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The Health Care Wars are on again!
Posted: 29 July 2012 11:48 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 31 ]
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Sorry, Daniel. I blame it on old age. You young ones take it out of me. I have to say everything at least twice to you and it gets me a bit crancky. What with my arthritis and by prostate and my… well, I think you get the idea.

Have a nice evening or whatever time it is over there

You, too, British buddy.

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Posted: 30 July 2012 12:21 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 32 ]
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Country A: Small Government, More Free-Market
Country B: Bigger Government, Less Free-Market

Country A: Less Debt, Less Taxes, Greater Diversity of Supply
Country B: More Debt, More Taxes, Less Diversity of Supply

If I have A and you have B and we start from scratch my businesses can fail and recover.  If B fails, for example Health Care you create a major disturbance throughout your nation.
So I decrease risk to economic depression.

A usually has more freedoms than B because B regulates. A self-regulates. No one wants to commit an action that loses money.

Greater GDP will always be A. More savings will always be A. & B will become stagnant over time and will most likely become a greater B if we follow patterns and become more stagnant.

Lets just use young America doing her Industrial Revolutions. Lifted the standard of living beyond anything the world had ever seen. Pure capitalism. Very low taxes, small government.

You have to create the environment for people to produce. You have to create the right mechanisms for prosperity. The benefits of freedom are absolutely clear especially in economics.

If A and B started there countries at the same time A would become much more prosperous than B at a much quicker rate if B became prosperous at all because A would have more capital formation dispersed over the land where B has a lot of eggs in one basket. Central planning in respect to a banking sector, and all the sectors is impossible because there is an infinite amount of knowledge in society. Central planning of a few individuals cannot harness that infinite knowledge. A free-market will regulate itself for the most part (except for environmental regulations) due to loss and gains. No one wants to lose money.

Creativity is also my biggest reason for supporting the free-market, small government system because there are greater odds better on the infinite knowledge compared to the central planning.

Again I should use the example of my way (A) to B in respect to Health Care. In A you could walk down the street in New York city and find an all high-tech health care shop. That is what the man behind the counter specializes in and walk down another street that sold marijuana and other herbs. You can have all herbal stores, all high tech, you can have different versions of high tech and herbal because there is seemingly an infinite number on different styles of health care corporations. My citizens, especially in a big country would have access to more supply of health care than yours with more options.

Imagine just walking into a health care shop like in type A with a list of prices of all the procedures. “You need a lung?” Then your just in and out depending on the severity of the procedure. You damn near need not even make an appointment that is how much the system could flourish.  It creates a more creative land and that is why everyone immigrated to America when it was a type A. Imagine with all the technology that we have how nice of a setting type A would be.

If we take America for example right now it is trying to transition to essentially a majority of all B and that is why America is economically declining. B required more regulation which when conducted wrong did not attain the infinite knowledge of society and regulated poorly not allowing businesses the liberty to pursue profit. The programs from B required spending that the government had to tax the people, borrowed money, and printed dollars. This then created the debt, the high taxes, and inflation from printing.

A>B
-A is a land of more freedom, imagination, economic success, production, ability to reach a higher standard of living. People want to live in A when A is allowed to reach its full potential without interference from B.
-Because A is a land of more imagination A because it harnesses the infinite knowledge of the free-market it in turn creates a better quality culture and a better setting that is more aesthetically pleasing of living space whether in a city or a town.

A is the only known model of governing that has created the highest standard of success in all of human history. B has never created more success than a pure A and never will.

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Posted: 30 July 2012 12:23 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 33 ]
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& it’s 4: 00 AM over here and I’m still up because I put it in that philosophical work to solve problems.

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Posted: 30 July 2012 12:40 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 34 ]
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DanielMoore1991 - 30 July 2012 12:21 AM

Country A: Small Government, More Free-Market
Country B: Bigger Government, Less Free-Market

Country A: Less Debt, Less Taxes, Greater Diversity of Supply
Country B: More Debt, More Taxes, Less Diversity of Supply

If I have A and you have B and we start from scratch my businesses can fail and recover.  If B fails, for example Health Care you create a major disturbance throughout your nation.
So I decrease risk to economic depression.

A usually has more freedoms than B because B regulates. A self-regulates. No one wants to commit an action that loses money.

