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 Kilkrazy wrote:
As I understand it, we already live in a post-scarcity age in terms of food production, but there are people dying of starvation because their countries are involved in civil war which disrupts distribution channels (e.g. The Yemen, South Sudan, etc.)

Post-scarcity is not just the ability to produce enough of a thing, it's the ability to produce enough of a thing so easily that it no longer has exchange value. We're not post scarcity in anything. Virtually all production still requires considerable input and consequently outputs still cost money. Food production is still pretty energy intensive. Energy is the problem.

A different example is the scarcity of housing in the UK, which isn't caused by a scarcity of space or capacity to build housing, but by a system of perverse incentives that prevent local councils from building social housing while leading house building companies to use their land banks to produce retirement homes because there is a lower tax regime making such projects more profitable.

Even worse, we have enough housing for everyone but tons of it is unoccupied.

 Supertony51 wrote:
Well, I believe the key here is transparency. People should be able to find out, in a easy manner, how much money is being spent and on what.

Hell, I'm not resentful about the taxes that are spent on common services like Defense, police, roads, even schools, although I feel like property taxes are bs.

What many people seem to be upset about, myself included are taxes being spent frivolously, or redistributed as handouts with no accountability.

All that data is publicly available, and easily accessed. Hell, you could probably get most of your answers from the wikipedia summary.

There's two problems. The first is that people don't bother to access this information, and then complain they don't know.

The second problem is that simply knowing where money is spent doesn't make you capable of knowing whether it was spent well. This isn't just a mistake the public makes, politicians do it too. They see one school with 1,000 kids and good results spent $2m, and another school with 750 kids and mediocre results spent $3m. But the second school might represent an area full of really troubled kids, and might have excellent courses in expensive but non-academic classes like metal work. The first school might be skating by with gifted kids, and blowing a fortune on a bloated administration.

Despite these two problems, people do little to address either knowledge shortfall, and still feel their opinion is valid and informed.

I agree on property taxes, by the way. Taxes should be some combination of consumption tax, income tax and excises. All other taxes are sub-optimal.

They got damn near 7k in EITC, ON TOP OF Medicaid, SNAP, and a plethora of other benefits. So literally money went from my pocket to their hand because they can't get their life straight.

I get it, the kids need to eat, but can anyone explain to me why or how they earned that 7k?

All the data is available.
https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/individuals/earned-income-tax-credit/use-the-eitc-assistant

no government isn't more efficient, ever.

Both you and skyth are talking in generalistions. You are right in a general sense, the private sector is less efficient in most things. This is why most things are left to the private sector. But there's a whole lot of things where there simply isn't a market for private sector work, and on top of that there are instances where the private sector is actually less efficient. Healthcare gets mentioned as an example of this - there is a direct connection between greater government involvement in a nation's healthcare and lower expenses, for a given quality of care.

There is no incentive for government programs to run efficiently. If they get 10$ one year and only need 9, they will spend the 10 on bull just to make sure that they still get 10 next year. I used to work for the government and I can tell you that, that is exactly how it works.

This still happens in some areas, but is being steadily pushed out of public practice. The simplest replacement is clean slate, which is similar to but not quite the same as zero based budgeting, which also defeats the practice you describe above. Bid budgeting is growing, where all depts get only their base budget for skeleton admin staff, and then bid for allocations based on what services projects they can offer for a given amount of funding, and there is also commitment budgeting which allocates funds based on budget estimates on what govt is committed to do.

I can't tell you the extent of these practices in the US. I have read plenty of pieces talking about the positive impact they've had as they've been rolled out, and cases studies on this stuff have been around for decades now.

They aren't perfect solutions, but then private sector allocations aren't perfect either. But they do represent a more real world view of how government finances operate today. The complaint you make is a very pointed criticism of 1970s government.

Additionally, Profit isn't "waste" it is used by a company to expand, which provides new jobs. It is used to develop new methods and technologies that enhance productivity or enrich quality of life.

Agreed.

 sebster wrote:

Additionally, Profit isn't "waste" it is used by a company to expand, which provides new jobs. It is used to develop new methods and technologies that enhance productivity or enrich quality of life.

Agreed.

Other than the fact that profit is what is left over after the money is spent on expansion and R&D, etc as well. The fact remains that the product cost less to make than is charged for it, thus it is 'waste' as far as government services are concerned.

If the government charged a $100 fee for something that only cost $90 to do, there would be people up in arms about that. However, if a private enterprise took over and did the same thing, the same people wouldn't have an issue with it. This lack of a need to turn a profit makes, in equal situations, government more efficient than private enterprises.

