6 ms·

opposite extreme: "'progress'- whatever the cost"... for some reason referred to as 'woke'? (still need to work on understanding that angle) "replacing what wo

opposite extreme: "'progress'- whatever the cost"... for some reason referred to as 'woke'? (still need to work on understanding that angle) "replacing what works with what sounds good" --T.Sowell offtopic rant, but on the subject of politics; to me it seems underhanded to pursue experimental federal programs eg for healthcare- why not demonstrate it works in a few test states.. wouldn't california love to pass something like that? if only there were a way to pass the buck to the federal government for the homeless... not that the 'red team' political machine hasn't been pulling on the middle as well, claiming to be 'good guys' while corrupting for their own aims; what grinds my gears is either side claiming any kind of moral highground without referencing empirical positive impact

rtkwe 6y ago
> why not demonstrate it works in a few test states It's tough to do some things at the state level because there's less money at the state level vs the federal level. It's a lot easier for a business to move from a state to avoid taxes meant to pay for healthcare by rerouting fund from the private market to the public market than it is to leave the US entirely. The federal government gets it's taxes first from income taxes then payroll taxes, I checked a couple states and most are income then sales/use tax which is a big difference. Not being able to reroute money from employer based systems into the single payer system is a huge hole in any state level attempt at single payer. Also just having more people means a federal level system will have more bargaining power than even the largest states.
- rtkwe 6y ago
  As for the etymology of woke I'm no linguist but it seems to flow pretty clearly from the idea of being awake to a problem. The particular slang is just from AAVE, not sure it's possible to trace where the different conjugation started from. > "I been sleeping all my life. And now that Mr. Garvey done woke me up, I'm gon' stay woke. And I'm gon help him wake up other black folk." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke
- AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
  > there's less money at the state level vs the federal level So if anything, it means to me that we need to work on increasing roles of individual states and decreasing federal powers.
  - rtkwe 6y ago
    That's more of a question of where you come down on the idea of federalism. Personally I think way more stuff makes sense to have created and funded uniformly across the country than fragmented. The biggest budget sinks at the federal level of military and entitlement programs like social security make sense to be there. The military for obvious reasons makes more sense to have funded from there and then social security et al as well because people often move from where they were working to where they retire so trying to fund that at the state level get's a bit dicey for moving the money to where the old people actually are.
arrosenberg 6y ago
> offtopic rant, but on the subject of politics; to me it seems underhanded to pursue experimental federal programs eg for healthcare- why not demonstrate it works in a few test states.. wouldn't california love to pass something like that? if only there were a way to pass the buck to the federal government for the homeless... Some states have scoped this out, and Vermont passed a law to pursue it. The problem has to do with financing (individual states can't print money) and the freerider problem, which isn't about the homeless, so much as more...libertarian states paying all of their diabetics to move to California to get treated.
- rtkwe 6y ago
  It's a bit extreme sounding but cities do this with homeless people today, some places will give out one way bus tickets to move homeless people to another city. [0] Even without a Machiavellian "muahaha we'll ship all our sick people to X" good cheap healthcare will attract sick people to a state. It was a problem with the ACA where if enough healthy people weren't paying in [1] insurance companies could go belly up from having to cover sicker people they could previously refuse. That's why there was an individual mandate and a backstop for companies that lost too much money on plans. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/20/bussed-out-america-moves-homeless-people-country-study https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/... [1] In the case of a single state doing a single payer system it's older or simply sicker people who may make less money because of chronic debilitating illness.
flamble 6y ago
There is nothing "underhanded" about it, and it's nowhere near being "experimental": almost every country in the developed world has universal healthcare and the overwhelming preponderance of evidence demonstrates its superiority in every criterion. If you think that the debate over healthcare has anything to do with the substantive merits of one system over another, you're viewing it through the wrong lens. It is purely a power struggle between a class of potentates who have become obscenely wealthy from selling insurance, and the vast majority of the public in whose interest universal healthcare is. Medicare for All being a success in one state would change little by just adding more evidence to the existing mountain because, again, it is not a struggle between differing points of view, but between monied interests and the masses. The colossal propaganda apparatus wielded by corporate interests would continue to wage relentless war against any expansion of such programs.
- smegcicle 6y ago
  >Medicare for All being a success in one state would change little at least it would prove to work here- it's not like the US is in the exact same position as the EU eg, I'm not sure how they're connected, but it's obvious that the majority of medical research is being done over here, and I never see that mentioned in the comparisons between our systems and overseas; if the overpayment we're doing over here is necessary waste for that goal, that should to be made explicit! health insurance is probably taking more than their honest share of the pie, but complaints that our health care is 'too expensive' never seem to take into account that our (expensive) health care is the best in the world am I wrong?
  - flamble 6y ago
    > at least it would prove to work here- it's not like the US is in the exact same position as the EU The EU and Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Bahrain, Brunei, Australia, and New Zealand. It works all over the world. Research on the US system accords with the overwhelming evidence from all around: it would work. > eg, I'm not sure how they're connected ... medical research Let's clarify. The repugnant gouging in the cost of hospital care, doctor's visits etc redounds mostly to the profit of private insurance who provide no social value in return. The exorbitant cost of medicine does indeed flow to pharmaceutical companies, but the particulars of how they would be affected depend on the details of how universal health care was implemented. > complaints that our health care is 'too expensive' never seem to take into account that our (expensive) health care is the best in the world I have no idea where you got that notion; the US is generally not ranked in the top 20. https://www.who.int/healthinfo/paper30.pdf https://www.who.int/healthinfo/paper30.pdf https://healthcarechannel.co/how-australian-healthcare-ranks-worldwide-2020/ https://healthcarechannel.co/how-australian-healthcare-ranks...
OCASM 6y ago
They just want to pass programs they can get people addicted to to secure votes. Example: welfare.
- rtkwe 6y ago
  Maybe for the sake of argument the D politicians are cynically doing it purely for the sake of holding power so we don't even have to ask what the end goal is. Then why do voters want it? There are plenty of democratic voters like me who aren't direct beneficiaries of public assistance. Why do I and others like me support expanding social safety nets? Personally it's for me it's that I think the economy is pretty brutal and random and to make the best economic choice means treating your whole life as fungible in the service of not winding up on the streets. You're supposed to just pick up and move uprooting the whole family if your local region goes into downturn probably leaving wealth behind if you did buy a house or find time to learn a new trade while also working to not starve. Personally I'm in a fairly secure position as a knowledge worker but even those jobs are subject to the whims of the larger economy. I'd like there to be an alternative to that for myself so I want to extend that grace to people who've had a worse time of it than me. At the core it's a lot of believing that whole you can steer yourself we live in a big economy that only cares about people as much as we force it to. I think people deserve better than to just be cogs in a machine that funnels money towards people that already have it.
  - OCASM 6y ago
    Because people who support these measures are all about the intentions and never care about the results. 60 years of welfare and things are worse off now than before. We know the solution to poverty, here and everywhere else in the world, is to teach, help and allow people to generate wealth. Instead, programs like welfare only make people completely dependent (for generations) on stealing money from others to the benefit of politicians.