Greater GDP will always be A. More savings will always be A. & B will become stagnant over time and will most likely become a greater B if we follow patterns and become more stagnant.

Lets just use young America doing her Industrial Revolutions. Lifted the standard of living beyond anything the world had ever seen. Pure capitalism. Very low taxes, small government.

You have to create the environment for people to produce. You have to create the right mechanisms for prosperity. The benefits of freedom are absolutely clear especially in economics.

If A and B started there countries at the same time A would become much more prosperous than B at a much quicker rate if B became prosperous at all because A would have more capital formation dispersed over the land where B has a lot of eggs in one basket. Central planning in respect to a banking sector, and all the sectors is impossible because there is an infinite amount of knowledge in society. Central planning of a few individuals cannot harness that infinite knowledge. A free-market will regulate itself for the most part (except for environmental regulations) due to loss and gains. No one wants to lose money.

Creativity is also my biggest reason for supporting the free-market, small government system because there are greater odds better on the infinite knowledge compared to the central planning.

Again I should use the example of my way (A) to B in respect to Health Care. In A you could walk down the street in New York city and find an all high-tech health care shop. That is what the man behind the counter specializes in and walk down another street that sold marijuana and other herbs. You can have all herbal stores, all high tech, you can have different versions of high tech and herbal because there is seemingly an infinite number on different styles of health care corporations. My citizens, especially in a big country would have access to more supply of health care than yours with more options.

Imagine just walking into a health care shop like in type A with a list of prices of all the procedures. “You need a lung?” Then your just in and out depending on the severity of the procedure. You damn near need not even make an appointment that is how much the system could flourish.  It creates a more creative land and that is why everyone immigrated to America when it was a type A. Imagine with all the technology that we have how nice of a setting type A would be.

If we take America for example right now it is trying to transition to essentially a majority of all B and that is why America is economically declining. B required more regulation which when conducted wrong did not attain the infinite knowledge of society and regulated poorly not allowing businesses the liberty to pursue profit. The programs from B required spending that the government had to tax the people, borrowed money, and printed dollars. This then created the debt, the high taxes, and inflation from printing.

A>B
-A is a land of more freedom, imagination, economic success, production, ability to reach a higher standard of living. People want to live in A when A is allowed to reach its full potential without interference from B.
-Because A is a land of more imagination A because it harnesses the infinite knowledge of the free-market it in turn creates a better quality culture and a better setting that is more aesthetically pleasing of living space whether in a city or a town.

A is the only known model of governing that has created the highest standard of success in all of human history. B has never created more success than a pure A and never will.

Well, Daniel, that’s your version of the gospel. I don’t buy it and neither do many others. We must agree to disagree.

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Posted: 30 July 2012 12:53 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 35 ]
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By the way, Daniel, there’s a very good book I think that would benefit you greatly . It’s an oldie but a goldie. It’s called:

Why Economists Disagree: The Political Economy of Economics by Cole, C., Cameron J. and Edwards C, Longman, 1983. I used it in my undergraduate days and it gave me a broarder view into the nature of value and alerted me to the fact that all theories of economics can be defended on entirely rational grounds if one first accepts the underlying assumptions. It also helped me to understand that I should not believe verything I read no matter who wrote it.

If you get through that, another useful read is Capitalist World Development: A Critique of Radical Development Geography; Corbridge, S., Macmillan, 1986. Another golden oldie.

I recommend them both to you. Or are you already too busy writing your own text books on political economy?

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Posted: 30 July 2012 05:02 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 36 ]
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DanielMoore1991 - 29 July 2012 05:39 PM

Lets get some free-market healthcare going on. Forget this public health-care with high taxes.

I encourage you to go visit a privately run, for-profit nursing home sometime. Not one of the nice, upscale ones for the tiny minority who can afford thousands of dollars per month out of pocket, I’m talking the run-of-the-mill, dime-a-dozen, run-for-profit nursing homes which are operated by corporate ownership looking to increase profit margins and capitalize on the currently aging US population.

And by “visit” I mean exactly that, because I wouldn’t recommend you put any of your loved ones in any of those places if you can find a way not to.

Then get back to me about “free market healthcare.” Not saying there’s no merit in the idea of “market driven” health care, but you should probably learn a thing or two about what “health care” really is before going too much further down the road of ideological abstractions.