Plus government doesn't need to pay million dollar salaries to executives. If government leaders were paid the way that corporate executives are paid, there would be a major uproar. Heck, consider the complaint that teachers are overpaid when people don't complain about corporate managers that have 25 direct reports being paid a lot more than teachers are...

Yeah, does government need to pay their governing personnel 6 figures a year on top of perks? Not to mention the fact that most congresspersons also have their law firms feeding them private sector funds. Government waste happens in completely different ways, but it still exists, and is even worse in my mind because it happens with no private sector competition, which at least curbs the worst of the private sector issues.

 Just Tony wrote:
Yeah, does government need to pay their governing personnel 6 figures a year on top of perks? Not to mention the fact that most congresspersons also have their law firms feeding them private sector funds. Government waste happens in completely different ways, but it still exists, and is even worse in my mind because it happens with no private sector competition, which at least curbs the worst of the private sector issues.

Competition doesn't curb the worst of the private sector issues though. If it did, executive compensation would be more in line with employee compensation instead of way out of proportion.

And if you got paid the same for ZERO responsibility or for taking ALL the responsibility, what would you do? Human nature is to take the path of least resistance, and while someone may be ambitious enough to take that responsibility with next to no compensation, 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of humanity wouldn't.

 Just Tony wrote:
And if you got paid the same for ZERO responsibility or for taking ALL the responsibility, what would you do? Human nature is to take the path of least resistance, and while someone may be ambitious enough to take that responsibility with next to no compensation, 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of humanity wouldn't.

That percentage would imply that not one member of the human race would take responsibiility. We know for a fact that is not true, due to there being people who do take responsibility.

So it's more like 99.999%

If that were at all true egalitarian societies could never have existed. And yet...

 Just Tony wrote:
And if you got paid the same for ZERO responsibility or for taking ALL the responsibility, what would you do? Human nature is to take the path of least resistance, and while someone may be ambitious enough to take that responsibility with next to no compensation, 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of humanity wouldn't.

Straw man much?

No one said that executives shouldn't be paid more than line workers. However, their pay should be a much smaller multiplier of what the line workers make than it is now.

The private sector has worked hard to make sure that it is much less than a free market. It constantly demands government intervention in the form of subsidies, tariffs, and other taxpayer largesse. When it fails, it demands bailouts, but the top players never give back their money. Competition is for the rubes at the bottom. Industries are often only nominally competitive to justify price hikes or buyouts.

Which private sector would you like the government to emulate? The very successful US auto industry that has repeatedly destroyed itself (except when propped p by public money)? Since we are talking budgets and resources perhaps the wildly successful financial industry that has produced catastrophic market crashes and required numerous bailouts?

Or, perhaps recognize that large scale coordinated human activities are inherently intertwined. And humans can run things well or poorly, depending on the systems in place. Government is nothing more than people trying to manage how things get done. Traditionally, the powerful dominate the game by force and take a disproportionate share of the resources while shouldering very little of the work. Apparently some people hate such a system if it is called monarchy but are just fine if it is called capitalism instead. Likewise, the poor possibly taking advantage of government programs is an unthinkable evil (and ignores that if it was such an exploit, the poverty rate would probably decline due to the resource reallocation), but the wealthy doing the same is readily accepted.

Compensation is a fiction created to justify why you spend all your time doing menial labor while someone else collects the benefit. Add cost taps to make sure your compensation gets bled off into necessities and you basically have servitude. Humans will often work for a variety of nonmaterial reasons including a sense of duty, self or community improvement, interest in the work, etc. Unless you believe that humanity never labored or produced before formal compensation existed.

 Just Tony wrote:
And if you got paid the same for ZERO responsibility or for taking ALL the responsibility, what would you do? Human nature is to take the path of least resistance, and while someone may be ambitious enough to take that responsibility with next to no compensation, 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of humanity wouldn't.

You have no idea what "human nature" is. Don't use that argument. Throughout all of history, it has been used poorly and constantly, to support every single possible viewpoint.

More libertarian centrist. I am all for freedom, but most of the time, people seem to use freedom to justify their mediocrity and do stupid things. AKA, use the excuse of freedom to be a big pile of fat (I'm free to be unhealthy), use the excuse of free speech to say hateful and ridiculous things (true patriots are against same sex-marriage), etc.

Seems to me that freedom is like alcohol. The more you take, the less good it is.

Let 'em be a big pile of fat. As long as they don't expect my tax dollars to subsidize the resulting health care costs.

