I need to see that movie. I know to take it with a grain of salt and all, but I enjoy his movies for what they are.

Well, I haven't looked at this thread in a couple days, and there is a lot there to process. I'm not going to address each point, cuz it will take too long, and it'll make my brain hurt.

Let me see if I can summarize my opposition. Everyone has a story. I don't see why taxpayers should be forced to pick up the pieces. That's what charities are for, not governments. If you don't have enough shame to ask the government for a handout, then ask it of your peers. Go to your church and ask that they have a fundraiser because you fell on hard times. Ask people who WANT to give, don't ask the government to make us give.

That is my problem with most of the government-run help programs. Welfare, WIC, unemployment, and government-run health insurance/healthcare, etc. are all great in theory. The problem is, people have no shame anymore. There is no shame in asking for help, so there are a lot of people that have no desire to ever get off of them. If everyone was a respectable person, and only took what they needed to get back on their feet, that would be great. The problem is, these lazy good-for-nothings stay on these programs their whole lives, with no shame for it. This increases the anticipated costs, which means more taxes to pay for it. Or worse services.

For example: I just got home from Raley's. In line in front of me was a single mother using WIC. Fine, that is what it is for, to help single mothers down on their luck. Then, I started to think about the situation. It is 12:30 on a Monday, and instead of looking for work to get off of all of the goverent aid, she is shopping in sweatpants. There is no reason for her to try to do better, in her opinion.

Stuff like that disgusts me. If this is too off-topic for the healthcare thread, I'll make a new thread if you want.

So, you had a detailed conversation with that woman, learned her backstory, her problems, her family history, and came to the conclusion that she's a lazy good-for-nothing person.

Or did you just make that assumption based on her sweatpants?

How do you know she's a single mother? How do you know she doesn't have Monday's off? How do you know whether or not she's got a work preventing disability? How do you know she doesn't have 5 kids which is too much to handle in addition to a job after her husband was killed in Iraq? How do you know she's not on WIC because she's suddenly caring for her sister's kids after her sister went to jail for meth?

My point is there are a million things you don't know about someone to make the assumption they're a lazy good-for-nothing disgusting person just because they're shopping on food stamps in sweatpants on a Monday at lunch time.

Unless you're a heartless bastard, I bet if you spent an hour chatting with that lady you'd end up buying her lunch.

And I can't understand your point about shame. You suggest people have too much shame to ask the gov't for a handout. Then you suggest people don't have any shame and therefore any gov't handouts will be abused.

And private charity is a wonderful concept. The problem is, unless they've been there, people don't naturally have an urge to give much to charity. (How much of your monthly income do you contribute to private charities?) And because of the limited giving to charity, charity organizations are perpetually unable to serve the demand. This is why taxes to pay for baseline social services work much better, as it spreads out the burden across many people making the burden very small for each individual while making it much easier for the social programs to reach the people that need them.

Regardless of her own situation, those people exist. And I said that people don't have too much shame to ask for handouts. If people have no problem staying on welfare indefinitely, it causes a problem for everyone.

I don't contribute anything to charities. But that's my point: I shouldn't have to. Making me pay for everyone's healthcare, etc is forcing me to pay into "charity". That's what I'm against. Let me make my own decisions of where my money should go.

Careful what you wish for. I think as you mature a bit, you may note that the future holds uncertainty regardless of how good your decisions are. You may find yourself in a situation where you are caring for a loved one encapable of full rehabilitation or any number of other scenarios where you'll need help.

I think we all agree that help should not be so readily available that a significant number can choose to live off of the help instead of taking care of themselves, but the government is in the best position (better than charities) to regulate the help and, as Sperry indicated, spread the load over everyone so that it's not a significant drain.

The real issue with any of these programs is abuse. Nobody benefits from moochers except the moocher.

They absolutely do. However, the financial and social costs of enabling the lazy bastards is far outweighed by the benefits provided to the people who deserve the help those programs provide, and the effect on society as a whole of not letting them sink into oblivion. The world you live in is undeniably a better place for all of us because of these programs.

