Dr.Who
Well-Known Member
Well done. I respect the humility of this post.
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Which group of armed men should we fear?
- Thread starter Little-Acorn
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Well done. I respect the humility of this post.
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As I've said before, the so called "public option" may not be required, other than by a pragmatic (solving problems by practical means, definition#1) point of view.
Every other nation has a public option, and they all pay less than we do. We also have a public option for the elderly, the poor, and veterans. It is no more "socialistic" to include all Americans than it is to have Medicare, Medicaid, and veterans care, is it? Would you eliminate those public options, too?
HR 3200 is voluminous, to be sure. It is only incoherent if you try to interpret it as its opponents have done. It is a real stretch to find payments to unions, death panels, euthanasia, illegal aliens, or any of the other red herrings that have been brought up in the bill.
I do agree that a simpler and briefer plan would be preferable, but its opponents would still claim fascism, socialism, or some other unacceptable ism.
That sounds a lot like the same thing I said in an earlier post. It was true then, and it's true now.
Hmm... That one is open to interpretation. States rights, perhaps?
We have come a long way from a strict interpretation of the Constitution, haven't we? Without the "promote the general welfare" clause, a whole lot of what government does is unconstitutional.
Perhaps a lot of it should be eliminated, too. The difficult part is agreeing on what parts that would be.
Dr.Who
Well-Known Member
I sure hope not.
Since when is it good policy for a capitalist nation to copy the policies of socialist nations?
And a good case can be made that other countries do not pay less than we do for the same care.
I would prefer to replace medicare and medicaid with better programs specifically because of their socialist aspects. however, in all honesty a program can be very socialistic or less socialistic. Medicare for example is less socialistic since those that do not pay in cannot benefit. It is forced insurance but there is a direct relationship between those who pay in and those who make claims. The proposals on the table now bring us a giant step closer to actually being a socialist country than any other step in history.
Well I actually meant to make a point about laws in general but yes HR3200 is quite large and incomprehensible. If it were simple to understand we would not have any debates about so called red herrings. If most laws were simple to understand the level of mistrust of our gov would be far less. The level of fraud committed by our leaders would be smaller too.
The opponents claim socialism etc because it has elements of socialism in it. Take out those elements and most of the complaints would disappear.
The clause does not give authority to do anything (if it did there would have no complaints about Iraq). And figuring out what to eliminate would be based on which parts are authorized.
Authorized in whose opinion?
Iraq is authorized in the "provide for the common defense" clause, or is it? Was the US defending itself when we invaded Iraq? That is debatable.
What is promoting the general welfare? Is the federal government getting involved in education doing so? I would say no, and I'll bet you would too. How do we know we're right, when so many are in favor of the idea?
Is providing for affordable health care for everyone promoting the general welfare? I say it is. Far from being "socialistic", we'd be more free if we didn't have to worry about losing everything in a catastrophic health event. It would be easier to change jobs or quit working for someone else altogether. Are Canadians any less free than we are in the USA? I don't think so.
But, you and many others say it is not promoting the general welfare, and so isn't covered by the Constitution.
Maybe you're right, and maybe not.
What is and is not authorized by the Constitution is not black and white, but open to many interpretations. I think that is how the founding fathers meant it to be.
Our world is, after all, quite different from theirs.
Dr.Who
Well-Known Member
I am saying that the general welfare clause does not give the gov the authority for anything based on the meaning of the words. It does not give authority because that was not the intention of the clause, it merely restates the powers given elsewhere. all the powers that are given are so that the gov can promote the general welfare.
A second gen wel clause elaborates on the power to tax and spend. The state must be able to tax and spend in order to fulfill the duties that it must. Again "gen wel" limits what the gov can do in fulfilling its duties as those things that benefit the nation as a whole.
Madison and the rest (except Hamilton a minor player who was not even authorized to vote a the constitutional convention) all agreed that it would be silly to write a document limiting the powers of gov and then with two words give them the power to do anything at all that could be fit under the large umbrella of general welfare.