 CptJake wrote:
Let 'em be a big pile of fat. As long as they don't expect my tax dollars to subsidize the resulting health care costs.

Don't know if you mean :

1) Privatize healthcare

or

2) Make public healtcare only accessible to people who are not living an unhealthy life.

If 1), then :

I'd prefer healthcare to be accessible to everyone. There's no reason to make an essential need unaccessible to the majority of the population, especially those that have lower income, because a minority is unable to be responsible. I myself was saved by a surgical intervention from a tumor in my throat when I was one year old. Had healthcare been privatized back then, I would have died from it. I owe my life to public healthcare.

If 2), then :

Indeed. People should be held responsible for their reckless behaviour. Otherwise, they'll never learn.

People don't generally learn from dying. They just die.

And if healthy people don't have to subsidize unhealthy people, I think poor people shouldn't have to subsidize multi-billion dollar corporations and tax cuts for the rich

We all end up with our tax dollars going to stuff that doesn't benefit us. The trade off is tax dollars going to stuff that does.

 Khornate25 wrote:

Indeed. People should be held responsible for their reckless behaviour. Otherwise, they'll never learn.

Where do you stop if you go down that road, and who defines reckless? I spend ten or so hours in a gym a week, run on all my gym off-days, have less than 5% body fat, and keep an extremely good diet. I have a hernia that is almost certainly the result of weightlifting, though. Should I be liable for the surgery I'm waiting on because it's self-inflicted, even though it was self-inflicted in the pursuit of being healthy?

What about an obese woman who collapses because she's out jogging trying to lose weight?

nfe wrote:

 Khornate25 wrote:

Indeed. People should be held responsible for their reckless behaviour. Otherwise, they'll never learn.

Where do you stop if you go down that road, and who defines reckless? I spend ten or so hours in a gym a week, run on all my gym off-days, have less than 5% body fat, and keep an extremely good diet. I have a hernia that is almost certainly the result of weightlifting, though. Should I be liable for the surgery I'm waiting on because it's self-inflicted, even though it was self-inflicted in the pursuit of being healthy?

What about an obese woman who collapses because she's out jogging trying to lose weight?

It's also insane to have thoughts like that because a person's weight is the result of a multitude of factors beyond their control and depending on their genetics can strongly resist attempts at decreasing the amount of body fat.

Nah, it's completely consistent with a human tendency to view the self as virtuous and others in need as deficient. Of course when the tables are flipped, everything changes. It is also ironic that poor "lifestyle" choices are condemned but ignore the reality that gets them there- the poor, for example, generally have worse nutritional access and information. Why do we not equally condemn those who relentlessly push unhealthy products?

A medical system should be about addressing medical needs, not moralizing who requires treatment. Preventable causes should be addressed, but, again, without the whole self righteous garb. People are quick to condemn the overweight, but ignore the myriad conditions that could be symptomatic of. The superficiality and callousness is astounding. But I guess people are okay with their money going to make outrageous unearned profits so long as the fat, ugly, and poor suffer. Never mind that studies indicate that Americans without insurance have about a 40% higher death risk across the board (which translates to about 45,000 deaths a year) and uninsured children are about 60% more likely to die resulting in about 17,000 deaths.

 Just Tony wrote:
Yeah, does government need to pay their governing personnel 6 figures a year on top of perks? Not to mention the fact that most congresspersons also have their law firms feeding them private sector funds. Government waste happens in completely different ways, but it still exists, and is even worse in my mind because it happens with no private sector competition, which at least curbs the worst of the private sector issues.

Competition only curbs issues in some cases, only if the behavior is subject to market forces (or that market forces aren't driving that excess because of poorly functioning, often intentionally malfunctioning, incentives) and that competition actually exists, neither of which is true by any means in the private sector, especially for healthcare.

Listen, I work 40 hours a week. I am pretty unhealthy. I am also pretty depressed on a daily basis because of my job and my life. I have had to take care of/teach others how to take care of 5 deaths in the past 6 months. Most people don't see, let alone prepare, that many dead bodies in a lifetime. I also don't make enough money to pay for a gym membership on my days off or health insurance to get medication for my depression. I cannot pay it out of pocket with rent, gas, uniforms, food, and other essentials that I need for life.

If I want to go home and eat a pizza or some tacos in order to make myself feel better, I am going to do it and you can take your self righteousness somewhere else.

