Wolverine, You guys are sound wrapped up with communism that you can't see that a simple gesture of helping your fellow human is a good thing without thinking it is the fall of democracy.

You are going to be taxed for every dollar you earn then some, So spare that dollar for some kid in Africa to receive free healthcare and give it to your neighbour

If you really want to make this an American vs England thing then please start a new thread, lets see how much the colonialists have learnt in 200 years!

No offence to anybody else, except wolverine :)

Excuse me?

I listed 10 concrete, REAL steps to lower the cost of health care and make more accessible to those who cannot afford it.

Which of those was "what if"? Which of them was not clear cut?

In fact, the first one I listed, making all medical care and medical insurance expenses pre-tax, would cause an immediate decrease in costs to the consumer of 15-30% as soon as it is implemented.

You don't consider that a concrete step toward making health care more affordable and more accessible?

Elliot



Obviously I don't or I wouldn't have responded in the fashion I did.

Wolverine, You guys are sound wrapped up with communism that you can't see that a simple gesture of helping your fellow human is a good thing without thinking it is the fall of democracy.



You have finally got to the nub of the debate on health care in the US; paranoia about communism.

The right in the US equates socialism as being communism and therefore un-american as if being un-american is necessarily a bad thing. These guys are more brainwashed than the Russian communists used to be.

Let's face it the US doesn't spend many dollars for a kid in Africa to have health care because they believe that kid should pay its own way the same way they expect their own people to pay their own way. The Darwinian anthem of survival of the fittest is sung in the US every day and being fit equates to having money. Even if all the money they spend on foreign aid were diverted to paying for health care in the US it would make no difference at all, because it is the system and the thinking behind the system that needs reform and it starts with the premise that the rights they so fervently espouse include a right to health care

Hello again, clete:

**greenie**

excon

Well said Paraclete!! See the Commonwealth isn't dead :)

Anyway, just read The Senete Committee has voted in favour of the Health reform

Can anybody here explain how a law becomes a law in America - short and brief please :) In otherwords, what happens now after the Senete Committee

Wolverine, You guys are sound wrapped up with communism that you can't see that a simple gesture of helping your fellow human is a good thing without thinking it is the fall of democracy.

You are going to be taxed for every dollar you earn then some, So spare that dollar for some kid in Africa to receive free healthcare and give it to your neighbour

If you really want to make this an American vs England thing then please start a new thread, lets see how much the colonialists have learnt in 200 years!

No offence to anybody else, except wolverine :)

To repeat Tom's question, where is the benevolence in being FORCED to give charity?

Or to put it another way...

There is the story of the Conservative and the Liberal who were walking together when they passed a homeless person on the street. The Conservative reached into his wallet and handed the homeless person a $5 bill. The Liberal was very impressed with this show of kindness and resolved to be charitable as well.

They continued to walk along the same road when they passed another homeless person. Immediately the Liberal reached into the pocket of the Conservative, grabbed the Conservative's wallet, pulled out a $100 bill and handed it to the homeless person.

That's the difference between YOUR gesture of "kindness" and the ones WE undertake. Ours are by choice based on what wish to contribute, while yours are mandatory and way too expensive. And not particularly charitable when you are doing it with other people's money.

And yet, despite our belief that the government has no place in giving charity FOR us, we STILL give more charity than you do... even with your government chipping in your money for you. By a factor of more than 2:1.

Ain't that something... we "greedy" Americans, who are "too stuck" on "avoiding communism" because we are "too individualistic" are more charitable in the real world than you more liberal, open-minded, even-handed Brits. Or the French. Or the Canadians. Or pretty much anyone else on Earth.

See, it isn't a USA vs. UK thing. It's a capitalism vs. socialism thing. Yours is a socialist country in all but name. (So is France and most of the rest of the European world. Canada too.) And yet despite that socialist attitude, you guys end up LESS charitable than us "greedy capitalists" by an order of magnitude. And then you claim that we should be even MORE charitable by having the government FORCE it on us. Nice of you to be so charitable with OUR money.

But we ain't buying what you are selling.

Well... excon is, but then he's excon.

Elliot

Can anybody here explain how a law becomes a law in America - short and brief please :) In otherwords, what happens now after the Senete CommitteeHello again, p:

I'll make it as short as I know how. There will be a conference in the senate to reconcile the two bills. The other one already passed its committee. Then they'll send the reconciled bill over to the house where they have 3 or 4 bills of their own. They'll be reconciled down to one, and then it's back to the senate for a final reconciliation. Then it'll be sent to the president.

excon

Funny isn't it... the people who seem to agree with Phlanx (from the UK) are NK (Canadian), Paraclete (Australian) and excon (from whatever planet he's from).

I don't see very many American's joining up with phlanx's point of view. Again, with the exception of excon.

The people who agree with his point of view seem to be the people who already LIVE under socialist systems.

Wonder why that is...

Elliot

You realize that Canada and the US are so incredibly similar - that must mean that you are already socialist - welcome!

Firstly Excon - that's brief and just right - thanks mate

Secondly, Wolverine, you are calling our country Solcialist, WOW, need a history book there I think

WWII broke us, and it took our entire Empire, to hold back Hitler before someone else decided to bring in some help, since then we have been rebuilding our country, to where we share the table on every global issue, not bad for a country that has a land mass of an ant in comarison

While Germany, France, and Japan too name a few were being set up and rebuilt after WWII, it was the victors who had to do it themselves

What England has been great at doing is setting up trade routes, so when we give to charity it is to teach a man to fish, not just give him a fish and ask if he is grateful

Socialist are we? We are the grandfathers of trade pal!

France and germany though - hell yeah there socialist up to the eyeballs!

You realize that Canada and the US are so incredibly similar - that must mean that you are already socialist - welcome!

Well, under Obama we're getting there. But there is still One HUGE difference... we don't have socialized medicine. We haven't nationalized that particular 20% of our economy. And we're working on getting the auto manufacturers out of the hands of the government, and the banks, investment houses and insurance companies too.

The biggest similarity between us is language. Unfortunately under Obama the similarities are becoming more and greater.

Elliot

See, it isn't a USA vs. UK thing. It's a capitalism vs. socialism thing. Hello again, Elliot:

No it isn't. It's a which socialist program you CHOOSE not to like. You're certainly happy with our socialistic fire department, police department, military and highway departments. It's fine with you that we, together, socialistically own and control our water and electricity. We combine together in a SOCIAL contract to have the city remove or trash and clean our streets.

So, it's not the "ism" thing you would have us believe. It's how you Pick which part of government to fawn over. Because as has been established, you ARE a lover of government services.

excon

Funny isn't it... the people who seem to agree with Phlanx (from the UK) are NK (Canadian), Paraclete (Australian) and excon (from whatever planet he's from).

I don't see very many American's joining up with phlanx's point of view. Again, with the exception of excon.

The people who agree with his point of view seem to be the people who already LIVE under socialist systems.

Wonder why that is...

Elliot

Because Elliot some of us enjoy the benefits of such a system particularly in health care where the worry of how we are going to meet the bills is taken away for the average person and placed on a government that actually does have the welfare of its citizens in mind and I speak for myself but yes we do LIVE and LIVE very well. It has taken a long time to get here but my standard of living is very good and I can afford all that I need and my society has less violence and no need of a gun toting populace to have security

The biggest similarity between us is language.
You don't travel much do you? There's a whole world outside of New Jersey, you should get out and visit it, you might learn something instead of being wrapped up in your bitterness and depression.

Firstly Excon - thats brief and just right - thanks mate

Secondly, Wolverine, you are calling our country Solcialist, WOW, need a history book there I think

WWII broke us, and it took our entire Empire, to hold back Hitler before someone else decided to bring in some help, since then we have been rebuilding our country, to where we share the table on every global issue, not bad for a country that has a land mass of an ant in comarison

While Germany, France, and Japan too name a few were being set up and rebuilt after WWII, it was the victors who had to do it themselves

What England has been great at doing is setting up trade routes, so when we give to charity it is to teach a man to fish, not just give him a fish and ask if he is grateful

Socialist are we? We are the grandfathers of trade pal!

France and germany though - hell yeah there socialist upto the eyeballs!

History lesson huh?

Remember the Great Depression? We were trying to rebuild our country before we ever got involved in WWII. And we did it without resorting to socialism. Actually we did it DESPITE FDR's attempts at socialism in the New Deal. The New Deal was a complete failure, and ended up drawing the Great Depression out for an additional 10 years more than it had to exist. So you Brits decided to copy FDR's failed model for yourselves after the War. And it has served you not at all well. YOU guys, by all rights, should have been the Superpower that we became, at least economically. You were more established, had the financial systems in place, etc. But it was us that became the superpower. Why do you think that is?

As for being the "grandfathers of trade"... first of all, you weren't. That would be the Jews of the Middle Ages... my people, as a matter of fact. WE were the merchants and money lenders. We propped up your economies when you needed capital and liquidity that you really didn't have. Because WE had developed the banking system that you wouldn't understand for generations to come.

Second of all, "trade" doesn't mean "capitalist". There was plenty of trade going on in feudal societies. Trade PREDATED capitalism. So yeah, you might have been good a trade, but you weren't the capitalists you think you were. Capitalism, REAL capitalism began with the industrial revolution, and the move AWAY from an agrarian society. It began with the Cotton Gin, invented by Eli Whitney in the good ol' USA. WE invented capitalism.

So if you want to give a history lesson, especially one about ECONOMIC history, you're going to have to bone up a bit.

Oh, did I tell you my degree is in economics and I have been in finance for over 15 years professionally? As an analyst, moreover. You are free to try to top me in economics and finance, but others here have tried. Only excon, who is a major glutton for punishment keeps coming back for more. He and I have been going at it for over 10 years now. But feel free, if you feel up to it.

Elliot

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried. Winston Chrchill

Basically Wolverine, nobody here is arguing whether we are communist or socialist, rather what we expect from our governments and ultimatly from our fellow man

It is such a shame you cannot see the benefits from providing help to those that are poor, needy and tired, whatever happened to the ideology of what America has been founded on?

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried. Winston Chrchill

Basically Wolverine, nobody here is arguing whether we are communist or socialist, rather what we expect from our governments and ultimatly from our fellow man

It is such a shame you cannot see the benefits from providing help to those that are poor, needy and tired, whatever happened to the ideology of what America has been founded on?

Feed a man a fish and he will live for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he will live for years to come.

You see the benefits of having your government give a man a fish. I see the benefits to teaching him to fish for himself.

You want to give people health care. I want to give them the ability to get it for themselves.

You see benefit in GIVING a man what you see as his due. I see greater benefit in giving him the tools to go get it himself.

It must be all that rugged individualism.

Elliot

Industrial Revolution - let me think mmmmm, that would be us again, with the manufacture of steel, first done in a place called Irongorge Shropshire, - 20 miles down the road from me

The shipping lanes, longitude, latitude, hell even timekeeping is ours, GMT and The military Zulu Time

At our height we ruled over 2/3 of the map, traded with every country, and when they didn't want to trade we went to war and won

The empire put into place a network of communication that emcompassed the world

As regards banking systems, yes it was the Jews who came up with the basic idea, but never for one minute think we didn't have our own money, If we ever needed some cash, we would just send out two ships, a privateer and a merchant, one to nick the gold, the other to set up a trade route so we could bu the goods with the stolen gold :)

I will certainly bow to your knowledge of Economics to some degree, but please don't try me on History that is outside of your neighbourhood, the world is a bit bigger than a few blocks

You see benefit in GIVING a man what you see as his due. I see greater benefit in giving him the tools to go get it himself.

