6 ms·

The Federal government's duty to the people (according to the Constitution) is seeing to their safety from foreign threats. Testing for all is in line with tha

by all2 7y ago

The Federal government's duty to the people (according to the Constitution) is seeing to their safety from foreign threats. Testing for all is in line with that duty. Being a social safety net is the duty of your family, your church, and your friends. Maybe even your state government. I know there are Socialist policies that are in place at the Federal level, but the intent of the framers was to guarantee freedoms for citizens. A social welfare state was not anywhere in the picture. Bottom line, personal responsibility goes a long, long way in terms of dealing with job loss and economic downturns.

throwaway2048 7y ago
Yes, clearly what we need to deal with a crisis is a little personal responsibility, not a government that even pretends to be effective at addressing it.
- mardifoufs 7y ago
  What more couldve been done? Not a rhetorical question. It's just that I dont see how the governement could stop the initial spread since little to nothing was known in the really early phases of the epidemic. Even the early mortality rates were probably... not honestly reported by China. If you compare it to a country like Italy that oddly enough seems to be getting praised for it's handling of the pandemic, what more should the US have done? Especially considering how much more lethal it is in Italy and just how crazily fast it spread there. Still, as a non american, it seems to me like everyone talks about how incompetent the US is when they are doing the same or better than their peers?
  - throwaway2048 7y ago
    The idea that "nothing more could have been done" by the government is a laughable farce, the US federal government continues to incompetently bumble and lots of people are going to die as a result. They are sticking to their guns on cutting CDC funding for crying out loud.
    - mardifoufs 7y ago
      I agree on a lot of what you say but my main point here is that it seems like European countries, even with affordable/free healthcare, better funded governement orgs and a lot less ground to cover have empirically worst results. So isn't it just a lot of... Luck? More than competence or lack thereof?
      - crooked-v 7y ago
        One major difference here to keep in mind is that Europe as a whole generally has much, much higher population density than most of the US, as well as far less distance between population centers. Accidental spread between towns and cities is much easier there just by pure geography.
  - all2 7y ago
    > everyone talks about how incompetent the US is when they are doing the same or better than their peers? This has to do with who is currently POTUS. The media in this country are far left leaning, to the point that most at the national level panicked when he was elected. If a person's only source of information is the big 3 or 4 outlets, they will never hear anything positive about the current administration.
    - non-entity 7y ago
      Ah yes, the monolithic "media" run by liberal, capitalist organizations are "far-left"
    - PostPost 7y ago
      The idea that the "media" is far left leaning is factually incorrect. The most popular news network in America is highly supportive of Trump: https://www.foxnews.com/media/highest-viewership-network-history-msnbc-cnn-2020 https://www.foxnews.com/media/highest-viewership-network-his...
      - all2 7y ago
        The other four are not.
    - wwweston 7y ago
      This has to do with specific criticisms of what the current POTUS does or doesn't do. The idea that people "just" hate him is a pernicious excuse for avoiding discussion of those specific criticisms.
  - magduf 7y ago
    If you want an example of how to competently handle this crisis, just look at South Korea. The US had a whole month to get prepared for this, and instead did pretty much nothing, and even refused to import test kits and prepare itself for large-scale testing the way SK did. The US has absolutely been incompetent, and while it hasn't been the only incompetent country (Spain is probably another one), it's easily the most visible because of its size and economic power and status as a superpower.
    - mardifoufs 7y ago
      Wouldn't Italy be a worst example than Spain?
      - magduf 7y ago
        I'm honestly not sure. Italy has some conditions that made it more vulnerable, like a larger portion of its population being older.
      - pmiller2 7y ago
        So what? Whataboutism proves nothing and is a distraction from the main issue (that the Trump administration bungled its response).
        mardifoufs 7y ago