Prior to 1936 the supreme court always upheld the interpretation as not giving the gov any specific power.
Since then the courts and congress have gradually added more and more power to congress based on the gen wel clause. At first it may not have been obvious but today the interpretation has become a parody of the constitution.
So to answer your question: the founding fathers, the early courts, and logic tell us that the gen wel clause does not grant powers to congress.
Today illogic, congress, and the recent courts re-interpret the clause in ways that defy common sense. Do they not see that once they have established the broad meaning of the phrase that there is nothing the state cannot do? Why even have a constitution?
There are lots of things in the Constitution that are necessary for liberty, regardless of how the promote the general welfare clause is interpreted.
There is the balance of powers between the three branches, very important, and worth watching. The tendency is to grant more power to the executive branch than it was intended to have.
There is the Bill of Rights, essential to liberty, and often under attack.
There are things like the succession of power, necessary to maintain order during times of crisis.
There is a lot more to the Constitution than limiting what the federal government can and can not do.
GenSeneca
Well-Known Member
What is the "Pragmatic" approach to slavery?
How do you "balance" the ideological standards with what is "practical"?
As is stated in your definition, under the guise of "balance", pragmatism is, as I've been saying, the abandonment of principle. Hence my incredibly accurate statement about Pragmatism being an unprincipled doctrine.
Who gets to determine what is, and is not, practical? Even with your definition, it requires that you set all principles aside and that is dangerous.
False, but a popular sentiment in the anti-capitalist echo chamber. The regulations were in place to prevent Enron from collapsing, just as the same SEC regulations were in place to stop Bernie Madoff, both are an example of governments failure to do precisely what Lassiez Faire Capitalism proposes; Focus government power on protecting individual rights, and the individual, from force and FRAUD. Both Enron and Madoff were cases of FRAUD and both were a failure of the SEC to enforce EXISTING regulations that would have prevented such fraud from taking place.
Again, entirely false. Government created the problem through FRAUD perpetrated at Fannie and Freddie - Government Sponsored Entities - GSE's that cooked the books and managed to blame it on Capitalism.
It was government regulation that expanded the sub-prime loan program through the CRA, it was government that promised to back the loans as an incentive for banks to give them out without incurring the associated risks (risks which were pushed onto the taxpayer) and it was government incompetence that overlooked the fraudulent bookkeeping of Fannie and Freddie.
LOL, Micheal Moore, is that you?
Your facts are wrong. The greatest reduction of poverty in history took place during the industrial revolution.
Now Capitalism caused the great depression? You're just being absurd... Capitalism goes through economic cycles, like the four seasons, it goes through periods of boom and bust but for every bust, there is economic opportunity that leads to the next boom and the overall outcome is a net positive one.
Governments attempts to end the boom and bust cycle of capitalism, or create artificial booms - such as it did in the housing market - have always exacerbated the problems by propping up industries that should rightly fail and preventing nature from running its course.
Only those laws which protect our individual rights and protect the public from force and fraud are necessary.
Its not even being considered. There are many such easy fixes but they constitute a reduction in governments power over the economy (by extension our lives) and therefore aren't considered "pragmatic" by politicians.
The public option would be allowed to operate on a different set of rules than the private sector, including unfairly being able to operate across state lines while private insurance is barred from the same practice.
Lets play a game of chess. You play as the "public sector" and follow the traditional rules of the game, whereby each of your pieces have specific moves they can make. I'll play as Government. Since I write the rules you have to operate under but I don't have to follow the same rules, all of my pieces have the same ability to move as the queen. Now, who will win such a game?
If government's role in the economy were limited to protecting everyone from force and fraud, what more could you possibly want?
But who decides what is practical? You think lowering the cost to the consumer by subsidizing HC insurance through taxpayer money is practical but I say it is not, because it does nothing to address the actual problem of rising costs, both to the consumer and the providers.
Collectivism then... You can't argue about that one. Socialism is a collectivist ideology.
