Politics

[rookhawk]

While it does appear that the ACA failed to control price increases, it had many other benefits that people often forget. One of which was the healthcare exchanges; they demonstrated that at least 6-7 companies needed to be present, selling the same product, to the same consumer for prices to be restrained. Any less than that and the costs increased substantially. For all these self-identified pro-Capitalist anti-Socialist hate fetishists on here, hopefully you are anti-monopoly too. As monopolies are inherently anti-capitalist.

The Democrats said repeatedly that there were updates and fixes that needed to be made to the ACA. However, the Republicans were only ever interested in repealing it, dozens of times. We're all still waiting for Trump's bill to repeal and replace the ACA. Remember how he said it was going to be better, cheaper, and everyone would be covered?

The problem with young people and democrats is they suffer the same naivety described as "Chesterton's Fence". They break/remove/destroy things without first understanding why the fence exists.

1.) Comprehend first
2.) Hidden purposes exist that are often more sophisticated than face value.
3.) Second-order thinking. Tearing something down without understanding its origin risks bringing back the problem it solved.

As pertains to ACA, democrats got fixated on the wrong things. Things like "see, more people have insurance" as though the measure of outcome was insurance coverage, rather than the costs of the actual care. (co-pays, deductibles, and premiums went up for the majority)

ACA was built to destroy what was working as a forced move towards single payer, third world toilet quality healthcare. Single payer has never worked in a heterogenous society, it works inefficiently even in homogenous societies where everyone has the same genetics, diet, fitness, and habits. (e.g. Japan)

The old system was pretty darned good compared to all the other systems. It needed minor tweaks via capitalism such as A.) Allowing plans to compete across State lines to provide greater competition, B.) Allowing foreign mail order Rx that was far cheaper for generics. C.) Banning the practice in half the States that you need approval from the existing hospitals to open up a new, competing hospital.

Instead we got this total abomination. The outcomes included my family healthcare doubling. It included forcing me as a male to pay for a plan that covered pregnancy. My wife and I intentionally avoided such plans because we paid out of pocket for delivery of our three kids knowing we wouldn't need that coverage thereafter.

Everything about the ACA was coercive redistribution of wealth for a more expensive, lower quality product.

 

[Altitude sickness]

Something closer to the Nordic Model. I’ve already mentioned many things previously, but a quick summary would be:

1.Being fiscally responsible for starters. A $2 Trillion annual budget deficit (and 39 trillion in debt) will eventually bankrupt the country. Contrary to popular beliefs, at some point the music stops, and we’ll be left without a chair. Only two options, cut spending or increase taxes. I’ve suggested several solutions on here, all of which were deemed unacceptable. God forbid rich people pay any more taxes. There is no viable pathway to cut spending. I’ve already demonstrated that the twin scared cows on here of mandatory spending and Military Industrial Complex spending cannot be touched. That leaves us with perpetual deficits. The math simply doesn’t work. Iran doesn’t have to nuke us; we’re financially destroying ourselves right now. All they have to do is wait us out.

2.Increase taxes on the rich. This solves the super majority (but not all) of problem #1 above.

3.Make shareholder value theory illegal in America. Almost every economic f@ck-up in the last 50 years in this country can be traced back to this concept. Outsourcing jobs, decimated manufacturing base, the importation of illegal immigrant labor, stagnate wages, massive income inequality, and every problem that stems from these. Publicly traded corporations know no patriotism. Shareholder value theory doesn’t allow for it. They don’t care about this country, our communities, or our people. They only care about their 10-Ks and quarterly earnings statements. We are sacrificing long-term viability for short-term pleasure. No amount of tariffs and deportations will ever truly make a difference as long as shareholder value theory is our country’s guiding light.

4.For a political party that claims to be pro-family, Republicans sure as sh!t don’t act like it. Republicans are against any mandates for; paid parental leave, increasing the minimum wage, sick leave, vacation leave, organized labor; there’s no reason the richest country in the world can’t mandate large corporation to offer paid leave for new parents. It would be a rounding error on their balance sheet. Republicans want to know why our birth rate is too low? It’s because kids are very expensive, and our wages haven’t even kept up with inflation. How many of you were just talking up the great idea of “Trump Accounts” on here, but yet congressional Republicans voted against Biden’s expanded child tax credit. Try achieving any decent GDP growth with a declining population.

5.Collective bargaining/Unions/PLAs/etc. Stop being so anti-worker rights.

