Forum Post: I have been accused of being a tea bagger. Tell me what you think.
Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 13, 2011, 2:01 a.m. EST by yarichin
(269)
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I think air, water, food, and residential land should never be taxed. They are a requirement for survival. Many services should be socialized, education, health care, and emergency services. I also think that the FED needs to go. Any currency not backed by some concrete object like eggs, or chickens, or gold, is a Ponzi scheme. Goldman Sachs is a petty shoplifter compared to the Federal Reserve BANK. The Reserve part means they reserve the right to not have any REAL money but to still charge interest on their own paper IOUs.
I think you are dead on, Yarichin, On all points.
As far as the Tea Party is concerned, I will say this.
I think that every revolution needs both elements, fire and ice, to be successful. They need the peaceful, civil disobedience way AND the armed guerillas ready to take matters into their own hands with a show of force.
If it was only peaceful protestors, then the armies of the oppressor would mow them down with no problems.
If it was only a civilian guerilla force, then the armies of the oppressor would declare martial law, and take them out with arguably superior weapons.
With BOTH elements though, the armies of the oppressor are caught in a psychological bind. If they attack the peaceful resistors without provocation, they have played their poker hand, and the armed guerillas have the next move (and the element of surprise).
Let's take Gandhi for example. We have all heard how successful he was against the formidable British army with his campaign of non-violence and non-compliance. He was counting on turning the brutality of the British against them, public relations wise.
What we don't hear is that there were also well armed Indian resistance groups that were giving the British a hard time as well.
We have also heard about Dr. Martin Luther King, and how he managed to raise up the profile and the living conditions of the African American people through non-violence and non-compliance.
What we fail to consider is that there was an armed group of revolutionaries called the Black Panthers, striving to accomplish the same goal, with force.
When faced with the two alternatives, a peaceful resolution or a violent confrontation, the oppressor will generally choose the peaceful alternative while congratulating his/ her intelligent choice and the morality of the non-violent resistor.
Those who chose a show of force are vilified of course, but without this alternative, the oppressor might have decided to make mincemeat of the non-violent resistor.
No doubt this is what the Police are considering, as well as the 1%. If they did unleash against the peaceful, unarmed demonstrators with a show of force as they have in Oakland, well, now they have the well armed Tea party and Militia groups to deal with.
At least the Occupiers are willing to stand toe to toe with the Police and 1%, and appeal to their reason and humanity. If the Police demonstrate they have none of that, the Tea Party are hanging back in hiding, well armed, possibly in well stocked, fortified bunkers.
If the 1% does use the Police and Military against the OWS crowds, well the Occupiers might have been 'naive' in appealing to the humanity of the Police, but the Tea Party certainly won't be.
To make sure that the government is still servicing the people, based upon the desires of the people ~for the people, by the people~ and to avoid it becoming a monarchy or dictatorship. The people must change the electorate either by the vote or revolution.
Peaceful or violent?
I may be wrong, but I believe most of our police and military are on the side of change.
But, it will take a several million awaken folks to march on Washington DC
Well, I think since there are two options, the peaceful solution will be chosen.
I am trying to think of it as a chess game, thinking five moves ahead.
If the Police become too violent with the peaceful protestors, they have to worry about the armed citizens who are certainly aware of what their intentions are.
I am also thinking that the Military are already on the side of the 99%, certainly the USMC is.
The Police are also paid with the tax revenues of the 99%. I suppose the 1% are now trying to give them some 'tax deductible bonuses'.
Also, the Police have sworn an oath 'To protect the innocent and apprehend the criminals." The OWS are the innocent, the 1% ARE the criminals."
I'm not sure, I think a lot of the Police are thinking of their pensions when they obey orders from the 1%.
I think you are right though, eventually some of the Police will start standing on the side of the 99%.
You are probably right about the march.
Thank you professor... the Universe would like to shake your hand.
Thanks jimmy. I am more or less repeating an article someone once handed to me about five years ago.
The logic of it makes sense. It's not as though the peaceful way always wins, or the violent way always wins, it's just that the enemy will generally prefer a peaceful solution to the violent alternative.
Then of course, underplay the fear of the violence and try and convince everyone that it was the 'man of peace' who showed him the error of his ways.
Thats the best summation of playing the peace card. I've been advocating strongly for NON-violence for OWS for a lot of reasons, but this tag team effect professorzed is a new idea for me. I believe we haven't been removed from more parks because of our (mostly non-violence), but I think we should be returning as soon as moved. Silence is louder than shouting, imo.
Well, the funny thing is that somehow the 1% think they can put the genie back in the bottle if they merely kick the Occupiers out of the parks.
However what is to stop the 99% from just Occupying another park, or even a National park like Yellowstone?
What would happen if every OWS packed up their tents and went home? Would that mean that the 1% finally won? Have the 99% pulled the wool back over their eyes and gone back to sleep? Or, would they merely be waiting and planning for the next phase?
It's interesting to see, just how scared and desperate the 1% are now already...sending heavily armed Police into parks to illegally remove protestors who are merely breaking by-laws.
That's important to remember....scared and desperate. That's the time when people and animals start reacting with an extreme and unreasonable use of force. It's like a cornered rat, fighting viciously since it cannot escape.
I don't know what would happen if we packed up our tents now and went home. I imagine they would ramp up the Police state with all due haste and with no holds barred. That would probably mean shutting down the internet, curfews, police with machine guns, etc.
If that happened of course, the next phase would be a General strike, as well as a Tax strike. Without the tax money of the 99%, and without the compliance of the 99%, then the 1% would ultimately fail.
So I think right now, our passive resistance movement is the last, best hope to resolve things in a peaceful, rational manner.
Here's what would, in my opinion, be "teabagger" about the position you've stated: if your opposition to the Fed, banks, etc. is ultimately an attempt to try to turn people against anyone who has any wealth and/or to demonize Jews and/or is an attempt to crash the economy and/or government ultimately for selfish and tyrannical purposes. And if you in some way stand to benefit from doing any of the above. Be mindful that even if YOU don't consciously have any of these things driving your views, many do, and many of these people are well-funded, well-armed, highly-placed and have wanted to take over for a very long time.
I am not only OWS but I came here from Tea Party. What both organizations are against are very much the same thing. Each approach the goal from a different direction but even the goals..system change due to the corruption of government by corporate money, are the same. Each one has been made a mockery of by the MSM which for some reason, doesn't want to publicize the truths.
If you think Im off base, watch this TEA Party video calling for revolution. Our groups might differ on a few points, but pretend you don't know this is Tea Party and see if you think OWS could have written 90% of this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeYscnFpEyA&feature=player_embedded
Great minds do not think alike but the usually come to similar conclusions.