Single payer would not "give us greater freedom", it would make us all slaves to one another because that is what collectivism does. The axiom of giving up essential liberty for security is true whether the security is social (HC), economic (welfare), or physical (terrorism).
I understand your point about being able to carry your insurance from one job to the next but what I don't understand is why you think the government operating on that principle, while barring private insurance from operating in the exact same manner, is a good thing. We could truly reform HC insurance to be like your car insurance, affordable, portable, reliable, and all it would take is an elimination of government regulations that are not in place specifically to protect those involved from force and fraud.
I've still found much to disagree with but I appreciate the sentiment. Your pessimistic view of capitalism is deeply ingrained and I don't see that changing. I also don't see you admitting that Pragmatism's abandonment of ideological principles is dangerous - the abolition of slavery was a triumph of ideological principle because to the slave states, slavery was practical and therefore a pragmatic system.
However, as far as Collectivism goes, I'm holding out hope. You've said before, in reference to HC, that we all pay for it one way or another... If someone doesn't have HC ins. the cost is passed onto others. Well what you fail to see is that therein lies the problem, we have been shackled to one another by force and rather than breaking those chains of collectivist slavery, you want the chains tighter and placed on more people to "lighten" the burden of those already ensnared.
We don't need more chains... and they don't need to be made tighter, they need to be thrown off. We need to return to individualism and the freedom that comes with being able to freely choose whom to help, when to help them, and be given the choice of how much we choose to offer. These choices should be left to each individual to make his own rational decision.
No, I don't want to see people dieing in the streets but we should have a choice as to whether or not to help them, being forced by government to help doesn't solve the problem, it makes the problem worse.
Stalin
Well-Known Member
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- Messages
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The US military; the organisation that has killed the most people since 1945.
Comrade Stalin of Statisticstan
For the slave, or the slave owner?
If it is ideologically pure, but doesn't work, then it should be abandoned. That is just common sense.
It is only the abandonment of principle when that principle doesn't work. Most principles, carried to their logical extreme, don't produce good results.
Who gets to decide what principles should guide us?
Regulation and capitalism are not necessarily opposites.
What happened in California is this: We started with two major power companies that served nearly the entire state, PG and E in the north, and Southern California Edison in the south. Since both had in place a huge infrastructure that couldn't be duplicated in any practical way (that hated word again!) they were allowed to operate as state regulated monopolies in their respective territories.
Then the principle of competition was applied, and those monopolies were deregulated and forced to sell off some of that infrastructure to competitors so that the "magic of the marketplace" could operate.
The result was soaring power prices, brownouts, blackouts, and widespread unhappiness with the whole situation. Stockholders in the two power companies (See? They weren't socialistic!) lost, as did their customers.
So, the deregulation was reversed, and the practical and workable system was restored, but not before Enron managed to take advantage of the situation and defraud their stockholders.
My response was too long for one post, so here's the rest. Maybe we need to stick to just one subject in the interest of brevity:
It wasn't the government that loaned money to people t hat they knew couldn't pay it back, then sold "toxic assets", meaning those unpayable mortgages, as valuable investments. That was done by the lenders, made possible by the lack of regulation.
Yes, it's me, in disguise.
The industrial revolution produced a huge amount of wealth, of course, that wound up in a few hands. Some people were raised out of poverty in a big way. It wasn't until the New Deal that much of that wealth actually percolated down to the average people.
Capitalism didn't produce t he great depression, far from it. Capitalism created more wealth than any other system ever devised by man. Just look at the Chinese, and how their economy has boomed since they discovered that capitalism is far more practical and useful than their old socialistic "great leaps forward" could ever have been. No, what created the great depression was the lack of a safety net for those boom and bust cycles you mentioned, along with a lack of oversight, i.e., regulation.
There you have a point. We would have been far better off to have allowed the failed industries to fail, instead of spending trillions of money that the government didn't have to bail them out. We would have been better off still had there been in place some oversight and regulation to make sure that the banks weren't gambling with other people's money. Maybe next time, we'll know, but I doubt it.