14% of americans can't read and write - some tools you are providing

14 Percent of U.S. Adults Can't Read | LiveScience (http://www.livescience.com/culture/090110-illiterate-adults.html)

History lesson huh?

Remember the Great Depression? We were trying to rebuild our country before we ever got involved in WWII. And we did it without resorting to socialism. Actually we did it DESPITE FDR's attempts at socialism in the New Deal. The New Deal was a complete failure, and ended up drawing the Great Depression out for an additional 10 years more than it had to exist. So you Brits decided to copy FDR's failed model for yourselves after the War. And it has served you not at all well. YOU guys, by all rights, should have been the Superpower that we became, at least economically. You were more established, had the financial systems in place, etc. But it was us that became the superpower. Why do you think that is?

As for being the "grandfathers of trade"... first of all, you weren't. That would be the Jews of the Middle Ages... my people, as a matter of fact. WE were the merchants and money lenders. We propped up your economies when you needed capital and liquidity that you really didn't have. Because WE had developed the banking system that you wouldn't understand for generations to come.

Second of all, "trade" doesn't mean "capitalist". There was plenty of trade going on in feudal societies. Trade PREDATED capitalism. So yeah, you might have been good a trade, but you weren't the capitalists you think you were. Capitalism, REAL capitalism began with the industrial revolution, and the move AWAY from an agrarian society. It began with the Cotton Gin, invented by Eli Whitney in the good ol' USA. WE invented capitalism.

So if you want to give a history lesson, especially one about ECONOMIC history, you're going to have to bone up a bit.

Oh, did I tell you my degree is in economics and I have been in finance for over 15 years professionally? As an analyst, moreover. You are free to try to top me in economics and finance, but others here have tried. Only excon, who is a major glutton for punishment keeps coming back for more. He and I have been going at it for over 10 years now. But feel free, if you feel up to it.

Elliot


Ah we have dragged out the great depression as an excuse for doing nothing. Self Inflicted injury. Just like our current great financial crisis you (US) caused the great depression with your largess and over reliance on the "market". If you are an economist you should have learned the lessons, not sat on your pedistal and glowered down at the lesser mortals. But then that's what economists do rather than thinking up original solutions to the problems they create. You didn't invent capitalism but you certainly perverted it

You have finally got to the nub of the debate on health care in the US; paranoia about communism.

Geez I'm so glad you guys know so much about us. I really haven't seen any paranoia about communism lately. On the other hand, Elliot, tom and myself have followed what the left has said for years now and we are quite familiar with their stated goals. It's really easy to know what they want when they say so.

But just FYI, the Ap has a story that explains much of the feeling in America now, Obama is ever-present (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091013/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_face_of_government).


Put aside for a moment the question of whether government is actually intruding into people's lives more than before. The point is that many people feel like it is — in part because Obama doesn't stop talking about his goals. If President George W. Bush got slapped around for being inarticulate, is Obama obnoxiously articulate?

"Obama's omnipresence refracts as big government to some degree," says Eric Dezenhall, an image consultant who has worked with celebrities and business leaders. "For those who like him, it reinforces their support for him. But for others, every time he appears, he conjures up the whole whiff of overreaching government and causes resentment."

Maybe it's about time the guy shuts up for a while.


Let's face it the US doesn't spend many dollars for a kid in Africa to have health care because they believe that kid should pay its own way the same way they expect their own people to pay their own way.

That's bullsh*t, Clete.

You realize that Canada and the US are so incredibly similar - that must mean that you are already socialist - welcome!

I posted one just for you NK, take a look (https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/current-events/will-united-states-ever-have-universal-healthcare-389870-50.html#post2029533).

Geez I'm so glad you guys know so much about us. I really haven't seen any paranoia about communism lately. /ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_face_of_government"]Obama is ever-present[/URL].

Maybe it's about time the guy shuts up for a while. .

Now it would be nice if we could convince not only Obama but all politicians and the media along with them to shut up for a while, but then we would be infringing on some of those wonderful freedoms wouldn't we, the freedom to bullsh*t:D



That's bullsh*t, Clete.

No more so than the bullsh*t that the US actually cares about the rest of the world, that it is a caring and sharing nation. In a pig's eye. :D

You have finally got to the nub of the debate on health care in the US; paranoia about communism.

The right in the US equates socialism as being communism and therefore un-american as if being un-american is necessarily a bad thing. These guys are more brainwashed than the Russian communists used to be.

Let's face it the US doesn't spend many dollars for a kid in Africa to have health care because they believe that kid should pay its own way the same way they expect their own people to pay their own way. The Darwinian anthem of survival of the fittest is sung in the US every day and being fit equates to having money. Even if all the money they spend on foreign aid were diverted to paying for health care in the US it would make no difference at all, because it is the system and the thinking behind the system that needs reform and it starts with the premise that the rights they so fervently espouse include a right to health care


Excuse me?

I'm absolutely not paranoid about communism.

While I'm absolutely against the Marxist idea of "pay according to your ability, receive according to your need", I've stated over and over that I don't mind paying for the things that actually DO improve our society as a whole. The fire department, the police department, the road crews, the education system, the MILLIONS of tax dollars that go in grants towards medical research, the National Parks system, and what have you.

What I *am* against is having to pay for someone else's bad choices. I've been adamantly against Welfare for years now, and I'm adamantly against paying for someone else's health care because they made choices that made it so that they cannot afford it on their own.

That's not anti-communism. That's anti-laziness, anti-idiocy, amd anti-selfishness.

Once again--show me an adult in this country that can't afford health insurance through no fault of their own.

The ONLY people you're going to be able to come up with are the ones who are currently "uninsurable" due to a pre-existing condition. So... let's get rid of THAT problem, and make it illegal for insurance companies to deny coverage or charge over x amount more for those with pre-existing conditions.

Problem solved!

Now it would be nice if we could convince not only Obama but all politicians and the media along with them to shut up for a while, but then we would be infringing on some of those wonderfull freedoms wouldn't we, the freedom to bullsh*t:D




No more so than the bullsh*t that the US actually cares about the rest of the world, that it is a caring and sharing nation. In a pig's eye. :D

Yeah... and HOW much international aid came to the US when Katrina hit?

I'd say that the US *Government* doesn't care about the rest of the world--in fact, I'd say our government has exploited far too many countries in the last 30 years--but the US *people* give to the plight of other countries pretty consistently, really.

Let's put it this way:

Would YOU want the U.S. Government to be running YOUR health care system, based on your opinion of the US in general, and its government in particular? I'm not talking just UHC here--I'm asking you if you'd want OUR government to set up YOUR UHC.

Yeah....and HOW much international aid came to the US when Katrina hit?

I'd say that the US *Government* doesn't care about the rest of the world--in fact, I'd say our government has exploited far too many countries in the last 30 years--but the US *people* give to the plight of other countries pretty consistantly, really.

Let's put it this way:

Would YOU want the U.S. Government to be running YOUR health care system, based on your opinion of the US in general, and its government in particular? I'm not talking just UHC here--I'm asking you if you'd want OUR government to set up YOUR UHC.

You didn't get aid for Katrina because you didn't ask for it

No, I would not like your government in control of anything, in my opinion they couldn't control sex in a brothel :D let alone develop partisan policies that really benefit everyone, but they are your government elected by the people for the people, etc, etc, etc or is it that they have forgotten the purpose they exist. The US has the government it deserves because they are prepared to put up with the load of bull* their politicians put out. So the point is you don't want them in control of health care so it is time to change the government or change the population.

There are basic fundamentals which should be part of any health care system
Choice of health care provider
Coverage for preexisting conditions
Coverage for those whose circumstances might disadvantage them
Adequate compensation for necessary procedures
Reasonable cost

That said such a scheme shouldn't cover elective procedures. You suggestion that wrong choices should exclude basic care is disengenerous and tainted by the Darwinian theorm since this requires a health provider or public servant to make judgments beyond their competancy

We have the health care system we have because our system provides for rigorous debate and a mechanism which rarely gives absolute power to any government, so what is proposed ultimately has to be considered reasonable and not tagged with meaningless local spending provisions. Deals are done but they are done within the perspective of the budget and ministerial responsibility

No more so than the bullsh*t that the US actually cares about the rest of the world, that it is a caring and sharing nation. In a pig's eye. :D

I think Elliot pointed out that our people are more generous than any other nation (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16638810/), 143% more generous than Australians. Take those numbers and stick 'em in your pig's eye.

I think Elliot pointed out that our people are more generous than any other nation (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16638810/), 143% more generous than Australians. Take those numbers and stick 'em in your pig's eye.

Yep.

We GREEDY AMERICANS who DON'T REALLY CARE ABOUT ANYONE ELSE give privately to charity in the amount of 1.63% of GDP. (This doesn't include GOVERNMENT AID, only charitable giving by individuals.)

Whereas, the great charitable Brits give 0.73% of their GDP to charity,
Canadians give 0.72% of GDP to charity, and Australians give 0.69% of GDP to charity.

Would you like to see that in terms of actual dollars given?

The following are the GDPs of our 4 countries as per the CIA World Factbook.

USA - $14.26 Trillion (2008 estimate)
UK - $2.226 Trillion (2008 estimate)
Canada - $1.3 Trillion (2008 estimate)
Australia - $800.2 Billion (2008 estimate)

That means that the USA gives $232.44 Billion in private charitable givings.

Compared to $14.25 billion given privately by the UK, $9.36 billion given by Canada, and $5.52 billion given by Australia.

In percentage of GDP terms, we Americans give 2.23 times what Brits give, 2.26 times what Canadians give, and 2.36 times what Aussies give.

In actual dollars, we give 16.3 times what Brits give, 24.8 times what Canada gives and 42.1 times what Australia gives.

But we just don't care, we're greedy, and we don't help other people. All we care about is ourselves. YOU GUYS are the charitable, open-handed types.

>chuckle<

Elliot

Yep.

We GREEDY AMERICANS who DON'T REALLY CARE ABOUT ANYONE ELSE give privately to charity in the amount of 1.63% of GDP. (This doesn't include GOVERNMENT AID, only charitable giving by individuals. >chuckle< Hello again, Elliot:

While you guys are busy congratulating yourself on how wonderful you are, people are DYING right here at home because they don't have access to heath care.

Deaths from No Health Insurance Under Clinton, Bush, Obama | Health Care Kali's Blog (http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/star_mason/2009/02/deaths-from-no-health-insuranc.php)

Based on the methodology of the Institute of Medicine, here are estimated numbers of American deaths due to lack of health insurance under three presidents.

Clinton: (Two terms) 144,000 Americans
Bush: (two terms) 176,000 Americans
Obama: (Since Jan 20) 1,260 Americans

-----------------

>chuckle< (only because you're so wrong - not because so many have died)

excon

There will be at least as many who die under these proposed plans. The funny thing is that in unguarded moments of candor ,the Dems. All but admit the Palin charge is true.

