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Well.. First - when you buy that Heath insurance, if you're poor or poorish, it's heavily subsidized. Of course, it might have been free but a number of red St

Well.. First - when you buy that Heath insurance, if you're poor or poorish, it's heavily subsidized. Of course, it might have been free but a number of red States didn't expand Medicare. But yes, it may cost you money because Oabamacare was step 1 and was always planned to be tweaked but well... We've seen how political discourse has gone. But medical bankruptcies have fallen tremendously with Obamacare. That's why you have to pay because it'll save you if you're unlucky. Just like social security. Re:free college - why do you think rural areas couldn't benefit from free college? Less, more expensive education isn't going to help. And the people that need to pay for it are the ones destroying your neighborhoods and city centers (aka the Walton family and their ilk) The lack of investment in their people and empathy for their people of Midwest governments is what's killing them, not costal elitism. The green new deal is a perfect example of the sort of investment it needs. But they'll fight it because winning is all that matters, people's lives be damned.

torstenvl 7y ago
"Heavily subsidized" is relative. The people being forced to pay a hefty bill every month aren't comforted by being reminded that the bill could be higher. You're conflating college and education. That is exactly the kind of elitism that the rural poor interpret as a personal attack. I know you don't mean it as such, and I know most people who say similar things as you're saying similarly don't mean it that way, but that's how it's received.* When I talk about empathy, that is what I mean - understanding others' perspectives and feelings. And no, "free" college does not help the working class, though it may help their children if they're lucky enough to benefit from the limited upward mobility in this country. There is a baseline number of jobs in the trades and service industries that need to be filled, they don't require a college degree, and for the people going into those jobs, getting a "free" college degree will only incur opportunity costs and additional taxes. * In understanding this anger, it's useful to understand the effect of childhood poverty on stress response. "By age five, the lower a child’s socioeconomic status, on the average, the (a) higher the basal glucocorticoid levels and/ or the more reactive the glucocorticoid stress response, (b) the thinner the frontal cortex and the lower its metabolism, and (c) the poorer the frontal function concerning working memory, emotion regulation, impulse control, and executive decision making; moreover, to achieve equivalent frontal regulation, lower-SES kids must activate more frontal cortex than do higher-SES kids." Robert Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst 195 (Kindle edition: Penguin Press 2017) (citing, inter alia, S. J. Lupien et al., Effects of Stress Throughout the Lifespan on the Brain, Behaviour and Cognition, 10 Nat'l Rev. Neuroscience 434 (2009); D. Hackman et al., Socioeconomic Status and the Brain: Mechanistic Insights from Human and Animal Research, 11 Nat'l Rev. Neuroscience 651 (2010); M. Sheridan et al., The Impact of Social Disparity on Prefrontal Function in Childhood, 7 Pub. Libr. Sci. One e35744 (2012); I. Liberzon et al., Childhood Poverty Alters Emotional Regulation in Adulthood, 10 Soc. Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience 1596 (2015)).
masonic 7y ago
it might have been free "Free". No, not free -- paid for by other taxpayers, at full retail cost for the provider. but a number of red States didn't expand Medicare If you don't know the difference between Medicare and Medicaid, perhaps broad policy comments should be avoided.
wutbrodo 7y ago
Do you not have a model of people who disagree with you that includes sincere belief that the policies don't work? Policy is more complicated than wishing for something and having it work out exactly the way you want: people voting against the ACA or free college may think it'll legitimately hurt the economy. FWIW, I'm a pretty strong supporter of the ACA (relative to the counterfactual, though single-payer would be nice..), and I'm neutral to warm about free universal college (much of the problem with the way college fits into our economy is that it's used as a blunt employment filter instead of actually increasing human capital, and universalizing subsidies may just exacerbate the problem. OTOH, blowing up that filter and making college the new high school may be useful in and of itself). Neither of those opinions prevents me from understanding that people may have different models of what the effects of these policies are likely to be. You may argue that it requires a degree of economic illiteracy to believe that, but 1) the majority of supporters for every policy are grossly economically illiterate, 2) there's a core of sound economically-literate arguments for almost every policy, and 3) economic illiteracy is a vastly different charge from "you're in a cult that prefers winning to improving your and others' lot in society". I suspect that it would be pretty easy for someone to take the confident, unnuanced opinions you likely have on a host of similar issues and make a similar or at least symmetric charge about your motivations.
- houseofrep 7y ago
  It is unlikely the person you are responding to has such a model. https://theindependentwhig.com/haidt-passages/haidt/conservatives-understand-liberals-better-than-liberals-understand-conservatives/ https://theindependentwhig.com/haidt-passages/haidt/conserva...

