unfortunately, dream, i think you are right.
I will die before they get me. And then I will come back and haunt their asses from the metaphysical realm! I DO happen to have some ideas about how we could dethrone the banks and avert the new world order though. I should start a thread on it and start getting the idea out there…
Hi 3xg, Oughtist from Canada here. Obama just left. If it were you just leaving, and I were an american, correction, United States of American, but still had my job as a public school teacher, teaching students with severe autism, say, could I be expecting a cut in pay? 
The main problem with socialized health care given the current economic situation has not yet been addressed in my opinion.
Don’t misunderstand me, I certainly value socialized health care as a viable option and believe that health care must either be one way or another for there to be any benefit to the average person. It must be entirely socialized or not at all socialized, as indicated by the points made regarding competitiveness and other forms of insurance.
The problem with socializing health care now was almost mentioned when someone brought up the fact that more people would use the health care. This in and of itself is not so much the issue as that would be one of the main objectives behind socializing health care.
The main issue is that socializing health care will not, in any way, stimulate the economy given present circumstances.
Somebody will pay for the health care to be socialized and that someone will be taxpayers. Contrary to popular belief, it will not merely be the wealthiest of the taxpayers, but the majority of the taxpayers. I would be considered on the upper end of lower-middle class and until I get every red cent (Did you like that pun?) of my Federal Income Tax back every year you cannot convince me otherwise.
The problem with this is simply that it cuts into disposable income. This would not only have an effect on the tertiary economy and tertiary service-sector jobs held by an alarming number of Americans, but to the point brought up earlier, it will have a negative influence on the global economy as countries such as China count on our consumerist asses to buy the worthless crap that they make. This effect of such an action would be devastating, not only would the taxpayers absorb the costs of maintaining this socialized health care (which many people that are privately insured currently would presumably switch to) but then you have the added detriment of tax dollars financially supporting people who are out of work due to a further decline in consumerism.
Basic consumerism will not be the only area that suffers, though. The banks will suffer even more greatly as well as the credit card companies because the more tax dollars go to supporting socialized medicine, the less are being pumped into mortgage debts, credit card bills and the like. The auto companies will also suffer to a greater extent because the fringe people (the people such as myself that are right on that line where they are as hard hit as the semi-wealthy, while not being semi-wealthy themselves) will be even more hesitant to purchase new automobiles and to travel.
Presumably, an additional percentage would also be levied upon businesses in the form of taxation for the socialized medicine, and I do not feel the need to elaborate on why this would be a negative.
The only point that I strongly oppose is this notion that there are no such things as jobs. Obviously, there are going to be specific examples where a statement such as that makes sense, but generally speaking, it is nonsensical. For instance, take Circuit City, they closed thousands of stores and people worked in those stores, those are undoubtedly jobs that are now gone. There is no way that anyone can even remotely come close to figuring out a way that Circuit City could operate with no staff whatsoever!
Aside from that, some of the above points I agree with while I disagree with some still. But, to all remaining points there are theories and arguments that can very easily support either side.
Don’t get me wrong. I could take a relatively hefty income cut, and still do my job (so long as I could get to it). It’s not the economics of my job that get to me, it’s the politics.
I was thinking things were going to hit the fan with Y2K. I just thought we were historically due.
My ex-band Spunosound had a song, the first half verse of which was:
It’s a comin, it’s a-really comin’ on,
It’s a comin on big horn dam.
I’ll stand my post so long as I can, so long as the politics don’t piss me off too much…
All of this presupposes that health care is a good thing in any form. Every major world issue that comes to my mind is ultimately tied to population. The extension of individual lives is an irrefutable factor in population control.
Many of the posts above refer to the good of community vs. the individual. It comes down to this: as individuals, none of us is capable of living autonomous from the community. The few exceptions you might be inclined to point to are statistically insignificant. Even an Eagle Scout would have little enthusiasm for truly striking out on their own for any lengthy period of time. Aside from physical ability and survival knowledge, we are also psychologically built as communal beings, and require frequent contact with our peers. Therefore, the community has a fundamental primacy in considerations of resource allocation, and in any difficult decisions we may be faced with in the near future.
I find it absurd and infuriating that so many fight against abortion when the true enemy (the one that will kill us all dead) is the artificial fertilization of otherwise barren couples. Can we not admit to ourselves that infertility is one of nature’s safeguards? That it is a fail-safe that trips whenever a species becomes a threat to the stability of the world community? Homosexuality is a twin sister of that very same safeguard, and here is medical technology, attempting to synthesize children from the DNA of same-gender parents. Great idea. These measures are selfish and indefensible. Opinions to the contrary are childish, and self-deluding.
I am enraged that such a massive amount of medical attention is given to the infirm, decrepit, insane, and otherwise useless members of the community. If a member has progressed beyond the point of being capable of repaying any of the resources that are being poured into their maintenance, and have little/no hope of recovery, then they are deadweight, and they are killing our planet.