You mean fraud like selling houses to people who they knew couldn't afford them, selling mortgages that they knew would never be paid, then passing them off as good investments?
Or like paying huge bonuses for CEOs who make the bottom line appear to be positive by laying off necessary employees, who then default on loans and no longer have assets to spend and keep the economy going?
If so, then you have a good point.
Then, by all means, let's let the private insurers operate across state lines.
How about protection by police, fire, and military? Isn't that done collectively?
You say that, but every single nation that has tried the so called "public option", and it has been tried in a number of different ways, pays less and has better outcomes than we do.
Yes, socialism is a collectivist ideology, no doubt about it. It is not a practical economic system, as it has been shown not to work over and over again.
Which doesn't mean, of course, the any "collectivist", idea, meaning people working together for a common end, is always bad, unworkable, or impractical. See my example of fire, police, and military above. Do you think those should be privatized also?
It would give us the freedom to change jobs or strike out on our own without fear of losing everything due to illness or accident. It would free small businesses from spending a big chunk of any profits they might make on health insurance.
If the public option is really optional, then it doesn't make anyone a slave to anything. The current public options, Medicare and Medicaid, are optional. No one has to sign on the Medicare regardless of their age. I'm over 65, and not on Medicare.
Why would they have to bar private insurance from operating on that same principle? Being able to carry insurance from one job to the next wold be a good thing.
It would, of course, be practical.
Capitalism is the best economic system ever devised. I'm not sure what I've posted to make you think that I don't believe in capitalism. What causes massive economic problems is unregulated capitalism, the kind that allows fraud and questionable business practices to flourish.
OK, we are "shackled to one another" in the sense that no one seems to be willing to just let people die if they can't afford health care. One way or another, the cost for those who can't pay is passed on to the rest of us.
So, what is the most efficient and most practical way of seeing to it that there is a system in place that makes it possible for everyone to get needed care, that encourages people to shop around, that encourages preventative care and good health practices, and that brings down costs?
So, we should have a choice to just let people die, or pay for their care? Your point is inconsistent here.
And, the idea that charity is going to pay for those who find that the can't pay is simply not going to work. How is that going to bring down costs, encourage a healthy life style, and pay for preventative care? How could charity ever generate enough money to pay for health care?
Universal health care is not just for the indigent. It is for everyone, an option that anyone can buy into and be protected from catastrophic costs.
What I'd really like to see done is quite simple: Make two changes to Medicare:
1. Instead of paying 80% of all costs, it should pay 0% for the first few hundred dollars, then an increasing percentage as costs escalate. Once costs become too high for an individual, then Medicare would pay. That way, the individual would shop around, and would be responsible paying for ordinary care. That would bring down costs.
2. Open Medicare for anyone who is either a citizen or a legal resident, regardless of age.
There you go, a workable plan that doesn't force anyone to accept it, all in two paragraphs. Wouldn't it be great if the government could come up with such a simple and practical solution to the problem of health care?
It wasn't the government that loaned money to people t hat they knew couldn't pay it back, then sold "toxic assets", meaning those unpayable mortgages, as valuable investments. That was done by the lenders, made possible by the lack of regulation.
Yes, it's me, in disguise.
The industrial revolution produced a huge amount of wealth, of course, that wound up in a few hands. Some people were raised out of poverty in a big way. It wasn't until the New Deal that much of that wealth actually percolated down to the average people.
Capitalism didn't produce t he great depression, far from it. Capitalism created more wealth than any other system ever devised by man. Just look at the Chinese, and how their economy has boomed since they discovered that capitalism is far more practical and useful than their old socialistic "great leaps forward" could ever have been. No, what created the great depression was the lack of a safety net for those boom and bust cycles you mentioned, along with a lack of oversight, i.e., regulation.
There you have a point. We would have been far better off to have allowed the failed industries to fail, instead of spending trillions of money that the government didn't have to bail them out. We would have been better off still had there been in place some oversight and regulation to make sure that the banks weren't gambling with other people's money. Maybe next time, we'll know, but I doubt it.