        I'm not trying to make any "whataboutist" argument, it's just that the best way to judge the performance of the US or any country is to compare it to their peers. I'm not even arguing about who's better here, I'm saying that even with an incompetent administration the US seems to fare okay, which seems to indicate it's a lot more complex to deal with or to prevent than people seem to think? Especially since comments and news about this seem to always highlight how bad the US is dealing with this and how efficient and proactive the EU is when facts prove the opposite? There is a lot of things the rest of the world can blame the US gov for, but this?
  - ilikehurdles 7y ago
    Here's a few things that could have (and reasonably should have) been done: * Getting testing kits distributed earlier. * Not downplaying the severity and contagiousness of the virus. * Not presenting the virus as a Democratic hoax. * Putting industry experts in charge of the response rather than politicians. * Having a fully staffed CDC. There have been multiple statements by the administration to correct or rectify earlier statements by the same administration. The response has been confusing, contradictory, and in its partisan nature (see bullet point 3 and 4), untrustworthy.
    - mardifoufs 7y ago
      I won't disagree with anything you said when it comes to what the governement did/didn't do but that's the thing, I think the sheer element of luck and numbers that comes with pandemics makes most of that irrelevant. Infected people came from Europe, Iran, China, etc. I don't think any adequate response could've dealt with that. Consider Italy, in which we just didn't know the extent of the disease's spread. Would it have been wise to test people that travelled there? What if Italy was doing just fine but Sweden had an unknown huge infection number? Would checking every single traveller make sense then, because it could've been anywhere? And from the point when it was already inside the US and highly contagious, does Trumps incompetence really matter? I mean we are at that point where it's definitely not stoppable. if the situation worsens in terms of mortality and infection numbers become unmanageable then yeah I think that would be something else. But right now the US is actually doing better than the average
- black_puppydog 7y ago
  Exactly. It's my personal responsibility to single-handedly ensure the medical system is not too overloaded to handle otherwise treatable cases. That means I personally have to starve if necessary. Not at all something that requires a collective effort. m(
  - pmiller2 7y ago
    I hope this is sarcasm, because I surely don’t intend to die of this virus or the consequences of this pandemic simply to benefit you. If the government won’t help me survive, I’ll do what I need to do to survive myself. There’s your “personal responsibility” right there.
    - black_puppydog 7y ago
      for the record: yes, that was sarcasm. the "m(" is a face palm. :D
Daishiman 7y ago
No.
karatestomp 7y ago
> Bottom line, personal responsibility goes a long, long way in terms of dealing with job loss and economic downturns. We personally and responsibly elected officials to provide government assistance for various things rather than just hoping charity covers the gap. So that's fine, right?
- magduf 7y ago
  >We personally and responsibly elected officials to provide government assistance for various things rather than just hoping charity covers the gap. Who's "we", and what jurisdiction are you talking about? If you're talking about the US federal government, you're factually wrong, especially for the executive branch, but also the Senate.
  - karatestomp 7y ago
    Post was anti-any-Federal-social-programs-at-all, and clearly we have tons of those, even if they're less comprehensive and less generous than in pretty much all other advanced-economy states. So at some point we decided those were a good idea. We may decide other ones are good ideas, too, eventually. Point is I reject the idea that personal responsibility and deciding the right way to handle something is to have the government do it are necessarily opposed. I think the premise is somewhere in "not even wrong" territory.
    - all2 7y ago
      > So at some point we decided those were a good idea. I know that this isn't true for at least Social Security. The original promise was that it would be purely voluntary. It was later rolled out to be mandatory. It has also turned in to a stack of IOUs. Obamacare was a stack of lies (prices didn't stay the same, quality and access to care decreased, providers could not be kept). It also is a money pit. I also know that despite our awful implementations of social programs no other economy in the world currently rivals that of the US. Even in poor economic conditions. The poorest of the poor in this country is in magnitude better conditions than their companions in other countries. I'm don't want my country weighed down any more, the way most others are.
JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> Federal government's duty to the people (according to the Constitution) is seeing to their safety from foreign threats Where does the Constitution say this?
- thesuperbigfrog 7y ago
  The Preamble states that one of the purposes of the Constitution is "to provide for the common defence". Article 1, Section 8 specifies that Congress shall have power to: punish piracy, declare war, raise and support armies, provide and maintain a navy, provide for calling forth the militia to repel invasions. Article 2, Section 2 specifies that the President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States. Defending the nation against foreign threats is integral to national security and definitely part of the US Constitution.
mr_overalls 7y ago
> intent of the framers The Framers were not omniscient, and the Constitution isn't a religious text. They allowed slavery, forbid women to vote, and held an 18th-century understanding of economics and science. While their design philosophy for our government is good to consider, we are not beholden to them to implement as they would have wished. The most successful nations today - in terms of population health, happiness, and well-being - are Western European countries with strong social safety nets.
- xyzzyz 7y ago
  > The Framers were not omniscient, and the Constitution isn't a religious text. Sure, but this is the text we have. If you don’t like what it creates, change it, there is a procedure to add amendments or change the whole thing altogether. Of course, the difficulty then is that quite a lot of people in fact like what we have and want to keep it this way.
  - pmiller2 7y ago
    And there is nothing in that text that prohibits establishing a real social safety net with protections for workers. “Just amend it if you don’t like it” is a straw man in this context.
    - crooked-v 7y ago
      I'd put fair odds on the entire package falling under the Commerce Clause, given that it could be argued to be fundamentally all about keeping the economy running something like normally through large disease outbreaks.
    - xyzzyz 7y ago
      Well, not anymore, now that Supreme Courts decided that the federal government can do whatever it wants. Originally though, the authors of the constitution, and the convention, had a very clear idea and very clear limits on what federal government can do, in fact enumerating those things. Social safety net is not one the enumerated list of things government can do, and the constitution would never have passed in the first place if the convention members had thought it is. What happened however was that the Supreme Court decided that the enumerated clauses are irrelevant, and that government can do whatever it wants, just saying magic words of "general welfare" and "interstate commerce". That's why there's no interest in passing amendments anymore: why bother when you can just get Supreme Court to stamp whatever you want? I'm not against having federal social safety net, but I'd prefer it to be passed the way founders intended, and how things used to be done before the Progressive era in Supreme Court: by expanding the enumerated list of things government can do, through constitutional amendment. What I don't like is having it passed through the Supreme Court backdoor, by interpreting the constitution literally opposite to what it was intended and commonly understood to mean when it was written.
evilsnoopi3 7y ago
> WE the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity... The Constitution itself states the role of the Federal government is to prevent mass turmoil and to help the general public. In fact, it lists both of those objectives before it mentions the securing freedoms and liberty; it is generally believed that the preamble is ordered in terms of the priority of its objectives. I understand that there is a very real argument that the Federal government should not be responsible for the well-being of every single citizen but a safety net in times of pandemic is, in my opinion, nowhere close to a Constitutional overreach based on how these objectives have been interpreted.
- all2 7y ago
  > a safety net in times of pandemic is, in my opinion, nowhere close to a Constitutional overreach based on how these objectives have been interpreted. Fair. The provisions in the bill are not impermanent, though. If they had a time limit on them, they would be reasonable. [Edit for spelling]
  - crooked-v 7y ago