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Posted: 30 July 2012 06:00 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 37 ]
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DanielMoore1991 - 29 July 2012 10:51 PM

I am in no means praising the current state of America. I feel like you think that. Just want to clear that up. We have too big of a government in America and that is why we are in the bad position.

Imagine trying to implement socialism on a global scale, even one aspect like health care, it would never be done. But it can be achieved over time if one implements a free-market health care system.

Unregulated “free-market” systems are prone to corruption, cronyism, and do not promote fair competition across the board.

I second Rob’s suggestion that you study up on some economics from less partial sources before pronouncing judgement on systems that do not fit into an ephemeral notion of ‘free-marketism’.

We had free-markets in the past that were unregulated (even in the US), and historically they were not globally beneficial, and there are tons of specific examples of harm done.

There is no single ‘panacea’ solution to economics, it is a dynamic changing discipline, and the factors affecting and regulating it will also have to be dynamic if the system is to succeed in a beneficial way for the general population.

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Posted: 30 July 2012 06:28 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 38 ]
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DanielMoore1991 - 30 July 2012 12:21 AM

A self-regulates. No one wants to commit an action that loses money.

Making money, while good for the business and shareholders, is not necessarily good for the people or the consumer.  In an unregulated market, a company might opt to go with an inferior product with a greater profit margin.  They may also make business decisions in support of dividends for shareholders that do not support the greater benefit of everyone.  (Greater quantity of pollutants, Minimum Required structural integrity, Bid-Auctioning for sub-contractors - who then take further shortcuts to meet THEIR bottom line and protect their profits, ‘acceptable risk assessments’ that might not pass in a regulated market….and similar examples from history.)

There are other problems, like a simple, cheap affordable solution to a problem, compared to a model that shows ongoing, revenue generating treatment for problems - and how those factors influence a business interested in protecting it’s profitability and/or revenue streams.

DanielMoore1991 - 30 July 2012 12:21 AM

If we take America for example right now it is trying to transition to essentially a majority of all B and that is why America is economically declining.

America is declining because people are not consuming, and a great deal of the US economy is based on consumer churn.
Wallstreet messed up and messed around with people’s livelihoods.  People with a lot of personal wealth invested in homes whose street value dropped drastically, or who lost jobs when the auto-market sank, or who lost associated jobs in construction, building or other support industries now find themselves with less money to consume with, further softening consumer product based industries.

It has less to do with your hypothetical move to ‘b’ and more to do with people hanging onto their money, and doing less big-ticket conspicuous consumption.  This is not a happy occurrence in a consumer based industry, so now the corporations have to cut back, and there are more lay-offs and down-sizing to protect profit margins and share-holder equity.  This results in more people having less money to splash around. Thus even the more local businesses are seeing a decrease in revenue.  Now restaurants and stores and the local level are getting less business because people are tightening up.  This means more downsizing.  It’s a vicious cycle.  It has very little to do with over-regulation, and a lot to do with people being cautions about their money and credit - because they got spanked by the wall street shenanigans, or have family/friends/etc who were.

A “free market” can’t do anything about people’s confidence in a consumer market by itself.  People have to feel they won’t get screwed if they invest a pile of money in an investment like a house, or a car, or other large purchases.  This takes regulation.  People have to have jobs to be able to spend money in a consumer economy.  This means that corporations that downsize merely to protect profit share could actually be doing harm to the economy at the local level. 

DanielMoore1991 - 30 July 2012 12:21 AM

B required more regulation which when conducted wrong did not attain the infinite knowledge of society and regulated poorly not allowing businesses the liberty to pursue profit. 

Further, public health care does not increase costs in the US, but simply creates a budget that accounts for the use of previously unaccounted emergency medical care.  People without insurance were going to the hospital where “Care must legally be provided regardless of insurance” and then those costs were being transferred to the US Tax payer when the bill became due.  HMO’s protecting their profitability for shareholders were making good business decisions that ended up being bad personal care decisions for demographics of their clients.  In this way, they were not protecting their client, but protecting their profit and profitability - a practice that regulation (or public health care) would help eliminate.

‘Pre-existing Condition’ is a scapegoat used to protect profitability.


