Forum Post: The republican contradiction
Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 9, 2011, 12:29 p.m. EST by ThatOneGuy
(51)
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you guys say you hate government spending like
http://www.hhs.gov/asfr/ob/docbudget/2010budgetinbrief.pdf
and you claim personal responsibility and privatization is the way to fix it.
the healthcare mandate fills all those requirements. but here, you have to actually practice what you preach. and we know how you religious types feel about that.
Just as no one questions the validity of universal education for creating wealth, it is necessary to have a proactive universal health-care system to ensure a highest level of productivity and incidentally, other trivial things like well being, happiness...etc.
republicans are just wrong about everything. they're wrong about the stuff they are wrong about and then the stuff that they're right about is just talk. They don't deliver any of it.
I don't hate government (taxpayer) spending on social services.
I hate government (taxpayer) spending on corporate welfare, corporate subsidies, war, the military industrial complex, etc.
Republican / Democrat has nothing to do with it. They both feed from the same trough.
and anyone protesting without the OWS leadership permission huh? don't talk to me fk nutts.
Ah! A right wing intellectual.
no, a liberal that you stalked for 3 day. get lost freak.
Hmmm. Sounds like borderline personality disorder ...
hmmm sounds like you're on the fringe. still stalking me... go Away.
It takes two to converse. Why do you persist?
i have asked you to find others to debate with. you are the one persisting/stalking.
You didn't "ask" me to do anything. But while I'm here I'll point out how you represent what's wrong with this country - intolerance, ignorance and arrogance. I'm finished now, thanks for proving my point.
You sure it's not a left wing brain surgeon?
"the healthcare mandate fills all those requirements"
Except that in order to fulfill those requirements it requires granting the government powers that are not in the Constitution.
Unless of course you read in the Constitution that the federal government has the power to compel citizens to purchase a product or service. If so, what will be the next thing the government compels me to buy?
ok ok. the "it's not constitutional" bs. stop paying your car insurance. as it is right now, those that do not qualify for gov healthcare but also cannot afford the bill, just don't pay it. so those that do pay have to pick up the tab for those that don't. the leftover unpaid balance is written off and the gov pays it in deductions, more gov spending. so keep cry'n or accept responsibility to pay your way, doesn't matter to me.
"stop paying your car insurance"
False comparison for 2 reasons.
First, automobile insurance is a STATE government mandate, not a FEDERAL one.
Secondly, you are only required to have auto insurance if you own a car. What is the similar requirement with the FEDERAL health insurance mandate?
"accept responsibility to pay your way"
That is exactly what I am advocating for...just without all the government bureaucracy.
I outlined plan for health care reform during the so-called health care "debate" (more like one sided lecture really). If you are interested in an actual debate on this topic, let me know and I will post it here.
Not that i am a republican, but how is giving billions in services to people who make no effort promoting personal responsibility? I am confused on your statement that the healthcare mandate resolves that. Most people who don't have insurance will be given insurance free of charge.
One in Six Americans are uninsured:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/121820/one-six-adults-without-health-insurance.aspx
The statistics are very much against the notion that the people that need health insurance are a small group of lazy scumbags:
http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/reports/05/uninsured-cps/index.htm#income
How many of the uninsured have cell phones, a car payment, or cable tv?
How many people can work and live in our society without a cell phone or a car? How many places are there where you can walk down the street to your job, or take a reliable and convenient bus to get where you need to go?
You can "pay" for a car, cash, not take on a car payment. You do not have to have a cell phone to live. God knows what the hell we did prior to cell phones, eh?
Oh, right. So if you're working 60 hours a week, making $10/hour, that's $600/week and $2400 a month. So now subtract 30% for taxes; you have: $1680/month. You live in a shared 1-bedroom apartment for $500. You have to eat - that's going to be at least $500 a month, bills for electricity, gas and water for $150 a month, You're going to have to keep your clothes clean if you want to keep your job - that's at least $100 a month on average. Did you want a phone line to call 911 in case you're dying? That's at least $30 a month...we still haven't figured out how you're getting back and forth to this nonexistent awesome job. Probably you have to work two such jobs and you have to commute on a bus back and forth to each. Bus fares are high these days, you'll be shelling out at least $100 a month. Under this schedule you have no hope for going to school or bettering yourself, or having a social life, but oh well, we still want to pay cash for a car. So at this rate, living in slavish misery and scrimping every dime, we can expect to buy a $30000 car in ten years. Hope you don't lose your job or your circumstances change! We still haven't figured in things like house repairs, decorations, holidays, travel, emergencies, what to do if you get robbed, healthcare expenses, you're living without a computer, you're living without expensive equipment that needs to be replaced occasionally.etc.etc.etc.