Here is former Labor Sec. Robert Reich ,currently a key advisor to the President .
YouTube - Robert Reich: What An Honest President Would Say About Health Reform (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT7Y0TOBuG4)


I'll actually give you a speech made up entirely, almost on the spur of the moment, of what a candidate for president would say if that candidate did not care about becoming president. In other words, this is what the truth is and a candidate will never say, but what a candidate should say if we were in the kind of democracy where citizens were honored in terms of their practice of citizenship and they were educated in terms of what the issues were and they could separate myth from reality in terms of what candidates would tell them:

"Thank you so much for coming this afternoon. I'm so glad to see you and I would like to be president. Let me tell you a few things on health care. Look, we have the only health care system in the world that is designed to avoid sick people. And that's true and what I'm going to do is that I am going try to reorganize it to be more amenable to treating sick people but that means you, particularly you young people, particularly you young healthy people...you're going to have to pay more.

"Thank you. And by the way, we're going to have to, if you're very old, we're not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It's too expensive... so we're going to let you die."

"Also I'm going to use the bargaining leverage of the federal government in terms of Medicare, Medicaid---we already have a lot of bargaining leverage---to force drug companies and insurance companies and medical suppliers to reduce their costs. What that means, less innovation and that means less new products and less new drugs on the market which means you are probably not going to live much longer than your parents. Thank you."

While you guys are busy congratulating yourself on how wonderful you are, people are DYING right here at home because they don't have access to heath care.

It's not self-congratulating to defend America's honor against false smears. Unlike the president I'd rather correct the record than apologize and grovel for acceptance.


Based on the methodology of the Institute of Medicine, here are estimated numbers of American deaths due to lack of health insurance under three presidents.

Again you're muddling things up, you said they're dying because "they don't have access to heath care." These muckrakers claim they're dying because the don't have health insurance. I say both are pretty darned difficult to prove. You might note also that according to their methodology somewhere around 37.5 million Americans died with health insurance during that time.

Here is former Labor Sec. Robert Reich ,currently a key advisor to the President

Nice catch tom, I heard that speech yesterday. I loved how the crowd applauded him on each point.

Ah we have dragged out the great depression as an excuse for doing nothing. Self Inflicted injury.

Huh? Where did you get that from anything I said.

If you will read my post, you will find that what I said was that DESPITE the Great Depression WE, not the UK, became a Superpower, while the UK languished.


Just like our current great financial crisis you (US) caused the great depression with your largess and over reliance on the "market". If you are an economist you should have learned the lessons, not sat on your pedistal and glowered down at the lesser mortals.

I did learn from the errors of the past. As I have posted on a number of prior occasions, it was GOVERNMENT Interference that caused the Great Depression to last for a decade more than it had to, and it is the same government intervention that caused the current financial fiasco. In fact, it was the same government attempts as social engineering that caused both of the crises. The beliefe that everyone should be taken care of by the government, regardless of the cost, is what caused both problems.

FDR did it because he mistakenly thought his New Deal would help get the country OUT of the Depression by giving people make-work jobs that didn't actually produce anything. The government paid for nothing to be produced... and the result was that nothing was produced. It was welfare, and it failed as welfare always has.

In the current crisis, it was government's insistence that everyone "deserves" to own a home and should be given the ability to buy one, whether they could afford it or not. Another welfare program that failed.

In the first case, the New Deal resulted in government spending that outstripped their ability to pay for that spending, a weakening of the currency, massive inflation, and higher unemployment.

In the case of the second, we saw the creation of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Community Reinvestment Act, which created an environment in which banks were FORCED to lend 60% of their loans to sub-prime borrowers that we KNEW wouldn't be able to pay us back, but were told to rely on the government's guarantees from Fannie and Freddie to make us whole. Well, the loans went bad, and Fannie and Freddie failed to make us whole because they couldn't keep up with the costs of their bad policies. Result: the government ended up spending more in guarantees of bad mortgages than they could pay for, ended up spending even more to bail the banks out, and now we have a $3 Trillion budget deficit, a $12 trillion official national debt, and are borrowing money that our grandkids will be paying back, printing money at an enormous rate, and are creating the very same conditions that existed during the Great Depression. And for exactly the same reason... social engineering by the government.

So yes, some of us learned our lessons. But they don't work in the government.

In fact, I just attended a seminar given by the Office of the Controller of The Currency (OCC) two weeks ago. The topic was "SBA lending", making government-guaranteed loans to small businesses. The SBA (Small Business Administration, a government agency) was rolling out a new program called the "ARC (America's Recovery Capital) Loan Program" (and ain't that name just a total lie). The program is designed to lend money to businesses that are having trouble paying their current loans. The loans are to be 100% guaranteed (compared to 50%, 75% or 90% guaranteed under other SBA programs). The SBA Administrator said that he EXPECTS THAT MANY OF THE ARC LOANS WILL FAIL, but that we should make the loans anyway.

Let me repeat that... the government wants us to make loans that THEY KNOW BEFOREHAND are going to fail... but we should make the loans anyway and rely on the government guarantee to get us out of it when the loans go bad.

Isn't that the type of lending that got us into this problem in the first place?

Does the government not learn from its mistakes?

It is their mandate to lend to people who couldn't afford the loans that created this mess. Now they are doing it again?



But then that's what economists do rather than thinking up original solutions to the problems they create. You didn't invent capitalism but you certainly perverted it

There are no "original solutions". All the solutions have been tried before. We know historically which ones worked and which ones didn't. Obama chose the ones that didn't. So did the creators of Fannie Mae (FDR, big shock there), Freddie Mac (LBJ created it to provide "competition" to Fannie Mae, even though they were owned by the same people--- the US Government), and CRA (Jimmy Carter in 1979, with Clinton increasing the mandate significantly in 1999). These solutions FAILED and caused the financial crisis we are in today. We even got a warning about it from the S&L crisis in the 80s, but the government ignored the warning about underwriting standards that we learned from that crisis and instead INCREASED the amount of Sub-Prime lending we were required to perform. The result was the current recession.

And now the government is doing it again with this ARC Loan Program from the SBA.

We learned from the mistakes of the past. The GOVERNMENT has FAILED to learn from those mistakes.

So have all of you who push for MORE government intervention and social engineering in our economy.

You want to look at people who have failed to learn from the errors of the past, Paraclete? Look to yourself first.

Elliot

So I see we are still with the communism dictate

So Wolverine, what do you suggest then, all I have ever read is why this isn't working or that isn't working

What would you think the perfect government would be?

you didn't get aid for Katrina because you didn't ask for it

No, I would not like your government in control of anything, in my opinion they couldn't control sex in a brothel :D let alone develop partisan policies that really benefit everyone, but they are your government elected by the people for the people, etc, etc, etc or is it that they have forgotten the purpose they exist. The US has the government it deserves because they are prepared to put up with the load of bull* their politicians put out. So the point is you don't want them in control of health care so it is time to change the government or change the population.

There are basic fundamentals which should be part of any health care system
Choice of health care provider
coverage for preexisting conditions
coverage for those whose circumstances might disadvantage them
adequate compensation for necessary procedures
reasonable cost

that said such a scheme shouldn't cover elective procedures. You suggestion that wrong choices should exclude basic care is disengenerous and tainted by the Darwinian theorm since this requires a health provider or public servant to make judgments beyond their competancy

We have the health care system we have because our system provides for rigorous debate and a mechanism which rarely gives absolute power to any government, so what is proposed ultimately has to be considered reasonable and not tagged with meaningless local spending provisions. Deals are done but they are done within the perspective of the budget and ministerial responsibility

I don't remember anyone ASKING me to give to the 2004 Tsunami victims. But I was down at the Red Cross that day making a $200 donation to help over there--which was all I could afford at the time. We then did a blanket and clothing drive in our neighborhood over the next couple of weeks, and brought THAT to the Red Cross. When my (then) 8 year old nephew heard that "kids like him" had no place to sleep and nothing to eat, he ran a lemonade stand for an entire weekend (which is a long time for a little kid--remember what YOUR attention span was then?) using his allowance to buy the ingredients, and gave the $150 he made to the Red Cross to help out the victims. No one ASKED him to. He saw people in need and gave to them. He did the same thing nine months later for the Katrina victims, because he thought that no one should have to be without food or a place to call home. He's 13 now, and volunteers at the YMCA and with his church to help out the local homeless. I'd like to point out--he learned that from family. ALL of us do what we can to help those in need, though it's usually those in need locally that we help. When I was a child, I *was* the family in need, and I've never forgotten the kindness of strangers.

As far as elective procedures---who determines what's elective? I think that CHILDBIRTH is an elective procedure. You either chose to have the child or you didn't. That ALSO means that abortion is elective, fertility treatment is elective, and reconstructive surgery after a car accident or mastectomy is elective. All drugs given in the labor and delivery room would be elective--I mean, really, you can give birth with no painkillers! Women have been doing it for centuries! Ooooh... that brings up another point... Cialis, Viagra, and other ED medicine would be elective! Skin graft treatments and hair transferal after severe burns would be elective--because it's ONLY to look better, not required to live. Birth control is an elective (you choose whether to have sex), contact lenses are an elective (glasses work just fine!), hearing aids are an elective (there are millions of deaf people that do JUST FINE), smoking cessation products are an elective (you have the willpower! Just do it!)---the list goes on and on. ANYTHING that isn't *directly* linked to keeping you ALIVE is an elective.

And thanks for making my point about NO ONE wanting our government in charge of ANYTHING. I didn't make our government what it is--I can blame Excon's generation for that, and just maybe Elliot's too (though I'm not sure on ages here). I've been able to vote for 16 years, and I've voted for all 16 of them. I have to admit I didn't get involved in local elections until the last 3 years, but part of that was because we moved fairly regularly, and I wasn't able to always understand what was going on locally. So... I've voted, and I've tried to change what I see are the problems in the government, and sometimes I feel hopeless that change will ever happen in my lifetime. The corruption and the money go too deep. THAT, however, is why I want Congress to be held to the same decisions they make for me. If this new health care plan isn't good enough for Congress to cancel their "All-Expenses-Paid" version of health care, well... why should it be good enough for me? Either way---why are YOU arguing that I should let idiots control my health if YOU wouldn't do it?

So I see we are still with the communism dictate

So Wolverine, what do you suggest then, all I have ever read is why this isnt working or that isnt working

What would you think the perfect government would be?

First of all, government CAN'T be perfect. It is made up of human beings and is therefore IMPERFECT by nature. But the Founding Fathers knew that and allowed for it when they created the Constitution.

But if you are asking me what I think the role of government should be, that's easy.

As I have posted in the past, government has only 3 duties.

1) Protect the nation from enemies foreign and domestic,
2) Maintain a system for travel and communication,
3) Maintain, protect and preserve an economic environment that allows for the free transfer of goods and services and the accumulation of wealth by individuals and businesses.

What that means is that government should maintain the military and police forces and any other agencies necessary to keep the nation safe from its enemies.

It also means that the government has the responsibility to maintain roads, bridges and tunnels, as well as a postal system. It could also be argued that they should maintain the infrastructure for telephones and internet, though that is open for debate. And frankly, we would get better results if that infrastructure continues to be provided by private companies. But I'm (reluctantly) open to the idea of government being involved.