I think I too am going to have to agree to disagree. 
A dynamic adaptable economy with the right balance of regulation and innovation, IMHO, will do a better overall job of growing and protecting Jane & Joe Everyone from the ‘good business decisions’ that protect profit at their expense.

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Posted: 30 July 2012 06:45 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 39 ]
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JEFE: A dynamic adaptable economy with the right balance of regulation and innovation, IMHO, will do a better overall job of growing and protecting Jane & Joe Everyone from the ‘good business decisions’ that protect profit at their expense.

Right on Jefe. Imagine a world in which there was no regulation and companies could rob consumers blind and exploit workers till they dropped. A world in which there was no social security and no spending on infrastructure, education or health by government. What sort of economy and what sort of society and what sort of environmental disasters would that produce. This “big government” boogie man slogan that the right-wingers keep chanting is crap.The fundamentalist right has a recipe for disaster, for a moribund economy, continued widening of inequality and social upheaval.

Australia avoided the problems much of the world had with their banks because ours were and are highy regulated. No banks went under or had to be rescued here. And going into the recession (which was forestalled in Australia - we never had one) what America needed to do and what Austrlaia did as a precautionary measure was to increase spending to create jobs so that consumers had money to keep consuming. That breaks the downward spiral and once things pick up public spending can be cut back if necessary to pay down debt. However, once things pick up it becomes less necessay because with more people working tax reciepts increase.

The neo-cons just don’t get it. Don’t want to get it. They are wedded to an outdated ideology that produced the current debacle in America. And the people are blinded by the right and the noxious crap that is spread on its behalf by Faux Noos. If Romney and the religious and economic right-wing nutters get back in I shudder to think what will happen in America. I love America and I don’t want to see it go down the gurgler. But that is what I see happening if the sort of nonsense Daniel has been infected with again takes hold of government in America.

People here will no doubt say, as they have in the past, that I should mind my own business. The problem with that is that it is my business. In this globalised economy (which America did much to create) what America or China or any other major economy does effects everyone and is therefore everyone’s business. It is hard for Americans to see that past attitudes must change. Notions of American exceptionalism must be seen for what they are and instead of Americans expecting and demanding to be the world’s number one citizens they are going to have to be content to be good global citizens. America can compete with the best of them if it gets itself out of the ideological paralysis it seems to be stuck in and it can continue to be a powerhouse of innovation and growth. But not in the old way. The world is too small. Things must change for us all.

[ Edited: 30 July 2012 07:18 AM by Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (Rob) ]
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Posted: 30 July 2012 07:13 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 40 ]
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bigredfutbol - 30 July 2012 05:02 AM
DanielMoore1991 - 29 July 2012 05:39 PM

Lets get some free-market healthcare going on. Forget this public health-care with high taxes.

I encourage you to go visit a privately run, for-profit nursing home sometime. Not one of the nice, upscale ones for the tiny minority who can afford thousands of dollars per month out of pocket, I’m talking the run-of-the-mill, dime-a-dozen, run-for-profit nursing homes which are operated by corporate ownership looking to increase profit margins and capitalize on the currently aging US population.

And by “visit” I mean exactly that, because I wouldn’t recommend you put any of your loved ones in any of those places if you can find a way not to.

Then get back to me about “free market healthcare.” Not saying there’s no merit in the idea of “market driven” health care, but you should probably learn a thing or two about what “health care” really is before going too much further down the road of ideological abstractions.

Daniel is young and idealistic.  He is proposing solutions based on idealisms rather than understanding.  As he gets older and more mature he may come around to a more nuanced understanding of things.

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Posted: 30 July 2012 07:19 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 41 ]
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burt - 30 July 2012 07:13 AM
bigredfutbol - 30 July 2012 05:02 AM
DanielMoore1991 - 29 July 2012 05:39 PM

Lets get some free-market healthcare going on. Forget this public health-care with high taxes.

I encourage you to go visit a privately run, for-profit nursing home sometime. Not one of the nice, upscale ones for the tiny minority who can afford thousands of dollars per month out of pocket, I’m talking the run-of-the-mill, dime-a-dozen, run-for-profit nursing homes which are operated by corporate ownership looking to increase profit margins and capitalize on the currently aging US population.

And by “visit” I mean exactly that, because I wouldn’t recommend you put any of your loved ones in any of those places if you can find a way not to.