Is the tea party awakening to the fact that it was formulated by former house majority leader Dick Armey and bankroll by the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers?
The video does not lend that impression, and is essentially unwatchable.
do we in ows care its founded by a Canadian anti-consumer magazine? Or that we put our money in Wells Fargo? sometimes we can use as well as be used.
The point is not to use, but rather to facilitate cooperation towards a common goal.
There is plenty of overlap between the two movements. The last thing the establishment of both political parties want is that the two movements unit or co-exist peacefully. It would drive a wedge right through the moribund, corrupt two-party political system we currently have. It would bring forth a new day where there is a fair playing field for Main Street Americans.
In the end the goal is a government that is accountable to it's people.
[Removed]
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
go live in a forest if you think so, honestly
Taxing air... no, but I'm in favor of hefty fines or fees for industries that pollute! OUR air. Taxing water... well, is the municipality builds plumbing infrastructure (pipelines, sewers, water fountains)... sure, taxes can and should be used for "public works" and public services. Taxing private land... I feel ya, but again, don't you usually get free services along wit that land... like public schools, police, fire departments, and roads to & from your "private" land? You want to pay "private" fees for all those services?? And pay the profits and CEO bonuses too??
I don't know enough about the FED, but obviously the financial shenanigans of all kinds need "to go".
Public schools, emergency services, and health care are rights in my opinion. They should be funded by taxes. Air, water, land, and food are also rights. We should not tax one right to pay for another. I was raised in the countryside. My water came from a well that was dug before I was born, and an electric pump got it to me. The sewer was an underground tank that we paid to have emptied. If you live in the city and share pipes for water and sewer you should also share costs. Taxing the land we live on is no different than taxing the air we breath unless you have a way to live in the sky.
I probably wouldn't call school or even health care a "right"... but I don't argue because I think it is in the best interest of all of us (as well as the future) to have educated, healthy citizens. I'm glad you see taxes as the way to provide this. So we are only arguing over small details, and I don't mind different proposals on how taxes should be collected fairly. I am more concerned how taxes are spent... mostly to pay private companies for things like completely useless fighter-jets, and other war-toys that don't keep us any safer when our real enemies have box-cutters & u-haul trucks. Really our REAL enemies are poorly educated citizens, a polluted environment, and a lack of health care. Thanks for your response. Stay engaged.
No...you're not a Tea Party member.. You're much too stupid
I welcome your criticism if it is constructive or challenging. Simply saying that I am stupid has no value without an explanation of why I am stupid. Please elaborate.
stevo is a known troll. Sadly people spend all their time being assholes on a website instead of being productive.
You are not a teabagger nor stupid. I would have to say i agree with your post.
A Tea Party member would never lower themselves to use the term asshole liberals do, for dunking a scrotum into your mouth.
If you go by the original tea party ideals, it is very hard not to be one at least in part. Most reasonable people would be against taxes on necessary items. However, tea party also likes the idea of small government, so your idea on reasonably socialized services separates you. The end the fed thing I think is too nuanced for the tea party, but I suspect they would be for it.
Out of curiosity, what do you think about tying money supply quantity to population growth. The idea is to take the average desired pay for a citizen (say to cover necessities and perhaps a little more) and multiply that by the best estimated population at that time (last census + estimated population growth since then).... of course other things would need to happen so that the wealth gap never becomes what it is today... such as tying CEO/board/manager salary to the lowest paid employee through a ratio voted on by those employees. That way if a CEO/ect wants to get paid more they have to have the employees vote for it, or increase those employees pay...
My point is, there must be better self-regulating forms of organization than the current model of top down heavy regulation that is corruptible.
Japan has a system of paying the highest paid people only 7X the rate of the lowest paid. So, the board and the CEO give themselves a raise, they have to give everyone a raise. As far as the currency thing, I am not sure Bitcoins are the answor but they make more sense than paying for things with unbacked IOUs.
I think you have it right on all the things you mention, except the central bank. Without it, and it's ability.to print money we would be like Greece.Any "profit" the Fed receives goes to the Treasury. Few people seem to understand how the Fed works. The money is "backed" by the productivity of the US economy. Remember, the gold standard was in place in 1929, when the stock market crashed.
If it was under the treasury, which is 100% constitutional, we wouldn't have a debt based system and inflation wouldn't happen.
The Federal Reserve is a private organization. We live in a capitalistic society yet this does not apply to them? They have a monopoly on the money business because it is against the law for anyone else to print money. This is not how a business is supposed to be allowed to operate in America.. They are devaluing our US dollar every year and our government aint helping to stop that either. At least most of them aren't and that's because they are well financed and need to keep getting that financing if they want to get reelected.
The idea that the Fed is private is more an illusion than a reality. The chairman and the board of governors are appointed by the the President and confirmed by Congress. The Fed is NOT a for profit business. The "profit" is returned to the treasury. The dollar is currently very strong. Arguably.too strong. A weaker dollar would tend to increase exports. I recommend you look a little further into how the Fed works.
So the government decides how much Bernanke makes?
Do you mean how much he makes personally or are you referring to the money supply?
The dollar is not strong. That's why everything is so expensive. My question was simple so I will ask it again
So the government decides how much Bernanke makes?
80% of the worlds transactions are in US dollars. The majority of central banks have their reserves in US dollars. During the recent crisis there was a flight to US dollars. I still can't answer your "simple" question since you didn't answer mine. What is the "everything" that is so expensive? Compared to what?
so was the federal reserve...an immoral institution that is created to benefit immoral big banks
Well, I respect your right to your opinion, but I think the original intent was maintain stability in the economy. Early in our history, banks existed to help farmers buy seed to sow in spring, and to help the "real economy". The degeneration to casinos, really just parasites on the real economy, came later.
http://www.cfr.org/international-peace-and-security/shanghai-cooperation-organization/p10883
i'm a libertarian, i wouldn't socialize education or health care and can't imagine anyone claiming a tea partier would support those things.
Well it wouldn't be up to me, or to you, but to a general vote.
I find your fear of 'socialization' a little bizarre though, and probably the result of some misinformation.
I live in Canada. We have what you would call 'single payer' health care. Some call it 'socialized medicine'. All of those things you might have heard about line ups, or death panels, or inferior service in Canada is absolute crap.
They might as well say the moon is made of green cheese. I have really been astounded at the incredible lies that the Health care industry have been telling about health care in Canada. Bat shit, fucking crazy lies. You know, like 'A dragon lives in the haunted house' sorts of lies. I suppose if you have never been to a Hospital in Canada, you would never know.
