Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats

Krisken

Krisken

GasBandit said:
What I said to you back then was mean and uncalled for and I was intentionally, specifically trying to cause you mental anguish. I don't do that any more. You can believe me or not as you see fit.
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I think I can do that. I'll be a bit wary for a while, just to be on the safe side, if that's alright.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Terrik said:
I think my chinese students knew more about American history than these students did.
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But did they know who Brad Pitt's ex wife is, huh? HUH?

"Teach them well and let them lead the way" indeed. This is what happens when self-esteem is more important than actual performance.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Chad Sexington said:
Is Texas Tech not actually a technical school? Few of them seemed to be studying things that aren't soft-sciences.
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It's your standard Texas state-funded research school that has grown beyond its original nomenclature. It even has a medical school and a law school within its campus.
 
Eriol

Eriol

I'm glad I knew every question about the USA there, but didn't know the Jersey Shore question. Unfortunately I DID know the Pitt-focused ones.

I'm sorry.



If you want a far more horrifying quiz, ask them what country is to the north of the USA. You will get some very unfortunate answers.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
stienman said:
While I'm not sure the conclusion is the best choice for the democrats, this article has a decent overview of the recent-ish history of the democratic party and puts a number of things in perspective that I think a lot of today's democrats don't understand about themselves.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/opinion/sunday/delusions-of-the-democrats.html
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It does make some interesting points. I hadn't ever done the math on the whole "lost the racist south" thing before, interesting that it turns out to not be true. However I agree with you. The last paragraph kind of gets lost in the deep grass. "An example of how Democrats fail is how the Republicans successfully cast Democrats as wild-eyed socialists... so your salvation lies in being wild-eyed socialists." Eehhhrrmmm....
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Electrifying large swaths of the South and West changed how people lived and worked every day, how their cities grew and their farms survived. The G.I. Bill, to take another of a thousand examples, was intended to reward veterans and stave off a postwar depression, but it also opened up new possibilities of learning and travel (and therefore work) for millions of young men. This blurring of the cultural and the economic includes the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, which threw the weight of the federal government behind the struggle of African-Americans to go about their daily lives with hope and dignity and which did not alienate every white person in the South.

Today’s Democratic Party, with its finely calibrated, top-down fixes, does not offer anything so transformative. It seems scared of its own shadow, which is probably why it keeps reassuring itself that its triumph is inevitable.
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This is pretty true. The healthcare reforms were a start, but going to a single payer government system or even just a government option for insurance would have freed millions of Americans from the shackles of bad employment and given them enough freedom to ether pursue education, start a business themselves, or just find a better job. Instead we got a government mandate that ensured everyone had to participate in the same crappy system we had before, albeit with the specter of losing our insurance gone thanks to making it illegal to deny coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

Forcing single payer would have literally transformed the job market overnight.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
AshburnerX said:
This is pretty true. The healthcare reforms were a start, but going to a single payer government system or even just a government option for insurance would have freed millions of Americans from the shackles of bad employment and given them enough freedom to ether pursue education, start a business themselves, or just find a better job. Instead we got a government mandate that ensured everyone had to participate in the same crappy system we had before, albeit with the specter of losing our insurance gone thanks to making it illegal to deny coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

Forcing single payer would have literally transformed the job market overnight.
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One thing the Democrats knew and got right, is that the American voter would never have accepted a jump straight from pre-obamacare american healthcare to single payer. They've got to annihilate the existing system with this poison pill, blame the collapse their fiddling caused on "the market not working," and then say "welp, we tried making private sector insurance/health care work, but obviously it's impossible, so now single payer."
 
Covar

Covar

GasBandit said:
One thing the Democrats knew and got right, is that the American voter would never have accepted a jump straight from pre-obamacare american healthcare to single payer. They've got to annihilate the existing system with this poison pill, blame the collapse their fiddling caused on "the market not working," and then say "welp, we tried making private sector insurance/health care work, but obviously it's impossible, so now single payer."
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Mafia tactics basically.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

GasBandit said:
One thing the Democrats knew and got right, is that the American voter would never have accepted a jump straight from pre-obamacare american healthcare to single payer. They've got to annihilate the existing system with this poison pill, blame the collapse their fiddling caused on "the market not working," and then say "welp, we tried making private sector insurance/health care work, but obviously it's impossible, so now single payer."
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I really can't feel to bad for the insurance companies when many of them are going to become contractors to handle all of the claims for single payer when it happens. They'll actually become more profitable that way anyways because they no longer have to assume any of the risk and it's only a matter of time until medical claims is completely automated anyway. That was always the end game for insurance companies: automated claims processing that didn't require employing thousands of people to look at pieces of paper all day.

I honestly can't wait to see what happens when stuff like this goes completely automated. We're going to have to address that issue of having millions of people we can't employ, who don't have the skills for better, and who may not be capable of training/educating to something better... and it's all going to happen within the next generation.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
AshburnerX said:
I honestly can't wait to see what happens when stuff like this goes completely automated. We're going to have to address that issue of having millions of people we can't employ, who don't have the skills for better, and who may not be capable of training/educating to something better... and it's all going to happen within the next generation.
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They'll die earlier/more often from cancer, so maybe it'll help balance that ledger.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

stienman said:
Social security and medicare were both hard sells.

Single payer is going to have to increase everyone's tax burden by 25% of their income, and it will come out of their paycheck, not their employer's.

That ends up with US tax brackets between 35% and 65%.

Even if a single payer system would pass constitutional muster, who believes the American public would go for a 25% tax increase across the board?

The poison is going to have to be a lot more bitter, and the reality is that the current challenges to the ACA are gutting it. Rulings due next year could remove the last of the main supports behind ACA. If it fails, we simply fall back to what we had before, except the poor are left worse off - they are fined if they don't have health insurance, and they won't be able to afford it because it won't be subsidized anymore. If anything it will serve to widen the gap between the poor and middle class.
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You are forgetting that wages will increase by a rather substantial percentage now that no one has to provide it. Companies that don't will find it harder to compete for qualified candidates and the primary motivation for less qualified candidates right now is to GET insurance in the first place. Companies will also be forced to get more creative with compensation now that they can't rely on comprehensive healthcare as a carrot.

You are also forgetting that going single payer forces the government to negotiate on medical services and goods. This means total costs per a visit and for supplies will go down because the government is exerting it's force on the marketplace, which has out of control pricing right now entirely because everyone has to make up for people who can't pay and private insurance companies demanding steep discounts to allow their insurance holders to go there. When every visit is going to be paid for, there is no longer an incentive to overcharge some patients.
 
Covar

Covar

AshburnerX said:
You are forgetting that wages will increase by a rather substantial percentage now that no one has to provide it. Companies that don't will find it harder to compete for qualified candidates and the primary motivation for less qualified candidates right now is to GET insurance in the first place. Companies will also be forced to get more creative with compensation now that they can't rely on comprehensive healthcare as a carrot.
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If my company didn't provide benefits I sincerely doubt that they would raise my salary. What would be their incentive to? Competition? Competitive market jobs also provide benefits and comparable salaries, all that would happen is that these companies would all suddenly be saving even more money than they do by providing/offering benefits.

AshburnerX said:
You are also forgetting that going single payer forces the government to negotiate on medical services and goods. This means total costs per a visit and for supplies will go down because the government is exerting it's force on the marketplace, which has out of control pricing right now entirely because everyone has to make up for people who can't pay and private insurance companies demanding steep discounts to allow their insurance holders to go there. When every visit is going to be paid for, there is no longer an incentive to overcharge some patients.
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So instead of overcharging people because they have insurance to pay for everything, the government will be the one overcharged.
 
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