Open Thread #249

dokdoforever — You’ve got it wrong. The role of government is not to respond to the needs of people. People take care of their own needs; for those that cannot, there is charity. Government should respect the will of the people, including the perfectly legitimate will to be left the hell alone. You do not have any right to my stuff.

China had the world’s largest economy up until the mid 1800s. It became a ‘messed up country’ thanks to a low, fixed tax rate which starved its government of revenue.

dokdoforever — You conveniently omit the key factor, which was a political system which progressively exempted various parties from taxation in order to buy their support. The modern example may be found in the US income tax, from which nearly half of Americans are exempted in order to buy their support. Half of Americans get to vote on taking shit away from the other half to give to themselves. All that need be done under such a system is to co-opt the minds of a small percentage of the actual tax payers to make them side with the tax eaters (tell them you’re only going to tax “the rich”), and the tax eaters rule the day.

America’s problem is that the tax eaters have grown so voracious that their eating now exceeds the tax collection, and, I submit, any reasonable capacity for future tax collection. What cannot be sustained will not be sustained.

Interesting theory there. I’d like to see an economic study in support.

dokdoforever — Fuck you. Go look for one yourself. It’s not on MSNBC or ThinkProgress’ website, I assure you. Since you seem to be unfamiliar with the provenance of the concept of “democratic tyranny”, I don’t hold out much hope for your education.

Today we reap the “benefits” of a progressive social system which kicked off in 1913, cemented its position in 1933, and metastasized in 1965.

This is especially rich coming from someone who is protected by a professional guild.

ecw — I am on record advocating for the abolition of the guild. And, to be honest, the work I do, while it is best done by someone with a JD, it doesn’t really require admission to the bar because as an advisor I do not conduct trials. For that I just need brains, which luckily I have in abundance.

What you lack are values. You could care less about anyone else. You’ve got a comfortable enough existence. I don’t think you’re going to go hungry in your lifetime. So, how about thinking about the rest of society, something beyond ‘my stuff.’

dokdoforever — You don’t know anything about what I do with my stuff or what I do for anyone else. It’s my objection to your assertion of a right to dictate what I do with my stuff, and to have that stuff forcibly taken from me to be used in a manner satisfactory to you, that bothers you. And you have the gall to say it’s my values which are deficient. Sorry, bossypants, it’s you. This is something you’ll have illustrated abundantly in the weeks, months, and years ahead.

[R]ead up on the fears of Copts in an Egypt dominated by an Islamist majority.

jefferyhodges — More relevant to my own objection to the tyranny of a democratic majority over the property rights of a minority, read up on what Turkey’s been doing with seizures of property from Christian churches. The Copts are being killed, which is objectionable for obvious reasons, but the property crime in Turkey seems right up dokdoforever‘s alley.

I actually predict that before the tide is turned, the United States will implement capital controls and limit the amount of assets its freeborn citizens can take with them when departing the country, seizing the rest for the state. I wonder if dokdoforever knows the last country to do that.

Insurance companies, drug makers and their army of minion lawyers have been raping the middle class in America and leaving the poor for dead for decades.

Creo69 — It’s interesting how the cost of healthcare increases the more the government “helps” “control” the cost.

Healthcare spending by government started out at the beginning of the 20th century at 0.25% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It increased slowly during the first half of the century, peaking at almost one percent of GDP in 1933 and then declining to 0.39% of GDP in World War II. It took until 1959 for the government’s spending on healthcare to reach 1% of GDP.

Following the passage of Medicare (a program for 65 year-olds and over) and Medicaid (a program for the poor) healthcare spending increased rapidly, reaching 2% of GDP in 1970 and 3% in 1980.

The increase in healthcare spending moderated in the 1980s, but still breached 4% of GDP in 1990 and increased rapidly in the early 1990s, reaching 5% of GDP in 1995. Rapid growth resumed in the 2000s, reaching 6% of GDP in 2007 and 7% of GDP in 2010.