rtkwe 6y ago

> why not demonstrate it works in a few test states It's tough to do some things at the state level because there's less money at the state level vs the federal level. It's a lot easier for a business to move from a state to avoid taxes meant to pay for healthcare by rerouting fund from the private market to the public market than it is to leave the US entirely. The federal government gets it's taxes first from income taxes then payroll taxes, I checked a couple states and most are income then sales/use tax which is a big difference. Not being able to reroute money from employer based systems into the single payer system is a huge hole in any state level attempt at single payer. Also just having more people means a federal level system will have more bargaining power than even the largest states.

rtkwe 6y ago
As for the etymology of woke I'm no linguist but it seems to flow pretty clearly from the idea of being awake to a problem. The particular slang is just from AAVE, not sure it's possible to trace where the different conjugation started from. > "I been sleeping all my life. And now that Mr. Garvey done woke me up, I'm gon' stay woke. And I'm gon help him wake up other black folk." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke
AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
> there's less money at the state level vs the federal level So if anything, it means to me that we need to work on increasing roles of individual states and decreasing federal powers.
- rtkwe 6y ago
  That's more of a question of where you come down on the idea of federalism. Personally I think way more stuff makes sense to have created and funded uniformly across the country than fragmented. The biggest budget sinks at the federal level of military and entitlement programs like social security make sense to be there. The military for obvious reasons makes more sense to have funded from there and then social security et al as well because people often move from where they were working to where they retire so trying to fund that at the state level get's a bit dicey for moving the money to where the old people actually are.

arrosenberg 6y ago

> offtopic rant, but on the subject of politics; to me it seems underhanded to pursue experimental federal programs eg for healthcare- why not demonstrate it works in a few test states.. wouldn't california love to pass something like that? if only there were a way to pass the buck to the federal government for the homeless... Some states have scoped this out, and Vermont passed a law to pursue it. The problem has to do with financing (individual states can't print money) and the freerider problem, which isn't about the homeless, so much as more...libertarian states paying all of their diabetics to move to California to get treated.