I wonder who you are to think life is so easy.
You can buy a decent car for 2000 dollars. I have paid cash for my cars 1 is 10 yrs old and the other 5 and they both have been doing very well for me as I maintain them, as a result my insurance is much lower as I do not require full coverage. Both get reasonable gas mileage too. With that said, don't you think that if there is something you want you will find a way to pay for it? How many of these uninsured have a TV and a game console? My family makes sacrifices so we can have things in the future. In the winter my thermostat is set at 63 in the day, 58 at night. In the summer it is set at 79 in the day 82 at night. it is obvious that you desire to have the government take care of the things you NEED so you can work to get the things you WANT, but that is not how it is supposed to be. try self reliance, it works.
If you can't live with out cell a cell phone that is really sad.
Plenty
I didn't say anything about being lazy or scumbags did i? That is you trying to put words in my mouth to justify your position, which is clearly weak, since you are going to such extremes. I said they did not have the money to self insure, and under the healthcare law, they are provided insurance for free. That is not personal responsibility.
You wrote: "...but how is giving billions in services to people who make no effort..."
Are you serious? Do you deny that there are millions of Americans who do absolutely nothing with themselves? Drive through any major city into the poor areas and you see people sitting on their porches all day long. Go out into the country into the poor white trailer parks and you will see people sitting around all day everyday. Don't be so thick.
Your hatred for poor people ignores that fact that there are vast numbers of working poor, people working 80-100 hour weeks barely scraping by but unable to stop one job to go look for another.
http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2009.pdf
according to the most recent stats, about 14-15% of the nation lives below poverty level and 70% of these people are "working poor"
I don't hate people at all. As a matter of fact in the last 10 years i have taken my money and donated over 5000 hours in the inner city, gang infested ghetto to try to help people break the cycle. And you know what the number 1 most common thing that people tell me is? "its hard to break out of it, because everyone around me tells me that i can't do it". I have helped alot of people particularly young black males, many of whom with criminal histories, to start a business, and be empowered so they break out of generational poverty. You have no idea what you are talking about. The system of victimization is slavery. Empowerment is the only way, and this little protest isn't helping the poor at all. In fact the leaders want everyone to be poor under some utopian anarcho-syndaclist style system. Get an education.
Motherfucker, my mother and drunken abuser stepdad kicked me out of my fucking house when I was 19 - I was homeless for 5 years. I worked at shit jobs for the next 6 until I could put myself through college for Chemistry. Then I went on to work in industry until I could save up enough money to get my Ph.D. I'm almost done with my Ph.D. in Biophysics from Purdue. So don't tell me to get an education. I've had plenty of fucking education. I've had to cauterize wounds or pour whiskey on them because I couldn't afford fucking medical care. I've had to fight for my fucking life and gone to sleep worrying I wouldn't wake up.
And so have i pal, you have no idea. I have a 18 inch gash on my arm from where i had to stitch myself up with thread and a needle. Good for you. Life sucks, and it is hard. But being educated in one specialized field does not make you an expert in other things. Experience in life is an education as well. When you espouse partisan ideology without thinking about the ramifications you need to improve your education.
I would argue that your experience is equally narrow, and your idealogy is equally or more partisan. OWS protesters are not primarily arguing about college debt. They are primarily protesting corruption in the government and the falling value of the dollar. If you did go to college like you have said on the other thread, you would know from your history and civics classes that these are issues that affect us all.
So how do you reform healthcare when doctors are expected to pay up to $500k a get an education? And who collects the money? the colleges and universities and professors. If you believe in the cause, why not get together with all of the other professors and suggest that no professor or administrator at a university should be paid more than $45,000 a year plus basic healthcare insurance? That would dramatically reduce the cost of education. I mean how much money do you need in life? Or how about charging $25 an hour to teach and work on an hourly basis regardless of tenure. Then professors who truly want to educate would make about $24,000 a year for teaching 20 hours a week. The rest of the time you need to find a way to make money if you want it. If you are going to be idealistic then you need to apply it to yourself first.