And the total share of GDP for all private and public healthcare spending now exceeds 16%. What was that total share of GDP for all private and public healthcare spending in 1965, when the Great Society kicked off? Six percent, you say?

Why, it’s almost as if the cost of healthcare increases in lockstep with the government’s effort to supply “free” healthcare to worthy recipients, or otherwise to control costs! Hey, I know what will fix this problem which appears highly likely to have been caused by government: More government intervention. Of course.

And to think, you would have much easier dealings with health insurers if they were left to actually write insurance rather than be forced to act as a redistribution scheme. You’d be free not to deal with them at all in my scheme — only the Democrats want to make it mandatory for you to deal with an insurance company. Say, did you know that health insurance was foisted upon the public in the first place by your friend the government?

In fact, it’s well organized, heavily funded parasitic self-interest groups, representing lawyers, doctors, insurance firms, energy, and others, that are the biggest threat to the U.S.

dokdoforever — Don’t forget the kulaks, Comrade.

[O]bamacare…[is]…simply a means of harnessing the police power of the state to further entrench and enforce an utterly broken system of delivering affordable healthcare[.]

It’s worse than that, Comrade. Obamacare is straight-up Leninist voluntarism designed to hasten the march to single-payer. These guys aren’t worried about being frog-marched into the embrace of the insurance companies, because they know that’s only a waypoint along the road while the insurance companies are destroyed by the unicorn-farts economics of Obamacare.

Otherwise, it’s very difficult to understand people who say they can’t afford to buy health insurance being so jubilant about being forced to buy health insurance.

I actually am horrified by the argle-bargle from Mitt Romney on repealing Obamacare “from day one”. He will be the President, and the President is not a king. The President does not repeal legislation — he executes it.

Therefore I am as uncomfortable with Mitt Romney’s declaration from the stump that he’s going to suspend Obamacare on his first day in office as I am about President Obama’s conduct in respect of implementing the DREAM Act by fiat, and as I am about Gov. Bobby Jindal (and other governors)’s declaration of refusal to establish an insurance exchange as required by the Affordable Care Act.

The way our American system is supposed to work is the legislature makes the law, the judiciary interprets the law and advises whether or not it fits our Constitutional order, and the executive follows the law. The Supreme Court has spoken — ACA is Constitutional and therefore until the legislature repeals the act, the executive must follow it. Romney and Jindal are flat wrong; they don’t get to pick and choose.

However, this makes it all the more critical to boot Obama from office and elect conservative lawmakers. The President nominates Supreme Court justices and the Senate confirms them. I hope to see Obamacare repealed by the Congress on the first day in session with a new Republican, Tea Party majority (now that Obamacare’s simply a tax, I guess the “reconciliation” process and its simple 51-vote majority is all that’s necessary for that). And I hope to see the Congress reject non-originalist nominees to the bench.

…Are you really a sentient being?

Go ahead and explain for us how it is to be understood that President Obama is not implementing the DREAM Act by fiat, or if he is in fact implementing the statute even though it failed in Congress, how that fits our Constitutional order.

I agree with you on the state of the republic. Are you prepared to renounce your citizenship and walk away from your tax burden?

Railwaycharm — I’m really worried it will come to that. I love my country — and am proud to have worn her cloth — but my country is definitely headed the wrong way. Am I supposed to go over the cliff together with Barack?

Railwaycharm — Romney may be disastrous. His appeal to me is mainly found in the fact that Obama is disastrous, and I will always prefer potential disaster to proven disaster.

One hope I have for Romney comes from the very fact that he seems to have no firm principles. Romney’s not a stupid man, and not married to a fixed ideological position; with his proven track record of success, I am optimistic that Romney will recognize the problems before him when he becomes our 45th President and seek to remedy those problems.

