If the not the US then where?

[cj001f]

Hey CBS, maybe you should try checking out these countries before you makes this statement. Think about it; Dru has a job doesn't he?

Ain't the government paying for your schooling Harpell?

[scott_harpell]

Hey CBS, maybe you should try checking out these countries before you makes this statement. Think about it; Dru has a job doesn't he?

Ain't the government paying for your schooling Harpell?

 

Are you fucking serious?

[Norman_Clyde]

Every dollar that is taken from me and spent on my behalf is a reduction of my freedom. Somebody else is deciding how my money will be spent. It is non-negotiable.

 

It is non-negotiable only if you do not have representative government, i.e. taxation without representation. Here in Washington you can choose to support people like Tim Eyman who will put an anti-tax referendum on the ballot for you. In fact, the "representation" in Washington is so good that the voters, in their infinite wisdom, can approve a referendum cutting taxes at the same time that they clamor for more government services.

 

Libertarian, free market fundamentalists love to go on about how taxes limit their freedom. The argument suggests the potential existence of a tax-free paradise where the free market creates a blissful world of absolute liberty where anyone willing to work for a living can have anything they want. But it's not so hard to see how unfettered free markets lead to big corporations getting bigger, squeezing small business out, consolidating their holdings, until the average person's economic life is controlled less by the government than by a host of huge corporate entities. A few percentage point changes in tax rates may affect lives less than the gutting of a small business community by warehouse retail. The Wal-Martization of the USA, arguably a result of less government, has changed the face of America. We used to be composed of small communities of independent businesses, tied together by mutual economic cooperation and dependence. No more. It is getting harder every day, and may soon be impossible, for any American to make an independent living, i.e. not as either an employee of a huge corporation or having a huge corporation as a customer. How about freedom from the massive consumer advertising onslaught that assaults us every day? This is what the "freedom" of the glorious free market has brought us: freedom to chase and possess anything and everything that can be bought and sold. Intangible things that have no price vanish from this equation, from public discussion, and eventually become invisible. Freedom isn't just about taxation, just as money isn't everything.

[chelle]

Take up surfing and move to Cosat Rica.

 

New Zealand is awesome but you better have a large bank account before you go, or you might not make enough money to ever come back.

 

The Netherlands is nice from what I hear, but ChrisT...the assisted suicide angle may make them sound progressive but... Look into it a little deeper and you'll find out that many doctors have been accused of euthenasia. That is just wrong.

 

For me, Mendoza Argentina. It is the equivalent of Napa valley surrounding a decent sized city. Nice people, good food, great wine. Culture wise I think I'd prefer Argentina to Chile. To illustrate the differences the two countries are often compared to Italy and Germany.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

These statements that are made over and over again are seldom supported by facts:

 

That government agencies are not subject to auditing.

That federal employees are immune from firing for poor performance.

That government workers are less efficient than private sector workers.

 

"seldom supported by facts". What a bunch of BS. Go the DOL if you want some hard proof. No private company would ever survive with that level of shitty customer service and slow turnaround. Ever been on jury duty? Same thing. The INS? Ditto. Government workers punch in at 9, and out at 5. They take their 1 hr lunch and two 15 minute breaks. Fly under the radar, don't get noticed, don't rock any boats, do the minimum. I've SEEN it man.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

[it is non-negotiable only if you do not have representative government, i.e. taxation without representation.

 

You've heard of "sticky wages" for employees during a recession? Well government spending is even worse. It never goes down, ever.

 

Here in Washington you can choose to support people like Tim Eyman who will put an anti-tax referendum on the ballot for you.

 

I still pay like $120 for my car thanks to some #*( transit fee. What happend to the $30 straight fee...

 

And what about the Mariner's stadium? The voters said NO, and the government did it anyway. Funny how we can never fix our #* transit system, but have a couple of $100 million for a sports arena (esp. when the old one was still not even paid for).

 

Libertarian, free market fundamentalists love to go on about how taxes limit their freedom. The argument suggests the potential existence of a tax-free paradise where the free market creates a blissful world of absolute liberty where anyone willing to work for a living can have anything they want.