    Novel coronaviruses and high-lethality flu strains aren't going to stop appearing, and if anything are going to become increasingly common as the world population increases and becomes ever more interconnected. Putting a time limit on the social safety nets needed to deal with them means you have to rebuild the entire structure again every time it happens, and the only benefit is cutting costs by a few billion dollars a year in between outbreaks (less, when you consider training and turnover costs from creating an entire program from scratch and then destroying it every time). The US takes in upwards of $3 trillion in taxes: we can easily afford it, just shut down a military base or two somewhere.
    - all2 7y ago
      > Novel coronaviruses and high-lethality flu strains aren't going to stop appearing, and if anything are going to become increasingly common You aren't wrong. South Korea has prior experience in this arena and they've done really well by learning from their prior contagions. I think there is a lot the Fed could do to enable state CDCs to handle outbreaks in the future. Part of all of this is the logistical half: materials for testing (which I understand is one of the major slowdowns this time around), distribution of knowledge, etc. There's a lot of ground to cover even at a municipal level. The Fed has the ability to collect information and act as a hub of best practices. I think that will be critical for saving lives this time around and next. [edit for missing words]
mistermann 7y ago
> The Federal government's duty to the people (according to the Constitution) is seeing to their safety from foreign threats. Testing for all is in line with that duty. Being a social safety net is the duty of your family, your church, and your friends. Maybe even your state government. This is technically correct, and at the time perfectly reasonable. What would the founding fathers advise when they observed our current situation, where we've allowed the planet to grow into this massively interconnected system, the particular design of which is derived from the "fact" that we've been optimizing for profits above almost everything else (like redundancy/resiliency/shock) for the last <x> decades? I imagine they'd start by remarking that they would never have gotten us into this situation in the first place (for reasons that I hope should finally be visible to people) - but now that we're here, what do you think their advice (including temporary measures) would be now that a significant number of variables have significantly changed?
wonderwonder 7y ago
Your argument is that we should not pass anything to help those affected by the virus and help prevent the spread but that we should also end medicare, medicaid, snap and social security because that's not what the framers intended? The role of government is fluid, roles and responsibilities change with facts on the ground. Condemning the poor to death is not the way to go.
- all2 7y ago
  > Your argument is that we should not pass anything to help those affected by the virus and help prevent the spread No. My argument is that if we don't sunset socialist policies, they will become rule of law. Without a time-limit provision the socialist programs in this bill are partisan. > we should also end medicare, medicaid, snap and social security because that's not what the framers intended Yes. Social Security removes a person's ability to choose how they spend and save the money that gets shuttled to the government. All social programs create dependency on the state; a state of being that we call "unhealthy" when it is between two consenting adults. I think that it is even less healthy when a person becomes dependent on a bureaucratic behemoth that does not have their best interest at heart. I'll point you to the cases of Alfie Evans [0] and Bloomberg's comments on death panels [1]. Social programs aren't about helping people (even though they are talked about that way). Social programs are about power and removing choice from people. > Condemning the poor to death is not the way to go. I do not condemn the poor to death. I say that the states are responsible for their people, not the Federal government. This isn't an all-or-nothing proposition. It is possible for states, family, friends, etc. to see to the welfare of their own and for the Fed to stay in its lane. No one is condemned to anything. [0] https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/25/health/alfie-evans-appeal-bn/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/25/health/alfie-evans-appeal-bn/... [1] https://twitter.com/CANCEL_SAM/status/1229127380402393088 https://twitter.com/CANCEL_SAM/status/1229127380402393088 [edit for spelling]
  - crooked-v 7y ago
    > Social programs aren't about helping people One of the primary arguments against Social Security at the time of its enactment was that it would reduce the labor by allowing more people to safely retire in old age. I think we can safely say that this is, in fact, what actually happened.