rtkwe 6y ago
It's a bit extreme sounding but cities do this with homeless people today, some places will give out one way bus tickets to move homeless people to another city. [0] Even without a Machiavellian "muahaha we'll ship all our sick people to X" good cheap healthcare will attract sick people to a state. It was a problem with the ACA where if enough healthy people weren't paying in [1] insurance companies could go belly up from having to cover sicker people they could previously refuse. That's why there was an individual mandate and a backstop for companies that lost too much money on plans. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/20/bussed-out-america-moves-homeless-people-country-study https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/... [1] In the case of a single state doing a single payer system it's older or simply sicker people who may make less money because of chronic debilitating illness.

flamble 6y ago

There is nothing "underhanded" about it, and it's nowhere near being "experimental": almost every country in the developed world has universal healthcare and the overwhelming preponderance of evidence demonstrates its superiority in every criterion. If you think that the debate over healthcare has anything to do with the substantive merits of one system over another, you're viewing it through the wrong lens. It is purely a power struggle between a class of potentates who have become obscenely wealthy from selling insurance, and the vast majority of the public in whose interest universal healthcare is. Medicare for All being a success in one state would change little by just adding more evidence to the existing mountain because, again, it is not a struggle between differing points of view, but between monied interests and the masses. The colossal propaganda apparatus wielded by corporate interests would continue to wage relentless war against any expansion of such programs.

smegcicle 6y ago
>Medicare for All being a success in one state would change little at least it would prove to work here- it's not like the US is in the exact same position as the EU eg, I'm not sure how they're connected, but it's obvious that the majority of medical research is being done over here, and I never see that mentioned in the comparisons between our systems and overseas; if the overpayment we're doing over here is necessary waste for that goal, that should to be made explicit! health insurance is probably taking more than their honest share of the pie, but complaints that our health care is 'too expensive' never seem to take into account that our (expensive) health care is the best in the world am I wrong?
- flamble 6y ago
  > at least it would prove to work here- it's not like the US is in the exact same position as the EU The EU and Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Bahrain, Brunei, Australia, and New Zealand. It works all over the world. Research on the US system accords with the overwhelming evidence from all around: it would work. > eg, I'm not sure how they're connected ... medical research Let's clarify. The repugnant gouging in the cost of hospital care, doctor's visits etc redounds mostly to the profit of private insurance who provide no social value in return. The exorbitant cost of medicine does indeed flow to pharmaceutical companies, but the particulars of how they would be affected depend on the details of how universal health care was implemented. > complaints that our health care is 'too expensive' never seem to take into account that our (expensive) health care is the best in the world I have no idea where you got that notion; the US is generally not ranked in the top 20. https://www.who.int/healthinfo/paper30.pdf https://www.who.int/healthinfo/paper30.pdf https://healthcarechannel.co/how-australian-healthcare-ranks-worldwide-2020/ https://healthcarechannel.co/how-australian-healthcare-ranks...

OCASM 6y ago

They just want to pass programs they can get people addicted to to secure votes. Example: welfare.

rtkwe 6y ago
Maybe for the sake of argument the D politicians are cynically doing it purely for the sake of holding power so we don't even have to ask what the end goal is. Then why do voters want it? There are plenty of democratic voters like me who aren't direct beneficiaries of public assistance. Why do I and others like me support expanding social safety nets? Personally it's for me it's that I think the economy is pretty brutal and random and to make the best economic choice means treating your whole life as fungible in the service of not winding up on the streets. You're supposed to just pick up and move uprooting the whole family if your local region goes into downturn probably leaving wealth behind if you did buy a house or find time to learn a new trade while also working to not starve. Personally I'm in a fairly secure position as a knowledge worker but even those jobs are subject to the whims of the larger economy. I'd like there to be an alternative to that for myself so I want to extend that grace to people who've had a worse time of it than me. At the core it's a lot of believing that whole you can steer yourself we live in a big economy that only cares about people as much as we force it to. I think people deserve better than to just be cogs in a machine that funnels money towards people that already have it.
- OCASM 6y ago
  Because people who support these measures are all about the intentions and never care about the results. 60 years of welfare and things are worse off now than before. We know the solution to poverty, here and everywhere else in the world, is to teach, help and allow people to generate wealth. Instead, programs like welfare only make people completely dependent (for generations) on stealing money from others to the benefit of politicians.