You mean fraud like selling houses to people who they knew couldn't afford them, selling mortgages that they knew would never be paid, then passing them off as good investments?
Or like paying huge bonuses for CEOs who make the bottom line appear to be positive by laying off necessary employees, who then default on loans and no longer have assets to spend and keep the economy going?
If so, then you have a good point.
Then, by all means, let's let the private insurers operate across state lines.
How about protection by police, fire, and military? Isn't that done collectively?
You say that, but every single nation that has tried the so called "public option", and it has been tried in a number of different ways, pays less and has better outcomes than we do.
Yes, socialism is a collectivist ideology, no doubt about it. It is not a practical economic system, as it has been shown not to work over and over again.
Which doesn't mean, of course, the any "collectivist", idea, meaning people working together for a common end, is always bad, unworkable, or impractical. See my example of fire, police, and military above. Do you think those should be privatized also?
It would give us the freedom to change jobs or strike out on our own without fear of losing everything due to illness or accident. It would free small businesses from spending a big chunk of any profits they might make on health insurance.
If the public option is really optional, then it doesn't make anyone a slave to anything. The current public options, Medicare and Medicaid, are optional. No one has to sign on the Medicare regardless of their age. I'm over 65, and not on Medicare.
Why would they have to bar private insurance from operating on that same principle? Being able to carry insurance from one job to the next wold be a good thing.
It would, of course, be practical.
Capitalism is the best economic system ever devised. I'm not sure what I've posted to make you think that I don't believe in capitalism. What causes massive economic problems is unregulated capitalism, the kind that allows fraud and questionable business practices to flourish.
OK, we are "shackled to one another" in the sense that no one seems to be willing to just let people die if they can't afford health care. One way or another, the cost for those who can't pay is passed on to the rest of us.
So, what is the most efficient and most practical way of seeing to it that there is a system in place that makes it possible for everyone to get needed care, that encourages people to shop around, that encourages preventative care and good health practices, and that brings down costs?
So, we should have a choice to just let people die, or pay for their care? Your point is inconsistent here.
And, the idea that charity is going to pay for those who find that the can't pay is simply not going to work. How is that going to bring down costs, encourage a healthy life style, and pay for preventative care? How could charity ever generate enough money to pay for health care?
Universal health care is not just for the indigent. It is for everyone, an option that anyone can buy into and be protected from catastrophic costs.
What I'd really like to see done is quite simple: Make two changes to Medicare:
1. Instead of paying 80% of all costs, it should pay 0% for the first few hundred dollars, then an increasing percentage as costs escalate. Once costs become too high for an individual, then Medicare would pay. That way, the individual would shop around, and would be responsible paying for ordinary care. That would bring down costs.
2. Open Medicare for anyone who is either a citizen or a legal resident, regardless of age.
There you go, a workable plan that doesn't force anyone to accept it, all in two paragraphs. Wouldn't it be great if the government could come up with such a simple and practical solution to the problem of health care?
The ones that vote... VOTE OVERWHELMINGLY ALMOST IF NOT TOTALLY REPUBLICAN.
That's just a 100% proven fact. You tell me... How many KKK and Skinhead votes do you estimate Barack Obama got? I think you know... bout none.
In fact I was even interested that during the primaries some KKK organization even had a direct funding link on their website for candidates like Ron Paul... running as... wait for it...
a Republican.
It seems unlikely that many skinheads or white supremacists would have voted for the nation's first black president.
How does that mean that Republican = skinhead, or the Republican = conservative?
Do you think these bigoted nutcases would have voted for a black Republican, say for example, Colon Powell?
Remember, it was a Republican who paved the way for Obama to win the presidency.
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Dr.Who
Well-Known Member
Then it would be logical not to grant too many powers to the Commander in Chief of the military. His office is one that has grown consistently for many years now. Will it be the 45th president who becomes a tyrant or the 46th or the 47th...?