We are!! There's a huge movement within academia for administrative smallness, low student tuitions and minimal overhead. This book talks about it. Everyone on our side knows education costs too much and doesn't teach real education.
http://www.amazon.com/Fall-Faculty-All-Administrative-University-Matters/dp/019978244X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320870095&sr=8-1
Professors work harder and have more talent than anyone else I know. My boss works at least 100 hours a week and makes 65K. Going after professors is wrong.
You should be attacking the universities and the AMA, not the poor faculty who sacrifice so much to bring education to the world. Most people in scientific academia would make double what they're making if they worked in industry. I made 58K a year before becoming a grad student. I make 24K now, and still have to pay $315/ month for health insurance. I teach classes to pharmacists and typically work 10-14 hours a day on research so that I can bring you better medicine.
I didn't say that they didn't. I am fully about ending corruption, reducing the cost of education, the cost of healthcare, and improving the lives of the poor. Doesn't mean i take a socialist viewpoint which to me is slavery. Your own experience should have taught you that. Teach a man to fish.... Anything other than that theory, is slavery and harmful to society. The right wingers are all about pushing religion, and protecting the ultra wealthy and i don't support that either. We should be teaching people survival, and empowerment, and neither ideology promotes that, including the anarchists, marxist etc.
conservative and republican are not the same thing, there is a decent portion that could care less about whether or not some book says about a thing and much more about whether or not it's legal under the constitution. Which as it stands how our wealthy make money tends to not be.
I'm not propounding that we institutionalize socialism. I don't know any OWS member that is. We are talking about a solution to end corporate dominance in our society and lives. One way in which corporations dominate is the death grip they have on the healthcare system, which needs to be dismantled and rebuilt ground up.
Stop trying to confuse them with clear and on-point thinking. lol
i have no idea what you just said. clarify for a response.
You stated that if you support personal responsibility then you should support the healthcare mandate. My response was that not everyone who is mandated to get healthcare is paying for it themselves, and of those people there are a portion who do absolutely nothing with themselves to support their own lives, and therefore support of that program would be reinforcing the same old tactic of enabling people for bad behavior. That is contrary to the thought of personal responsibility.
ok, but slackers are not a reflection of the mandate. if you consider this as a window to getting rid of workers comp, big plus for small biz, then an sudden increase in min-wage at the same time let employers off the hook for paying taxes on employees because employees would then be able to pay taxes, we can shift responsibility back to the individual in a way that also frees up business from those cost and all the administrative cost that comes with it. leaving the employer to pay only the wage. thisalso ends the disenfranchising of the working class while increasing revenue because employees that could pay taxes and afford to buy thing would generate higher GDP than just relying on industry.
I disagree there are alot of slackers in the country and they are expensive. I have been an employer for 20+ years and you are missing a small thing. Raising the minimum wage will only result in rising prices. There will be no rise in the ability of the uneducated worker to afford extra things. Your idea is not practical. Think about this. Everyone thinks unions are so great. What if i told you that union wage pressure is what has caused the problems in society? Why? because unions control commodities. Steel, Lumber, Iron, ALuminum, trucking, shipping, etc. When the cost of producing a product goes up the average American can not afford it. Unions demand higher wages without any responsible reason to do so. When that happens, they put a burden on average Americans. I.E. the death of American Auto. Then average Americans have to struggle for years to catch up to the union wage cost increase in goods, and then by the time that happens, the unions want more money, and the cycle starts all over again. Want to know why the government supports unions? because it is 'growth'. our economy would not have grown nearly as much if there were no union wage pressures. There would be no need for a minimum wage. But politicians don't get elected when growth is slow, so they push it forward. Both parties. People really need to understand economics over a long period of time to be able to recognize the real problems. Union wage pressures are not part of any free market. So if people want to complain about the rich 1% manipulating the market, then turn that same eye on the unions. Do you ever wonder why a college professor is paid $100k+ a year to work less than 20 hours a week? Or being paid to publish books that they should be doing in their spare time? And people wonder why college education is so high. It is because of the frickin professors and the union.
I am in academia and I don't know anyone younger than 60 that works less than 50 hours a week. You know, Jimbo, without those college professors, you wouldn't have the computer you're writing this on, the internet to hook it up to, or the electricity to power it. Publicly funded research is the fountain of the modern age. Don't be so quick to dismiss people who are innovators, working hard every day to make your life better.