by all2 7y ago

throwaway2048 7y ago

Yes, clearly what we need to deal with a crisis is a little personal responsibility, not a government that even pretends to be effective at addressing it.

mardifoufs 7y ago
What more couldve been done? Not a rhetorical question. It's just that I dont see how the governement could stop the initial spread since little to nothing was known in the really early phases of the epidemic. Even the early mortality rates were probably... not honestly reported by China. If you compare it to a country like Italy that oddly enough seems to be getting praised for it's handling of the pandemic, what more should the US have done? Especially considering how much more lethal it is in Italy and just how crazily fast it spread there. Still, as a non american, it seems to me like everyone talks about how incompetent the US is when they are doing the same or better than their peers?
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  The idea that "nothing more could have been done" by the government is a laughable farce, the US federal government continues to incompetently bumble and lots of people are going to die as a result. They are sticking to their guns on cutting CDC funding for crying out loud.
  - mardifoufs 7y ago
    I agree on a lot of what you say but my main point here is that it seems like European countries, even with affordable/free healthcare, better funded governement orgs and a lot less ground to cover have empirically worst results. So isn't it just a lot of... Luck? More than competence or lack thereof?
    - crooked-v 7y ago
      One major difference here to keep in mind is that Europe as a whole generally has much, much higher population density than most of the US, as well as far less distance between population centers. Accidental spread between towns and cities is much easier there just by pure geography.
- all2 7y ago
  > everyone talks about how incompetent the US is when they are doing the same or better than their peers? This has to do with who is currently POTUS. The media in this country are far left leaning, to the point that most at the national level panicked when he was elected. If a person's only source of information is the big 3 or 4 outlets, they will never hear anything positive about the current administration.
  - non-entity 7y ago
    Ah yes, the monolithic "media" run by liberal, capitalist organizations are "far-left"
  - PostPost 7y ago
    The idea that the "media" is far left leaning is factually incorrect. The most popular news network in America is highly supportive of Trump: https://www.foxnews.com/media/highest-viewership-network-history-msnbc-cnn-2020 https://www.foxnews.com/media/highest-viewership-network-his...
    - all2 7y ago
      The other four are not.
  - wwweston 7y ago
    This has to do with specific criticisms of what the current POTUS does or doesn't do. The idea that people "just" hate him is a pernicious excuse for avoiding discussion of those specific criticisms.
- magduf 7y ago
  If you want an example of how to competently handle this crisis, just look at South Korea. The US had a whole month to get prepared for this, and instead did pretty much nothing, and even refused to import test kits and prepare itself for large-scale testing the way SK did. The US has absolutely been incompetent, and while it hasn't been the only incompetent country (Spain is probably another one), it's easily the most visible because of its size and economic power and status as a superpower.
  - mardifoufs 7y ago
    Wouldn't Italy be a worst example than Spain?
    - magduf 7y ago
      I'm honestly not sure. Italy has some conditions that made it more vulnerable, like a larger portion of its population being older.
    - pmiller2 7y ago
      So what? Whataboutism proves nothing and is a distraction from the main issue (that the Trump administration bungled its response).
      - mardifoufs 7y ago
        I'm not trying to make any "whataboutist" argument, it's just that the best way to judge the performance of the US or any country is to compare it to their peers. I'm not even arguing about who's better here, I'm saying that even with an incompetent administration the US seems to fare okay, which seems to indicate it's a lot more complex to deal with or to prevent than people seem to think? Especially since comments and news about this seem to always highlight how bad the US is dealing with this and how efficient and proactive the EU is when facts prove the opposite? There is a lot of things the rest of the world can blame the US gov for, but this?
- ilikehurdles 7y ago
  Here's a few things that could have (and reasonably should have) been done: * Getting testing kits distributed earlier. * Not downplaying the severity and contagiousness of the virus. * Not presenting the virus as a Democratic hoax. * Putting industry experts in charge of the response rather than politicians. * Having a fully staffed CDC. There have been multiple statements by the administration to correct or rectify earlier statements by the same administration. The response has been confusing, contradictory, and in its partisan nature (see bullet point 3 and 4), untrustworthy.
  - mardifoufs 7y ago
    I won't disagree with anything you said when it comes to what the governement did/didn't do but that's the thing, I think the sheer element of luck and numbers that comes with pandemics makes most of that irrelevant. Infected people came from Europe, Iran, China, etc. I don't think any adequate response could've dealt with that. Consider Italy, in which we just didn't know the extent of the disease's spread. Would it have been wise to test people that travelled there? What if Italy was doing just fine but Sweden had an unknown huge infection number? Would checking every single traveller make sense then, because it could've been anywhere? And from the point when it was already inside the US and highly contagious, does Trumps incompetence really matter? I mean we are at that point where it's definitely not stoppable. if the situation worsens in terms of mortality and infection numbers become unmanageable then yeah I think that would be something else. But right now the US is actually doing better than the average
black_puppydog 7y ago
Exactly. It's my personal responsibility to single-handedly ensure the medical system is not too overloaded to handle otherwise treatable cases. That means I personally have to starve if necessary. Not at all something that requires a collective effort. m(
- pmiller2 7y ago
  I hope this is sarcasm, because I surely don’t intend to die of this virus or the consequences of this pandemic simply to benefit you. If the government won’t help me survive, I’ll do what I need to do to survive myself. There’s your “personal responsibility” right there.
  - black_puppydog 7y ago
    for the record: yes, that was sarcasm. the "m(" is a face palm. :D

Daishiman 7y ago

No.

karatestomp 7y ago

> Bottom line, personal responsibility goes a long, long way in terms of dealing with job loss and economic downturns. We personally and responsibly elected officials to provide government assistance for various things rather than just hoping charity covers the gap. So that's fine, right?