Obama’s not that smart (certainly not as smart as he and his boosters believe), and has no track record of having done anything before he conned America into electing him President. What he does have is a fixed ideological perspective and firm set of principles, and those principles are mostly wrong. Obama’s determined to double down on stupid even as the disaster compounds.

You would have given away money to civic organization, charities, schools and other valuable causes, and you would not owe any tax.

No amount of charitable donation will wipe out a tax liability. All it does is reduce taxable income. Unless you want me to live on nothing. With a zero income I won’t have to pay any tax.

There’s a time and place for everything. The same act may be right for one time, and absolutely wrong for another. When Reagan became President, the national debt was about US$1.1 trillion, and when he left office in 1988 the debt was about US$2.8 trillion. He piled up a lot of debt. However, at that time there was fiscal room to maneuver. There is no such room today, hence whether or not Reagan ran deficits in 1981, and for what reasons, may not be all that relevant to what should be done today.

Reagan spent the money on defense, as he was focused on defeating an existential threat. Today, all our money (actual and borrowed) goes into the maw of runaway social spending, which is the existential threat.

I firmly believe that the explosion in US healthcare costs is fueled by the injection of “help” from the US government. It closely tracks a similar phenomenon in the education market.

Then you’re one of those weird people who refuses to look at the examples of other countries.

Those examples are inapposite, because in those other countries they have taken a statist step which has until now been abhorrent to Americans: In a single-payer system the state absolutely controls the price of medical services. Doctors are either state employees on a salary, or otherwise are compensated only according to an official fee schedule, at an unrealistically-low rate. Otherwise they are pushed out into the unregulated, unreimbursed elective sectors — like cosmetic surgery and LASIK.

Where there is only a single place one can sell one’s labor, we call that slavery, and it’s a step I’m not eager to see in America.

The example of LASIK is illustrative, actually. It’s one of the few areas of medicine where the price has plummeted. Incidentally, it’s one of the few areas of medicine where the government and insurance companies do not intrude. Patients have direct contact with the price, and they are sensitive to price.

hoju_saram — I have no experience with the German healthcare system. I have only experienced US private healthcare, US military healthcare, the UK’s National Health Service, Korea’s system and one elective visit to a hospital in Singapore.

I wonder why they call it “single-payer”? ‘Cause you know that’s what our Communists want.

I also wonder what compels you to share your opinion with us about the US healthcare system. You’re not a citizen, and don’t live there. That means you are exposed to neither the services provided nor to the cost of such services. We don’t need you cheerleading my country further into bankruptcy and despair. How about a nice cup of STFU? I promise not to weigh in on Australian politics.

Sperwer — Yeah, yeah. I’m looking into it. If only I were a kept man like you.

Initially, Japan and England were ahead of the US [in the development of personal computers].

Balderdash. Since 1975, I’ve been a computer user and our family owned nearly every interesting machine made through 1992, up to and including the Apple Lisa and NeXT Computer. Japan and England were never, at any time, “ahead of the US”. You are as misinformed about personal computing as you are about nearly everything else. I’m not sure you do much reading in English.

Do not go to law school unless you’re absolutely, 100% sure you want to be in the legal field. And I would add: Unless your daddy is going to give you a job in his firm.

This is similar to Reagan time. He said the dollar was too high. And, he borrowed and borrowed to devaluate the dollar. It worked.

The strong dollar was the keystone of Reaganomics. I wonder why so much that you know simply isn’t true?

Actually, I owe RolyPoly an apology. I was thinking of Canadian dollars and British pounds in respect of the “strong dollar” aspect of Reaganomics, and forgot about the later policy reversal of the Plaza Accord. Although the dollar remained strong against other currencies, and it could be argued that on the whole the dollar was strong under Reagan, it is true that he deliberately sought to revalue the dollar against the currencies of Germany and Japan based on a belief that they were artificially weak due to manipulation by the governments of Germany and Japan. I wouldn’t describe that as a devaluation policy, but it’s not flat-out wrong as is usual for RolyPoly.