Finally, it means that the government has the responsibility to enforce contract law, enforce enti-trust law, and enforce international trade law, and enforce laws regarding the safety of the products being produced and sold in the USA.

Other than that, from a Constitutional standpoint, the role of the government is exactly nil, zippo, nada.

They do NOT have the authority to spend tax dollars to bail out companies that they believe are "too big to fail". They do not have the authority to take over companies. They do not have the authority to cap executive pay. They do not have the authority to force companies to manufacture their goods or produce their services in a particular way. They do not have the authority to take control of those methods of production or methods of distribution. They do not have the authority to regulate any business with the exception of making sure that what the business produces is safe. And they do not have the authority to produce goods and services of their own for the open market. No matter how well-intentioned or ill-intentioned their ideas may be, they do not have the Constitutional authority to do it.

Simply put, as Thomas Jefferson said, "The government that governs best governs least." THAT is what I believe government should be. That's also what the Founding Fathers meant for it to be.

As for my specific ideas on health care reform with the minimum amount of government intervention possible, please read this post, which was a prior response to you.

https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/current-events/will-united-states-ever-have-universal-healthcare-389870-48.html#post2029047

Elliot

Mmm. Not a single thought on Foreign Policy and how the united states is seen and acts abroad

mmm. not a single thought on Foreign Policy and how the united states is seen and acts abroad

Yep, absolutely true.

And also absolutely false.

You will notice that I mentioned manitenance of a military.

You will also notice that I mentioned both contract law (which includes treaties) and international trade law.

That covers both the carrot and the stick of international diplomacy and international relations. Which is used when is a matter for the elected officials to decide, but only within the bounds of Constitutional Law.

Elliot

So influence shouldn't shape Foreign Policy?

First of all, government CAN'T be perfect.

Don't tell that to Neal Gabler, he thinks our government is "better than the American people (http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/10/13/one_nation_under_illusion/?page=full)." I guess that would explain our low opinion of Congress, we just don't know how damned good government is.

Don't tell that to Neal Gabler, he thinks our government is "better than the American people (http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/10/13/one_nation_under_illusion/?page=full)." I guess that would explain our low opinion of Congress, we just don't know how damned good government is.

Well that little piece certainly tells it like it is and it is good to know there are some americans who are realists. I was beginning to think you were all brainwashed.

"We’ve been living in a fool’s paradise. The result may be a government that is as good as the American people, which is something that should concern everyone"

but I think I would paraphrase that last sentence in your post
"we just don't know what damned good government is."

but I think I would paraphrase that last sentence in your post
"we just don't know what damned good government is."

NO rephrasing necessary, I meant it exactly as put.

So influence shouldnt shape Foreign Policy?

Sure it should. But only to the extent permitted by the Constitution. The government can't simply say that it wants to do something either domisticallly or in foreign policy, and therefore it is going to do it. That way lies tyranny... the sort of thing we fought a war with you guys to be free of.

Here's an example... just as a President cannot declare war without the ratification of Congress, he also cannot sign and enforece treaties without Congress' ratification. Foreign policy (for war OR peace) is LIMITED by the powers granted by the Constitution. And nobody may violate the Constitution, no matter how good the cause.

That addresses your question about foreign policy and the government. But the same thing applies on the domestic front.

The Constitution outlines very clearly what the powers of the Federal government are. It also says that those power NOT SPECIFICALLY SO ENUMERATED are in the hands of the states and individuals, NOT in the hands of the government.

The power to take over a business or an industry, or to start providing services to people that are outside their purview (like health care or retirement benefits, or anything else) is NOT enumerated in the Constitution. Therefore the Federal Government has no such power. EVEN if they think that doing such a thing would be the "humane thing to do" they cannot do it.

Elliot

Sure it should. But only to the extent permitted by the Constitution..... Here's an example... just as a President cannot declare war without the ratification of Congress, Hello again, Elliot:

Hate to break it to you, but the president can't declare war at all. Don't thank me. That's why I'm here.

excon

PS> Doncha think your discussion of the Constitution might be taken more seriously if you actually KNEW the Constitution?

The president is commander in chief of the military, though.

He doesn't have to "declare" war to start one.

Just look at the Vietnam "war".

And what the hell kind of fool congress declares war on "terror" anyway?

I would like to say, by the way, that I don't necessarily agree with Elliot on all of his points about not wanting the government involved. I personally think that democratic socialism is the way to go. Problem is--we got to fix the corruption in our government before we can go that route.

Morning Wolverine,

I find with interest you consider all policies of the United States to be created in Government

Strange statement I hear you saying, well, foreign policy is shaped by the people of a country just as much as it it is by its paper policies

Why is it you consider that a reputation of a country is based solely at the door of its government?

Morning Wolverine,

I find with interest you consider all policies of the United States to be created in Government

Stange statment I hear you saying, well, foreign policy is shaped by the people of a country just as much as it it is by its paper policies

Why is it you consider that a reputation of a country is based solely at the door of its government?

What makes you think it isn't.

For instance... the reputation of the French (at least by many Americans) is that they are a bunch of effite, elitist racists who couldn't win a war with a wet paper bag without the help of the US military.

Are most French elitist? Probably not. Are they racists? Probably not. Are they all effite? That one's still up for debate, but by and large I would say no. Are they all poor fighters? Again, probably not.

But their government is ALL of those things. They haven't won a war since the late 1700s, they stockpile their immigrants in government housing projects so that they don't have to think about them too often, and they all come off as a bunch of wine-sniffing, cheese-tasting effites. And so, reputation follows what the government does.

As for reputation following the individuals' actions, and not those of the government... I again point you to the fact that the individual citizens of the USA are the most charitable people in the world by a factor of 2:1. And yet, we have the reputation of being greedy, self-absorbed, and uncaring. Clearly the reputation of Americans does NOT follow the actions of the people, but rather the actions of the government... which has been greedy, uncaring and self-absorbed in many ways.

But we have gotten off-topic. The topic we have been pursuing is the role of government, not the reputation of countries toward other countries. And as I have said, the role of government is spelled out in the Constitution. Reputation doesn't enter into the equation. The good intentions of those who wish to act in an extra-constitutional manner don't enter into the equation.

Elliot

Evening Wolverine,

I think we are still on track, let me demonstrate

The constitution has played a major part in you answering my simple question on foreign policy

So, lets see what it says :


The Preamble states:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

So the basic ideology of the consitition includes general welfare, how can you argue against?

Or were the Fathers of the Document wrong?

phlanx that would require an understanding of what the founders meant by general welfare. Without getting into it ;they did not consider it the duty of a massive central nanny state to administer what the gvt. Thinks is good for the masses. They truly believed the role of the central government limited and they specifically enumerated what was permitted by the central government in the articles of the Constitution.

Here's the problem with that line "promoting the general welfare":

Who decides?

Prohibition was "promoting the general welfare".

The drinking age is "promoting the general welfare".

Seat belt laws are "promoting the general welfare".

Anti-gambling laws are "promoting the general welfare".

Some see abolishing abortion, preventing gay marriage, or even the abolishment of the equal rights amendment as 'promoting the general welfare'.

Does "promoting the general welfare" mean that the government can then do whatever it wants to CONTROL the general populace "for its own good"?

Whose morals decide what the "general welfare" of the country is?

Is Democracy seriously missing something in America

What makes a Government decide what is good for the people - THE People DO! Or do we have a completely different explanation of democracy

You allow your government to tell you at what age you can drink, where you can gamble, what you should wear in a car (this is a good thing!)

And yet you think a simple reform to allow millions of americans to obtain health insurance is a bad thing and anti constitutional

I am afraid I still don't get it!

Have you ever heard of the electoral college, phlanx?

And I'm not stopping millions of Americans from getting health insurance now! I'm just refusing to PAY for it.

Evening Wolverine,

I think we are still on track, let me demonstrate

The constitution has played a major part in you answering my simple question on foreign policy

So, lets see what it says :



So the basic ideology of the consitition includes general welfare, how can you argue against?

Or were the Fathers of the Document wrong?

The Constitution DOES promote the general welfare of the people. But the Founders knew that promoting the general welfare meant, and gave the Federal Government specific instructions on how to do so by...

1) protecting the citizens from enemies
2) maintaining the ability of people to travel and communicate
3) maintaining the ability of the people to conduct business, gain wealth, and pursue business opportunities unimpeded.

It did NOT mean handing stuff out to the people.

Nor did it mean taking money from one person to give to another.

Nor did it mean taking money from the people at all for any purpose other than the three responsibilities that the Federal Government is supposed to take care of.

In fact, the ability to do so is SPECIFICALLY prohibited by the 10th Amendment whioch states:



The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.


That means that if it isn't enumerated in the Constitution as a power reserved to the Federal Government, the Federal Government can't do it.

There is nothing in the Constitution that gives the Federal Government the power to give people health care or health insurance. That power is reserved for the states (who regulate insurance companies and medical practitioners) or for the people (who purchase health insurance or health care services). The Federal Government has no such legal power.

Again, it may be a nice idea, and people may think it is the right thing to do (if they don't understand the economics of it), but it is ILLEGAL for the Federal Government to do so under the Constitution.

But here's a question for you to answer.

How do you define "promoting the general welfare"? Who determines what "general welfare" means? Does the definition change? How often? Under what circumstances does it change? Are there any limitations to what the government can do to promote the general welfare? Who determines those? Who ENFORCES those limitations, if any?

If I think that one individual or business can do more with a piece of property than another individual or business, can the government arbitrarily take that property away from one and give it to another because it "promotes the general welfare"? Can the government force me to give up my home because the government determines that someone else can make better use of it to build a business than I can and therefore taking it away from me and giving it to someone else promotes the "general welfare"?

Not according to the written Constitution, they can't.

But they have taken such powers upon themselves anyway. (I suggest that you Google a Supreme Court case known as Kelo v. New London to see an example of what I mean.) And THAT is one example of why I have problems with giving the government more powers than they currently have. And handing them direct control of 1/6th of our economy falls under the heading of A Very Bad Idea.

The Founding Fathers knew that the meaning of "general welfare" would come up for debate eventually. That's why they were very specific in the powers that they granted the government and the responsibilities they enumerated for the government. And that is why they were very clear to say that any powers not so enumerated do not belong to the federal government.

Elliot

Is Democracy seriously missing something in America

What makes a Government decide what is good for the poeple - THE People DO!! Or do we have a completly different explanation of democracy

You allow your government to tell you at what age you can drink, where you can gamble, what you should wear in a car (this is a good thing!)

And yet you think a simple reform to allow millions of americans to obtain health insurance is a bad thing and anti constitutional

I am afraid I still dont get it!

Democracy is when you elect people to tell you what to do as distinct from them being born into a position or taking over at the point of a gun. There is an illusion in democracy that the average person actually has a say in what gets done but it is an illusion. As long as a government behaves in a reasonable manner democracy works but as soon as it puts its hand in the pocket of the people they get upset

Is Democracy seriously missing something in America

What makes a Government decide what is good for the poeple - THE People DO!! Or do we have a completly different explanation of democracy

You allow your government to tell you at what age you can drink, where you can gamble, what you should wear in a car (this is a good thing!)

And yet you think a simple reform to allow millions of americans to obtain health insurance is a bad thing and anti constitutional

I am afraid I still dont get it!