6.Stop being so anti-environment and pro-pollution. Corporations are not going to do the right thing. Neither are people, that’s why we have laws and a police force. Not polluting costs money, shareholder value theory doesn’t like that. It’s a lot easier for say, Chemours corporation to dump GenX forever chemicals in the Cape Fear River for 50 years (and not tell us) and pollute the drinking water of all of Wilmington, NC; then it is to properly dispose of that shit. Accept that regulations are needed. Regulations are not always bad, Government does not always = bad, private enterprise does not always = good. There’s a reason why we have the EPA, the Cuyahoga River caught on fire 17 times. Or as @Altitude sickness post put it, there’s a reason why airplanes don’t have square windows anymore, we tried it, it was bad, and people died.

7.Roll back GW Bush’s disastrous bankruptcy law. One reason we have a student debt crisis is the inability to discharge such debt. Outlaw debtor’s prisons, and slavery.

8.Get billionaires and corporations out of politics. Money is not free speech, and corporations are not people.

9.Get the right-wingers out of people’s private lives.

All of this can be achieved quite easily and affordably. There are no new budget-busting federal government programs in my list. Sorry Private Equity, I guess you won’t be meeting your annual target IRR of 20%+. Sorry baby boomers, I guess your 401K won’t be increasing at a rate of 15% a year anymore. Single-digit stock-market growth for a while people.

Not all of your ideas are ridiculous.

The issue I see is that the primary theme running through your 9 bullet points are human failings.

So how do you propose handing all those “fixes” over to the government humans and then expecting those humans to manage it all.

Worse. Every NGO and government operation then skims a share to send back to the political party for giving them the business. So we send more to DC for even worse outcomes. And less freedom.

 

[Killingtime]

The problem with young people and democrats is they suffer the same naivety described as "Chesterton's Fence". They break/remove/destroy things without first understanding why the fence exists.

1.) Comprehend first
2.) Hidden purposes exist that are often more sophisticated than face value.
3.) Second-order thinking. Tearing something down without understanding its origin risks bringing back the problem it solved.

As pertains to ACA, democrats got fixated on the wrong things. Things like "see, more people have insurance" as though the measure of outcome was insurance coverage, rather than the costs of the actual care. (co-pays, deductibles, and premiums went up for the majority)

ACA was built to destroy what was working as a forced move towards single payer, third world toilet quality healthcare. Single payer has never worked in a heterogenous society, it works inefficiently even in homogenous societies where everyone has the same genetics, diet, fitness, and habits. (e.g. Japan)

The old system was pretty darned good compared to all the other systems. It needed minor tweaks via capitalism such as A.) Allowing plans to compete across State lines to provide greater competition, B.) Allowing foreign mail order Rx that was far cheaper for generics. C.) Banning the practice in half the States that you need approval from the existing hospitals to open up a new, competing hospital.

Instead we got this total abomination. The outcomes included my family healthcare doubling. It included forcing me as a male to pay for a plan that covered pregnancy. My wife and I intentionally avoided such plans because we paid out of pocket for delivery of our three kids knowing we wouldn't need that coverage thereafter.

Everything about the ACA was coercive redistribution of wealth for a more expensive, lower quality product.

Thanks for the info rookhawk I didn’t know about the things the older system allowed. I had heard that many people’s private insurance had doubled. I’ve been blessed my company has amazing

 

[rookhawk]

Not all of your ideas are ridiculous.

The issue I see is that the primary theme running through your 9 bullet points are human failings.

So how do you propose handing all those “fixes” over to the government humans and then expecting those humans to manage it all.

Worse. Every NGO and government operation then skims a share to send back to the political party for giving them the business. So we send more to DC for even worse outcomes. And less freedom.

Increased taxation on the rich is a nonsensical non-solution. There isn't enough wealth in the hands of the rich to fund our government without debt for even a single year.

When the lefties show up on this forum they always spout this off as a solution and I always dismiss it with a death ray of fact, rather than opinion. They ignore facts and repeat the solution over, and over again.

Imagine this:

-Eat all profits from Exxon and Walmart (run the country for 4 days)
-All proft for the remaining 498 Fortune 500 companies ( (37 days of government operation)
-All corporate advertising for all ad money for all superbowls (an hour)
-All money for sports salaries for all sports (Not even a day)
-All, 100% of money above $250,000 in this country. 1.93%, 2,238,800 households. $1.4T. Take it all. (120 days)
-All the money spent on Iraq and Afghanistan - $264 billion (27 days)
-The whole star wars franchise, all endorsements, movies, royalties (1 day)
-Kill all the Beverly Hills residents and take all their homes, liquidated at present values. (3 days)
-Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have "accidents" and we take 50% via inheritance tax (6 days)
-The remaining 400 billionaires, take 50% via inheritance (70 days)
-Take all the remaining wealth, forget the 50% inheritance (70 days)
-End all foreign aid (1 day)

We're still short of 32 hours of running the USA for a year. So every man, woman, and child would kick in $40 to operate the country for the remaining hours.

