Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Frazzled wrote:Its irrelevant. You just higher illegal aliens and pay them lower. Plus they work harder, much harder. I'd rather hire an illegal alien who put massive effort into getiting here and is highly motivated to make money vs. a high school mouth breather.

Our neighbor is a contractor. He never hires "local" vs. "illegal" for just that reason.

You forgot to add: while complaining about border security.

Hopefully this notes the end of this rather ridiculous situation (a year of monotonous debate, backed up by years of the same), not the end to the entire problem.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/health/policy/04health.html

http://www.politico.com/livepulse/0310/Harkin_Reconciliation_is_a_go.html

President Obama's speech.




Brain-crushingly informative set of articles. Hope you have a bit of time on your hands, if you haven't paid some amount of attention to the health care debate. This is likely the best compilation online, though there are bound to be thousands of fantastic articles around the net.

Frazzled wrote:Its irrelevant. You just higher illegal aliens and pay them lower. Plus they work harder, much harder. I'd rather hire an illegal alien who put massive effort into getiting here and is highly motivated to make money vs. a high school mouth breather.

Our neighbor is a contractor. He never hires "local" vs. "illegal" for just that reason.

So, you'd rather encourage border-jumpers AND contribute to the unemployment rate? Why not run a Ponzi scheme, and go for the hat-trick?

He's lowering the unemployment rate in Mexico.

lord_sutekh wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Its irrelevant. You just higher illegal aliens and pay them lower. Plus they work harder, much harder. I'd rather hire an illegal alien who put massive effort into getiting here and is highly motivated to make money vs. a high school mouth breather.

Our neighbor is a contractor. He never hires "local" vs. "illegal" for just that reason.

So, you'd rather encourage border-jumpers AND contribute to the unemployment rate? Why not run a Ponzi scheme, and go for the hat-trick?

What do you mean encourage? There's reality then there's the utopia of unicorns and antigunners. Thats reality.
Thank your democratic (and republican) Congress and Presidents for it, don't blame me.

View from the other side of the pond on healthcare...

Cost of increased taxes to pay for universal coverage < Cost of private health insurance policy.
-Good for individual wealth.

Number of people employed to run universal health care < Number employed to staff private health insurance.
-Bad for overall employment levels.

Cost to economy due to lost income related to sickness with universal coverage < cost with private coverage.
-Good for national wealth.

Ultimately, its not an economic argument that stops the US from having universal coverage, its a political one. The insurance lobby sides with those who think government should be as small as possible and trots out bogus arguments about loss of liberty (how?), massive government beaurocracy (actually more efficient than insurance companies) and huge tax raises (more than offset by not having to pay insurance premiums).

Just suck it up and CHANGE into tzeentch worshippers.


I mean support Obama's policy, obviously [looks around furtively...]

Chimera_Calvin wrote:View from the other side of the pond on healthcare...

Cost of increased taxes to pay for universal coverage < Cost of private health insurance policy.
-Good for individual wealth.

Number of people employed to run universal health care < Number employed to staff private health insurance.
-Bad for overall employment levels.

Cost to economy due to lost income related to sickness with universal coverage < cost with private coverage.
-Good for national wealth.

Can you prove any of those statemnts or are you just blowing smoke out your ass?

And once again, the proposals being put forth by our congress are absolutely nothing like the British health system.

The bribes continue:

http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-now-selling-appeals-court-judgeships-health-care-votes

I hope they go ahead and pass the bill without a single GOP vote. They're just as wrong in opposing it as they were to oppose Medicare and Civil Rights in the 60's. Their blustering is just as ridiculous now as it was back then...

Here's a gem from good ol' Ronald Reagan, begging the public to oppose the passage of Medicare:

"If you don’t, this program I promise you, will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow and behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country until one day as Norman Thomas said we will wake to find that we have socialism, and if you don’t do this and I don’t do this, one of these days we are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free."

LOL @ fearmongering...

They didn't oppose Medicare and Civil Rights in the 60s. The Southern Democrats did.

The GOP most certainly did oppose Medicare - see the vote tally:

http://www.ssa.gov/history/tally65.html

But you're right about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - percentage-wise, more Republican lawmakers supported it than Democratic.

Nearly half the Republicans voted for the original Medicare, thats pretty damn bipartisan to me. The fact Our Leader can't get one vote speaks volumes.

Frazzled wrote:The bribes continue:

http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-now-selling-appeals-court-judgeships-health-care-votes

Now Frazz... you know the most ethical and transparent Administration in the history of the US would never trade political favors for votes.

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Commissar Molotov wrote:Here's a gem from good ol' Ronald Reagan, begging the public to oppose the passage of Medicare:

"If you don’t, this program I promise you, will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow and behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country until one day as Norman Thomas said we will wake to find that we have socialism, and if you don’t do this and I don’t do this, one of these days we are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free."