However, look at it this way. Would you support a 'socialized' Fire Department? Would a 'private-for-proift' Fire department be able to put out house fires faster, cheaper, better?
In the 19th century, Fire departments were individual 'for profit' companies. If you wanted your house protected, you had to pay each fire company 'fire insurance' money. If a house was on fire, all these different fire companies raced to get to the fire first. Then they checked your door to see if you were covered. If you didn't buy fire insurance from their company, they let your house burn to the ground...and your neighbours.
At the turn of the century, SOMEONE figured out that this was an insane system, and that Fire departments should be 'socialized', paid for by the municipality, and not private for profit companies. If they didn't, then the whole city would burn down.
Same thing with sewers, lighthouses, streetlights, stop-signs, schools.
However, these issues don't matter for the moment. What does matter is that the OWS represents peaceful resistance, and the Tea Party and Militia groups represent armed resistance.
general direct votes for things would be a horrible idea. mob rule for 50.1% is a horrible way to run a country. that is why our founders created a representative republic.
i'm not looking for a different version of health care, i'm looking for the best version of it. i don't think it's yours at all. iirc private practices used to be illegal or something in canada? you have a system that is 90% socialized and 10% market based. it should be 90% market based and 10% socialized. like food stamps in america. you let a normal market set prices for food (i'll ignore the stupid stuff we do with agg subsidies and all that for the sake of this conversation) - we then find the prices correctly, and the correct amounts are produced. if you're poor and can't afford food, then hopefully charity is able to provide you with all you need. if not, then as a last ditch effort, the government can come in and give you money for food ie. food stamps. this is how health care should work. a market should set the prices for things, so we find out their real costs, and meet those needs correctly. in the absence of the market, you have a government deciding these things, how to allocate resources. but they don't really know, they guess. for prices, if they guess too high, they are just wasting money. if they guess too low, then you have shortages, or lower quality, or both.
this is not to say i'm defending our current system, it's a broken pile of shit too. and it's this way because markets are not setting prices. government interventions into the market have broken it so it no longer acts like it should. the reason our costs inflate greater in health care than other things year after year is because the price discovery mechanism has been broken. if we restored it, we'd get to normal prices and prices for things would plummet.
i'm not arguing for privatizing all fire depts (there certainly are those out there, btw) - and i don't consider that an analogous situation to health care at all. you also simply seem to be blaming the problems of health care in this country on things like health insurance being for profit. but life insurance is for profit. so is car insurance. so is home insurance. and they work well. they don't inflate faster than the rate of inflation every year, as health care has done. so your understanding of the root problem is incorrect, if you are merely blaming the high prices on the system being for profit. i used to work in vancouver, btw, and car insurance up there was insanely prices, especially vs. the well functioning (for profit) auto insurance we have available here.
the tea party being a scary armed resistance is media hype. the much shorter life of OWS has seen significantly more violence.
I don't know where you get your ideas about how things work in Canada. You should really come across the border and see for yourself sometime.
Private health care in Canada is not 'illegal'. In fact, every Doctor runs a private practice. The only difference is, that the provincial government pays for the patient's health insurance. That's what 'single payer' means. Instead of a dozen health care insurance companies, deciding whether they will pay to cover your condition or not, you only have ONE, which you still have to pay into. The difference is that it's an insurance company owned by the government, and almost all of your health care is covered.
So since you are American, if you came to Canada and had to go to the hospital for some reason, here is what would happen. The nurse would ask if you had a Government Health insurance plan, you would say 'No', then she would ask if you had another health care insurance plan, like Aetna, Blue Cross, etc. If you said 'No', she would ask if you had a credit card, and bill you directly.
No 'death panels' or 'waiting lists'. Well there are people waiting in the emergency room to be assessed by triage, but that happens everywhere. If your injury is not life threatening, you will have to wait behind someone that has to be seen right away.
Some Doctors and procedures are not covered by health care insurance in Canada at all, such as plastic surgery, dentistry, etc. Also, you could technically be a Doctor and REFUSE to accept patients that use Government heath care insurance. The money is the same, but your choice.
I don't know what you mean, 'Canada has a system that is 90% socialized and 10% market based'. Do you mean the health care system, or the whole country. Canada is a mixed economy just like the U.S. There has been the privatization of publicly owned goods since the early 1990s, and it really has been a disaster. These people are talking about privatizing schools and public libraries.
As it is now in Canada and the U.S., the government DOES set the prices on food. As an example, American farmers sell potatoes at 10 cents a pound, Mexican farmers sell potatoes at 5 cents a pound. The U.S. government intervenes, subsidizing the U.S. farmer and setting the price at 4 cents a pound, hoping to make the Mexican farmers bankrupt.
You don't see the analogy between a privatized fire department and privatized health care? Look at it this way. Fires spread, and so do diseases.
If someone is sick or injured, and can't afford health care, the only option they have is to go on social assistance. They can't work, and they certainly don't have enough money to buy things and reinvest in the economy.
If they are sick and injured, and are able to use government health insurance to return to health quickly, they are back in the workforce and the money they might have spent on medical bills can go towards paying their mortgage, buying groceries, maybe a new car, etc.
Life insurance, Car insurance, etc. are privatized in Canada and I suppose they work well...I have never had to use them. I know that Car insurance is ridiculously expensive, it's mandatory, and causes many people here to refrain from buying cars, so I suppose that's a good thing.
I'm not sure if it matters that the Tea party as a scary armed resistance is media hype or not. It's still part of public perception, just like the idea that a fiat currency backed by nothing is still valuable. I don't think it's too much of a stretch of the imagination to see ANY American exercising their right to bear arms, if their freedom of speech and assembly is taken away. I just think that the Tea party people are a step ahead of the game on that one.
My point is that right now, OWS is demonstrating peaceful disobedience and non compliance with the current structure. So they are offering a comprimise, and an olive branch. So far, the 1% have responded to this by having the Police respond with excessive force, so we are already aware of their intentions.