This is all aside from the fact that the medical industry is massively, unbelievably wasteful. This is because the motives behind the industry, the founding principle of the thing, is premised in the individual. Though it is not expressed in such terms, there is an unspoken assumption that every individual has the right to eternal life. We fight very hard to make this dream a reality, and the fight is ravaging our world.
The community is sacred. Individuals are not ever to be held above this mandate.
I am not proposing we abandon medicine all together. What I’m saying is that each and every sector thereof must be reevaluated with respect to its cause and effect within the community. The individual should receive the most minimal, sideways glance of a concern to this assessment.
I am convinced that if we really do destroy the world, as it seems we might, it will be the crutch of our sentimentality for human biomass that deals the deathblow (ironically ending in species-suicide).
Fornicate, foreign ick ate, for an occasion such as that comment, I must say, and I beg your forebarence, fuck you Mr. Shambles.
p.s. I like your picture.
EDIT: I would be happy to support my use of language in this post.
Let not my assertion that we should stop making babies imply that I am promoting abstinence. Quite to the contrary, as what Rob Brezsny would call a ‘fan of truth and beauty’, I am a true worshipper of love, most especially in its highest form of expression. The only way our species can endure the coming, inevitable depopulation we are facing without violence or other devastation to the collective conscious is to face it with compassion for each other. This is subtly distinct from what I called ‘sentimentality for human biomass’, but that subtle deviation makes all the difference.
What I’m trying to say is, fuck the world. We could all use the love.
What does that have to do with being enraged about demonstrating compassion to the weakest members of society? I call bullshit.
being forced at gunpoint to show compassion for the weakest members of society to assuage the guilt of liberal democrats could never be tyranny…
-Imp
Eugenics lives?
Well, cognitive dissonance is unavoidable here unfortunately, but the seeming paradox it completely functional and non-contradictory. Aversion to the deaths of others (secondary to the death of self of course but still there) is an evolutionary affectation. It’s hard-wired into our brains. The population explosion has, however, created imperatives in our lives for which evolution has not had nearly enough human generations to adapt to. My point is this: People are going to die. We have already crossed the sustainability line. Even if this were not the case and we could support 6.7 billion individuals, it is still given to human beings to die. Death is a part of life. (It feels cliche even saying that, but until people really grok this point we are going to continue making the same mistakes.) Fear of this is childish.
Depopulation being an inevitability, what we will find is that the underprivileged will not be nearly so helpless then as they are now. It is the social systems and demographic allocation of the planet that holds them down, nothing more. As these systems crumble under their own weight and national boundaries erode simply because no one cares to maintain them, everyone is suddenly equal. Evolutionary trends are able to take over once more (we have mostly killed evolution in humans) as natural and sexual selection return to a stable state.
What I’m saying is, we must have compassion for our neighbors, for our friends and lovers, for our tribe, for our confidantes, and for our selves. This compassion can either be juxtaposed with cool rationality and acceptance that there might be death in other places and acceptance that we cannot save everyone, or we can all die. All of us. When national boundaries dissolve (they were imaginary in the first place) starving people may roam wherever they wish. I hope they stick together to, and forge ahead with the utmost compassion for each other.
Funny thing is, there is also an assumption here that we in the first world won’t be the one’s starving. What garden will you pluck your fruits from in center-city Boston when the supply lines have broken down? How will you cure your scurvy in Idaho when the only source of nutrition is the potato? People don’t realize how fragile the edifice of society really is. The physical stuff is diaphanous at best, and the systems themselves? The structure of promises and habits that lie between people? Those are just as imaginary as money and national boundaries, and they are doomed.
If you’ll indulge me as I geek out for a moment, I’d like to paraphrase a quote by President Laura Roslin from Battlestar Galactica (pertinent given that they are living the crisis that we only see on the horizon): “Yes, Lee will do the right thing because Lee always does the right thing. What I’m afraid of is that he’ll never be able to see that sometimes the right thing is a luxury that cannot be afforded.”
Hi Mr. Shambles.
Sorry for telling you to fuck off.
I’m pretty much right there with you in terms of your scenario of potential global meltdown. But I don’t think that an economics solution is going to save us. As you imply, compassion is key. I think this implication is demonstrated best by focusing on the living, now, and to continue doing so in the future, for whatever that holds. The “weak” are among the living. Human life is weak, true, at least in the big picture. But childish fears aside, why not wait until it’s clear we’re in a lifeboat before we start employing lifeboat ethics? Compassion is a practice of love and wisdom, not rational calculations. 
Compassion might work. A 300-ship navy would probably work better.
Call me a nihilist, Faust, but if I have to even sit through Water World again, I swear I’ll start praying to God!!!