magduf 7y ago
>We personally and responsibly elected officials to provide government assistance for various things rather than just hoping charity covers the gap. Who's "we", and what jurisdiction are you talking about? If you're talking about the US federal government, you're factually wrong, especially for the executive branch, but also the Senate.
- karatestomp 7y ago
  Post was anti-any-Federal-social-programs-at-all, and clearly we have tons of those, even if they're less comprehensive and less generous than in pretty much all other advanced-economy states. So at some point we decided those were a good idea. We may decide other ones are good ideas, too, eventually. Point is I reject the idea that personal responsibility and deciding the right way to handle something is to have the government do it are necessarily opposed. I think the premise is somewhere in "not even wrong" territory.
  - all2 7y ago
    > So at some point we decided those were a good idea. I know that this isn't true for at least Social Security. The original promise was that it would be purely voluntary. It was later rolled out to be mandatory. It has also turned in to a stack of IOUs. Obamacare was a stack of lies (prices didn't stay the same, quality and access to care decreased, providers could not be kept). It also is a money pit. I also know that despite our awful implementations of social programs no other economy in the world currently rivals that of the US. Even in poor economic conditions. The poorest of the poor in this country is in magnitude better conditions than their companions in other countries. I'm don't want my country weighed down any more, the way most others are.

JumpCrisscross 7y ago

> Federal government's duty to the people (according to the Constitution) is seeing to their safety from foreign threats Where does the Constitution say this?

thesuperbigfrog 7y ago
The Preamble states that one of the purposes of the Constitution is "to provide for the common defence". Article 1, Section 8 specifies that Congress shall have power to: punish piracy, declare war, raise and support armies, provide and maintain a navy, provide for calling forth the militia to repel invasions. Article 2, Section 2 specifies that the President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States. Defending the nation against foreign threats is integral to national security and definitely part of the US Constitution.

mr_overalls 7y ago

> intent of the framers The Framers were not omniscient, and the Constitution isn't a religious text. They allowed slavery, forbid women to vote, and held an 18th-century understanding of economics and science. While their design philosophy for our government is good to consider, we are not beholden to them to implement as they would have wished. The most successful nations today - in terms of population health, happiness, and well-being - are Western European countries with strong social safety nets.

xyzzyz 7y ago
> The Framers were not omniscient, and the Constitution isn't a religious text. Sure, but this is the text we have. If you don’t like what it creates, change it, there is a procedure to add amendments or change the whole thing altogether. Of course, the difficulty then is that quite a lot of people in fact like what we have and want to keep it this way.
- pmiller2 7y ago
  And there is nothing in that text that prohibits establishing a real social safety net with protections for workers. “Just amend it if you don’t like it” is a straw man in this context.
  - crooked-v 7y ago
    I'd put fair odds on the entire package falling under the Commerce Clause, given that it could be argued to be fundamentally all about keeping the economy running something like normally through large disease outbreaks.
  - xyzzyz 7y ago
    Well, not anymore, now that Supreme Courts decided that the federal government can do whatever it wants. Originally though, the authors of the constitution, and the convention, had a very clear idea and very clear limits on what federal government can do, in fact enumerating those things. Social safety net is not one the enumerated list of things government can do, and the constitution would never have passed in the first place if the convention members had thought it is. What happened however was that the Supreme Court decided that the enumerated clauses are irrelevant, and that government can do whatever it wants, just saying magic words of "general welfare" and "interstate commerce". That's why there's no interest in passing amendments anymore: why bother when you can just get Supreme Court to stamp whatever you want? I'm not against having federal social safety net, but I'd prefer it to be passed the way founders intended, and how things used to be done before the Progressive era in Supreme Court: by expanding the enumerated list of things government can do, through constitutional amendment. What I don't like is having it passed through the Supreme Court backdoor, by interpreting the constitution literally opposite to what it was intended and commonly understood to mean when it was written.

evilsnoopi3 7y ago

> WE the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity... The Constitution itself states the role of the Federal government is to prevent mass turmoil and to help the general public. In fact, it lists both of those objectives before it mentions the securing freedoms and liberty; it is generally believed that the preamble is ordered in terms of the priority of its objectives. I understand that there is a very real argument that the Federal government should not be responsible for the well-being of every single citizen but a safety net in times of pandemic is, in my opinion, nowhere close to a Constitutional overreach based on how these objectives have been interpreted.