Yet every bully lives in constant fear of retribution. The Police in particular are aware of the difficult position they are in. Any brutality towards the OWS people means no negotiation when it comes to the Tea party people, or the Michigan militia, or whatever.
again i think your fire/health example is poor. for many reasons. many health problems aren't contagious so there goes your fire example. regarding government assistance to get back to health, again i am fine with that - for POOR people. like food stamps. but i don't want the government giving food stamps to everyone. i want the government giving them to poor people, just like i want health care as a last backstop to be funded by the government.
you were stating above the monopoly government insurance was great, competitive providers are bad. for profit bad. yet when i was in BC, in the vancouver area, my friend had a quote of something like $550 for his subaru wrx. much of vancouver is relatively slow driving areas. he had a good record and was older than 25. here in the US, around CHICAGO, a much higher speed and accident prone area, his insurance was half of that. my insurance with a subaru wrx sti - the race version of this car - was even just around $300. and i can choose what coverage i want on my car, and what company - there are a ton of different options. and how i choose them changes how i will interact with my car insurance company and the choices i make to pay for problems. the problem with US health care is no such relationship exists. insurance, by definition, is to be used to mitigate catastrophic risks. you buy it for major things, like car accidents. not minor things, like changing your oil. but this is exactly how US health care is abused. people, almost everyone, use it for basic things like a preventative physical checkup. people don't know what they cost. very often, the DOCTORS won't even know how much they cost. they are not a major accident - this is basic stuff, like checking your oil. but nobody knows or cares how much it costs. patients here just pay a $20 copay. in this system today where no one even knows - is it any surprise that the cost of it inflates greatly beyond inflation every year? this has nothing to do with anyone being for profit - many other for profit systems are working just fine. including insurance. prices aren't rising because of things being for profit, they are rising because work is being done without either person knowing the cost. if we fix this problem, health care costs will plummet. obamacare actually sets up an exchange and is hoping that people get dumped on it and DO shop in a market. the stupidity of this is that they do it on top of all the current complexity that got us into this mess in the first place. why they didn't just remove the laws that caused health care to come to where it's at today i dont' know. but the government is the one that made polices that resulted in the system behaving the way it does today.
i don't know how you think the OWS has been more peaceful than tea parties. tea party violence, especially given the scope and amount of time, has been ridiculously lower. they also haven't left huge messes. really i don't care, i want more people talking about the problems which are crony capitalism/corporatism/rent seeking. we don't just have a military industrial complex, we have one in every industry. the 10 or 20% of the tea party and OWS that gets this is the only part worth listening to and that has any hope of creating good ideas. i am a libertarian and the original tea party was rather focused on these economic issues, then descended into republican and theocrat control. i think the initial OWS was slightly this way but with a progressive lean rather than libertarian, although it's descending into republican and anti-capitalist control.
like i said, i worked up there, and for a while actually. i didn't ever need to go to the hospital or a doctor nor did it seem like a super fun thing to do so i did not take a trek. i didn't say private care in canada was illegal. what i said was i thought they "used to be illegal or something". being less lazy and doing some research on your hockey country i found the following: the provinces employ a lot of disincentives to discourage a parallel private system. the part in particular i found what i was referenceing was a quebec law banning the sale of private medical insurance for medical services already covered by the public health care system. a canadian supreme court case found this to be a bad law.
what is wrong with a dozen health care companies, competing for my business? in a normal healthy market, competition is what keeps profits in line and prices down. regarding to decide whether to pay for your condition or not - if you are covered in the US under your insurance contract then the problem is covered. if they drop you because they say ooh that's expensive, then you get to the good old american tradition of suing the fuck all out of them. they cannot reneg on a contract.
regarding death panels - are you going to say canada will spend infinity dollars on a patient? there is always a death panel, it just changes who is at the table. the family, the government, the insurance company, there is always a finite amount of dollars and resources that will be spent on someone.
regarding waiting lists - i'm sure there's tons of papers but here is one from a quick google. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBsQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amsa.org%2FAMSA%2FLibraries%2FAcademy_Docs%2FWaitingTimes_primer.sflb.ashx&ei=TiXATpONCqKK2wWZiY2kBQ&usg=AFQjCNGLxriYH-jU5nICEmIUvfACSncVUw a terse summary indicates the data is not very good, canadians do come to the US for things but not in overwhelming numbers, and that there definitely is a problem for many canadians for certain procedures. it also notes these waits are rarely problems in the US.
regarding quality - which we have not yet mentioned - i'd much rather be treated in the US, where we consistently score top 5 in terms of recovery metrics.
my 90% example was in regards to health care. you also wandered down the path i specifically said to ignore about stupid agriculture subsidies. my point was, we have a food system where prices are (mostly) set by a market. those people that are poor, who have no food after charity, still get food stamps. but the system doesn't treat everyone like they are poor - i don't start out with food stamps every month. that is the way to do it. you have it kind of the opposite with your health care system - you have it set up like everyone is poor. that's not the way to do it, because you don't have a market finding prices then. you have bureaucrats guessing or making very rough "negotiations."
"The provinces employ a lot of disincentives ..."
This is not really true. There was an attempt to privatize health care in Ontario in the 1990. When this happened there was very nearly a revolution that overthrew the provincial government. (Ontario 'days of action'). Canadians really want to keep their single-payer health care system.
So it's not as though 'the province decides', it's the voters who decide.
What is wrong with a few dozen health care companies competing for your business? Unnecessary duplicity.
What is the advantage of having a dozen Health care insurance companies, all paying for their offices, overhead, staff, and the high salaries CEOs, when one not for profit health insurance company would do? How does having a dozen of them make them cheaper, or more efficient?
If privatized health care is so wonderful, why is it that the United States is pretty much the only country in the world that still uses this system? Don't you think Europe, Japan, and so forth would have rejected socialized health care insurance if it was such a crappy idea?
As for 'death panels', I have never heard of them. I don't even see why they would be necessary, except to give Rush Limbaugh something to talk about. There is no death penalty in Canada, and a committee of bureacrats sitting around a table deciding who lives and who dies because they need to balance the hospital budget is a fantasy.
For one thing, patients die without asking anyone's permission. Any patient who required 'infinite dollars' to treat would be pretty likely to die on their own. Pharmaceuticals in Canada are much cheaper, only because our laws allow for generic manufacture of them.
my google for the illegal thing pulled that stuff off of snopes, which i consider to be pretty fair. i'm too lazy to go look up the other things but i don't doubt it is true. you are talking about replacement, i am simply talking about coexisting but with unfavorable conditions. one of the things here people want is a government version of health care insurance to compete with private, but this is really dishonest, because i'm sure it would be unfair competition. ie. if a health care inusrance company loses money, it closes. a government version would just get more money from the government. perhaps it would raise it's premiums - but that is ignoring the whole point. in either case it wouldn't fix the root problem anyway - people's relationship and how they use health care. the price discovery mechanism would still be broken.
"What is wrong with a few dozen health care companies competing for your business? Unnecessary duplicity.