As I have said before, there are ways to make sure that everyone who wants insurance can get it without nationalizing the health system of the USA. What is wrong with trying those methods, all of which are Constitutional, Capitalist and Democratic, and don't rely on Marxism and government growth? Why are you so stuck on selling us a socialist system when we have OTHER options than can work better and don't violate the Constitution.

I haven't seen you comment on ANY of the 10 items that I listed to reform health care in the USA. Is that because you don't have anything to say about it? Do you think those reforms won't work? Do you think they will work? Have you even read them?

If there are other options, why would you continue to push THIS solution when you know that so many people are against it?

Elliot

The Constitution DOES promote the general welfare of the people. But the Founders knew that promoting the general welfare meant, and gave the Federal Government specific instructions on how to do so by...


The Founding Fathers knew that the meaning of "general welfare" would come up for debate eventually. That's why they were very specific in the powers that they granted the government and the responsibilities they enumerated for the government. And that is why they were very clear to say that any powers not so enumerated do not belong to the federal government.

Elliot

You know Elliot I'm glad we had 100 years to observe the operation of your Constitution before we modeled ours on yours

democracy is when you elect people to tell you what to do as distinct from them being born into a position or taking over at the point of a gun. There is an illusion in democracy that the average person actually has a say in what gets done but it is an illusion. As long as a government behaves in a reasonable manner democracy works but as soon as it puts its hand in the pocket of the people they get upset

Yep. And in a Democracy, we can do something about it in the next election.

And given the number of times in the past coupls of years that bad laws have been STOPPED by phone calls flooding Congress members' switchboards, I would hesitate to claim that the people have no power. Cap & Trade has died in the Senate because of the flood of phone calls that members of the House of Representatives had to deal with telling them NOT to vote for it before they ended up voting for it. It passed in the House by the skin of their teeth, but the Senate buried the bill because of the political flak that they feared from their constituents.

The Immigration Reform bill died a horrible death in 2007 and 2008 because members of Congress received phone calls from constitutents telling them to vote against it, too.

And there is a reason that Congress wasn't able to simply vote for Health Care Reform before the summer recess took place as Obama wanted. They were flooded with phone calls DEMANDING that people have a chance to read the bill and ask questions before Congress voted on it.

Members of Congress from BOTH Houses know that they have to stand for election. And if they get flooded with phone calls telling them that if they vote for a particular bill they are going to be voted out of office, they listen. And legistlation gets buried or voted down because of it.

So the Democratic system DOES work if enough people are willing to act within that system. The representative either votes the way the majority wishes him to vote, or his constituents vote him out of office.

This isn't illusion. There are those who used to BELIEVE that it was only an illusion, back when people weren't quite as involved with the political process as so man are now. But recent events over the past couple of years have proven otherwise. The people really DO have the power to stop bad legislation or vote the bums out of office, IF THEY ARE WILLING TO ACT. Which they are now. And the Members of Congress know it.

Elliot

Yep. And in a Democracy, we can do something about it in the next election.

And given the number of times in the past coupls of years that bad laws have been STOPPED by phone calls flooding Congress members' switchboards, I would hesitate to claim that the people have no power. Cap & Trade has died in the Senate because of the flood of phone calls that members of the House of Representatives had to deal with telling them NOT to vote for it before they ended up voting for it. It passed in the House by the skin of their teeth, but the Senate burried the bill because of the political flak that they feared from their constituents.

The Immigration Reform bill died a horrible death in 2007 and 2008 because members of Congress received phone calls from constitutents telling them to vote against it, too.

And there is a reason that Congress wasn't able to simply vote for Health Care Reform before the summer recess took place as Obama wanted. They were flooded with phone calls DEMANDING that people have a chance to read the bill and ask questions before Congress voted on it.

Members of Congress from BOTH Houses know that they have to stand for election. And if they get flooded with phone calls telling them that if they vote for a particular bill they are going to be voted out of office, they listen. And legistlation gets burried or voted down because of it.

So the Democratic system DOES work if enough people are willing to act within that system. The representative either votes the way the majority wishes him to vote, or his constituents vote him out of office.

This isn't illusion. There are those who used to BELIEVE that it was only an illusion, back when people weren't quite as involved with the political process as so man are now. But recent events over the past couple of years have proven otherwise. The people really DO have the power to stop bad legislation or vote the bums out of office, IF THEY ARE WILLING TO ACT. Which they are now. And the Members of Congress know it.

Elliot

You're right Elliot by using affirmative action the people have stopped their "democratic representatives" from making decisions that were not in their interest. What this demonstrates is that the system isn't working, not that it is. If the people elected by the people were acting in the interests of the people it would not be necessary for the people to conduct a pseudo referendum to get them to do not what is in the interest of vested interests but what is in the interest of the people. As I said Elliot democracy is an illusion and mob rule has taken over

Democracy IS mob rule... just without the violence and with a set of rules.

But you make that sound like it's a bad thing. The key thing that makes it GOOD is the 2nd half of my 1st sentence... "just without the violence and with a set of rules".

Elliot

As I said Elliot democracy is an illusion and mob rule has taken over

Then don't vote. If you feel that way, don't participate in the system. Nobody is forcing you to be involved.

I prefer to excersize my rights and my controls over the government.

Elliot

Well there you have it, America in a nut shell! It is not consititutional right to help your fellow american! Thank God it is God Save the Queen

Then don't vote. If you feel that way, don't participate in the system. Nobody is forcing you to be involved.

I prefer to excersize my rights and my controls over the government.

Elliot

That's the illusion, Elliot, you don't have any control over government!

We used to talk about the faceless men in politics, the behind the scenes powerbrokers. I'm sure you have them just as we do. These are the decision makers, the ones who have control, not you, unless you are one of them, but if your were you wouldn't be spending your time here.

What I vote for as I'm sure you do is a party platform and a leader who will carry it out. There is a basket of policies the majority of which I agree with and that's what is voted for. We call it a mandate these days, but should a party try to implement something not in the mandate we get upset and that's when governments change and the democratic process works. At other times it happens by default

Well there you have it, America in a nut shell! It is not consititutional right to help your fellow american! Thank God it is God Save the Queen

No it is only constitutional to help yourself, or so the Americans believe, but I don't actually see that in their constitution either

There is a simple solution to the Constitutional issue which the Dems always seem to overlook . If they really believe that government provided health care is an inalienable right then there are ways the founders put in to amend the constitution.

Phalanx in jolly old England do you have the same inalienable right to government provided food and shelter or do you mostly have to feed yourself by your own means. Now I'm not talking about a safety net. Despite your comment above ,we do have those for the truly needy. I'm talking about government provided food for everyone. And if not why not ? Surely you think eating equally important to going for a physical if not more so.

Eveing Tomder

Now you asking the simple question, should there be charities or not

If it wasn't for charities the Government would have to deal with such issues, but as there are charities they don't have to

Besides, Constitutional (we don't exactly have one as it is approx 800 years old and clouded with a lot of history) we have the right to feed off certain parts of the land, and therefore food is always available

And if you really want to get picky :) then yes, I can have 24/7 shelter, food, medical care, entertainment items, TVS etc, and all I have to do is to be thrown in jail, and I will be completely suported by the government

Odd isn't it, Law abiding citizens get nothing while the ones who break the law get the entitlements

There is a simple solution to the Constitutional issue which the Dems always seem to overlook . If they truely believe that health care is an inalienable right then there are ways the founders put in to amend the constitution. Hello again, tom:

Not really. We don't have to amend it. It's already there.

You DO remember that pesky Ninth Amendment, don't you? If not, I'll reprint it here for you:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

That's pretty clear. Seems to me, if the people have an inalienable right to health care, it can be found there. In fact, that's WHY the Ninth Amendment was written. The founders realized that they couldn't list ALL of our rights, but they knew that by listing SOME, people like you would say, "well, it's not LISTED, so it's not a right" Knowing that the people's inalienable rights went far beyond those listed, they wrote the Ninth Amendment to take care of the rest.

Weren't our Founders brilliant?

excon

If it wasn't for charities the Government would have to deal with such issues, but as there are charities they don't have to


Yes sir... I have said this more than once here in one form or another . There is no virtue in charity or benevolence that is compelled. If the gvt. Is taxing me to provide for all but the neediest then they are picking my pockets .

D*ckens had it right in 'A Christmas Carol' .The men soliciting charity were the good guys . Scrooge's retort to them was that the poor should rely on the gvt services that he supports through his taxes for their welfare. Scrooge was a typical liberal socialist.

Ex the true measure of a right is that its exercise cannot place an undue burden on someone else i.e. the cost of that right is paid by someone else . An entitlement on the other hand transfers an undue cost to someone other than the one receiving that benefit.
For that reason, government provided health care can never be a right, only an entitlement.
The founders never intended to 9th amnedment to be a vehicle to pick someone's pocket or for the government to act as Robin Hood.

Ex the true measure of a right is that its exercise cannot place an undue burden on someone else ie the cost of that right is paid by someone else Hello again, tom:

We have a right to a gun. Somebody gets paid for making 'em. Besides, ain't nobody saying universal health care is going to be free - especially you folks.

excon

That's right.. I have a right to a gun so long as I pay for it . If I had a guaranteed right to a government provided gun then it would be an entitlement and not a right. A right is something the government can never take away. An entitlement they can change the rules of the game any time they choose to do so.

There is a simple solution to the Constitutional issue which the Dems always seem to overlook . If they really believe that government provided health care is an inalienable right then there are ways the founders put in to amend the constitution.

phalanx in jolly old England do you have the same inalienable right to government provided food and shelter or do you mostly have to feed yourself by your own means. Now I'm not talking about a safety net. Despite your comment above ,we do have those for the truely needy. I'm talking about government provided food for everyone. And if not why not ? Surely you think eating equally important to going for a physical if not more so.

Now come on Tom you know that's not a fair question, Britain is a welfare state and no one need go hungary there.

And Tom it is very hard to get the majority necessary to amend the American constitution. In today's reality it would require bipartisan support not really a reality and in any case if it is an inalienable right there is a Supreme Court to test it in. Given the Supreme Court leanings and propensity for left leaning judgements they should have no difficulty, after all, if criminals have rights so do the sick

phlanx that would require an understanding of what the founders meant by general welfare. Without getting into it ;they did not consider it the duty of a massive central nanny state to administer what the gvt. thinks is good for the masses. They truely believed the role of the central government limited and they specifically enumerated what was permitted by the central government in the articles of the Constitution.

Yes they were all for states rights and that idea ultimately fostered the idea that a state could resist invasion which the Constitution required the central government to protect against not perpetrate. What the founding fathers wanted and what the population wanted has sometimes been at odds but who should decide; some long dead liberatians with a different agenda in mind or those people alive today. The reality is that care for welfare of the individual didn't exist beyond individual charity in the day of the founding fathers and so you take a narrow view of what they meant by welfare based on your knowledge of their society which you do not live in. Their concern for welfare was not focused on poverty because that was something that happened in a different place and among people they subjected. The founding fathers thought slavery a good idea but today that idea is anathema so not all of their ideas are sacrosanct

Honestly, I don't give a DAMN whether UHC is Constitutional. I don't care that I'm coming across as a selfish b!tch that is only looking out for myself.