torstenvl 7y ago

"Heavily subsidized" is relative. The people being forced to pay a hefty bill every month aren't comforted by being reminded that the bill could be higher. You're conflating college and education. That is exactly the kind of elitism that the rural poor interpret as a personal attack. I know you don't mean it as such, and I know most people who say similar things as you're saying similarly don't mean it that way, but that's how it's received.* When I talk about empathy, that is what I mean - understanding others' perspectives and feelings. And no, "free" college does not help the working class, though it may help their children if they're lucky enough to benefit from the limited upward mobility in this country. There is a baseline number of jobs in the trades and service industries that need to be filled, they don't require a college degree, and for the people going into those jobs, getting a "free" college degree will only incur opportunity costs and additional taxes. * In understanding this anger, it's useful to understand the effect of childhood poverty on stress response. "By age five, the lower a child’s socioeconomic status, on the average, the (a) higher the basal glucocorticoid levels and/ or the more reactive the glucocorticoid stress response, (b) the thinner the frontal cortex and the lower its metabolism, and (c) the poorer the frontal function concerning working memory, emotion regulation, impulse control, and executive decision making; moreover, to achieve equivalent frontal regulation, lower-SES kids must activate more frontal cortex than do higher-SES kids." Robert Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst 195 (Kindle edition: Penguin Press 2017) (citing, inter alia, S. J. Lupien et al., Effects of Stress Throughout the Lifespan on the Brain, Behaviour and Cognition, 10 Nat'l Rev. Neuroscience 434 (2009); D. Hackman et al., Socioeconomic Status and the Brain: Mechanistic Insights from Human and Animal Research, 11 Nat'l Rev. Neuroscience 651 (2010); M. Sheridan et al., The Impact of Social Disparity on Prefrontal Function in Childhood, 7 Pub. Libr. Sci. One e35744 (2012); I. Liberzon et al., Childhood Poverty Alters Emotional Regulation in Adulthood, 10 Soc. Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience 1596 (2015)).

masonic 7y ago

it might have been free "Free". No, not free -- paid for by other taxpayers, at full retail cost for the provider. but a number of red States didn't expand Medicare If you don't know the difference between Medicare and Medicaid, perhaps broad policy comments should be avoided.

wutbrodo 7y ago

Do you not have a model of people who disagree with you that includes sincere belief that the policies don't work? Policy is more complicated than wishing for something and having it work out exactly the way you want: people voting against the ACA or free college may think it'll legitimately hurt the economy. FWIW, I'm a pretty strong supporter of the ACA (relative to the counterfactual, though single-payer would be nice..), and I'm neutral to warm about free universal college (much of the problem with the way college fits into our economy is that it's used as a blunt employment filter instead of actually increasing human capital, and universalizing subsidies may just exacerbate the problem. OTOH, blowing up that filter and making college the new high school may be useful in and of itself). Neither of those opinions prevents me from understanding that people may have different models of what the effects of these policies are likely to be. You may argue that it requires a degree of economic illiteracy to believe that, but 1) the majority of supporters for every policy are grossly economically illiterate, 2) there's a core of sound economically-literate arguments for almost every policy, and 3) economic illiteracy is a vastly different charge from "you're in a cult that prefers winning to improving your and others' lot in society". I suspect that it would be pretty easy for someone to take the confident, unnuanced opinions you likely have on a host of similar issues and make a similar or at least symmetric charge about your motivations.

houseofrep 7y ago
It is unlikely the person you are responding to has such a model. https://theindependentwhig.com/haidt-passages/haidt/conservatives-understand-liberals-better-than-liberals-understand-conservatives/ https://theindependentwhig.com/haidt-passages/haidt/conserva...