Congrats, we destroyed all incentive, all production, all wealth, all major companies, all major brands, all high-competence investors, all major capitalists. They are all gone and we only ran our bloated government for a single year.

The solution is the bottom 50% that pay no taxes need to have skin in the game. Raise their taxes to 1/4 their income. That would solve the budget issues immediately. Immediately thereafter 99% of society would demand small government. It turns out when you pay for the gimmies, nobody wants "free" stuff any longer.

End all taxes except sales tax. Consumption tax is the fairest of any system that can be designed. Government must live within the means of the taxes collected and must have a balanced budget.

 

[Red Leg]

Laura Loomer, who I hope most of you have never heard of much less listened to, is a "MAGA" influencer with millions of followers who has been a mouthpiece for nearly every lunatic far right conspiracy that livens up the nether reaches of the internet. Like Tucker Carlson, she has been a faithful mouthpiece for Russian propaganda spreading notions such as Zelensky and the Ukrainian people are Nazis, the Bucha massacre was "fake news," Ukraine has banned the Orthodox Church, Russia is inevitably winning, the aide we sent to Ukraine went into oligarch's pockets, and on and on and on. Goebbels could not have done a better job than Russia has in exploiting a foreign spokesperson. We have seen the results of a lot of that information dominance success fed into this discussion over the last several years.

In any case, Loomer was invited to go to Ukraine. It seemed logical that if you were going to spread this nonsense, then a visit to the location of the on-going crime would be informative - particularly if one has obviously never studied any actual history and have no background in international issues (she has a BA in Journalism from the University of Miami Shores in 2015.) To her credit, she went, and to his credit, Zelensky gave her an interview where he patiently walked her through almost every question she asked. Her escort took her to Bucha where she spoke with surviving citizens, saw the mass graves, and even experienced a timely Russian missile attack on the civilian center of the town that killed several and wounded dozens.

To her credit, after returning a couple of days ago, she apparently has spent hours on her keyboard apologizing for every bit of Russian propaganda she has amplified since the start of the war. The horrified comments from her tinfoil capped followers to her redemption posts are hilarious were they not so indicative of Russia's information space success.

Interestingly, Trump posted on Truth Social the interview between Loomer and Zelensky. The interview below is an hour long, but it is worth dipping into. The interviewer is one of Ukraine's leading journalists.

It’s time to give Russia hell — even Laura Loomer thinks so

Everybody loves a redemption arc, and Laura Loomer’s abrupt reversal on the war in Ukraine may prove particularly rewarding.

nypost.com

 

[Ontario Hunter]

Has a socialist/communist country ever existed with good intentions? I think we all can agree that authoritarian governments are a bad idea whatever beliefs they hold, so it would be an interesting case study if one could function without the addition of human greed, and also without being sanctioned out the ass by the developed world.

On a small scale, Hutterites are a pretty successful example of small scale socialism (as much as I despise them, I have to admit they are efficient and effective).

One of the reasons the Hutterites are so "successful" is they all live on govt welfare. Yep, because they don't own anything, they are technically impoverished and homeless. Everything in the colony belongs to the church. So taxpayers cover their medical costs (e.g. glasses). And they don't pay taxes either.

 

[Ontario Hunter]

He never tires of making a fool of himself.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-vows-wildfire-smoke-tariffs-canada-9.7282977

The courts would toss that tariff before the ink could dry on his Executive Order.

Tariffs here, tariffs there, tariffs everywhere. It gets old.

 

[Pheroze]

Laura Loomer, who I hope most of you have never heard of much less listened to, is a "MAGA" influencer with millions of followers who has been a mouthpiece for nearly every lunatic far right conspiracy that livens up the nether reaches of the internet. Like Tucker Carlson, she has been a faithful mouthpiece for Russian propaganda spreading notions such as Zelensky and the Ukrainian people are Nazis, the Bucha massacre was "fake news," Ukraine has banned the Orthodox Church, Russia is inevitably winning, the aide we sent to Ukraine went into oligarch's pockets, and on and on and on. Goebbels could not have done a better job than Russia has in exploiting a foreign spokesperson. We have seen the results of a lot of that information dominance success fed into this discussion over the last several years.