You will have to forgive Rob as he is fresh from the womb. Rob, you will probably have that same attitude until you yourself have been involuntarily put in a similar situation. You are a young, smart, physically capable man and it might not be very difficult for you to go out and get a job. That sometimes makes it hard to put yourself in another persons shoes. That, coupled with that fact that we see so much dishonesty and laziness on a daily basis, makes it difficult to not judge people as such.

I know Rob and I don't think Rob is saying that he doesn't want to contribute. I think Rob just wants to make sure that if he is contributing, that money is going to people who genuinely need it and not to those who are having babies because they like to screw without the responsibility or those who would rather get high than put food on the table. I understand where he is coming from and unfortunately that is just a fact of life in this land of opportunity.

Was this plan designed to help people like my son who can't qualify for health insurance? Yes. Will it also force everyone to support the people who damage their organs with smoking and alcohol or the morbidly obese who drink a 24pak of diet coke a day and are now diabetics on insulin? Yes.

There is no perfect system. Every system in this country that is designed to help someone of need will always be molested into a device used to screw someone out of a dollar. It's just the way it is. Change the things you can, live with the things you can't.

I don't agree that government is capable of making better allocation decisions for welfare recipients than local charities. I also don't agree that welfare does more good than harm, both in principle and practice. When you remove the need for people to work, you remove their dignity. The tiny percentage of truly needy people can be more than adequately managed by local charity.

Maybe it's just my inexperience, young age, lack of exposure, and privileged life getting in the way of reality, but that is how I see it.

The reason I stated that the government is in the best position (better than charities) to regulate the help is that, in addition to being able to spread the load over everyone making it less of an impact, they also are in a position to be better organized and more efficient. With charities, volunteers are responsible for distributing the help. And while they very well may care more than social workers, they aren't trained to do it professionally, and, at least in theory, would be more susceptible to getting taken advantage of by those that abuse the help and efficiency (of help distributed vs. cost) should also be better when a large entity handles the whole country.

Now notice I didn't say that's how it is, just that the gov't is in the best position to do it right. I'm aware that our government lacks this theoretical efficiency, but it should be the goal in mind when reform is implemented.

But welfare doesn't remove the "need" for work if you want more than a bare scraping by minimal existence. And right now, welfare doesn't even provide that if you consider health care.

I hope you realize, that if you are putting in a lot of (legitimate) work now, you are already paying for other people's situation, through required 'donations', I mean, deductions, to social security/medicare, not to mention federal income tax. Ouch. And for social security - well good luck getting that investment back. No mean-ness intended, it just appears to be the reality of the system.

Tell me about it - one nice thing about keeping State employment is the contribution to SS stops, and I actually have some control over the substitute. In reality, SS and Medicare are nothing more than additional involuntary taxes, just without the name.

Yes, I realize that. But just because they already took an inch doesn't mean I should just go ahead and give them the whole mile.

I'm not saying healthcare doesn't need to be reformed, I'm saying that socializing it is not the right way to do it. I think that they should remove the restrictions on getting medical insurance from out of state, and they should be required to accept people with a pre-existing condition. The amount of competition would mean that they would have to have better services for less money. Putting the government in charge of anything is rarely the answer.

My girlfriend's family was put into a similar situation, and after almost 5 years of dating, I consider them my family. Details aren't important, but her dad didn't have health insurance, and his mom had to foot the bill. It was a huge bill. It sucks that she had to pay for it, but I still don't think it would have been fair to make everyone pay for it.

You do know the first war you are talking about was against Afghanistan after they refused hand over / go after/ or even ask alqueda nicely to stop training/planning/ and attacking us.

So you would rather the USA just say "well we asked their government but they said no so we are just going to sit idle and wait for attack #2" ?? (i'm sure you wouldn't)

The way both of those wars were conducted was, as I said, stupid. Afghanistan should have been purely a Special Forces/AF Recon/intelligence operation. Iraq was completely unjustified and bungled from the start.

I'm not saying Al-Qaeda should have been let off the hook after the attacks. I'm saying we spent unreal amounts of money for no legitimate end. Not to mention the massive damage we did to the economy, infrastructure and quality of life in Iraq.

Interesting some of the ways they are going to pay (partially pay?) for the new plan :

http://www.boston.com/business/perso...plication.html

Section 10907 of the Original Bill - Excise tax on indoor tanning services: This is a sales tax of ten percent assessed on your trip to the tanning salon. This tax begins July 1, 2010.

