What's good? Glad you could make it.
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Firstly, everyone gets free hand-outs in some form. Free public roads, free K-12 education, free police protection, free military protection, these are all free benefits you get from the government, rich or poor. "Socialism" is all around you, even in a capitalist society. So when people discuss "socialism" they are not discussing the concept, since even the most ardent Republican supports many "socialist programs," they are discussing who should benefit from socialism.
Oooh this is my fault. I never meant to say that socialism as part of a mixed economy is bad. I guess I was kind of misleading and it looks like I was making a blanket statement about socialism = all bad. I meant countries with a greater degree of socialism tend to do worse economically than more capitalistic countries.
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There is a reason for Obama's grants for people studying Primary Care. If you are a doctor, you maximize your earning potential by specializing into a field (oncologist, cardiologist, brain surgeon), but there is a problem of over-specialization because people have economic incentives to specialize. The goal of the funding is to give more of an incentive to Primary Care and GP, the lower paid doctors, so that there are more of them in the field.
Yes, I realize this and I said this was the only bright spot in the plan for me.
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As for Supply v. Demand:
Even if there is an excess of demand for medical services and a shortage of supply, you move towards a prioritization where urgent care is given to people who can't afford it. As of right now, a high earning patient has an easier time getting a sore thumb looked at than a poor patient with cancer. I say its better that people with sore thumbs get looked at a little less so that poor people with life-threatening conditions get looked at more. There is more of a value to society in people getting treated for life-threatening illnesses than there is for smaller, irrelevant medical problems.
Is that the plan? Moving towards a prioritization of urgent care? If it is then that's awesome.
But as of now, I would think approving the healthcare plan would actually lead to an increase of treatment for smaller, irrelevant medical problems due to greater availability of services.
I could be wrong on this cuz I'm not 100% sure on what the healthcare plan entails.
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Honestly, everyone is curious just how far we can keep National Debt piling up. For now, China has indicated it is going to keep purchasing US bonds because it is the best way to stabilize their currency and continue their economic growth. Chinese reps have also said they would like to buy bonds from other governments, especially an EU bond if such a thing were created, but for now US treasury bonds are the only game in town. If China starts getting better options for buying bonds its time to start worrying (they would still buy US bonds to ensure economic stability and protect the value of their purchased assets, they would just leverage less in the future).
China relies on us a lot for it's exports, they have a vested interest in us. I just wish Obama didn't put tariffs on the tires we import from China - that doesn't help anybody really except for the domestic tire makers.
Actually, nm I don't want to open the doors for a debate about global trade.
It feels like sometimes China doesn't like us and I sometimes get the feeling we don't like them either, but we need each other.
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If you don't have children but your taxes go towards paying K-12, is that stealing? What if you don't use the local highway overpass that cost $30M out of your taxes? If paying taxes were completely optional, then this country could not run itself.
I think this is where I believe our views diverge. I don't feel taxing the rich to help out the sick is overall conducive to GDP growth. This is why it's different for me than the other things you mention. And for the record, education would be the number 1 priority for me in running a country's domestic affairs.
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This is actually not accurate. Excess government interference can hurt the functioning of markets and reduce economic growth, but a lack of government interference can do it all the same, consider the Economic Crisis of 2007. You have to analyze each government action individually, sometimes you need more government interference, sometimes you need less. There is no blanket principle that less is always better. There are many instances of where markets will actually fail if government doesn't step in to regulate business conduct.
How can you tell me that increasing taxes on the rich and corporations isn't detrimental to GDP growth?
Anyway, I was talking about socialist policies and now you're saying government intervention is good which is an entirely different topic lol. I guess somewhere along the way you labeled me as a free market maniac or something because of my talk about capitalism vs socialism. Anyway, government intervention is good, I wholeheartedly support it (for the most part). I agree with you 100% on everything you said. While we're on this topic, please tell me you were one of the few lucid people who were supportive of the bailout plan from the start and not just another raving angry taxpayer.