In any case, Loomer was invited to go to Ukraine. It seemed logical that if you were going to spread this nonsense, then a visit to the location of the on-going crime would be informative - particularly if one has obviously never studied any actual history and have no background in international issues (she has a BA in Journalism from the University of Miami Shores in 2015.) To her credit, she went, and to his credit, Zelensky gave her an interview where he patiently walked her through almost every question she asked. Her escort took her to Bucha where she spoke with surviving citizens, saw the mass graves, and even experienced a timely Russian missile attack on the civilian center of the town that killed several and wounded dozens.

To her credit, after returning a couple of days ago, she apparently has spent hours on her keyboard apologizing for every bit of Russian propaganda she has amplified since the start of the war. The horrified comments from her tinfoil capped followers to her redemption posts are hilarious were they not so indicative of Russia's information space success.

Interestingly, Trump posted on Truth Social the interview between Loomer and Zelensky. The interview below is an hour long, but it is worth dipping into. The interviewer is one of Ukraine's leading journalists.

It’s time to give Russia hell — even Laura Loomer thinks so

Everybody loves a redemption arc, and Laura Loomer’s abrupt reversal on the war in Ukraine may prove particularly rewarding.

nypost.com

It gives credence to the expression “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”

 

[Hank2211]

One of the reasons the Hutterites are so "successful" is they all live on govt welfare. Yep, because they don't own anything, they are technically impoverished and homeless. Everything in the colony belongs to the church. So taxpayers cover their medical costs (e.g. glasses). And they don't pay taxes either.

I can see you’re from Ontario. If you lived in Alberta, you’d know that:

1. Hutterites don’t take, or get, welfare. They look after their own.

2. Everyone in Alberta has their medical costs covered by the province. Hutterites are no different.

3. Hutterites do pay taxes (see sec. 143 of the Income Tax Act (Canada). They often pay more than other farmers, because they don’t get the benefit of a corporate structure. The colony is taxed as if it were a trust, and the income of the colony is attributed to each of the adult members, who pay income tax on those deemed earnings, even though older don’t necessarily have access to the colony’s earnings. In addition, they pay property taxes, which most religious organizations do not. See, for example, https://www.producer.com/news/yes-hutterites-do-pay-taxes/

4. Hutterites are among the hardest working and most honest and business-like people you will meet. In addition, they are always willing to help out their neighbours in emergencies.

Enough said?

 

[wesheltonj]

Something closer to the Nordic Model. I’ve already mentioned many things previously, but a quick summary would be:

1.Being fiscally responsible for starters. A $2 Trillion annual budget deficit (and 39 trillion in debt) will eventually bankrupt the country. Contrary to popular beliefs, at some point the music stops, and we’ll be left without a chair. Only two options, cut spending or increase taxes. I’ve suggested several solutions on here, all of which were deemed unacceptable. God forbid rich people pay any more taxes. There is no viable pathway to cut spending. I’ve already demonstrated that the twin scared cows on here of mandatory spending and Military Industrial Complex spending cannot be touched. That leaves us with perpetual deficits. The math simply doesn’t work. Iran doesn’t have to nuke us; we’re financially destroying ourselves right now. All they have to do is wait us out.

2.Increase taxes on the rich. This solves the super majority (but not all) of problem #1 above.

3.Make shareholder value theory illegal in America. Almost every economic f@ck-up in the last 50 years in this country can be traced back to this concept. Outsourcing jobs, decimated manufacturing base, the importation of illegal immigrant labor, stagnate wages, massive income inequality, and every problem that stems from these. Publicly traded corporations know no patriotism. Shareholder value theory doesn’t allow for it. They don’t care about this country, our communities, or our people. They only care about their 10-Ks and quarterly earnings statements. We are sacrificing long-term viability for short-term pleasure. No amount of tariffs and deportations will ever truly make a difference as long as shareholder value theory is our country’s guiding light.

4.For a political party that claims to be pro-family, Republicans sure as sh!t don’t act like it. Republicans are against any mandates for; paid parental leave, increasing the minimum wage, sick leave, vacation leave, organized labor; there’s no reason the richest country in the world can’t mandate large corporation to offer paid leave for new parents. It would be a rounding error on their balance sheet. Republicans want to know why our birth rate is too low? It’s because kids are very expensive, and our wages haven’t even kept up with inflation. How many of you were just talking up the great idea of “Trump Accounts” on here, but yet congressional Republicans voted against Biden’s expanded child tax credit. Try achieving any decent GDP growth with a declining population.