If your concern with healthcare expenses is that some people are there because of poor choices, the solution is not to cut off their healthcare. It is to note the following:

- What can be caused by poor choices can be the result of a myriad of other factors

- Some of these people are valuable in a non-medical way (such as brilliant scientists)

- You may find yourself in one of those circumstances

- Cutting of that sort of support will eventually swing back around to hurt you and the people you care about

- You can reduce the issue through education and better distribution of resources

 CptJake wrote:
Let 'em be a big pile of fat. As long as they don't expect my tax dollars to subsidize the resulting health care costs.

DO you pay taxes? Serious question.

jmurph wrote:Nah, it's completely consistent with a human tendency to view the self as virtuous and others in need as deficient. Of course when the tables are flipped, everything changes. It is also ironic that poor "lifestyle" choices are condemned but ignore the reality that gets them there- the poor, for example, generally have worse nutritional access and information. Why do we not equally condemn those who relentlessly push unhealthy products?

It's the just-world hypothesis in action.

A medical system should be about addressing medical needs, not moralizing who requires treatment. Preventable causes should be addressed, but, again, without the whole self righteous garb. People are quick to condemn the overweight, but ignore the myriad conditions that could be symptomatic of. The superficiality and callousness is astounding. But I guess people are okay with their money going to make outrageous unearned profits so long as the fat, ugly, and poor suffer. Never mind that studies indicate that Americans without insurance have about a 40% higher death risk across the board (which translates to about 45,000 deaths a year) and uninsured children are about 60% more likely to die resulting in about 17,000 deaths.

Having more people insured also means they can get medical help when they need it and don't just get it when they finally stumble into the emergency room as a last resort. This reduces cost (earlier treatment is usually cheaper), and leads to less waiting time for actual emergencies (because those cases don't develop that far). It also leads to the possibility of better preventive care which tends to reduce cost even more and an overall healthier, less stressed population and cheaper healthcare system. The problem is that in this cheaper version certain people tend to think that some others don't deserve healthcare because they can't pay for insurance (or because of preexisting condition, lifetime limits, or whatever). And that despite the more altruistic system costing less overall than the technically fairer system. Our biases and prejudices are sometimes hard to shake off even if it would lead to overall better results for everyone.

I am myself poor. Like extremely poor. Make less than 12k$ a year (helping kids with their homeworks is actually a gakky job, money wise). Yet, I still manage to weight only 220 pounds, have 5% body fat, train at the gym that I can afford 4 times a week, training using safe fitness programs, eat only rice and fish meat and, beside the occasional flu, I am in perfect health. People seem to be looking for excuses. When you think about the notion of responsability as something immoral, it's because you yourself lack willpower. Like a lot.

I eat rice two times a day, and fish meat in the morning.
I drink alcohol only once a year, on christmas.
Beside buying two time a year a new unit or paint for w40k, I don't spend my money on useless things.
My gym membership only cost me 12$ a month. Yeah, it's a really basic gym, but it's what I can afford.

It's hard, but it's still within the reach of any human to live like I live. And if you ever need a motivation to help you, just remember that it's extremely cheap to live like that. People should receive help because of the random injustice of life, not because they just can't control themselve. It's about being an adult.

When you find yourself in front of the desire for cigarettes, alcohol, junk food or whatever, just ask yourself :

1-Do I need that gak ?
2-How much worktime does the cost of this thing represent ?
3-Will I actually feel better after it ? Or worse ?

You'll be surprised, but since I started my actual life time, I lost a lot of weight, built up a lot of muscle, and I seriously don't regret alcohol, junk food and cigarettes. In fact, I feel way better than when I was using these gaks. Believe me, it feels way better being healthy and having a wallet that's filled with cash, even if it's just a little.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LordofHats wrote:
People don't generally learn from dying. They just die.

And if healthy people don't have to subsidize unhealthy people, I think poor people shouldn't have to subsidize multi-billion dollar corporations and tax cuts for the rich

We all end up with our tax dollars going to stuff that doesn't benefit us. The trade off is tax dollars going to stuff that does.

No one should subsidize corporations, regardless of their responsability towards their health. These two subjects have no connection whatsoever.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dreadwinter wrote:
Listen, I work 40 hours a week. I am pretty unhealthy. I am also pretty depressed on a daily basis because of my job and my life. I have had to take care of/teach others how to take care of 5 deaths in the past 6 months. Most people don't see, let alone prepare, that many dead bodies in a lifetime. I also don't make enough money to pay for a gym membership on my days off or health insurance to get medication for my depression. I cannot pay it out of pocket with rent, gas, uniforms, food, and other essentials that I need for life.

If I want to go home and eat a pizza or some tacos in order to make myself feel better, I am going to do it and you can take your self righteousness somewhere else.