The main 2 reasons I am against UHC are as follows:

1. I don't trust out government to implement a health care system that actually WORKS. I look at OTHER decisions our government has made with money, and think I'd be an IDIOT to think they could do this less expensively than the private sector, in a manner that was fair treatment to ALL U.S citizens.

2. I don't want to pay for it. No one has YET refuted that the people who don't have health insurance don't have it because of decisions that they themselves have made, except those currently considered "uninsurable". Make a law that forces insurance companies to treat those people fairly, and voilà! You have a system that works again! EVERY OTHER PERSON who does not have health care of some sort has put THEMSELVES in that position. I am NOT going to pay for someone else's bad choices.

Morning Synnen

Do you not accept the possibility that someone is having difficulties through nothing more than making a mistake

A bad choice at some point is made by all of us, hopefully if you live your life more than once!

And Tom it is very hard to get the majority necessary to amend the American constitution. In today's reality it would require bipartisan support not really a reality and in any case if it is an inalienable right there is a Supreme Court to test it in. Given the Supreme Court leanings and propensity for left leaning judgements they should have no difficulty, after all, if criminals have rights so do the sick
So there's democracy... it comes down to a handful (5) of unelected for life oligarchs in black robes. I don't think so. They don't get to decide what is a right even though often they have overstepped their mandate and have done so.Hint... they have even used Excon's very broad interpretation of the 9th amendment or in one bizarre ruling the court found that there were rights hidden deep in the "penumbras" and "emanations" of other constitutional protections.(whatever that means) .

The Constitution was not meant to be easily changed. Still ;if there was overwhelming support for the proposition that government provided health care was an inalienable right ,then there would be no issue ;the amendment would get done.
See my other posting about the Constitutionality of UHC to see how leftists have gotten unconstitutional "entitlements" through the system when they know they have no mandate and authority to do so.
https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/current-events/constitutionality-universal-health-care-405829.html

Yes they were all for states rights and that idea ultimately fostered the idea that a state could resist invasion which the Constitution required the central government to protect against not perpetrate. What the founding fathers wanted and what the population wanted has sometimes been at odds but who should decide; some long dead liberatians with a different agenda in mind or those people alive today. The reality is that care for welfare of the individual didn't exist beyond individual charity in the day of the founding fathers and so you take a narrow view of what they meant by welfare based on your knowledge of their society which you do not live in. Their concern for welfare was not focused on poverty because that was something that happened in a different place and among people they subjected. The founding fathers thought slavery a good idea but today that idea is anathema so not all of their ideas are sacrosanct

There are many things in your response that is refutable. But I'll simply say that the founders knew that there would be changes needed over time ,and that is why they provided an instrument to change the Constitution... the amendment process. Beyond a new constitutional convention that is the only legitimate way for the changing . Anything else is a usurpation of power.

Well there you have it, America in a nut shell! It is not consititutional right to help your fellow american! Thank God it is God Save the Queen

There you DON'T have it.

It is UnConstitutional for the GOVERNMENT to distribute goods and services.

It is VERY AMERICAN for man to help his fellow man.

Which is why Americans do it more than twice as much as you Brits do.

God Bless the USA.

But you STILL haven't answered my questions. I'm not going to let you avoid them... and you clearly ARE trying to avoid them, because you can't answer them, and not being able to do so destroys your entire point.

1) Who defines "general welfare"?
2) What about the alternatives to health care reform that I posted?

Elliot

That's the illusion, Elliot, you don't have any control over government!

We used to talk about the faceless men in politics, the behind the scenes powerbrokers. I'm sure you have them just as we do. These are the decision makers, the ones who have control, not you, unless you are one of them, but if your were you wouldn't be spending your time here.

What I vote for as I'm sure you do is a party platform and a leader who will carry it out. There is a basket of policies the majority of which I agree with and that's what is voted for. We call it a mandate these days, but should a party try to implement something not in the mandate we get upset and that's when governments change and the democratic process works. At other times it happens by default

Of course it happens by default unless we get involved. And generally it is true that we only get involved when we are upset. But when we DO get involved, we can indeed control the system.

That beats the hell out of most of the methods of governance throughout history... most of which have been tyrannies, or at least monarchies. In those systems, it didn't matter how upset you got. You could get upset all you wanted, there was STILL no method by which the people could control or change the policies of the govermment.

What you are describing of Democracy is a "negative feedback control loop", in which we only react to negative data. Something that we don't like happens, and so we react to it... and that reaction causes change. A negative feedback control loop is STILL a control loop. There is still control, even if you only excersize it because of negative input. And it isn't an illusion... the control is real and has real effect.

In tyrannies, monarchies, and other oppressive forms of government, there is no control loop of any sort.

I choose Democracy and its negative feedback control loop over no control whatsoever.

As for your argument that what people generally vote for is a party leader and a platform... that is often true. But when people voted for Barack Obama, it seems to me that they were voting less for a party leader and a platform than they were voting AGAINST Bush. It was the same negative feedback control loop that I am describing. They didn't like BUSH, so they voted against anything remotely related to Bush. And they got change... they controlled the outcome.

Now, I believe that we are seeing the people rejecting what Obama represents in terms of "platform" and "leadership", and I think that the people will again vote with that negative feedback loop... and we will see a change in Congress in 2010 and a change in President in 2012, with corresponding changes in policy.

Clearly the people DO have control of the direction of the country and the makeup of the government if such changes are possible.

If the people can control who is in the government via the vote, and they can change the decisions of the members of the government via their phone campaigns, in what way is such control illusory? In what way is it not real? If it has real results, and can cause real changes in both the makeup of government and the policies of that government, why do you say that it isn't real?

Elliot

Now come on Tom you know that's not a fair question, Britain is a welfare state and no one need go hungary there.

So is the USA... we have health care programs that account for up to 20% of every state's budget, and we have both government-run and charitable health care for the poor. And no hospital can turn a patient away, regardless of ability to pay. So why is it an issue?

As has been said before, nobody in the USA (whether they are a citizen or not) needs to go without health care.

So why do we need to reform the system to provide health care that is already provided to the poor?


And Tom it is very hard to get the majority necessary to amend the American constitution.

Yep. Deliberately so. It has only happened 18 times in our history (the first 10 Amendments all happened at the same time, the rest happened individually). But it has happened. The most recent was in May of 1992.


In today's reality it would require bipartisan support not really a reality

If it doesn't have bipartisan support, it shouldn't be amended. If the vast majority of federal legislators AND state governments cannot agree to the change, why should it be changed? Just because someone thinks it's going to be good for the people? Again we get back to the question of who determines what "general welfare" means. If the overwhelming majority of people can't agree to it, it isn't promoting the "general welfare" is it?

[quite]and in any case if it is an inalienable right there is a Supreme Court to test it in. Given the Supreme Court leanings and propensity for left leaning judgements they should have no difficulty, after all, if criminals have rights so do the sick[/quote]

So you are suggesting MORE legislation from the bench.

Clete, there is a specific separation of powers between the branches of government in the USA. The Legislative branch (Congress) writes laws. The Executive branch (the President) implements laws. The Judicial branch (the Supreme Court) interprets laws and determines the Constitutionality of laws.

The Supreme Court and lower courts are not supposed to be writing law... they are not supposed to be creating new sets of laws to determine who has what rights. They are supposed to simply interpret laws that are already on the books.

What you are proposing... having the SCOTUS determine whether there is a "right to health care"... is simply an attempt to have the court write new law. That is a violation of the separation of powers. As such it would be unconstitutional.

Not that that has stopped them in the past.

Elliot

Salvo Elliot,

Firstly, apologies for missing anything you asked

Lets look at the charity and the facts and not stats - don't make me quote Disraeli to you :)

300m Americans vs. 60m Brits
15tn US GDP vs. 3tn UK GDP
The US is 3.719 million square miles. England is 94,526 square miles.

Therefore, to simplify for you :) You could fit 39 England's into the US and still have room left over

We have the 6th largest economy in the world vs. your first and yet we give the second largest amount to charity

Imagine what the brits could do if we had the land mass that you have - remember 39 times the room to play

By the way, I'm English, as opposed to British, complicated story of history :)

So to answer your questions,

1. Who defines General Welfare? In democracy the people do - obviously

However your question is a little vague, the preamble stated promote the general welfare

So I ask you back, how can a "I'm all right jack" attitude be promoting the general welfare?

Please correct me here if I don't understand it but the founders wrote the constitution to end the elitism of English rule

It was designed so that all men could be equal and be appointed to power by merit and not hereditary

What the main reason for the self rule was back then, is certainly not the situation today

So any argument by what the founders meant is never going to be settled, especially as even you guys can't agree on it by what I have been forced to read up J

It is surely a document which allows you to change according to what the feelings of people are today and certainly not what was thought of way back when which is exactly the reason why it was written in the first place

2nd

I am sure you can appreciate, there is so much news in the world and most of the time it is sensationalised so not really worth listening to, so please correct be if I am wrong

I thought the whole point of the Obamas' plan was to reform a section of the healthcare which provided health insurance to all at a basic level, to clean up certain aspects of the insurance companies to stop their uneven handed approach when dealing with the poor.

SO PLEASE TELL ME - The Constitution was written to make all men equal, no more elitism, and yet I find myself discussing elitism with an American who thinks it is a good idea - Have I got this wrong here or have you guys come full circle

Not having seen it for myself I can only read into third party evidence which by itself is usually tainted to one side, but it does come across as a very harsh system

Don't get me wrong at all, I am all for standing up on your own two feet and getting what you want (within the law of course) but in an economic structure of basic and luxury goods there will always be the ones who have and the ones who don't

True there are the ones who sit back and collect welfare all day long and do nothing for it, but even the tight so and so you are mate, I am sure you can recognise there are those who cannot get good basic health care even though they work hard to try to do everything for themselves in the American way

And so a whole generation of a family must suffer so the next can get the American Dream

In today's age how can that be classed as fair and equal on such basic needs as healthcare

Let me ask you a fair question,

The Founders wrote the document to address some fundamental problems they saw with their present system of rule

This also included a section so that when and where the attitudes of the people changed, the constitution could be changed as well

And yet anytime change is required for a basic level, there is an outcry it is unconstitutional

So my question is this, why do you think elitism rule is what the founders would have wanted?

Morning Synnen

Do you not accept the possibility that someone is having difficulties through nothing more than making a mistake

A bad choice at some point is made by all of us, hopefully if you live your life more than once!

Yup. My life has been bad more than once, through choices I made, whether those choices were mistakes or not.

I got pregnant at 17. I was already working to help support my family (not for "fun" money like many teens), and KNEW another mouth to feed was going to be insanity. My family offered support, but I did what was best for my daughter, and myself, and chose adoption. How many people parent that can't afford to?

I ran up credit card debt in college. In my defense, nearly all of the debt was groceries. I had problems where I was told I had financial aid, and it fell through at the last minute. Since I'd already signed a lease, I had to stick out a year in a town out of state from where I'd grown up. I got a job, went to school full time, and worked more than 40 hours every week to pay for rent, school and food. Food was my LOWEST priority, and many days, my only meal was the one I got from the church down the street from me. I should have dropped out of school; instead, I failed everything and had more debt. So... when my lease was up, I DID drop out of school. I sacrificed my education for food in my stomach.