 

I'd be happy with cut-backs on the order of 25-30%. I'd also like to grandfather out social security. I'm not a beilever of the pure libertarian utopia.

[chucK]

Hey Norman Clyde,

You're a doctor. How do you feel about socialized medicine?

 

I think this is one area where a government takeover would help. There is currently huge waste in terms of how the providers, consumers, insurers and the government interact. Not that the govt. doing all this stuff on it's own would do it perfectly, but I think they couldn't screw it up more and would end up providing much better care to the poor and the middle class.

 

One downside I see is that once the state is paying for healthcare, there is an incentive to legislate risk-taking behaviors.

Edited November 18, 2004 by chucK

[JayB]

Erecting regulations to prevent consumers from obtaining the goods they need from the least expensive vendor is hardly a policy that represents the interests of the people that the arguments for greater regulation of commerce are supposedly intended to benefit.

 

What you actually end up doing is creating a local set of tarriffs that protect business owners and force local consumers - a great many of whom are lower income in rural areas - to pay a higher price for the things that they need. This more or less amounts to a direct tax on the poor, which suppresses commerce when they are deprived of the resources that they could elect to spend on other wants or needs, the gratification of which would provide business for other local contractors, businesses, etc.

 

The notion that Walmart destroys local economies is an economic fallacy cherished by the same sort of people who believe that forcing employers to pay a "living wage" will actually reduce poverty, when an incontestable body of emperical data and theory have proven otherwise for decades. By artifically increasing wages beyond the range that the market will support you inflate away any increase in purchasing power that folks on the low end gain from mandatory wage increases, and increase unemployment directly by inducing layoffs and suppressing hiring - all of which make things materially worse for those on the low end of the earnings scale.

[chucK]

Every dollar that is taken from me and spent on my behalf is a reduction of my freedom. Somebody else is deciding how my money will be spent. It is non-negotiable. You said you pay for services anyway that are provided through taxes in countries like Sweden and Norway, but I would argue that it is better to have choice. With choice you might spend less on your retirement for one year, and more the next, or choose higher deductables on insurance, or whatever. With government programs, you have no choices, it is a fixed cost that you shell out and never see again. I also consider that government is wasteful because there is little accountability and auditing. Once government services are funded, it is difficult to cut costs. On the contrary costs rise, and overhead is built in - overhead and waste, that would never cut it long term in the private sector.

 

Kas,

The market works because it weeds out slackers by letting them die. If you want to let market forces work for social security, for example, you are going to have to accept watching a good percentage of our elderly population to die early due to starvation and exposure.

 

Many people will not save enough for retirement. No amounts of threats or advertising are going to change that. Plus, many people who are carefully saving for retirement will lose their shirts in the stock market (think former Enron employees) and be out on the street.

 

Are you willing to condemn a good percentage of our elderly population to an early death? I hope you're not saying that they can go on welfare instead!

[catbirdseat]

Erecting regulations to prevent consumers from obtaining the goods they need from the least expensive vendor is hardly a policy that represents the interests of the people that the arguments for greater regulation of commerce are supposedly intended to benefit.

 

What you actually end up doing is creating a local set of tarriffs that protect business owners and force local consumers - a great many of whom are lower income in rural areas - to pay a higher price for the things that they need. This more or less amounts to a direct tax on the poor, which suppresses commerce when they are deprived of the resources that they could elect to spend on other wants or needs, the gratification of which would provide business for other local contractors, businesses, etc.

 

The notion that Walmart destroys local economies is an economic fallacy cherished by the same sort of people who believe that forcing employers to pay a "living wage" will actually reduce poverty, when an incontestable body of emperical data and theory have proven otherwise for decades. By artifically increasing wages beyond the range that the market will support you inflate away any increase in purchasing power that folks on the low end gain from mandatory wage increases, and increase unemployment directly by inducing layoffs and suppressing hiring - all of which make things materially worse for those on the low end of the earnings scale.

Your micro economic analysis is accurate, but your macro economic analysis is flawed. What do we mean by "destroy"? Use whatever term you like, but Walmart has altered the nature of the local economy and manufacturing in the US. It has changed the types of jobs that Americans hold. It has changed the distribution of wealth between individuals. There are winners and there most decidedly are losers.

