To all those conservatives, right wingers, those that say you have to work for it, you must deserve it, you must not “expect” entitlements, well consider this in the case of private health care:
"What Jubek is sharing is that due to a lack of a government heath care program people in China have to save a significant amount of money for a “just in case” medical situation. Apply that same mentality here in the states. If you or a loved one had a heart attack and you didn’t have the cash to pay up front for medical services you may not get treated and die. Wouldn’t you save for such potential disaster ? "
Now, what this means for the USA, EU, JAPAN and other developed countries is that “private” health care is the worst possible system imaginable: when you must pay, and pay up front “for your life”, there is no possible competition, no possible optimization through competition, and especially no possible “decrease” in price for health care services. In fact the exact opposite happens, and happens big time because WHEN YOU EITHER DIE OR PAY THE AMOUNT OF MONEY THE PRIVATE HEALTH CARE GIVER DEMANDS, YOU CAN BE SURE HE WILL DEMAND AS MUCH MONEY AS IS POSSIBLE! You are completely under his control, his will, and he establishes the price since you are completely without any possible power to negotiate.
So, USA keep your private health care, ask as much money as possible for it, some will get richer and richer, some poorer and poorer, but they “deserve” to get poor, they didn’t earn the right to live.
If you really analyze and break down the essence of all these debates, it is just a power struggle, a fight, one will power against another, one model of an imaginary good world against another, one aesthetic - artistic choice against another. There is no correct model, no “model that works”, just temporary models, equilibriums that are always destined to change in any possible way. All social models are just a set of rules and behaviors a group of people decide to follow, either through force, tradition or laws imposed, etc.
These rules always benefit some and penalize some others, sometimes alot of people lose out, sometimes just a few, aside from the fact that “losing out” is also arbitrarily defined and accepted. You could just accept a neutral definition of “how much pain” a person bears, or the number of people bear under a given economic - social model, that is according to the rules that govern a model and that people must follow.
The play out of forces determine who bears more pain, and these forces can go in any possible way, aside from the fact that most pain in modern economies is mostly psychological and rarely physical…
Who determines who has the “right to live” ? No one has any right to anything, only if you fight and win you “have the right”. But you can fight using any dirty weapon possible…
Modern economies are rich enough to give everything to everyone many times over. Technological societies have enough excess capacity to provide all the basics and even most luxuries to everyone, to 7 billion people, all of them worldwide FOR FREE. This is the real incredible contradiction of the modern economic system, it is so rich that people don’t know how to deal with it: so they create these imaginary fights, they fight each other off, as if the other person is the enemy: the enemy is within the psychological situation where modern technology gives us everything for free, but we can’t accept this and impose huge prices to pay, just because. PEOPLE LOVE TO FIGHT OTHERS, LOVE “TO HATE”, in fact “HATE MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND”.
No with technology we should be able to make smaller more powerful weapons… wallet sized. Convienent for eliminating those long holiday shopping lines.
I’d be proud of that child too. She exhibited compassion, and when pressed, critical intelligence. On the other hand, the republican take on the situation, as nearly always, seems to exhibit only one of those virtues at best. And they’re supposedly all grown up.
Don’t tell anyone but I’m working on an antimatter doomsday device so I can hold the world to ransom for 1 trillion dollars. Since the energy conversion is ~100% efficient, unlike those old nukes I only need a teaspoon to take out Earth, Venus and Mars all in one go.
Aah gee and here I was looking forward to seeing those planets as wealthy luxury planets for vacationers with too much money and too much time on their hands. Think of the employment for the poor. But oh well we maybe able to do that with the poles when they melt to nothing then refreeze… or so they say it will happen, Damn Republicans.
No it is not hate, it is our infactuation with mathematics, with measuring everything, hence money, with always measuring how much person A gets, how much person B pays, is it equal or greater than ? Am I paying more or less, is he paying more or less ? does he “deserve” more or less ? More pain or less pain ?
Always precision, a mathematically obsessed civilization, A must be equal to B, but there is always someone who wants to change the equation slightly.
One of the most interesting discoveries of anthropologist when dealing with “primitive” societies is that they have no concept of “how much” something is worth or “how much must be exchanged between trading parthers”: they would keep on giving all kinds of weird and wacky donations to the “more advanced” civilization and laugh, since they didn’t have any way to measure it (and why measure anyways, what on earth is measurement anyways ???) , they could care less, the measurement - mathematical problem didn’t even exist in their minds…
But I fanthom some kind of power struggles were always going on, some kinds of ranking systems were in place, maybe not mathematical, or maybe not, why rank ? why struggle for some abstract entity called power, or even your own free will, why not want to be subdued and accept pain ? questions, questions, no answers…
Given that there are about 10 million homeless and poor households in America, and given that giving them food and shelter for free would cost 10 million times 20 thousand dollars a year (10 thousand for food, and 10 thousand for shelter) that would only cost 200 billion dollars a year. That amount of money is peanuts, considering that the USA spends 600 billion dollars a year for defense and spent an unknown amount of maybe trillions for Irak war, Afghanistan war and bailout of the rich and mega rich banks and financial institutions. The mega rich really didn’t need all that money being that they were already so rich, but that is “social justice” according to the right wing: steal from the poor and give to the rich.
But then people would not enjoy seeing the poor suffer, would not have that satisfaction of seeing them punished as they deserve to be, as feeling so superior to the poor and so deserving and so hard working, etc.
Those that despise the poor are mostly those that are slightly richer, the lower middle class, right wing thugs that are full of guns and hate and love to see others suffer.