What is the advantage of having a dozen Health care insurance companies, all paying for their offices, overhead, staff, and the high salaries CEOs, when one not for profit health insurance company would do? How does having a dozen of them make them cheaper, or more efficient?"
they may not necessarily have extra staff, if serving the same amount of people either way (1 company or 10 small ones) - not only that, but the private companies are incented to do more with less - they are always looking to be more efficient and save on operating costs. competition makes them more efficient. what incentive does government have to do this? literally none. as i pointed out earlier, our auto market is free from the market interventions we have in health care. also, you could say that pre-existing conditions are analogous to our really bad drivers - we have drivers no company wants to insure. yet they still get insurance. it's high risk stuff and the government manages the money. relationship with an insurance company is done via dividing up that pool among auto insurers by market share within each state. similar could be done with those with pre-existing conditions or those who have exhausted their benefits. note that this would take much longer in a world with a restored pricing mechanism and lower costs.
your "everyone else is doing it, so why not the US?" is a logical fallacy. just because they are all doing it, doesn't mean it's the right answer. and in regards to our private system, just because it's private, doesn't mean they are all the same - even your socialized type ones differ greatly among all those countries. and i already pointed out i don't defend the current system - it's broken, and broken by the government. my post was too long and i responded to you in two - did you see the other? you did not comment on my explanation of this with the broken pricing mechanism or the example i provided with physicals and oil changes.
just because you've never heard of death panels doesn't mean they don't exist - and they certainly don't have that name. but again you cannot give infinite care to someone. at some point, someone decides to pull the plug, or says this fight is not worth doing anymore. it's not like you spend a million dollars just to get someone to live another 3 hours. depending on this system the decision is made by the family, assets of the person under care, insurance companies, the government, etc. there is no infinite money, there is no infinte care. one thing that other countries do differently than the US is they handle death much better. they are much more likely in europe to say, let someone die peacefully, where in the US no one wants to be the one that pulled the plug on grandma, and they will fight and fight to keep them alive, which drastically increases the costs for end of life care.
the US has generics as well. i'm not totally up on our drug market. i think our costs are a mix of making up in profits here where they are unable to collect them elsewhere as well as what i talked about before regarding the price discovery mechanism. it is broken for all things medical.
Hmm, well when I say 'everyone else is doing it' I don't mean 'so the U.S. should too'. What I mean is that if single payer was so awful, it wouldn't be so popular. None of these people, or democratically elected governments, have a gun pointed at their heads saying 'create a single-payer system'.
It's not just the staff, it's those CEO astronomical salaries that are in the millions. Why is this necessary?
Also, you seem to have bought into the premise that competition in everything is good for all products and services. I think this is a myth, wholly unproven. Privatized libraries are not better than the publicly owned libraries (invented in the United States, btw), they are worse.
All medical insurance does is pay for more or less fixed costs for unforeseen medical necessities. The only way for them to 'cut costs' would be to stop paying for advertising, stop paying for 12 CEOs, and 'do more with less' by amalgamating into one health care insurance provider, which would be a not-for-profit one.
The only time I have ever heard the term 'death panels' is in scare tactics to describe Canadian health care in the U.S. You are right in that there isn't 'infinite care' for some patients. They die. However, if you have a relative that needs medical care for the rest of their lives, like a special needs child, it's covered.
Apparently there isn't infinite money for health care, but there is infinite money for war? How much was spent on the Iraq war, which was a wholly unnecessary and illegal war? This would have been enough to cover the health care needs of every person living in the USA (including illegals) for hundreds of years.
If anything, instead of the hospital saying "We can't afford to keep this patient alive", single-payer health insurance would say "It's not covered." Pretty much the same as with private health care insurance, except of course single-payer has much deeper pockets.
As far as I know, the reason meds are cheaper in Canada is because there is a shorter statute of limitations on drug patents. A pharmaceutical company in Canada that invents a patent has ownership of it for 2 years, in the US it's five.
(part 2)
"The only time I have ever heard the term 'death panels' is .."
yes, it's a stupid scare term but you're getting too hung up on the wording for my point. which is someone is pulling the plug on grandma if they don't die - deciding how much effort to maintain life support and how valiant of efforts to take when problems occur. this is done in every single system.
"Apparently there isn't infinite money for health care, but there is infinite money for war? How much was spent on the Iraq war, which was a wholly unnecessary and illegal war? This would have been enough to cover the health care needs of every person living in the USA (including illegals) for hundreds of years."
this is again, a totally separate argument. that this war is a total waste doesn't mean we should have spent the money on health care instead. what it really means is we shouldn't have spent it in the first place, and they shouldn't have taxed me to pay for it. maybe i'd have a lot more to spend in the economy right now and it would be in a lot better shape. sure, i'd rather pay for medical stuff than war, but those are not the only two choices we face. neither would that have fixed the health care problem. that is like the OWS wanting the 1% to pay for student loans right now - the one thing that has inflated more than both health care and our housing bubble. education is in a big bubble now, and the answer is not to tax people to pay for bubble prices, it's to let the bubble crash. it's to fix our system so that it doesn't create a bubble (which is exactly how our student loan system works.) also, defense (not that i consider this defense) is a proper role in the traditional beliefs of federal government within american history and philosophy. paying for someone's health care is not. if you look at the rights laid out by our founders, none of them come at the cost of someone else. freedom of speech, religion, etc. incur no cost to deliver. health care, food, etc. do not. i support things like food stamps, but not because i think food is a right. i do it because i think it is a practical solution that will maintain social order and a base standard of living. just like i support a health care program that would be along those lines - socialized care for the poor. not socialized care for me, in the middle class.
that sounds like a good theory on the drug patent, i thought it was longer in both. unfortunately the pharma industry seems less incented to come up with new innovative drugs and more incented to create minor changes, like add some sugar to something existing, get a new patent, and then market the hell out of it and try to get doctors to prescribe it more. given this i think the pharma industry is ripe for much more (intelligent) government involvement than the rest of health care for establishing better incentives. the rest of health care i think would improve in quality and cost if we restored the market that the government destroyed. obamacare is actually trying to do this, although it does it in a really roundabout way it seems to me.
(part 1 of 2)
you are just wordsmithing the same argument. and i'm not saying it's the most awful thing on earth - in some respects it certainly is better than our current system in the US. but that doesn't mean we can't create a new system that takes the intelligent parts and creating something better than both systems.