There's also a National sales tax in place on medical devices now.. How long before a national sales tax creeps it way onto other products ?

That says it's from the original bill. Did it make it into the law?

Ya given the limited research i did on it (5 minutes) it appears that part made it from the original

http://dpc.senate.gov/dpcdoc-sen_hea..._as_passed.cfm



I'm not sure if Boston.com does a great job fact checking, or no job... I'm hoping they do some fact checking though.

That's who wrote it. It's not presented s journalism and I doubt that guy's unbiased about the bill (not that anyone else is either). But even assuming he's right, I don't really care. Little ticky-tack expenses like that are the real price of freedom. The only way to prevent them is to have the totalitarian regime that Faux News is trying to tell us we suddenly got in January.

IMO the real price of freedom is the lives of our forefathers who died in the revolutionary war, cival war, World war II (probably I as well but i'm lousy at history) and even Afghanstan (but not iraq either time) .

Other solders have died serving their country, (and in loose sense keeping us safe, as we demonstate how effective our military is, even in unjustified cases) But not every death has really been for our freedom.

Taxation to me is partial slavery.
Used to be a slaved kept 0% of the fruits of his labor and had no say in where he could go, when he could go, who he could associate with, with his only freedoms being of spoken word , and music but only for a few hours a week.

Now I get to keep 80% of the fruits of my labor, and I can by in large go where ever i want when ever i want (but not some state or federally owned land, including forest service roads, and old roads constructed with tax payer money) and i'm free to associate with who i want. and i can buy Almost any thing out there (Ice-T Cop killer i can't buy though, certain guns, etc) also almost no one can physically harm me with out facing legal issues themselves. (homeland security , police, and diplomats)


Though even with say a 90% tax rate if no one legally "owns" you , you're not a slave. but i'm just comparing the differences for arguments sake

I know its been a popular talking point but really
What other "rights" come with a fine if you don't exercise them?

The right to get paid for employment and the right buy things?

I can only pray for national sales tax sooner rather than later.

http://www.fairtax.org/

And the idea of taxing vices is pretty straightforward and not akin to slavery in that stretch you attempted to make.

Take cigarettes for example. People that want to smoke are allowed to, even though it hurts their health. But because smokers end up costing *everyone* more due to the cost of healthcare, there's a tax on cigarettes to offset that. So, you're allowed to do what you want but if it affects others, you have to compensate them for it.

I'm assuming that because indoor tanning is more dangerous than the sun for getting skin cancer, they can justify a tax on it to offset the burden unnecessary cancer patients place on the healthcare system.

As far as agreeing with that justification... I'm not so sure I believe there's a demonstrateable relationship between tanning and the cost of healthcare. But for things like smoking (and diabetes, and heart disease, etc) there certainly is a quantifiable correlation. IMO, taxing cigarettes and corn syrup would be fine with me to offset the massive cost of keeping people that over-consume those items it alive. Once it's not such a big problem, then the tax should go away.

But of course, I'd much rather pay for it all with a flat tax instead, and use preventative healthcare to stop people from getting all those problems caused by smoking and corn syrup before they happen. After all, what's the point of collecting money to handle large numbers of sick people if we can prevent the sick people to begin with? The goal of healthcare first and foremost should be to keep people healthy... not to deal with them after they're sick.

Only 2 things I'm gonna say to Sperry's post:

1. I didn't click the link, but it seems like a straightforward enough idea. I am totally for a national sales tax being the only tax we have. The states would then (hopefully) follow suit.

2. When have you ever seen the government impose a tax, and then take it away later? I can't think of any examples.

1. I dislike sales tax vs. income tax. It discourages spending "on the ground" by us consumers more than income tax discourages people from attempting to earn more. Required services (roads, military, fire/police, social programs, etc.) require fixed amounts of money more easily maintained by income taxes than by sales taxes. I bet dollars spent on taxable goods have dropped more in the current recession than incomes have, and I bet they would rise faster when we start growing again too. This is not what we really want- we want to reduce the flux of deficits and surplus related to GDP. But then again, I also dislike flat taxes because I like using tax incentives or penalties to encourage/discourage specific behavior, like vice taxes or deductions for mortgage interest paid. I favor the general outline of our current tax system, but I think there are certainly inefficiencies that can be addressed.