There ARE some situations where I'm more than happy to help someone get out of a bad spot they're in due to their choices---but they have to be doing as much as I am to get them out of that situation. Great example is a family I help. Mother, 2 kids. Mom is a recovering alcoholic and drug user, sober 3 years. She started her road to recovery when the father of the kids snapped one day and instead of hitting her like he usually did, he hit one of the kids. She packed them up and moved to a women's shelter and started the long road to recovery--so that she didn't lose her kids to him. She'd made some REALLY bad choices in her life, but she makes the choice every morning now to get up, stay sober, and earn enough to keep her family. She barely does it. She also has the unfortunate situation of having Crohn's disease (which is a pre-existing condition that will get you denied health care). She does everything she can herself, but sometimes it's not enough. I've sort of "adopted" them, and help them every time I have a chance--with money for bills, with food, with a place to go that's safe with no drugs or alcohol, with an ear to listen, hand me down clothing, etc. This is a woman who made SERIOUS mistakes in her life, and through NO fault of her own is being denied insurance.

So yes, some people can make mistakes and need a hand up. Giving them a hand up is NOT the same as giving them a hand OUT--and there are PLENTY of programs to help most people who need it.

The problem, phlanx, is that most people who make mistakes and get what they need ANYWAY don't learn from their mistakes--and therefore keep making them. Just look at the US Welfare system if you don't believe me.

So why do we need to reform the system to provide health care that is already provided to the poor?Hello again, Elliot:

For a moment, let's pretend that I agree with you that we're serving everybody's medical needs. I don't, of course, but let's pretend. IF we ARE doing it, then we're not doing it very efficiently because we spend more to get less. That's simply a management problem.

Take ER's for example. I understand you have some experience there... ER's aren't for day to day treatment. They're too damn expensive for that. So, we should REFORM the system, if in no other way, so that ER's go back to being ER's, and people get their day to day treatment in a much more cost effective manner.

There's more, of course. But, as a right winger, you DO understand management, don't you?? If we did just that, how much do you think it'll save us?? How could you be against changing THAT?? Can't you say anything other than NO?? Guess not.

excon

Morning Synnen

Do you not accept the possibility that someone is having difficulties through nothing more than making a mistake

A bad choice at some point is made by all of us, hopefully if you live your life more than once!

Oh, sure, it happens all the time.

Now explain to me why I should be penalized for someone else's bad decisions by having MY MONEY taken away from me to pay for that person.

What bad decision did I make that I should be penalized? What action did I take that obligates me to that other person? What document did I sign that makes me financially obligated to someone else?

There's a word for being forced to work without compensation so that someone else will benefit from my labor. It's "slavery".

If I am forced to work so that the money I earn is taken away from me to pay for someone else's benefits, then I am a slave. Call it what you will, that is essentially what it is. Call it a "welfare program", call it "forced charity", call it "good citizenship", call it "responsibility to my fellow citizen", it is all the same thing. If I am forced to give up my hard-earned money to someone else without choice, I am a slave. We fought a war in this country to eliminate slavery.

I have no desire to be a slave.

You clearly do.

Elliot

Gordon Bennett Wolverine

As an econoimist I would have thought you would understand the basic rule of any government

YOU ARE GOING TO BE TAXED REGARDLESS!!

So it is not a question of if or how but how much

Hell, I understand that - I work hard for my money and yet I find the government takes money out in every direction so that somebody else can live on welfare, so this and that can be paid for - all of which I will never ever see the benefit from

DIRECTLY!!

Surely the point of having social reform is to ensure the masses are kept happy

Unhappy masses tend to riot, break laws, cause anarchy, and generally ruin any chance you have of earning a living

And then what - taxes have to be increased to keep law and order, WOULD you be happy to pay some of your hard earned cash then mate

You are a Citizen in a country, which will always make you a slave to the system whether you like or not mate, or do you break the laws and don't pay taxes?

Funny point : You had to go to war to get social reform to change so the benefits of the few were cared for, and yet here - we changed the law in a civilised manner within Parliament

Hello again, Elliot:

For a moment, let's pretend that I agree we're serving everybody. IF that's so, then we're not doing it efficiently because we spend more to get less. That's simply a management problem.

Take ER's for example. I understand you have some experience there... ER's aren't for day to day treatment. They're too damn expensive for that. So, we should REFORM the system, if in no other way, so that ER's go back to being ER's, and people get their day to day treatment in a much more cost effective manner.

There's more, of course. But, as a right winger, you DO understand management, don't you??? If we did just that, how much do you think it'll save us??? How could you be against changing THAT??? Can't you say anything other than NO??? Guess not.

excon

And so your solution to "mismanagement" is to give the entire system over to the most inefficient, most wasteful, most poorly managed agency the world has ever seen... the US government.

This is the same US government that pays $500 for a hammer and $1200 for a toilet seat.

This is the same government that spends money during a recession to study the sexual habbits of field mice.

This is the same government that created Freddie Mac in order to create competition with Fannie Mae, even though both bodies are owned and regulated by the same people, and therefore there is no competition.

This is the same government that mysteriously "lost" $24.5 billion in 2003... they simply can't account for how the money was spent, so they wrote it off.

This is the same government that spent $100 million between 1997 and 2003 on 270,000 commercial airline tickets that were never used... and each of those tickets were fully REFUNDABLE, but refunds were never applied for. (In 27,000 cases, tickets were actually paid for TWICE.)

This is the same government... in fact the same Medicare system... that Inspector General Janet Renquist (DHHS) found in 2002 to have paid 8 TIMES what other agencies were paying for the same drugs, supplies and equipment.

This is who you want to turn our "mismanaged" health care system over to?

But getting more to the point than that... what makes you think that the system is being mismanaged at all?

We have been through the numbers... of the 46 million people that supposedly don't have insurance, roughly 10 million of them CHOOSE not to have health insurance, 12 million are illegal aliens not elligible for health insurance, and 10 million are people uninsured for less than 4 months at a time but generally have insurance at all other times. That leaves between 10 and 15 million people uninsured for extended periods. Or roughly 3&#37; of the US population.

That means that the system we have is 97% efficient in providing health insurance. Where is the inefficiency? What government agency can improve on 97% efficiency in comletion of its assigned task?

So... in summation, you want to improve on 97% efficiency by handing the system over to the most inefficient agency every created in the history of mankind.

What a brilliant solution.

NOT!!

Elliot

Take ER's for example. I understand you have some experience there... ER's aren't for day to day treatment. They're too damn expensive for that. So, we should REFORM the system, if in no other way, so that ER's go back to being ER's, and people get their day to day treatment in a much more cost effective manner.


But getting more to the point than that... what makes you think that the system is being mismanaged at all?
Hello again, El:

Well, we were talking about ER's as an example... I don't know what happened to your right wing business acumen, but my four year old granddaughter can take ONE look at the ER's and surmise that there's some mismanagement going on.

You not so much, huh?

excon

Gordon Bennett Wolverine

As an econoimist I would have thought you would understand the basic rule of any government

YOU ARE GOING TO BE TAXED REGARDLESS!!!

So it is not a question of if or how but how much

Hell, i understand that - I work hard for my money and yet I find the government takes money out in every direction so that somebody else can live on welfare, so this and that can be paid for - all of which I will never ever see the benefit from

DIRECTLY!!!!!!!

Surely the point of having social reform is to ensure the masses are kept happy

Unhappy masses tend to riot, break laws, cause anarchy, and generally ruin any chance you have of earning a living

And then what - taxes have to be increased to keep law and order, WOULD you be happy to pay some of your hard earned cash then mate

You are a Citizen in a country, which will always make you a slave to the system whether you like or not mate, or do you break the laws and dont pay taxes?

Funny point : You had to go to war to get social reform to change so the benefits of the few were cared for, and yet here - we changed the law in a civilised manner within Parliament

First of all, yes, we are all taxed. As we should be. The government has to maintain roads, bridges and tunnels. The government has to maintian a communication system (mail, phones, internet). The government has to maintain a military and police force. The government has to maintain courts to enforce both criminal and civil law. It needs to maintain a jail system to punish those who violate criminal law.

All these things are accounted for in the Constitution.

But taxing people in order to give their money to someone else in the form of welfare or pork barrel spending?

Nuh uh. It ain't in the Constitution. It's pure Keynesian BS, which is in turn based on Marxism... the idea that government is the only body capable of taking care of man.

There is a value in government. It's value is exactly what I have said it is... the maintenance of a military, the maintenance of freedom of communication and travel, and the maintenance of an economic environment that is favorable to free trade.

Any role of government other than that HAS NO VALUE except to erode personal freedoms by limiting free choice and decreasing personal wealth.

What you are essentially telling me is that you have no faith in your fellow man. You don't believe that man can be charitable to his fellow man except when forced to do so by his government. You believe in the inherent "badness" of man and the inherent "goodness" of government.

I disagree. I have more faith in my fellow man than you do. I trust my fellow man to help help others when they are in need without being forced to do so by the government via taxes and welfare spending. And as I have pointed out before, Americans seem to be better at it than you Brits.

Perhaps that is why you need your government to intervene on your behalf and we don't. We actually do give more charity than you do... we can be trusted to do so without government intervention. You guys don't give as much charity so you need a government to force you to do it.

Elliot

Hello again, El:

Well, we were talking about ER's as an example... I don't know what happened to your right wing business acumen, but my four year old granddaughter can take ONE look at the ER's and surmise that there's some mismanagement going on.

You not so much, huh?

excon

Really?

I define efficiency as placing the most care where it will do the most good in the shortest amount of time possible within a specific department-wide budget without turning away a single patient. By that definition, excon, you are 100% wrong.

In my experience, ERs are some of the most efficient health care service providers around. They actually determine who goes first based on NEED, not based on some arbitrary event like who got there first or who is the most important or richest person in the room. It's called "triage medicine", and it works very well. The guy with the gunshot wound to the abdomen will ALWAYS get cared for before the guy with the splinter in his pinky. The guy with the major trauma from an MVA will go before the guy with the sniffles. The guy who is having the MI will go before the guy with a cold. That is an efficient method of distributing care based on immediate need.

So what you, a non-professional in health care see as "inefficient" I, as a volunteer EMT with 20 years of critical care experience, see as the height of efficiency in providing care.

Now... if you want to talk about inefficiencies in OTHER departments of a hospital, we can have that discussion. But not ERs. They are actually the MOST EFFICIENTLY RUN part of any health center or hospital due to the nature of trama and critical care medicine. And you will be hard pressed to find any system that is more efficiently run and gives more effective care than an ER.

And that is even in the state-run and county-run hospitals that I have worked in... with all the massive waste that takes place in any government agency, ERs are STILL the most efficient part of any hospital, by the definition I gave above.

Do you have a different definition of efficiency that applies to an ER?

More importantly, can you show me how the government can run an ER more efficiently than it is currently run?

I doubt it. But go ahead... give it a shot.

Elliot

In my experience, ERs are some of the most efficient health care service providers around. Hello again, Elliot:

Remind me NOT to inquire about your right wing business acumen any more. What you said above, indicates that you NEVER had any...

So, you think a guy sitting around to get his cold treated by an emergency room doctor is the most efficient use of that doctors time, do you?? Dude! We can't talk about this anymore... Cause you and I ain't on the same planet...

excon

Hello again, Elliot:

Remind me NOT to inquire about your right wing business acumen any more. What you said above, indicates that you NEVER had any...