5.Collective bargaining/Unions/PLAs/etc. Stop being so anti-worker rights.

6.Stop being so anti-environment and pro-pollution. Corporations are not going to do the right thing. Neither are people, that’s why we have laws and a police force. Not polluting costs money, shareholder value theory doesn’t like that. It’s a lot easier for say, Chemours corporation to dump GenX forever chemicals in the Cape Fear River for 50 years (and not tell us) and pollute the drinking water of all of Wilmington, NC; then it is to properly dispose of that shit. Accept that regulations are needed. Regulations are not always bad, Government does not always = bad, private enterprise does not always = good. There’s a reason why we have the EPA, the Cuyahoga River caught on fire 17 times. Or as @Altitude sickness post put it, there’s a reason why airplanes don’t have square windows anymore, we tried it, it was bad, and people died.

7.Roll back GW Bush’s disastrous bankruptcy law. One reason we have a student debt crisis is the inability to discharge such debt. Outlaw debtor’s prisons, and slavery.

8.Get billionaires and corporations out of politics. Money is not free speech, and corporations are not people.

9.Get the right-wingers out of people’s private lives.

All of this can be achieved quite easily and affordably. There are no new budget-busting federal government programs in my list. Sorry Private Equity, I guess you won’t be meeting your annual target IRR of 20%+. Sorry baby boomers, I guess your 401K won’t be increasing at a rate of 15% a year anymore. Single-digit stock-market growth for a while people.

Is this what they are teaching you at Chapel Hill or NC State? If so, ask for a refund of your tuition.

 

[Killingtime]

I can see you’re from Ontario. If you lived in Alberta, you’d know that:

1. Hutterites don’t take, or get, welfare. They look after their own.

2. Everyone in Alberta has their medical costs covered by the province. Hutterites are no different.

3. Hutterites do pay taxes (see sec. 143 of the Income Tax Act (Canada). They often pay more than other farmers, because they don’t get the benefit of a corporate structure. The colony is taxed as if it were a trust, and the income of the colony is attributed to each of the adult members, who pay income tax on those deemed earnings, even though older don’t necessarily have access to the colony’s earnings. In addition, they pay property taxes, which most religious organizations do not. See, for example, https://www.producer.com/news/yes-hutterites-do-pay-taxes/

4. Hutterites are among the hardest working and most honest and business-like people you will meet. In addition, they are always willing to help out their neighbours in emergencies.

Enough said?

I had to look up what a Hutterite was. I didn’t realize y’all had a different version of Amish up there. The Amish in the states pay all the different taxes as well I believe except social security.

 

[Hank2211]

I had to look up what a Hutterite was. I didn’t realize y’all had a different version of Amish up there. The Amish in the states pay all the different taxes as well I believe except social security.

The biggest difference between the two, I think, is that the old order Amish eschew modern technology, while the Hutterites embrace it.

 

[Killingtime]

The biggest difference between the two, I think, is that the old order Amish eschew modern technology, while the Hutterites embrace it.

I appreciate the Amish lifestyle they have proven to me that if all the technology of modern society went away tomorrow their life wouldn’t change much if anything they would be more valuable to society. And they always seem happy when I meet them traveling.

 

[Killingtime]

I think the Mennonite’s here use tech.

 

[Tubby’s Canteen]

Got too love the state of Canadian health cares spent so long in out patients last night with the wife waiting for stitches that they could no longer give them to her.

 

[Red Leg]

Is this what they are teaching you at Chapel Hill or NC State? If so, ask for a refund of your tuition.

Really good point and one I should have caught onto earlier. The posts and syntax (Bud) do read with the blind assurance of a sophomore rather simply a troll.

 

[Altitude sickness]

It’s natural for young people to be more liberal and want to split everyones spoils up evenly.

Until you go fight for, and drag your own spoils back into the cave. Then giving those spoils to the slumbering slug in the cave next door isn’t so romantic.

 

[steve white]

This has to be the most cringe worthy group of Presidential hopefuls in the history of this nation.
They are really scraping the bottom of the political barrel.

View attachment 779112

How many billion did Bootygig spend to end up with like 7 operational charging stations for autos when he was in the Biden Admin??? Someone refresh me on his level of incompetence.

 

[Brent in Az]

How many billion did Bootygig spend to end up with like 7 operational charging stations for autos when he was in the Biden Admin??? Someone refresh me on his level of incompetence.

That was Bidens infrastructure money laundering scheme, where the money didn't get spent on what it was supposed to

 

[Brent in Az]

He's the type of guy that would fly a plane into the WTC.