LOL @ fearmongering...

Sounds more like sooth saying to me. Reagan was a wise man and we are fools for not heeding his words.

The very program (Social Security) that was designed to be a safety net for those that couldn't provide for their sunset years has been used to fleece the taxpayers and has turned out to be a big ponzi scheme that is already running into the red. The so called reserve will NEVER be tapped and our corrupt government will hide their ponzi scheme by reducing benefits and increasing retirement age.

Why the hell would I trust an increasing amount of my life to these crooks?

The Green Git wrote:
Sounds more like sooth saying to me. Reagan was a wise man and we are fools for not heeding his words.

The same conclusion can be drawn from the formation of the earliest social groups; eg. "Mark my words, if you listen to me, you'll listen to others, and if you listen to others, eventually you'll involve them in your decision making. And once you involve them in your decision making, you'll allow them to take over your decision making." Its nonsensical, slippery-slope gibberish which denies agency to anyone not granted it in the past tense. Basically, if that Reagan quote is truly representative of soothsaying the only valid conclusion becomes on in which socialism is inevitable.

The Green Git wrote:
The very program (Social Security) that was designed to be a safety net for those that couldn't provide for their sunset years has been used to fleece the taxpayers and has turned out to be a big ponzi scheme that is already running into the red. The so called reserve will NEVER be tapped and our corrupt government will hide their ponzi scheme by reducing benefits and increasing retirement age.

Both of those should have been done some time ago as the age at which benefits can be collected has always been directly tied to the average life expectancy in these sorts of programs.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Frazzled wrote:
What do you mean encourage? There's reality then there's the utopia of unicorns and antigunners. Thats reality.
Thank your democratic (and republican) Congress and Presidents for it, don't blame me.

No, reality would mean acknowledging that eliminating, or reducing, the minimum wage would significantly alter the balance on which illegals are hired. Even people here without legal validation have costs associated with their presence. Prevent them from undercutting wages and there will most certainly be an effect, therefore its not irrelevant.

Frazzled wrote

Chimera_Calvin wrote:
View from the other side of the pond on healthcare...

Cost of increased taxes to pay for universal coverage < Cost of private health insurance policy.
-Good for individual wealth.

Number of people employed to run universal health care < Number employed to staff private health insurance.
-Bad for overall employment levels.

Cost to economy due to lost income related to sickness with universal coverage < cost with private coverage.
-Good for national wealth.

Just something I wanted to speicfy about minimum wage: Over here in my neck of the woods, (your woods may be different, mine happen to be full of deer and bunnies), Minimum wage is about $8.50 an hour, it was a dollar and a half less when I got my first job. Since then it has become much harder for unemployed people to find work, and even harder to get a raise, (in the kind of crap entry level jobs i work in). I believe this is because the cost of living is much higher on the west side of the state, (WA). While it's nice for seatllites it sucks for spokanites, if they were to lower min wage in my state I would be very happy and probably have more choices in employment. I understand in some places lowering minimum wage is a terrble idea, take Idaho for example: theirs is $4-5 doallrs an hour IIRC and I've met alot of people that commute from Idaho to Spokane to cash in on our super high min wage. It may not work everywhere, but there has to be some places they could lower it and get more people working. Like here. *wink wink*

ShumaGorath wrote:
Increase job training for highly technical fields and encourage upper level education by providing better aid to applying students. The factories aren't coming back and we aren't a production economy. We are a service and technology economy that is too stupid to realize it. We should capitalize on what we have (more colleges than the rest of the world combined) and stop trying to breathe life into a dead body.

I'm having trouble understanding what exactly your saying here, in order to improve our economy we all need to go to college, and get high paying, cutting edge jobs?
I see two problems here: first, where is the money for this increased job training for highly technical fields supposed to come from? Community colleges are swelling with students and there's less and less financial aid to go around. Like I said earlier I'm no expert of any kind, but this doesnt sound like a viable economy to me. I guess I can't see every working citizen in America being a college grad, which brings me to the second problem I see here: Do you really have that much faith in the American people that you could see a majority of us completeing college, and becoming engineers and doctors? From my basic, rudimentary understanding of economics, even if your not a production centered economy, you still need to be producing something in order to keep new money coming in. Heres the scenario I'm seeing, and it doesn't work in my head: pay your takes so you can have health care, which pays your doctor who shops at the wal-mart you work at, thus putting money into your pocket so you can pay those taxes again. Okay, now you guys can pick apart my comments and point out the garing flaws in my illogic.

Frazzled wrote:The bribes continue:

http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-now-selling-appeals-court-judgeships-health-care-votes

The scorched earth policy continues.

The Matheson family is respected by most of Utah. The vetting process for Scott Matheson has been going on for months, and both of Utah's Republican Senators have praised the decision. But don't let the truth get in the way of winning back the White House.