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But importantly, investing into health care is key for the US economy. There is a principle economists refer to as "poverty shock," this is an external circumstance beyond someone's control that forces them into poverty. For example, you are in a car accident and have to pay $60,000 in medical bills because insurance will only cover so much. Or, you are in a car accident and just lose wages for 3 months while insurance does cover your medical bills. These situations cause people who are living on the margins (high credit card debt) to spiral out of control. The end result is that they often times have a hard time returning to their original standard of living.
You see, if you're a 25 year old college graduate and you deal with testicular cancer but it goes into remission and you're able to get a job again, you have a chance to escape poverty and to build your future.
But if you're a 60 year old widower with few job prospects, there are no paths for you to get back out into the work force and to re-earn your place in society.
Some people are at high risk for poverty shock and when it happens, their wages are reduced, which reduces their spending in the local community, which causes businesses to reduce their orders / expenses, which causes other businesses to fail, etc. One of the key methods of protecting an economy and making sure that it grows is to: 1) invest in human capital, make sure you have healthy, well-educated workers that are worth a good salary, and 2) protect people from poverty shock, minimize external factors that can stop economic development.
When you look at the foreclosure data, the plurality of all foreclosures are from medical problems:
"Half of all respondents (49%) indicated that their foreclosure was caused in part by a medical problem, including illness or injuries (32%), unmanageable medical bills (23%), lost work due to a medical problem (27%), or caring for sick family members (14%). We also examined objective indicia of medical disruptions in the previous two years, including those respondents paying more than $2,000 of medical bills out of pocket (37%), those losing two or more weeks of work because of injury or illness (30%), those currently disabled and unable to work (8%), and those who used their home equity to pay medical bills (13%). Altogether, seven in ten respondents (69%) reported at least one of these factors."
With the economy tightening and people having less pay, something as simple as medical bills, which used to affect a small portion of the population, now has much greater impact on people's well being. People are on the margin and at greater risk, while medical bills are now poverty shock. The result is that people can't pay their mortgage, can't sell their house at equivalent value, and thus are evicted with an additional $100,000 in debt and forced to declare personal bankruptcy. The personal bankruptcy ruins their credit and they are forced to pay high interest rates on all their day-to-day loans, which increases their living expenses and gives them even more bills to pay, all at a time that their earning has gone down. This becomes a downward spiral where people who were once high earners contributing to a community in well-paid, specialized jobs are now unable to contribute to their community via spending and unable to pay their loans, which creates a problem of NPL's (Non-Performing Loans), which, in turn, hurts the banks and lenders who gave them the money in the first place, as their assets turn toxic.
In short, protecting people from bankruptcy by issues beyond their control is good for the economy. And investing into the health and education of your workers ensures that they contribute more to the economy.
It feels like you're making a slippery slope argument of some sort. No doubt poverty shock exists, but it's not to say that without adequate healthcare policies we would have crippled human capital.
If you're 60 and you get sick, then that's too bad, shit happens. Go find a job at Mcdonalds or something.
Your data on foreclosures is nice but you can't say medical reasons are the only variable that caused those foreclosures. Keep in mind that many years ago, lending practices were absurdly loose. Most people bought homes they could barely just afford. Medical issues aside, I think the reasons for those foreclosures are just as much a result of predatory lending by banks and irresponsible homeowners (well to be fair, most of them didn't know better). Very clever though to lead insufficient healthcare into toxic bank assets but it's kinda slippery.
Anyway, my point is that the money spent on healthcare doesn't provide the return on GDP to justify it. You save lives though and improve the lives of some people and yea you improve a portion of your human capital but that doesn't cut it for me when you take into account the costs. If you really wanna know where I'm coming from, listen to this.
Did you know eskimos put their elderly on icebergs that float away so they won't have to deal with healthcare costs? It may seem Machiavellian, but from a purely pragmatic point of view, it makes sense no? If you're old and can't take care of yourself and provide no utility to the world but take up resources, then what's the point? Over here, we have medicare and resting homes where we spend money on the elderly where the return is pretty much the utility relatives derive from them being alive. And medical costs go up cuz of it. Of course a country based on Christian ideals (or any ideals for that matter) would never go for the eskimos' inhumane way of "taking care" of the elderly.
If my views seem borderline insane and extremist, it's cuz I'm amoral, exclude emotion from my decisions, and go almost purely on logic.