dalem

The idea, see, is that instead of quitting the game and taking your ball and flouncing off, you keep trying.

That's what elections are for - vote for the people and the policies that you favor, no leaving necessary.

-dale

Anon

So now you're telling us how to debate?

Just like a socialist.

Dude, please, eat broken glass and die.

barrowaj

Go easy on the kid Snipe, he's not a socialist anyway.

barrowaj

The thing is, if you asked people, they would prefer to be healthy, and not be obese. The environment that they are in just facilitates them making the wrong decisions to acheive those goals. Since obesity is a problem for both individuals and for healthcare in general, I think that we should try to do something about it rather than just sweep it under the carpet.

Lunatock

Give or take a thread in which Barrowaj accused both Tophatter and myself of being Columbine-type domestic terrorists. Just mentioning that it's possible for the leftists to behave that way, not that I want to tear his angel wings out or anything.

Shek

It doesn't matter what they prefer. If they can't translate their own desires into action, then they can enjoy the consequences of their own inaction.

__________________
"So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

Anon

A lot of fatbodies are proud of their bellies. "Fat Pride" i guess?

LOL, it's pretty sad, but a lot of guys brag about their accomplished beer bellies.

Praxus

I have a right to property. You have leaving me two choices. To stay and face your persecution, or to give up my property, and flee the country.

No, there isn't any coercion in that

The burden of proof is on he who asserts the positive. It is not on he who refutes what is popular.

Where is this "moral obligation" derived from?

Or we could fight against what is wrong.

Show me, how many innovations that Government funded research comes up with, as compared to Privately funded research. You think that everything good comes from the Government, when that assertion is arbitrary at best.

What happens if I don't want to pay those extra taxes to fund your social experiment? That's right, the Government comes, takes my property by force, and arrests me. If I resist this gross violation of my rights, through force, they will kill me.

Socialism is based upon violence.

barrowaj

I'm not advocating taking away anyone's property. It says in the constitution that it is not permissable to do so without just compensation.

Right, and so the burden of proof is on you to explain how "socialist" policies caused the great depression.

The fact that recovery from the depression coincided with the implementation of the New Deal is significant proof that it was a cause for the recovery. Its pretty common that the burden of proof is on the person who dissents from the norm.

From the same phrase in the declaration of independence that is the origin of your right to property, the three unalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The good that government funded research does is vast. If you really want proof, just go pick up a copy of Science, or Nature. Almost every project that produced those papers comes from government funded research. Just in the field of molecular and cellular biology there are things like sequencing genes, figuring out what they do, looking at regulation of cell cycling, cell responses to hormones, metabolism, and more. I could go on and on about the things that are discovered just in that narrow field. On the other hand, privately funded research doesn't usually focus on basic science projects because the economic benefit of said research may not be directly tangible. Basic science research often has no practical product in mind when it is being done. That doesn't mean that it isn't worthwhile though. Without basic science research in cholesterol metabolism, we could have never produced drugs like statins (cholesterol lowering drugs). Brown and Goldstein (the Nobel Prize winners in 1982) had no idea that their research would lead to such drugs in the future. But producing those drugs would never have been possible without the public knowledge about cholesterol metabolism. Drug companies would not have even thought of trying to make such drugs, because the knowledge of cholesterol metabolism would not have even existed.

Look, I'm sorry if you feel like the things I am advocating are a "social experiment," and I resent the fact that you feel I am trying to coerce anyone. We always have to pay for things that people vote for. For example, I don't like the fact that I have to pay for such an excessive military, but I do it anyway. I think being able to defend our interests is important, but I feel that the military has become something of a large beauracracy that has to justify its large expense in order to be self sustaining.

And capilalism is based on exploitation

dalem

The thing is, if you asked me, I would prefer to be nuts-deep in Salma Hayek.

Since when do preferences have anything to do with the details of reality?

-dale

Shek

Out of curiosity, what do you feel is the force structure and technology that we should be paying for? BTW, much of the DoD R&D effort spins off to private use for the benefit of society. For example, the internet that we are now using was an ARPA (now DARPA) project.

clegane

You say you have a right to property, but where do you get that right? The government. If there were no government, people wouldn't give a damn about
your rights and take your property anyway. Thus you give money to the government and indirectly to the people who have less to gain from not getting their property stolen than from being allowed to steal yours. You give up some so you don't have to give up all.

Each year, two million Americans go bankrupt trying to pay medical bills and most of them had medical insurance. Private insurance for those not obscenely rich is fast becoming not enough
Your right to not pay another 2 or three percent of your income is outweighed by their rights to not lose all their property.
Barrowaj's general plan works fine: more than what we have now, but less than what they have in Europe.


I've looked into the Great Depression. Its a bit complicated. On one hand, there was the gold standard, but on the other hand there was completely unregulated stock market speculation and Banking. Calvin Coolidge was president for the larger part of the 1920's and he was a very pro-business and laissez faire president. He was suceeded by Herbert Hoover, another pro-business man.

While the New Deal did not do as much as the WWII in ending the depression, it did increase the public's confidence in the economy especially in banking, which was essential for the economy to recover.



In "life, liberty, and property" notice that life comes before property.




Product innovations often come from privately funded research. The problem with privately funded research is its short term scope. The people who put up the money expect a return on their investments in the near future and are thus unlikely to sponsor long-term scientific endevours.
The scientific base upon which product innovations are built are often funded by either the Government or Universities. The biggest example is the Manhattan Project.


Everybody has to pay taxes and the government doesn't always do what everybody likes.
If you don't want to pay the extra taxes, you should try and keep the taxes from being passed in the first place. The possbility of punishment for breaking a law is not a valid arguement against passing the law.

If you truly believe that helping indigents in the country with basic health care is unjust, then do as Martin Luther King did, refuse to obey the law peacefully, and then accept the lawful punishment.

__________________
"Its true, we add insult to injury, but... you add the injury"
-Jon Stewart to Bill O'Reilly

Shek

http://www.pnhp.org/bankruptcy/Illne...Bankruptcy.pdf

Here's the actual study. I looked it over and the statistical methodology looks sound. However, what was interesting was that the mean out of pocket medical expenses in the year prior to bankruptcy was around $3.5K, with total out of pocket medical expenses since the beginning of the medical condition being over $11K.

That doesn't seem like that much money to me to have saved up for a rainy day, and so for me, a weakness of this study is the failure to control for other factors such as savings accumulated, disability coverage, mean income prior to the medical condition that caused the medical bankruptcy, etc. Without this context, I don't think you can make sound policy recommendations or isolate the true effects of the medical costs.

Anon

Bzzzzzzt.

All rights are inalienable- bestowed by the creator, this is a truth we hold to be self-evident.

Sound familiar?


Molon Labe...

troung

Run a right light in a school zone and they will force you to pull your car over... fight back and they will kill you...