[Norman_Clyde]

ChucK,

Regarding socialized medicine/single payer, I support the idea in principle, though I think it's currently a political impossibility. I suspect that a few years of a national health program would improve the USA's health statistics to where we might approach other developed countries like Canada (you know, the ones that spend less on health care than we do). A national health program would also mean that healthy climbers with, let's say, a sore knee or shoulder would not be able to get an MRI after only a week's wait. But if any of you have a problem like this and are uninsured, you're out of luck with the current system anyway. At least with national health insurance, you'd get your MRI within 6 months or so.

 

The two main single payer gurus are Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein, who work out of Boston (Booga! Booga! Liberal Taxachusetts!). One of the most interesting stats they put forward is that a full 70 per cent of US health care expenditures are currently shouldered by the federal government, between Medicare, Medicaid, and subsidies to health insurers. Taxes already pay for most of health care, but we also get the massive inefficiencies due to insurers devoting masses of employees to denying/reducing charges by physicians and hospitals.

 

I work part time at the VA hospital in Tacoma, probably as close as we have to fully socialized medicine in the USA today. There I get to see the good side (integrated medical record, nothing falls through the cracks, people really do get their needs taken care of) and the bad side (long waits for appointments and consults with specialists, and I'd say that federal employees in health care are indeed less motivated and work less hard than those I know in the private sector-- though this is a gross generalization).

 

JayB, I'm not an economist, but I stand by my previous assertion that Wal-Mart and other huge warehouse retailers suck the life out of communities. They are all about externalizing costs (like, for example, health insurance) onto the local community, while all profits return to corporate headquarters. This is in marked contrast to locally owned businesses, where profits are not siphoned away and there is more hope of a community being at least partly self-sustaining. Are you saying that thousands of people with marginal buying power were at the brink of starvation until they suddenly became able to buy cheaper groceries at Wal-Mart? Don't you think there might be other effects on employment rates, local wages, etc. that might not be all good?

Edited November 18, 2004 by Norman_Clyde

[Dru]

Hey Scott

I dont work for the government

[cj001f]

I find "personal freedom" and healthcare today amusing. For those with employer provided healthcare, the employers pick the service provider and pay a majority of the cost as part of our compensation package. That portion is part of your compensation whether you choose to obtain health insurance through your employer or not. I've never heard anyone succesfully ask for a 10% raise because they've sought insurance on their own. It's a tax - I pay for it whether I use it or not.

[ChrisT]

Dru I thought you were employed by cc.com

[willstrickland]

Jay, are you familiar with the Wal-Mart "triangle strategy"?

 

This is a tactic where Wal-Mart will throw up their big-box stores in rural areas in a somewhat triangular layout. Say, for example, one in Yakima, one in Ellensburg, and one in Vantage. After the economic fallout has occured (i.e. local small business and smaller direct Wal-mart competitors going under), they build a "super wal-mart" somewhere in the triangle and close the other three. Having crushed the local competitors, they now have consolidated their operations into one location, lowering their fixed costs substantially. The problem is, now the locals have no other options and have to spend more in transportation costs just to get to the store...whether to work there or shop there.

 

Now you can say..well, once they do this the market is susceptible to a new local business opening to compete and use the so-called transportation cost arbitrage (poor descriptive choice I know, but I'm not a business major). And that is certainly true, but it misses the big picture.

 

This is a long-standing strategy of Wal-Mart, it just isn't quite as do-able in the western states because of the lack of population density and road networks. It has worked quite effectively east of the Mississippi.

[snoboy]

Don't forget that they put major clauses on the leases/sales of their now closed buildings making sure that nobody can use them to compete against them for ages after they shut down...

 

Free market my ass.

 

Oh yeah, what about the corporate welfare? Wal Mart workers on food stamps because they don't get paid enough to live? Whatever way you slice it, things are pretty f$%^ed.

 

I would like to move to Canada... oh wait.