"You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my yard, and I’ll pay you $50. "
This example shows just how idiotic the right wing is: first of all most people would do this chore themselves, it is almost fun and healthy and even distracting, often much more fun then “office jobs” and dealing with people.
Second of all, even if someone called someone else to do it, they would call some kid and give him pocket money, 5 or 10 dollars.
Third of all, the abstract idea that there are “all those simple jobs” out there that actually pay a living wage is pure dreaming and utopia: JOBS NO LONGER EXIST, WORK IS OBSOLETE, TECHNOLOGY HAS AUTOMATED AND OPTIMIZED MOST WORK, LABOR IS NO LONGER NEEDED.
Now find us all 10 million jobs for the “poor” that will pay them 20,000 dollars a year. But don’t count on the 10 million jobs that are being outsourced to India or Vietnam at 100 dollars a month, that pay level is too little to constitute a living wage in the USA.
Right I am sorry I don’t know of any kid that will do regular lawn work for less than 40. 5 or 10 just does not get them squat at the malls.
I doubt you would find my yard fun or healthy there is over an acre of it studded with hills holes and other obsticles. My rider even gets stuck at times. I have to have a rider, a push mower and a weed whacker to do my yard. Then add to that hot humid weather and grass that grows at an incredible rate and is always wet even when it does not rain,Yippee fun fun fun. To hire some kid it would cost me more than 50. A pro lawn service would cost me well over a hundred a week.
You are thinking that all 10,000,000 want to work or can work. That they would give up a free ride on Uncle Sam’s tab in order to work 8 or 9 hours a day for maybe a hundred more a week. Oh sure … Hey, US folks may be under educated but we ain’t dumb.
You want the free ride, you want to sponge off because you don’t want to pay the pro lawn service the money that they deserve to receive for the labor. That is the problem with the right wing ideology: as long as they have to pay someone else, that someone else either costs too much or is lazy, or is any other million possible things. Just pay for a professional job, else do it yourself.
You can get some really poor mexicans, the ones that built all the homes in the last few years in the US to do that work, there are many unemployed now.
You could also just sell that large plot of land and get a small townhouse and not worry about it anymore.
Of course given 100 people maybe 10 or 15 or 20 really don’t want to work OR MOSTLY “PRETEND TO WORK” since modern technology has eliminated work and most work is very vague, abstract and detached from any clear input - manipulation - output format.
But those 20 % are completely irrelevant compared to how much huge excess capacity and productivity is in the system anyways, and many people want to work and work even much more than necessary.
If you think it is just a joke then you don’t know Imp, or ever read his concise, conservative agenda. There is no joking in that. His delivery might have been, but his argument is straight out of the farthest right.
Plenty? Like whom exactly? How come the homeless guy is not part of the “plenty of people”? Why are we not all part of the “plenty”? Just curious…
You must live in Liberal land. I have yet to meet any poor Mexicans here in Miss, Texas Arizona or across the southern part of US. They know how not to spend money so that they can send it home where they will live comfortably on it once they build up a large enough stake. You don’t see one mexican renting an apartment or house you see 10 to 20 renting that place, they split the costs, it saves them money. So they live cheaply, it does not make them poor especially by their own country’s standards. And while we are at it. Most immigrants from the south are not Mexicans. They come from South American Countries. Mexico has just as hard of a time keeping them out of their borders as we do. Unlike us the ones they see crossing illegally they shoot. We just send them back. The vast majority of jobs that latin americans will take are minimum waged jobs. Sure they may get only $4 or $5 bucks an hour but comapred to what they would make in their own country thats like us making $50 an hour. Yes, I resent illegals coming into this country , I do not resent the ones that do it legally. They are more than welcome because this is a country that was made by and for immigrants. The ones that do it legally have respect for this country and its laws, they are an asset.
Labor jobs have not been eliminated, they have changed but, not eliminated. Sure Auto plants and such have gone tech but there are jobs out there. Not all will find employment even if all wanted to but, thats why we have federal programs.
What stops people from moving to another area or city to find jobs? Nothing, here in the US you can still move about with out the Government’s permission. How do you think this country was built?
How the heck am I getting a free ride by not paying someone to do my job? Why would I pay a lawn service? I can spend that money on better things like steaks and beer. I would hire a kid to do the work in a heart beat and have and will again from time to time if any wants to do it. It does a kid good to work and earn money.
I will never live in a city again. We have worked to hard to earn title to these 10 acres. City life sucks. I would rather be broke out here than wealthy in a city.
You live in Liberal land and thats fine and dandy, I know folks that live in conservative land and thats fine and dandy, until you start trying to force me to live where you are.
You must live in Liberal land. I have yet to meet any poor Mexicans here in Miss, Texas Arizona or across the southern part of US. They know how not to spend money so that they can send it home where they will live comfortably on it once they build up a large enough stake. You don’t see one mexican renting an apartment or house you see 10 to 20 renting that place, they split the costs, it saves them money. So they live cheaply, it does not make them poor especially by their own country’s standards. And while we are at it. Most immigrants from the south are not Mexicans. They come from South American Countries. Mexico has just as hard of a time keeping them out of their borders as we do. Unlike us the ones they see crossing illegally they shoot. We just send them back. The vast majority of jobs that latin americans will take are minimum waged jobs. Sure they may get only $4 or $5 bucks an hour but comapred to what they would make in their own country thats like us making $50 an hour. Yes, I resent illegals coming into this country , I do not resent the ones that do it legally. They are more than welcome because this is a country that was made by and for immigrants. The ones that do it legally have respect for this country and its laws, they are an asset.