I'm having trouble understanding what exactly your saying here, in order to improve our economy we all need to go to college, and get high paying, cutting edge jobs?

Not universally, but some effort to reduce the slide backwards is absolutely necessary. It's considerably harder for a college applicant to attend now than it was 20 years ago. Costs have soared well above inflation while average earnings have slid backwards. Our education economy is one of the few things we have to compete with.

I see two problems here: first, where is the money for this increased job training for highly technical fields supposed to come from? Community colleges are swelling with students and there's less and less financial aid to go around.

I suppose federal and state governments and the attendees themselves paying up front or taking out loans. Same thing going on now really.

Like I said earlier I'm no expert of any kind, but this doesnt sound like a viable economy to me.

Because money has to come from somewhere? Thats your reasoning? Increased aid and focus on college level education would be a drop in the bucket when placed next to healthcare or defense.

I guess I can't see every working citizen in America being a college grad, which brings me to the second problem I see here: Do you really have that much faith in the American people that you could see a majority of us completeing college, and becoming engineers and doctors?

Service and technology economy. The grads can work the technical and business jobs, the rest can work at mcdonalds or do construction or something. The time of the 15 dollar an hour untrained factory job is gone, you don't get to be payed that much for doing something some starving black dude across an ocean could do for a thirtieth the cost.

From my basic, rudimentary understanding of economics, even if your not a production centered economy, you still need to be producing something in order to keep new money coming in.

Only insofar as you want to lower the trade deficit, and America produces quite a bit. However most of the goods it produces are either sold in the U.S., or are intangible and come in the form of medicines, technology, services (such as telecommunications or search), or business services. If a factory export economy was required to survive as a nation the U.S., the UK, and a significant number of european states would have ceased to exist 20 years ago.

Heres the scenario I'm seeing, and it doesn't work in my head: pay your takes so you can have health care, which pays your doctor who shops at the wal-mart you work at, thus putting money into your pocket so you can pay those taxes again. Okay, now you guys can pick apart my comments and point out the garing flaws in my illogic.

Well this last one makes sense, though doctors probably don't shop at wallmart.

ShumaGorath wrote:

YOU CAN'T LOWER TAXES THAT fething MUCH THE FACTORIES AREN'T COMING BACK.

No, but you can tariff the heck out of whatever enters from another country. Yes, I know, the world bank and fair trade losers will come out of the woodwork but other countries *cough* South Korea *cough* get away with it. This shouldn't be news but every country is involved in some form of protectionist behavior anyway, the Canadians always cry when the U.S. raises tariffs on lumber.

agnosto wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

YOU CAN'T LOWER TAXES THAT fething MUCH THE FACTORIES AREN'T COMING BACK.

No, but you can tariff the heck out of whatever enters from another country. Yes, I know, the world bank and fair trade losers will come out of the woodwork but other countries *cough* South Korea *cough* get away with it. This shouldn't be news but every country is involved in some form of protectionist behavior anyway, the Canadians always cry when the U.S. raises tariffs on lumber.

Do you want a tshirt to cost 40 dollars? Globalized production is at the heart of why we are able to afford such cheap goods.

ShumaGorath wrote:

Do you want a tshirt to cost 40 dollars? Globalized production is at the heart of why we are able to afford such cheap goods.

Yes and it is the American consumer's locust-like consumption that drives the sweatshops and is partially responsible for the flight of the American manufacturing base.

In answer to your rhetorical question, I want a tshirt to be priced as it should cost, not what walmart thinks it should. I think, overall, people waste less when it costs more. Look at countries in europe and asia and compare the consumer appetites with that of consumers in the U.S. big difference.

As to the OP,
I've lived in 2 countries with a form of public healthcare and cannot for the life of me understand why people are so disinclined to try it. What do you think Medicare and Medicaid (especially medicaid) are? Socialized healthcare. Besides, the people that all the conservatives are worried about getting access to free healthcare, already have it. Roll medicaid and medicare into a complete socialized medicine package and you've got a recipe for win. But, most americans are so indoctrinated in the "all socialism is evil" thing that they won't even consider it. Just think about all that money from your paycheck that goes to medicare and all the federal and state money that gets dumped into medicaid already. think about it.

Frazzled wrote:Nearly half the Republicans voted for the original Medicare, thats pretty damn bipartisan to me. The fact Our Leader can't get one vote speaks volumes.

Yeah, it says that no Republican would dare cross the floor to support even the most watered down version of the bill. It also speaks volumes when the GOP can't even list a starting position for their own vision of healthcare reform... because all they have is bluff and SOCIALISM!