CEO pay is too high, which i consider an argument unto itself, and entirely separate from the problem with health care. auto insurance cEOs make millions too - yet that market works fine here, and actually better than the one in canada. its not CEO pay that makes the price for services at the doctor rise faster than inflation. you could pay the CEO $0 and that wouldn't fix that problem one bit.
i'm not saying competition is 100% at all times the answer to everything. obviously you are not going to call around after you got stabbed or shot. but the services you use to get treatment for this will already have downward pressure from the rest of the market that is not emergency care like this. in fact, much of health care is quality of life issues. krugman wrote an article called "patients are not consumers" and certainly there are times where this is true. but he ignores the fact that very often, consumers are patients. for my physical example i have given you, where patients and doctors don't even know the price, it is quite obvious why the price would rise year after year faster than inflation. however if you look at primarily cash based or market providers, you will see the prices posted and rather static. you can get a physical at wal-mart, and it's $80. period. i can call them up and they will answer this in 10 seconds. if i call 10 doctors, it's likely a few will not be able to give me an answer, those that do will take a while, and the price will be 110-130. the third party, the insurer, also negotiated with the doctors to arrive at some actual price. but the point is, our system is broken because nobody actually knows it. and we are involving a 3rd party for literally no reason at all - a physical checkup should have nothing to do with the insurance company.
"All medical insurance does is pay for more or less fixed costs .. The only way for them to 'cut costs' .."
but they are not fixed costs, that is my point. your government guesses at prices, my government has a totally destroyed pricing mechanism that just creates ever inflating prices. an optimum system would be a working market - just like for practically everying else. if your "cut costs" is in reference to my competition optimizing systems, there are many ways to improve operating costs, which every business goes through (and which government very rarely does.)
Well certainly no system is perfect.
One thing that is not taken into account is that Canada has a smaller population than the state of California. So there are less potential patients, and more money to spread around. Also, some of the health care system is paid for by putting a heavy tax on unhealthy things, like cigarettes and junk food.
I was pretty horrified at the way Obama (and Congress?) handled the whole health care issue in the US. Instead of making it something like a single-payer system (which I would have seen as an improvement), he made a kind of hobbled, anemic government health care that wouldn't be as good as the dozen or so private-for-profit companies. I think he also made it mandatory?
Assuming for the sake of argument the 'single-payer' model is desirable. (Although yes, hundreds of different models to choose from) What I would probably do in the USA for health care is handle it at the state level. There are some states that would want 'State-level' health care insurance, and in other states it would never pass. If you really wanted State covered health insurance, you would have to be a resident of that state. If you wanted that option, you could move to that state. Some states in the US are already considering this.
I suppose another model could be that Americans could apply for the same health care coverage that the U.S. military gets, since THAT system (as well as the US military itself), is entirely funded by tax payers.
There is a service in Canada where you can call up a nurse and ask them questions of a medical nature, for free. They will answer and give you medical advice over the phone.
I don't know how to address what you are saying, or how to 'fix' the system. Human beings are flawed, and so is any system of human creation.
What I am thinking though, is that there are a lot of Americans out of work. They can't afford to pay for private health insurance. Putting more money into the health care system needs to take priority over putting more money into the military.
Health care is a 'public safety' thing, just like sewers, fire departments, schools, and traffic lights. There are some things that it makes no sense to privatize, things that are essential even though they might not be profitable.
Having someone sit around the house with a broken leg because they can't afford to go to a doctor just means another mouth to feed on the welfare system. Save yourself $10,000 a year from paying welfare costs by paying $1000 to treat this person in the hospital, so they can go back to work, and start buying stuff.
Even if that person is unemployed, you still save the state money by preventably treating their medical condition. After all, diseases are contagious, and are no respecter of economic class.
i have something by gary webb on my amazon list although i haven't given it a read yet. us military is used to guard poppy fields in afghanistan for sure though!
Yes, and the US Military is a not-for-profit tax dollar sink.
that's exactly the reason i do support food stamps or similar programs, i think there are practical reasons to have them.
i can't believe weed isn't legal in more places yet, or even hemp which has so many industrial uses and isn't even worth smoking. alcohol is arguably the worst drug, certainly the most abused. some of the harder drugs don't even leave lasting effects once someone gets on them, alcohol can do a permanent number on you though. while working in vancouver i went to coquitlam a few times, saw in a documentary i think later, called the cartel, that they actually have a huuuge number of grow houses out there.
Yes, I think Thomas Jefferson used to grow hemp, and sometimes smoke it as well.
The strange thing about marijuana (and other drugs) is that it has been used since prehistoric times, and it's only been made illegal in the last hundred years or so. I think Aristotle had a kind of snobbery about it, since marijuana is something you can use unrefined, and wine is something that has to be cultivated and processed, he thought that wine was more civilized.
I agree alcohol is probably the worst drug, with the possible exception of say, crystal meth.
Yes, I think there is a lot of marijuana being grown in Canada to support the economy, and (at least according to Micheal Ruppert) a lot of cocaine being brought in by the CIA to prop up the US economy.
i would recommend checking out portugal's experience with decriminalizing all drugs. it has been a resounding success. i think it could be well argued there is no single thing more detrimental to the black community than the war on drugs here as well. we figured out prohibition wouldn't work for alcohol 90 years ago, i don't know why they haven't figured it out for other things now. re: prostitution i would also compare the health, safety and usage between the US and various places in europe.
i'm a practical lower case l libertarian, i don't think we can have a 100% free system or the optimum is one without regulation. i do believe we have gone well too far in the opposite direction though, and our systems would be better with less intervention and more intelligent regulation.
regarding responsibility for our fellow man, i think they should be free to make mistakes, and i don't believe i have any right to force them into making the right one. i have a responsibility to friends, family, fellow man to encourage them to do what i believe is right. and the responsibility to help those when they are down. but i don't think that i have the responsibility through government to limit or force choices onto another, or to force someone to help when someone is down, from an ideological perspective. in the practical real world, i let these beliefs bend to support programs like food stamps - not because i believe food is a right, but because i believe charity won't always cover all needs, and i want to maintain social order and provide these people with something and not see them dying in the streets. my belief is still that maximizing freedom will result in maximizing growth and increase wealth for all classes.
Well, there is a practical reason for things like a food stamp program too. Without things like food stamps and welfare, you would have a lot of hungry, desperate people. If there are more hungry, desperate people than you have Police (or guns), you would have a problem.
That's why the Ancient Romans had 'welfare'. It wasn't because they were kind to their fellow man, it's because they had so many slaves that the Roman plebians (working class) couldn't get jobs. They didn't have enough Police to control these people, so they gave them all a free ration of grain, and later a little money, and had them watch spectacles in the arena all day. If they didn't do that, the poor unemployed would riot in the streets, robbing from the wealthy classes.
The war on drugs is a complete disaster, I think most people are in agreement on that. The US has the largest population of incarcerated people in the world, next to China. It costs the taxpayers A LOT to keep someone in prison, and using or even selling drugs is a victimless crime.
What if drugs are dangerous? Well so are firearms. You can legally sell a gun and bullets to someone, and it's up to them what they want to do with them. If they commit suicide or murder, does it mean that the gun salesman was somehow responsible? Couldn't they also use a knife or a rope?