[willstrickland]

While we're on health care, I thought this was interesting:

 

"The administration will also push hard for large savings accounts that could shelter thousands of dollars of deposits each year from taxation on investment gains, according to White House economic advisers who have been involved with the planning. And any tax reform, according to Treasury Department officials, would likely eliminate the alternative minimum tax, a parallel income tax designed to ensure that the rich pay income taxes but one that increasingly ensnares the middle class. To pay for those large tax cuts, the administration is looking at eliminating both the deduction for state and local taxes, and the business tax deduction for employer-sponsored health insurance. That would raise nearly $926 billion over five years, according to White House and congressional documents."

[KaskadskyjKozak]

The market works because it weeds out slackers by letting them die. If you want to let market forces work for social security, for example, you are going to have to accept watching a good percentage of our elderly population to die early due to starvation and exposure.

 

Are you willing to condemn a good percentage of our elderly population to an early death? I hope you're not saying that they can go on welfare instead!

 

1. I am talking about grandfathering social security - people over the age of say 60 would get 100% of their benefits, between 50 and 60 say 85%, and so on down to our 20 year olds who get nothing. The program would end, but not starve out those who are counting on it already.

 

2. Families need to take care of eachother. When an aging parent needs financial assistance, their relatives need to chip in.

 

3. Some people who do not have family who can (or will) help. It is our moral responsibility to help them - but this is appropriate through private charities, not wasteful government programs.

[chucK]

You can rationalize all you want about what would be nice to have, but you know there are going to be people who will die from lack of a safety net.

 

This is why I think the SS privatization idea that Bush wants to do is a bad idea. By letting people invest their SS in the stock market there will be losers. Some winners, some no diff, some losers. That's guaranteed. Those who lose are SOL if they don't have some other safety net. SS should be a safety net guaranteed so our society doesn't have to bail out those who gambled with their retirement and lost.

Edited November 18, 2004 by chucK

[KaskadskyjKozak]

You can rationalize all you want about what would be nice to have, but you know there are going to be people who will die from lack of a safety net.

 

This is why I think the SS privatization idea that Bush wants to do is a bad idea. By letting people invest their SS in the stock market there will be losers. Some winners, some no diff, some losers. That's guaranteed. Those who lose are SOL if they don't have some other safety net. SS should be a safety net guaranteed so our society doesn't have to bail out those who gambled with their retirement and lost.

 

I don't want SS privatized, I want it eliminated forever. I am not counting on getting a single red cent from my contributions.

 

If someone "dies" then that is everyone's problem, and moral responsibility to prevent. People need to stop using the government as a surrogate for them.

 

This whole discussion is all just mental masturbation anyway; nothing will be changing for the better anytime soon. Time to have some

 

 

and forget about it.

 

Hasta!

[catbirdseat]

None of us has the foggiest notion of what this country was like before Social Security existed. But my father and my grandfather did and they told me about it. It was ugly. Old people out on farms starving to death when they could no longer work. Parents moving in with their children like beggars. Social security has allowed people to maintain their dignity in their old age. It was never intended as a "retirement account". It was meant to be a safety net.

[scott_harpell]

Parents moving in with their children like beggars.

 

This is the status quo in many other nations. It is not begging but merely taking care of your parents. It is simply what is done. It is not begging at all.

[catbirdseat]

So are you looking forward to caring for your parents? Are you looking forward to someday moving in with YOUR children, assuming you have any? It may be true that this is common in other countries, but given a choice, it is not what most people would want.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Parents moving in with their children like beggars.

 

This is the status quo in many other nations. It is not begging but merely taking care of your parents. It is simply what is done. It is not begging at all.

 

It used to be the status quo in the US as well (not just before SS existed). In today's America, people are too willing to abandon their parents because it's too "inconvenient" or "expensive" to do otherwise.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

So are you looking forward to caring for your parents? Are you looking forward to someday moving in with YOUR children, assuming you have any? It may be true that this is common in other countries, but given a choice, it is not what most people would want.

 

Considering what one's parents sacrifice in raising you, it doesn't seem too unreasonable to return the care, when the time comes. And your children will be watching what you do to grandma and grandpa (and learning...)