in ~94, 95, somewhere around then. Great game. But I always hear people saying, in essence, "OMG ZELDA IS SO AWESOME" about any one in the serious, I feel like I'm missing something somehow.
Fun game? Sure. Drop everything for the chance to play it in a new format
I'm guessing the answer to all of those is ... no?
If you don't understand metaphors, please ... just don't use them.
If google is now discounting the wording other people use to link to a page, then isn't google themselves becoming like old fashioned engine, ie only specifically accounting for information on the actual page and not based on what other people who link to this page thinK?
I think it's more sophisticated than that, and I don't think Google plans to reveal more about how it works than necessary, so as to maintain their algorithm's "security by obscurity". Someone will figure it out eventually, but at least its robustness will improve until then.
You threadjacked into a tangential rant about libertarians, in which you call them worse than Scientologists ... and somehow, you got the nerve to call me a troll.
That's interesting, but please remind me what any of that has to do with your earlier claim that my complaint about "equating government funding of science with science" was a troll against stem cell research funding proponents.
Would you like to admit your error, or simply pontificate on the separate matter you just brought up?
Government wouldn't be able to control all of the journals due to money; with the internet, anyone can start a journal if they can afford the bandwidth. (Getting credibility is another matter...)
If the government mandates that you have to publish in something like PubMed, and the paid journals end up going out of business (because they can't compete with "free"), then the government ends up with a lot more power of the purse over what research gets done.
How would that be an imposition? "Okay, I'll put it in my favored journal *and* this public resource."
I agree that government can have a lot of control due to its choice of what research to fund, but it's pretty limited in terms of manipulating research through journal access.
(I know, I know, you weren't endorsing that argument, but I wanted to make sure it got addressed regardless, since someone else will.)
What a silly comparison. In the original, one thing (open access) is compared to its opposite (government censorship), while in your phrasing two similar things ("opposition to government funding of science" and "opposition to science") are compared.
True, but still:
1) Neither makes sense.
2) My comparison involves things which are *more* similar.
As the only context in which this minor distinction makes sense is that of stem-cell reseaerch, I'd say it is obvious you are trying to troll people who support stem cell research.
I'd say it's obvious your perspective is limited.
What about people who oppose all government grants to researchers on principle? Who think the space program was a sub-optimal use of funds? Why oppose government-run or government-funded schools (which by transition includes science classes)? What about people who merely think science funding shouldn't be increased as much as the other party wants? What about people who think NASA should only do experiments in space that don't require a human there?
But you are correct in that people who want the government to fund stem cell research characterize the opposition as "anti-science". My point is, that's ridiculous.
Probably by the same reasoning that "opposition to government funding of science" equals "opposition to science".
I think that if you want to combine your exercise with video gaming, DDR is the way to go. It got me off the couch and I lost 30 pounds in the first three months. (265 -> 235) Also, I got my parents hooked on the Eyetoy's Kinetic, and they liked it so much they've now gotten like four other people to play it. Yeah, that involves the PS2, but remember, the PS2 was from when Sony was still good. (I don't like hard pads, so I use the foam Red Octane Ignition, costs ~$80. If you want to do doubles mode, where you dance across two pads, buy a second and clip them together on the bottom with what are called "blanket pins" -- heavy-duty safety pins.)
Unfortunately, nothing for the Wii yet seems to be targeted toward exercise. There's a set of minigames on Rayman that are labled "workout", and they require moving as fast as possible with your arms, but they are kind of awkward and not really feasible for regular exercise.
I've been hoping for some game that involves you holstering a Wiimote into your legs, or legs and arms and then exploits the motion sensing and possibly also a dance pad, but haven't seen any plans for such a game. Any news on the homebrew side?
I love the Wii, but they're missing out on one of its uses.
I tried to scalp a PS3 on ebay (from Texas). Where were the bids from England? Do you guys not have Dec. 25th?
Hey, that reminds me -- do y'all have the fourth of July in G/B?
If it does not help much (in terms of reducing congestion), then the tolls aren't high enough to be following my plan. Like I said in journal, the tolls would have to be on the order of $30 each way for a small car, not merely several dollars for a passage of 9 miles.
Sorry, I missed that you were talking about short-term investors. I should take my own sig's advice...
Still, who distinguishes day-traders from short-term investors *who buy stocks*?