all2 7y ago
> a safety net in times of pandemic is, in my opinion, nowhere close to a Constitutional overreach based on how these objectives have been interpreted. Fair. The provisions in the bill are not impermanent, though. If they had a time limit on them, they would be reasonable. [Edit for spelling]
- crooked-v 7y ago
  Novel coronaviruses and high-lethality flu strains aren't going to stop appearing, and if anything are going to become increasingly common as the world population increases and becomes ever more interconnected. Putting a time limit on the social safety nets needed to deal with them means you have to rebuild the entire structure again every time it happens, and the only benefit is cutting costs by a few billion dollars a year in between outbreaks (less, when you consider training and turnover costs from creating an entire program from scratch and then destroying it every time). The US takes in upwards of $3 trillion in taxes: we can easily afford it, just shut down a military base or two somewhere.
  - all2 7y ago
    > Novel coronaviruses and high-lethality flu strains aren't going to stop appearing, and if anything are going to become increasingly common You aren't wrong. South Korea has prior experience in this arena and they've done really well by learning from their prior contagions. I think there is a lot the Fed could do to enable state CDCs to handle outbreaks in the future. Part of all of this is the logistical half: materials for testing (which I understand is one of the major slowdowns this time around), distribution of knowledge, etc. There's a lot of ground to cover even at a municipal level. The Fed has the ability to collect information and act as a hub of best practices. I think that will be critical for saving lives this time around and next. [edit for missing words]

mistermann 7y ago

> The Federal government's duty to the people (according to the Constitution) is seeing to their safety from foreign threats. Testing for all is in line with that duty. Being a social safety net is the duty of your family, your church, and your friends. Maybe even your state government. This is technically correct, and at the time perfectly reasonable. What would the founding fathers advise when they observed our current situation, where we've allowed the planet to grow into this massively interconnected system, the particular design of which is derived from the "fact" that we've been optimizing for profits above almost everything else (like redundancy/resiliency/shock) for the last <x> decades? I imagine they'd start by remarking that they would never have gotten us into this situation in the first place (for reasons that I hope should finally be visible to people) - but now that we're here, what do you think their advice (including temporary measures) would be now that a significant number of variables have significantly changed?

wonderwonder 7y ago

Your argument is that we should not pass anything to help those affected by the virus and help prevent the spread but that we should also end medicare, medicaid, snap and social security because that's not what the framers intended? The role of government is fluid, roles and responsibilities change with facts on the ground. Condemning the poor to death is not the way to go.

all2 7y ago
> Your argument is that we should not pass anything to help those affected by the virus and help prevent the spread No. My argument is that if we don't sunset socialist policies, they will become rule of law. Without a time-limit provision the socialist programs in this bill are partisan. > we should also end medicare, medicaid, snap and social security because that's not what the framers intended Yes. Social Security removes a person's ability to choose how they spend and save the money that gets shuttled to the government. All social programs create dependency on the state; a state of being that we call "unhealthy" when it is between two consenting adults. I think that it is even less healthy when a person becomes dependent on a bureaucratic behemoth that does not have their best interest at heart. I'll point you to the cases of Alfie Evans [0] and Bloomberg's comments on death panels [1]. Social programs aren't about helping people (even though they are talked about that way). Social programs are about power and removing choice from people. > Condemning the poor to death is not the way to go. I do not condemn the poor to death. I say that the states are responsible for their people, not the Federal government. This isn't an all-or-nothing proposition. It is possible for states, family, friends, etc. to see to the welfare of their own and for the Fed to stay in its lane. No one is condemned to anything. [0] https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/25/health/alfie-evans-appeal-bn/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/25/health/alfie-evans-appeal-bn/... [1] https://twitter.com/CANCEL_SAM/status/1229127380402393088 https://twitter.com/CANCEL_SAM/status/1229127380402393088 [edit for spelling]
- crooked-v 7y ago
  > Social programs aren't about helping people One of the primary arguments against Social Security at the time of its enactment was that it would reduce the labor by allowing more people to safely retire in old age. I think we can safely say that this is, in fact, what actually happened.