I mean, hate the Democrats all you want (there's plenty of reasons to) but don't for one second pretend that no member of the GOP will cross the floor because of Obama or the contents of the health bill (in any form, it don't matter). They won't cross the floor because it's good politics to hurt the Democrats on this issue.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

agnosto wrote:No, but you can tariff the heck out of whatever enters from another country. Yes, I know, the world bank and fair trade losers will come out of the woodwork but other countries *cough* South Korea *cough* get away with it. This shouldn't be news but every country is involved in some form of protectionist behavior anyway, the Canadians always cry when the U.S. raises tariffs on lumber.

There are millions of jobs in the US dependant on exports - good jobs that pay well. The high living standard in the US is only possible as a result of trade with other nations. The benefits of comparative advantage is very basic stuff and impossible to dispute.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

agnosto wrote:Yes and it is the American consumer's locust-like consumption that drives the sweatshops and is partially responsible for the flight of the American manufacturing base.

In answer to your rhetorical question, I want a tshirt to be priced as it should cost, not what walmart thinks it should. I think, overall, people waste less when it costs more. Look at countries in europe and asia and compare the consumer appetites with that of consumers in the U.S. big difference.

Are you working on the assumption that consumption patterns in Europe are substantially different to the US? They aren't.

Yes and it is the American consumer's locust-like consumption that drives the sweatshops and is partially responsible for the flight of the American manufacturing base.

Not really, sheer profit drives companies overseas, it's the american onus to own more that keeps market capitalism flowin'.

In answer to your rhetorical question, I want a tshirt to be priced as it should cost, not what walmart thinks it should. I think, overall, people waste less when it costs more. Look at countries in europe and asia and compare the consumer appetites with that of consumers in the U.S. big difference.

Cost is relative to what people are willing to pay. There is no price that something "Should cost". I'm also going to just assume that you've never been to either europe (in the last 30 years) or china (in the last 15). Neither one is particularly different in it's spending habits or shirt costs.

agnosto wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

Do you want a tshirt to cost 40 dollars? Globalized production is at the heart of why we are able to afford such cheap goods.

Yes and it is the American consumer's locust-like consumption that drives the sweatshops and is partially responsible for the flight of the American manufacturing base.

In answer to your rhetorical question, I want a tshirt to be priced as it should cost, not what walmart thinks it should. I think, overall, people waste less when it costs more. Look at countries in europe and asia and compare the consumer appetites with that of consumers in the U.S. big difference.

As to the OP,
I've lived in 2 countries with a form of public healthcare and cannot for the life of me understand why people are so disinclined to try it. What do you think Medicare and Medicaid (especially medicaid) are? Socialized healthcare. Besides, the people that all the conservatives are worried about getting access to free healthcare, already have it. Roll medicaid and medicare into a complete socialized medicine package and you've got a recipe for win. But, most americans are so indoctrinated in the "all socialism is evil" thing that they won't even consider it. Just think about all that money from your paycheck that goes to medicare and all the federal and state money that gets dumped into medicaid already. think about it.

Incorrect. I'm annoyed because they want to kill Medicare and Medicare Advantage to pay for it.
That and the other 2000 pages of whatever bill is up this time.

Whatever. This is stupid. Arguing about this topic on the OT is stupid. Pass or fail this is the death knell of the Democrats' control of Congress in 2010.

Frazzled wrote:

agnosto wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

Do you want a tshirt to cost 40 dollars? Globalized production is at the heart of why we are able to afford such cheap goods.

Yes and it is the American consumer's locust-like consumption that drives the sweatshops and is partially responsible for the flight of the American manufacturing base.

In answer to your rhetorical question, I want a tshirt to be priced as it should cost, not what walmart thinks it should. I think, overall, people waste less when it costs more. Look at countries in europe and asia and compare the consumer appetites with that of consumers in the U.S. big difference.

As to the OP,
I've lived in 2 countries with a form of public healthcare and cannot for the life of me understand why people are so disinclined to try it. What do you think Medicare and Medicaid (especially medicaid) are? Socialized healthcare. Besides, the people that all the conservatives are worried about getting access to free healthcare, already have it. Roll medicaid and medicare into a complete socialized medicine package and you've got a recipe for win. But, most americans are so indoctrinated in the "all socialism is evil" thing that they won't even consider it. Just think about all that money from your paycheck that goes to medicare and all the federal and state money that gets dumped into medicaid already. think about it.

Incorrect. I'm annoyed because they want to kill Medicare and Medicare Advantage to pay for it.
That and the other 2000 pages of whatever bill is up this time.

Whatever. This is stupid. Arguing about this topic on the OT is stupid. Pass or fail this is the death knell of the Democrats' control of Congress in 2010.

Argue about what? I haven't seen you make a cognizant point in sixth months, and if you think the republicans have looked anything but petty over the last year you're smoking some damn good reefer.

Keep living in your fantasy world Shuma.

Frazzled wrote:Keep living in your fantasy world Shuma.

It's the real world fraz. Are you on medicare?

Are you?

Frazzled wrote:Are you?

At 23 I certainly hope not.