Of course, most drugs are pretty harmless. Alcohol and tobacco are some of the most harmful drugs available, and they are both legal.
well, once you are in a career where you have health insurance as a benefit, the next one you're going to probably has something similar. and without major changes it doesn't necessarily become a big deal, ie. keeping you in a crappy job you hate. that is not my beef with health insurance tied to employment at all. my beef is with how people behave. for example, i shop around to change the oil for my car and find the best price. i tailored my insurance coverage and deductibles to what i want. if i have a $500 deductible and a $600 accident, i may just pay the $600. because if i file a claim, my rates may go up to recover that $100. etc. now under employer health insurance, the way the system is today, i shop around for nothing. i go anywhere for a physical - i don't know the price, the doctor doesn't know the price, i simply pay a $20 copay. the copay largely exists to keep me mentally from thinking the service is $0/free and doing even more adverse things. i can't tailor my coverage (ie. acupuncture no, chiropractic yes) - i end up kind of paying what everyone might want. also if i have a $500 deductible and $600 bill situation, i never pay the $600 - if premiums are increased to cover that extra $100 they aren't raised on me - they are raised on me and everyone i work with. so apparently just a small amount. but everyone does this, and every small amount adds up. things such as these, and especially not knowing or caring about prices, are large reasons why inflation may go up 2.5% but health care costs covered by insurance go up 6 or 7%. if you look at other medical procedures, say plastic surgery, this situation doesn't exist, because it's a competitive market where people care about costs. here there is price competition keeping prices down, and increases in cost are due to increases in quality. some people point out that these services are voluntary so that somehow keeps the prices down, but that's not true. what keeps them down is people care what they cost. there are things we need even more than health care and those prices are kept in check and match inflation too, because they are priced in a market. it's only when you don't have or break a market that you get these ever increasing cost situations.
it's not a topic that i know a lot about but i'm not sure how good our food standards really are. like in the 60's i think it was guys visually inspecting chicken if it was slimey looking on a line. and today it seems to be near the same thing. i don't think we should get rid of the FDA as some of my libertarian brethren do, but i think it's something that there's probably a lot of room for improvement in.
i don't think you fix the problem of obesity by taxing sugar (especially after you taxed me to lower the cost of sugar!) - i don't like the idea of tax policy influencing food at all. it's still my body and my responsibility. do taxes on pop and candy even curb consumption? i think they do very little unless you make them very large. geez look how much smoking is taxed and it does nothing but kill you, and millions of people still do it. and if they want to, fine, it's their body. the vast majority of the reduction in smoking isn't due to cost, but due to education of its effects. this is what we need regarding food choices, not more taxes. i hear lawmakers trying to prevent fast food restaurants and attacking them all the time too - yet you will find a ton of calories in more mid market and upscale restaurants, where it takes little effort to find food with an extraordinary amount of calories. i don't want to play the game of policing what anyone eats. i'd like to say rather than taxing sugar we subsidize veggies, but even then i think i'm opening up a can of worms to a bunch of potentially undesirable and unforseen consequences.
the US state of new hampshire is very libertarian; their state government is part time and hasn't taken a salary increase for something like 200 years. they are the only state without a seat belt law. they also take the least amount of federal money, and generally do pretty well economically; i think their unemployment rate is quite low now. they also have no state income taxes. property taxes are not small vs. other states, but i think it a more fair and logical system to shift the tax burden on property vs. labor. i like NH a lot.
Yes I have heard that New Hampshire is very Libertarian.
I don't know. I agree with the Libertarian view on individual rights and freedoms, such as legalizing drugs, prostitution, etc.
However, I don't agree with letting Adam Smiths 'Invisible hand' and a lassier-faire economy. The Government of Ontario tried to privatize meat inspection, and water purification here in Ontario, and a lot of people got sick, and some died as a result.
I remember the story of Cain and Able in the Bible. Cain offers up grain as a sacrifice, and Able offers up a lamb. In a fit of jealousy, Cain murders Able and hides the body. Later, God starts looking for Able, and asks Cain if he has seen him.
Cain says to God. "Am I my brother's keeper?"
It's the first question man asks in the bible. It's also a rhetorical question, but an interesting one.
"Am I my brother's keeper?"
Am I responsible to take care of my fellow man, as a Shepard to a lamb,
or
should I let them make their own mistakes, as an equal and a responsible adult?
i don't know exactly all what obamacare entails, i don't think anyone does really. i also don't like the idea of the sin tax being levied on certain foods instead of others. especially the sugary stuff - my tax money is taken to make high fructose syrup, making pop cheaper with subsidy - then i'm going to be taxed on top of that for drinking pop? we just had some sugar passed, but it counted on snickers but not on twizzlers because they contain yeast and were classified as some kind of baked good or something. this is just a mess, and i don't think something other people should be controlling anyway. if i have to pay for your health care, how about i just police everything you do and slap the bacon out of your mouth? i don't really think that it's the government's role to police this stuff. or anyone else's business what i eat.
i'm not sure what you mean by government health care in your response, because as far as i know, the government did not create any entity to perform any service. obamacare does make health insurance mandatory, which is another thing that i think does not agree with american philosophy - requirement to buy a product, and a private one at that. some people say this is just like car or home insurance but that's not true at all. you are free to be a moron and forego home insurance if you own your home - while you have a mortgage it is the banks that require it though. and for autos, driving is treated as a 'privilege' by state and the state mandate is because you can not only damage your car, but you can damage somebody else's or damage public property. there's not really a great equivalent for health care, where damages are generally limited to yourself.
i am perfectly fine with the state model you propose - although the federal interventions are what is breaking the current system and need to be remedied. if we removed those and got where i wanted then great. if michigan thought it would be smarter to do some state version, then it's michigan that should try it - the federal government shouldn't make us all do it. this is how the country was really supposed to be - 50 experiments to see what would work best for local populations.
regarding what i'm saying is broken, it is not a result of humans being flawed. people do what i expect them to do with health and car insurance - insurance tied to them as individuals. they would do this if health care was too - which is exactly what obamacare is hoping for on the new exchange they are making. the problem is people behave differently when their insurance is tied to their employer - and in this country health insurance has been married to employment due to a federal tax exemption created during ww2 wage freezes. if they simply moved this i think we'd get to an individual and market model. this is why i don't understand why obamacare is establishing some new exchange on top of current complexity - why not just get rid of that law that made the playing field uneven in the first place.
regarding your broken leg guy, as i noted before, i'm fine with paying for him. if he can't pay for it, and can't get patched up via charity, then i'm fine socializing his - a poor person - 's cost on the system. and the price that will be paid won't be made up, but determined by a market. because the market based price won't create shortages or reductions in quality.