Considering the fact you live in the USA, I think you actually need to get a free pass. The USA have a lower minimum wage and have greater intergenerationnal and class inequalities and, frankly, your food is really full of fat (never tasted anything like that anywhere else on the planet), so your hardshipst might be normal. But in Canada, especially in Center and Eastern Canada, we have no excuses.

Indirect benefit of paying for other peoples healthcare; you're not surrounded by dead people. More realistically you're not trapped in a health system in which being poor is a death sentence, which even the rich should care about because literally anyone can wind up poor for innumerable reasons. Market crash, bad investments, lay offs. People making bad health choices can have those costs mitigated in a number of ways, like taxes on tobacco and alcohol to offset the costs of lung cancer and liver disease.

Indirect benefit for paying for the subsidizing of business; improved economic growth by mitigating the risk of new or ongoing ventures. Oil and energy are super cheap in the US compared to much of the rest of the world, and that's because we subsidize coal and oil with billions of dollars every year. Cheap energy in general helps everyone. This can backfire sure, like how the structures of food subsidizes make it hard for small farmers to get by, because specific ideas aren't always good just cause the general idea is.

The point is stop complaining about how tax dollars are spent just because you don't see an immediate benefit in your life and actually look at policy outcomes.

Rice and "fish meat" is literally not a balanced diet. Long term, you'd be feeling the effects of vitamin C deficiency pretty hardcore, which can cause weakened immune systems as well as dental issues, requiring increased visits to medical facilities. Stop misusing my tax dollars for your unhealthy lifestyle .

Oh, but I do notice that you're spending $12 on a gym membership when you could be running and lifting cinderblocks for free. I get that you kids are addicted to luxury goods nowadays, but you REALLY should be spending that on a couple oranges or some vitamin C tablets or something.

If you ever need a motivation to help you, just remember that it's extremely cheap to live like that. People should receive help because of the random injustice of life, not because they just can't control themselves. It's about being an adult.

When you find yourself in front of the desire for being able to ask if a bro even lifts on the internet, just ask yourself :

1-Do I need that gak ?
2-How much worktime does the cost of this thing represent ?
3-Will I actually feel better after it ? Or worse ?

Also, get yourself some goddamned vitamin C. We do bootstraps here, not handouts. Sheesh.

EDIT: Forgot the underscores. Seriously, I can't believe we're not doing this still.

 Khornate25 wrote:
I am myself poor. Like extremely poor. Make less than 12k$ a year (helping kids with their homeworks is actually a gakky job, money wise). Yet, I still manage to weight only 220 pounds, have 5% body fat, train at the gym that I can afford 4 times a week, training using safe fitness programs, eat only rice and fish meat and, beside the occasional flu, I am in perfect health. People seem to be looking for excuses. When you think about the notion of responsability as something immoral, it's because you yourself lack willpower. Like a lot.

I'm betting you are young, without spouse or children, under 30, and dont work 40+ hours a week and arent in school full time? It's relatively easy to be fit when you are naturally healthy, young, and have lots of time, people in such situations that are rabidly unfit are a small minority. It gets difficult when family and work squeeze out time and money for gyms and exercise and the inevitable march of time takes tolls on bodies. Social and psychological factors also play a very strong role and it takes more than simple willpower to kickstart that sort of thing for most people. If your spouse for instance lives the lardbutt life, its gonna be much harder for you to break it successfully than it would otherwise.

If you're 220 with only 5% body fat and are in the gym 4 times a week, you're bigger, stronger, and fitter than the overwhelmingly vast majority of humans on the planet. Holding everyone to such a standard is simply unrealistic.


Ive dropped a hundred pounds off my peak weight, I am out walking every day and engaging in drills, pt, and fencing combatives 3-4 nights a week and 6-8 hours a week generally, sometimes more. My diet during weekdays is almost entirely fruits and veggies with two unbreaded chicken tenders a day, for about a 1500-1700cal a day diet. But thats only possible because I have no other concerns but me, myself, and I outside of work, and am still relatively young and without any major health issues. The same cannot be said of many people across the nation.

Rice could also increase the levels of arsenic you ingest, which is bad for you as well.

 Khornate25 wrote:
I am myself poor. Like extremely poor. Make less than 12k$ a year

In Spain this is considered "middle class"

I laught but is actually very sad

 daedalus wrote:

 CptJake wrote:
Let 'em be a big pile of fat. As long as they don't expect my tax dollars to subsidize the resulting health care costs.

DO you pay taxes? Serious question.

Yes, wife and I both pay state and federal income taxes, and property taxes in two states plus other assorted taxes.

Serious answer.