So, you think a guy sitting around to get his cold treated by an emergency room doctor is the most efficient use of that doctors time, do you??? Dude! We can't talk about this anymore... Cause you and I ain't on the same planet...

excon

Actually it is an inefficient use of the PATIENT'S time. The Doctor is busy doing other things, like treating patients with greater immediate need. So yes, the doctor's time is being used efficiently. It is the PATIENT'S time that is being wasted.

But we weren't talking about the efficiency of the patient. We were talking about the efficiency of the ER. And the ER is VERY efficient.

Try again.

Elliot

Actually it is an inefficient use of the PATIENT'S time.Hello again, Elliot:

So, having an emergency room doctor treat a guy with a cold is INEFFICIENT for the patient, but it's a GOOD use of the doctors time?? That's you story? You're going to stick with that, huh?

DUDE!

Patient inefficiency costs us HOW MUCH?? I didn't know that WE were the problem. DUDE!!

excon

Hello again, Elliot:

So, having an emergency room doctor treat a guy with a cold is INEFFICIENT for the patient, but it's a GOOD use of the doctors time?? That's you story? You're going to stick with that, huh?

You clearly can't understand what you have read.

It is an efficient use of the doctor's time because the doctor is treating patients on the basis of most urgent need. THAT is the definition of efficiency.


Patient inefficiency costs us HOW MUCH?? I didn't know that WE were the problem. DUDE!!

Excon

Patient inefficiency costs us ABSOLUTELY NOTHING... which is why it isn't a problem. You are trying to manufacture an issue that doesn't exist.

You have yet to show how ERs are inefficient, and you have yet to show how government could do a better job of managing them. That's because you CAN'T and you know it.

Elliot

Don't worry excon, elliot is an economist who thinks paying taxes for services amounts to slavery

Elliot, your list didn't include social services which looks after others people kids paid for by you, or do you want to see what China or Romania did with their unwanted kids!

You haven't mentioned the refuse collection - surely you are more than capable of driving down to the refuse collection point instead of paying your government to do it

Road networks can be looked after by companies, so can rail and mail.

Telephone networks - nah you don't need a government for that either do you

You certainly don't need a government to run your jails

So the next step would be a privatised police force - because a company can look after that as well

You keep stating the one fact that you guys give more to charity than we do - WuHu, good for you, pat yourselves on the back

One question, how many wars has the US won?? (No offence to anybody serving or had served)

When your country comes even close to what we as a nation have achieved then please feel free to keep sounding it out

I wonder how much you will be giving to charity in a few generations when you are no longer a super power?

Elliot, you really are not living in this solar system

You missed the point . Those are all legitimate services of local governments . The mandates of the central Federal government in our system is few and delineated carefully in the articles of the Constitution.

The Constituition is not a fixed document

Where in the original text does it state, And every week your rubbish will be collected form your door. Your kids will be looked after if you can't look after them, we will lay telephone communications so everybody can talk to each

It doesn't, it is open to interpretation and change

And as I have said many times over, the War of Indpendence was about tyranny, about ruling elitism, and yet here people are saying, nobody is taking my position away from me - if people are hungary let them eat cake, wow everybody has moved on haven't they!

You clearly can't understand what you have read.

It is an efficient use of the doctor's time because the doctor is treating patients on the basis of most urgent need. THAT is the definition of efficiency.Hello again, Elliot:

Then tell me what I didn't understand... I understand perfectly what you said... The doctor is treating people efficiently, even though some of his time is spent on people who shouldn't be there in the first place...

Who wouldn't understand THAT cockamamy right wing business bull crap?? I mean, if a manager told a worker to pound nails into sand, and the worker diligently pounded those nails, that would, according to you, be an efficient use of the workers time, even though nobody needs nails pounded into sand??

Yessir. I understand perfectly. I doubt, however, that you'll understand me. That's cool. Those reading this will.

excon

Excon, I understand what you are trying to say

My final thought here is you just can't reason with stupidty

Have a good evening people

Don't worry excon, elliot is an economist who thinks paying taxes for services amounts to slavery

Elliot, your list didn't include social services which looks after others people kids paid for by you, or do you want to see what China or Romania did with their unwanted kids!

I didn't list that because it isn't provided for in the Constitution.


You haven't mentioned the refuse collection - surely you are more than capable of driving down to the refuse collection point instead of paying your government to do it

You're right, I missed that one, though it could be said to be part of maintenance of roads... but I'll grant you that one.


Road networks can be looked after by companies, so can rail and mail.

Yep... and most often, road repairs are contracted out to private companies. But it is STILL a government responsibility under the Constitution and therefore something that can legitimately be taxed for.


Telephone networks - nah you don't need a government for that either do you

Actually not... the private companies handle it better than the government ever could. But it could be argued that it is a government responsibility.


You certainly don't need a government to run your jails

I actually listed jails above... but as a matter of fact, the running of jails is often contracted out to private companies as well. But the government pays for it.


So the next step would be a privatised police force - because a company can look after that as well

There are some counties that have such a system... police duties are contracted out to private individuals. Nevertheless, it is a government responsibility to do it, and the government pays for it.


You keep stating the one fact that you guys give more to charity than we do - WuHu, good for you, pat yourselves on the back

Actually it goes to the heart of your point. You argued that you need the government to handle your charity work for you... you need the government to do all the benevolent work that your people don't do by themselves. We don't need the government to do that work for us because we give more charity voluntarily than you do.


One question, how many wars has the US won?? (No offence to anybody serving or had served)

Beginning with our national birth in 1776:

1) The Revolutionary War
2) The Shays Rebellion
3) The Whiskey Rebellion
4) The Quasi-War (against France)
5) The War of 1812 (aka The Second War of Independence)
6) The Mexican-American War
7) The Amercan Civil War (coincidentally was also lost that war)
8) The Spanish American War
9) The Banana Wars
10) World War I
11) World War II
13) The Korean War
14) The Cold War
15) Granada
16) The Gulf War
17) The Iraq War.


When your country comes even close to what we as a nation have achieved then please feel free to keep sounding it out

Please keep in mind that the only reason you don't speak German is because of US.

Deal with it.


I wonder how much you will be giving to charity in a few generations when you are no longer a super power?

That will depend on how much our government keeps taking from us in the name of "helping those less fortunate" as you advocate. But for now WE ARE a super power, both economically and militarily. I'm just trying to make sure we stay that way.

Again, deal with it.


Elliot, you really are not living in this solar system

Uh huh... you're the one dreaming of the USA no longer being a super power and utopian governments that keep everyone happy, healthy and care-free.

The Constituition is not a fixed document

AND THAT is where you are wrong. It IS a fixed document.


Where in the orginal text does it state, And every week your rubbish will be collected form your door.

It doesn't... that's a STATE responsibility, not a federal one.


Your kids will be looked after if you can't look after them

Since when is that a government responsibility? It may be a nice thing for someone to do for you, but it isn't a government responsibility.


we will lay telephone communications so everybody can talk to each

That IS listed... when it talks about maintaining roads and mail systems... which includes methods of communications. But the fact is that the telephone system is handled by private companies... formerly Bell Telephone, and now it's various "baby bells".


It doesnt, it is open to interpretation and change

Interpretation, yes. That is what the Supreme Court is there for. But change? Only via Amendment.


And as I have said many times over, the War of Indpendence was about tyranny, about ruling elitism, and yet here people are saying, nobody is taking my position away from me - if people are hungary let them eat cake, wow everybody has moved on havent they!

You're right.

When we rebelled against King George, we did so because he was taxing us into oblivion, taking our assets, ostensibly for the good of the realm.

Today the government is trying to pass new laws that will tax us into oblivion and take away our assets, ostensibly for the good of the nation.

Not much has changed at all.

And your analysis of the reasons for the Revolution make it clear that you STILL don't know what it was about. It was about TAXATION without REPRESENTATION... it was about taking away the hard-earned assets of individuals without them having a say in the matter.

It had nothing to do with "elitism" or "position". In fact, the Founding Fathers were quite ready to name George Washington "King"... it was the system they knew and most understood. They LIKED monarchy, and would have been quite comfortable with it. They had no problem with the idea of a ruling elite. But they decided, after looking at history, that there had to be a better system that would prevent that much power from being in the hands of any one man... and from that concept came the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

The point is that you misunderstand the nature of the Revolutionary War, why we broke away from you, and how we came to believe what we do about the role of government. You still think it was because of some sort of hate of monarchy and nobility in general. It wasn't. And when you can figure out what it REALLY was all about... freedom to keep what you earn, freedom to accumulate wealth, freedom to pursue our goals unmolested by government intervention... then you will understand why Conservatives feel as we do about the role of government.

But I doubt that you will get it. You don't see anything wrong with the government taking your money and giving it to others. Or keeping it for themselves.

Excon,

Well, for one thing you seem to think that "patient inefficiency", the fact that the patient has to wait around for a long time in an ER if his problem isn't emergent, is some sort of issue.

Second, you seem to think that a doctor who deals with patients who need less care AFTER dealing with patients who need more care is somehow an inefficient use of that doctor's time.

Third, you seem to think that the government is going to fix these inefficiencies... that somehow the patient won't have to wait so long, and that somehow the doctor's time will be more efficiently used.

You assume this despite the fact that everywhere nationalized health care has been tried, patient waits for care have INCREASED instead of decreasing... patients who used to wait for a few hours in an emergency room now wait weeks for an appointment with their doctor at his office.

You assume this despite the fact that in every place where it has been tried, doctors have become LESS efficient due to government intervention... a doctor who has met his quota for the day, week, month or year doesn't see any more patients, because he's not getting paid for more patients. He could have 3 more hours left to his shift, but he's not going to see any more patients that day, because he's met his quota. Whereas in the USA, doctors see patients until their shift is over, and then they usually stay overtime to make sure that the patients they STARTED seeing are cleared from the board before they go home.

So patient wait times become more inefficient, and doctors times are spent more inefficiently in a nationalized health care setting.

And fourth, you think that ERs are inefficient.

But YOU assume that nationalizing health care is going to make these things MORE efficient.

THAT is what you don't understand.

Elliot

Excon, I understand what you are trying to say

My final thought here is you just can't reason with stupidty

Have a good evening poeple

Funny, I was thinking the same thing about you...

Since the OP has never returned to this thread shouldn't it be closed now?

Elliot

YOU WILL BE TAXED - YOU HAVE BEEN TAXED - YOU WILL BE TAXED FURTHER

Taxes are part and parcel of any government

And since when is social services not givernment ruled?

You are paying taxes, these taxes go to the welfare of the state

If you can't see that then you need help

I have no problem to bowing down to superior knowledge of that small part of our history, we have so much of it it is difficult to cover everything

However, the people had representation as early as 1215, with implemented procedures with Cromwell.

The represnetation was there, it was how this was organised, which was the elite ruling class that still had the power

And if they were truly happy with King George, then they were happy with they way King George ruled - which they weren't!

They knew that an all out attack on the King himself would have left them in a very difficult position

That's how I understand it, but back to the elk, if you can't see the simple truth in all of this that it is good to help your fellow man then may I suggest you get out a bit more

>Thread Closed<
As it's run it's course..