2. There's plenty, like the Bush tax cuts expiring or income tax rates being reduced in periods of surplus, like the late '90s and early '50s for example. Many small individual taxes are written into law with expiration dates just like most provisions of the Stimulus Bill were. And, given the platform of Republicans for decades has included reducing taxes, all we have to do is elect them more and they'll repeal/reduce taxes.

I dunno, I like the idea of taxing the 1+ trillion dollars earned by people on the black market by taxing the stuff they buy with their illicitly earned money. Plus we can tax illegal immigrants without them fearing INS swooping down on them for filing.

Well now we have a national sales tax combined with our full income tax rates...

I don't see our government getting rid of income tax, but i'm sure they will add in a national sales tax for everything at some point. :(

If it was a swap i'de be down :)

Valid points. On immigration, I think most of the laws and enforcement are stupid. If it weren't for the racist policies against central and south americans, we wouldn't have any real issues to enforce. My only gripe is that immigrants shouldn't be allowed to work for crazy low pay compared to what a natural or naturalized citizen would, on the books.

Great points that I had never thought of, Scott. I just think it is the most "fair".

Would you prefer they not work at all?

I'de prefer they work in their own countries :lol:

While i feel we should up our Quotas of immigrants, i also feel we should kick out the illegals. There are many immigrants who went through all the hoops, submitted paper work / back ground checks and are in, working, paying taxes, but are waiting for full Status. Like my friend Jose from Argentina .

Its just not fair to Jose who is doing everything fairly, that others sneak in get services get a job pay no taxes, and create a negative stereo type that affects him. :~:

How do illegals get away without paying taxes? Their employers just pay them under the table? I'd think it would be far easier to bust the employers than the employees...

I had a different friend Jose, who was here illegally (3 or 4 times) and worked for the fire fighters department. I'm pretty sure he paid taxes there, but other jobs he worked he didn't. he kept getting caught, deported, and then he would come back...

one of the jobs he took was at a mexican restaruant operated by hispanics and he just told them he was here illegal and they kept him off the books but didn't tell the other employees.

He was actually a piece of shit and i got into a fight with him on the 4th of July. he hated america and americans and was trash talking America on the 4th of july and i wasn't having it.

Illegals (in my experience) suck ass. but legal immigrants tend to be quite cool. (again in my experience) your actual results my vary

Actually XXX's parents are way cool (here illegally) and they pay their taxes and own / operate a business.

Anyone know if Obama-Care will cover illegals ? ? :(

The problem with so-called illegal immigrants is that they are products of racist policies set by the state department decades ago.

And I don't see how paying them twice as much as they make now will give them incentive to not work. :confused:

Like Cody said, it's an issue for employers, not the immigrants.

It bugs the shit out of me when people who like to talk about the Founding Fathers in political discussions see anything other than felony convictions or treasonous behavior as a bar to becoming an American.

I think our immigration laws need to change, also. I have a friend here illegally who CANNOT become legal. He/his parents have tried, but they were denied, because the INS has already met their quota for Mexicans that they let in, from what I understand of what happened. He goes to school, will become an engineer, and will attempt to work in this country. Why can't we let him stay here legally?

The only beef I have with illegals is the same beef I have with people here legally: I don't like the ones that are here just to abuse the system. Besides that, we should have an open door policy, IMO.

Exactly. So back to my point earlier about not letting employers pay them less then minimum wage and/or under the table- where is the disincentive for them to work? Legitimizing the cheap labor that comes in solves nearly all the problems that currently arise from illegal immigration. And the ones that get a little worse (slight increase in crime and social program cost) already have mechanisms in place for dealing with them.

The problem I have with paying them more, is that they are willing to work for it. If they are paid more, the cost of everything goes up.

So what? Same thing happens when you or I gets a college degree and a promotion.

I don't think I've ever paid another $1 for a qdoba burrito because you got promoted. When companies have to pay more money, they pass that cost on to customers, is what I mean by that.

Right. And I don't mind paying $.10 more for a head of lettuce when it means solving the problems created by illegal immigration on a large scale, which was created by bad policy.

This is one of those issues where economics is not the primary concern in a policy debate.