However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion. GEORGE WASHINGTON, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796
All this talk about personal responsibility is a little much. There really aren't that many people who just sit around all day and say "let someone else take care of me". For the most part, many poor people try their best and work hard. They may not be as smart or conniving as the top 1% or top 10%, and that is why they have problems. The lucky people who have done well in life just don't realize how lucky they are, and how much they owe to governments that run a stable society and provide all these poor lemmings for rich business to feed off of. Lets put it like this. Separate out the top 10% of earners and give them their own country. What will happen? There will be nobody to do the shit jobs! Heck, maybe even give them the top 20% of earners so that you include well paid public servants like police and firefighters and road construction guys, etc. We could go even further and take every nice suburb in every city of every state, anyone who owns a nice house, and lets put them all together. All the so called hard working people who supposedly have lots of personal responsibility and have everything they have from hard work. What will happen? They would very quickly lose their quality of life. Nice communities rely on poor people travelling long distances to work in shops that the well off people like to shop at. Companies like Walmart rely on government subsidies for their poor employees so they get to pay them less. Most financial institutions, be it big banks or shit money lending outfits rely on gouging poor people who don't have the knowledge or ability to get either cheap credit, or free services by having big accounts with said institutions. Technology companies wouldn't be who they are without scores of poor people buying up cell phones and cell phone plans. Google and Facebook make what they do via advertising because billions of people are seeing ads, the poor people, those same people with supposedly little personal responsibility. Their simple existence is what allows rich people to have what they have. Businesses make lots of money from poor people, and government spending is based on populations of poor people, and this money spent is money earned by both corporations and well off public servants. The rest of the county, the 80% or 70% who is poor will do just fine if given their own country. They will support each other, and although they may not have fancy cars, fancy houses, fancy things, they will work hard in life, plow their fields, raise their livestock, and perhaps die at an early age without fancy healthcare, but at least they won't have been taken advantage of by the rich fuckers who lie to them and tell them they should be grateful for what little they have and not even include them in the healthcare system when they get sick, even though they continue to enrich the lives of rich people every day both directly and indirectly.
Yeah the US government and political system does seem designed to feed itself and serve whoever pays it the most rather than the people. Had a discussion once with a US republican about 'free speech' I tried to describe it as what comes from my mouth, writings etc.... he tried to extend it to being able to give donations to politicians to amplify such a voice. He also got a bit annoyed when I said they only have one more political party than China
We have one bad party, and then there are other parties. I am not in anyway in favor of the other parties. In most cases no matter how stupid the bad party is the other party can figure out a way to be more stupid. But there is no getting along with the bad party, and most of the time they will be in power because their message is You will get more than you will give.
%% Exactly CD; let him pay for that TRAINWRECK==============================================================================. I'm not getting on that trainwreck
Just a hypothetical question here. How is it financially responsible to purchase insurance coverage you're highly unlikely to use? Certainly in considering 1,000 24-35 year olds in aggregate, this is unquestionably poor financial responsibility. Especially when you consider that the medical bankruptcy you're likely to face if it hits the fan will place you solidly within medicaid qualifications. It makes about as much sense as a poor traveler purchasing kidnap and ransom insurance. Or about as much sense as someone who doesn't own a car purchasing auto insurance (I'm actually the exception to this rule--but that's a different story). The personal responsibility argument as applicable to health care is bull shit. It doesn't hold up to even the most superficial scrutiny.
Well, here I'll whip out my ("Oh, noooo! He's going to whip it out!!! Shield the children!") libertarian card and observe that the way to guarantee free speech is not to stifle one side of an argument. Is our contemporary environment at all "fair and balanced"? No -- you're completely correct that, for the most part, Money = Volume, and that that is an unsought aberration to what the Founding Fathers intended. But Citizens United [Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission 558 U.S. 310 (2010)] did not say that the marketplace for ideas could not be improved. What if we had a federal-level body, commissioned to act only within its enabling legislation, to observe and even *regulate* the free speech/media vehicles using national bandwidth to route communications in this country? What would we call such a thing? "Anybody? Anyone? Bueller?" (If you're wondering, then "Yes, a self-described libertarian just proposed that an existing government entity do its job.")
Please don't confuse health insurance with healthcare. They are not interchangeable. All countries have healthcare. Some have government health insurance.
Well, DSF/MSF notwithstanding, the fate of healthcare is inseparable from its cost. In a thread about single payer, all the more.
yes, so we are just debating on the definition of single. If single can pay for it without taking any money from me that's just fine. If I am one of many single payers paying single to pay my single bill no thanks. I have already seen how single pays things. And in the end I am the only single payer left.