Then get back to me about “free market healthcare.” Not saying there’s no merit in the idea of “market driven” health care, but you should probably learn a thing or two about what “health care” really is before going too much further down the road of ideological abstractions.

Daniel is young and idealistic.  He is proposing solutions based on idealisms rather than understanding.  As he gets older and more mature he may come around to a more nuanced understanding of things.

That is true, Burt. And that is why I recommended some readting to him and why I have been kinder and more patient with him than I otherwise might have been.

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Posted: 30 July 2012 07:20 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 42 ]
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Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (Rob) - 30 July 2012 06:45 AM

JEFE: A dynamic adaptable economy with the right balance of regulation and innovation, IMHO, will do a better overall job of growing and protecting Jane & Joe Everyone from the ‘good business decisions’ that protect profit at their expense.

Right on Jefe. Imagine a world in which there was no regulation and companies could rob consumers blind and exploit workers till they dropped. A world in which there was no social security and no spending on infrastructure, education or health by government. What sort of economy and what sort of society and what sort of environmental disasters would that produce. This “big government” boogie man slogan that the right-wingers keep chanting is crap.The fundamentalist right has a recipe for disaster, for a moribund economy, continued widening of inequality and social upheaval.

Australia avoided the problems much of the world had with their banks because ours were and are highy regulated. No banks went under or had to be rescued here. And going into the recession (which was forestalled in Australia - we never had one) what America needed to do and what Austrlaia did as a precautionary measure was to increase spending to create jobs so that consumers had money to keep consuming. That breaks the downward spiral and once things pick up public spending can be cut back if necessary to pay down debt. However, once things pick up it becomes less necessay because with more people working tax reciepts increase.

The neo-cons just don’t get it. Don’t want to get it. They are wedded to an outdated ideology that produced the current debacle in America. And the people are blinded by the right and the noxious crap that is spread on its behalf by Faux Noos. If Romney and the religious and economic right-wing nutters get back in I shudder to think what will happen in America. I love America and I don’t want to see it go down the gurgler.

Right on, the real problem is ideology - on both sides, but the neo-cons are by far the worst.  Hardly anybody bothers to ask what a sensible solution would look like, it’s always some sort of unfounded belief about how things “ought” to be rather than about “how they are and what can be done to produce actual improvement.”

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Posted: 30 July 2012 07:20 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 43 ]
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Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (Rob) - 30 July 2012 06:45 AM

Australia avoided the problems much of the world had with their banks because ours were and are highy regulated. No banks went under or had to be rescued here. And going into the recession (which was forestalled in Australia - we never had one) what America needed to do and what Austrlaia did as a precautionary measure was to increase spending to create jobs so that consumers had money to keep consuming. That breaks the downward spiral and once things pick up public spending can be cut back if necessary to pay down debt. However, once things pick up it becomes less necessay because with more people working tax reciepts increase.

Um, that is what America did, Rob. Rebates and tax breaks, lower interest rates etc to put more money in consumers pockets to spend and consume. Problem is you can’t really spend your way out of debt.

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Posted: 30 July 2012 07:48 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 44 ]
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GAD - 30 July 2012 07:20 AM
Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (Rob) - 30 July 2012 06:45 AM

Australia avoided the problems much of the world had with their banks because ours were and are highy regulated. No banks went under or had to be rescued here. And going into the recession (which was forestalled in Australia - we never had one) what America needed to do and what Austrlaia did as a precautionary measure was to increase spending to create jobs so that consumers had money to keep consuming. That breaks the downward spiral and once things pick up public spending can be cut back if necessary to pay down debt. However, once things pick up it becomes less necessay because with more people working tax reciepts increase.

Um, that is what America did, Rob. Rebates and tax breaks, lower interest rates etc to put more money in consumers pockets to spend and consume. Problem is you can’t really spend your way out of debt.

GAD, the spending (mainly on unnecessary wars), the deregulation and the damage were done under Bush. Then the government went rescuing banks with public money that should have been spent on public works, education, health etc. Spending that would have yeilded great returns in the medium to long term. It is almost too late now. But not quite. It’s going to be harder to get the economie going again but a turn to the right won’t do it. It will make things worse.

I know you won’t agree with me for ideological reasons but that’s the way I see it.

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Posted: 30 July 2012 08:14 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 45 ]
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*wrong thread*

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