Funny I went to college. i know lots of professors and most of them have 2 classes a week, and the rest of their time they are doing whatever in their field of specialty. is it not true that as part of your agreement with the Uni that you are required to write and publish a certain amount of articles, papers or books? of course it is. Do that in your own time. I am not even complaining about the cost of education because it doesn't affect me, but all these kids in this OWS movement are mad as hell about it. I paid my way through a good university by working and being self employed and sacrificing partying and hanging out with my friends to do it. If I can do it anyone can. 40 hours a week of school and 60+ working on a business. Americans have become lazy and it is the academia that promotes the 'greater society' vision that makes them that way. How about teaching a course called, "Surviving and achieving in the country today"? And teach the students to do everything but expect a handout from the government. By empowering themselves to solve problems using their own abilities? Because that wouldn't fall into the indoctrination of academia.
I thought you worked 20 hours a day and ate ramen for 20 years. You went to college too? Apparently you don't sleep or shit.
Sleep is overrated. Yes i spent every waking hour going to school from 18-22 living homeless for 6 months and running a business. That's right. I didn't have fun, i didn't go many places with friends and i starved alot of the time. But i was also smart about what i did for business. I didn't wait tables or some menial shit because that wasn't enough. I did deals that would get me $1000 for a couple hours of work. Nothing illegal ever. I just used my brain.
:"I disagree there are alot of slackers in the country and they are expensive."
ok. but your need to tie the mandate to a problem of society shows you are unwilling to learn. good luck.
I am open to all ideas. But giving up without addressing my issue, means you have failed to solve the problem. And this is why things don't get done. the healthcare law was a travesty. It left 10s of millions uninsured, it drove up insurance prices, and it did nothing to control costs. It was a political ploy. It is you who are unwilling to learn because it doesn't fit into your ideological model.
you have taken the bait of blaming your neighbor. well your neighbor isn't the problem homie, nor is the guy that built your car, or your house, or any other working class folk.
What are you talking about? i told you how bad the law was, because it didn't address the situation. Hate to inform you but i am wealthy and all self made. I have no problems. I just can't stand corruption and don't like to see poor people have to struggle against corruption. I don't support either party because they are only in it for themselves and i weep about how uneducated America has become, particularly the young people coming out of college who are brainwashed with complete socialist nonsense.
i agree with the lack of understanding what pure socialism really looks like(cuba much) but unions are not the issue, the folks running the union, the folks running HP, ect.. they are the issue. i didn't see that addressed in your reply. without unions we would live in a third world country right now.
Unions had their purposes in the past for labor laws, there is no doubt. But the wage pressures was not a good thing. You probably don't remember but a coke used to be $.05 and there was very little poverty. That was just 50-60 years ago. I consider the union leaders to be slave owners personally. But people have to have some responsibility in their own fates. Our educational system has crashed because people don't care. The Hippy Generation has done a horrible job of raising their kids. Peace and love is not a way to run a society. I am sorry but it doesn't work, because there are predators in society and they don't go in for that. Sure there is corruption but considering 85% of employers are small businesses, and most of them are not corrupt then how much have they contributed to the problem?
ok, but you have to let go of the party line talking points.
"Then average Americans have to struggle for years to catch up to the union wage cost increase in goods"
ok, so instead of people making a good living, the focus should be to keep cost down?
lets apply that logic to your job then. you demand to much, your pay is to high. you must take a smaller pay check so i can afford your goods. let me know when you accept those terms.
I don't follow either party. They are both corrupt and neither of them supports my views. Sorry to inform you i have been self employed since i was a teenager. I haven't worked for someone for 20 years. I am the master of my own destiny and never taken a dime from the government. I have employed over 650 people in my lifetime and when i was young and had no money i worked 20 hours a day and ate ramen noodles and lived in a place with a mattress just to get ahead. As i did better i kept working 16 hours a day 7 days a week for decades. Would it surprise you to know that i have worked the equivalent of 66 years of (40 hour a week) labor in 22 years? And i have the money to show for it, and i do alot of the poor people directly. I give back to my community constantly to show people how to do what i did. Do away with union wage pressure. Do away with collective bargaining. Do away with the minimum wage, and watch prices of products fall. The government won't like it because growth will go down, but so what, it will be easier on everyone. Supporting more wages is just complicitious in the government scam to keep growing. Growth should be moderate it doesn't need to be outstanding. You want a free market don't you? Then you need to remove all of the things that infringe on it. Start with the unions, cut out corporate lobbying and donations and their corrupt influence. Unlike you I am not a partisan. I know economics and politics very well, and see the evil of both sides.
ah, no comment?