I agree that health insurance shouldn't be tied to employment. It's just another incentive to stick at a crappy job you hate. It also doesn't take into account that most new job creation is being created by self-employed people or small companies.
I certainly agree with food standards. I think the US was the first country to start federally inspecting meat. I know you weren't arguing against food standards or federal meat inspection, but this is one example where having the government place controls on the market is a good thing.
I can see how you would think that taxing sugary stuff is 'market interference'. However, obesity is one of the most preventable causes of health care problems and so, junk food gets a tax. Obesity really is a problem in the US, and it's preventable. That alone could save millions in preventable health care costs.
I don't know. I don't think my father agrees with 'state owned' health care either. Mostly because for him it's about freedom of choice. He thinks that it shouldn't be mandatory to wear a seat belt, or a motorcycle helmet, but in Canada it is....and he sees the reason for this as a way for government health care to hopefully save money. I don't agree with him, but I can see the line of reasoning here.
Well, health care in Canada isn't federal. It's done on a province to province basis. I guess the only 'bad' thing is that the poorest provinces, such as Newfoundland, have a lot less to invest in health care than the richest provinces, Ontario and Quebec.
A national health care system on a federal level in the US would most likely fail. The US is just way too big, with a large population. It could possibly work on a state level, especially in more 'liberal' states like California and New York. (I suppose California is pretty much bankrupt now though.) If it isn't working, it can be voted out.
I think with 'broken leg guy', private insurance pays for him too...if he has it. Then I guess there is a system of Medicare or free clinics to take care of him if he is penniless.
it works the same way I suppose, you pay $20 a month for private health care insurance, and so do a million others, so when one of you get a leg broken or needs a new heart, the rest of the million pay for it. Same thing for house or car insurance.
Does Canada have infinity dollars to spend on a patient? No, but how many medical procedures cost 'infinity dollars'? I suppose Canada is more willing to spend money on keeping a brain-dead senior hooked to a life support machine that we are to spend billions and billions on a phony war.
That link you sent me regarding waiting lists seems to support my position, that there are no waiting lists in Canada. Well, that is not entirely correct. There are waiting lists in Canada for some non-emergency procedures. The waiting lists are a little longer than they are in the US, but you get the procedure and you don't have to pay 'out of pocket' for it.
regarding quality. I don't understand what you mean about 'recovery metrics'. Here is a list of Health care services ranked by -quality-, compiled by the world health organization.
France is the best in the world, Canada is #30, the USA is number 37.
http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html
I have heard of Canadians going to the US for certain procedures. You know what? Our Government health insurance ALSO pays for the bill on procedures in the US. So, even if there was a waiting list in Canada, it would be easy enough to drive to the US and still have the procedure covered.
In regards to health care, I don't think it's 90% socialized. Yes, each province has a not-for-profit health insurance company that pays for medical procedures. Dentists, eye care, massage therapy, plastic surgery, alternative medicines, etc. are not covered. Also, I don't even think all provinces have it. Alberta may have private health care insurance.
When you say 'not to wander down the path' and ignore agriculture subsidies, I start to wonder what you mean about the food market being competitive. To me, agriculture is food. Do you mean processed food? Fast food? I'm not sure I understand the significance of food being sold at different prices in a competitive market.
Also, I think you are comparing apples and oranges here when you are comparing 'food stamps for the poor' to a single-payer health care system.
You seem to think that there are an enormous amount of Doctors all competing with each other with the promise of 'better, faster, cheaper' open heart surgery. Again, it's not as though medical procedures are like grapple grommets. It's not as though having a dozen private health care insurance companies is going to change the price of the operation.
If you are sick and need to go to the hospital, it's not really a 'buyers market'. The procedure could be very expensive, and you really have no option. If you need open heart surgery, and the Doctor tells you $10,000, are you really in a position to start haggling the doctor down, or comparison shopping to find a cheaper doctor?
In Canada, NO ONE is turned away from medical care because they can't afford it. The same is true all over Europe. Can you say the same for the US?
What are you talking about with 'the market finding prices?'
In Canada you have one health care provider, which covers all medical conditions. You get sick, you go to a doctor, you get treated. Done. No need to worry about getting a second mortgage to keep your son or daughter alive. There is no 'shadowy bureacracy' to sit around and decide that your son or daughter's operation will run over their budget, so sorry, cost-cutting measures, they can't be permitted to live.
There is no such thing as 'the market finding prices' as far as medical procedures are concerned. It's not a competitive market. There are no bureaucrats guessing or making rough negotiations.
What it comes down to is instead of twelve health care insurance companies, with their highly paid CEOs, secretaries, staff, buildings, overhead, etc., you have just one...with no overpaid CEO.
Doesn't matter the only way to reach a real political solution is thru war, revolutionary war. They have never and will never give up power. That is what both movements have asked, and you have seen their responce. History repeats is self, time and again. I think this may be different in that it may be a global revolution against governments and huge corporations that control them like puppets. From Europe to the Mideast and even Asia, this could spread everywhere.
Yes, but we are already in a war. This is a low level war, on a psychological level. The battlefield is your mind, and the minds of the 99%. Your weapons are your creativity and your intellect.
The good news is, they can't stay in power if we don't allow it. It's our tax dollars that pay the salaries of the Politicians, the Police, and the Military. Withdraw your taxes, and they have no more financial support, unless the 1% decides they suddenly want to start paying taxes now.
Remember that, it's the 99% that pay the salaries of the Police that are used to brutalize and intimidate them. The Police are biting the hand that feeds them.
Don't think that by being a passive resistor you aren't fighting. You are fighting them on a psychological level. You are showing them that you aren't a robot, you have waken from your sleep, and now you are refusing their claim to power. The Police can't harm you without breaking the same laws they are sworn to protect and uphold. They also know that the 99% are well equipped with video cameras, photo cameras, lawyers, and most importantly, a creative imagination.
I remember hearing that one of the weaknesses of the Axis forces in World War 2 was that they ALWAYS obeyed orders. Of course, allied forces obeyed orders too, but occasionally an officer or soldier took some risk and took initiative to act on their own, in ways that always surprised the Germans. Also, an officer could disobey an order if he thought it would harm his men. He might be court martialed, but only if he failed, and that was still better than death.
The Germans were locked into their authoritarian structure, so when their commander made a mistake they all made a mistake.
This is also the weakness of the Police. They are trained like the military, to act in predictable patterns, to follow and obey orders. They don't expect things like cartwheels, clowns, flash-mobs, and so on. It scares them witless. That is our advantage. We are not restrained by a chain of command. We can think of new methods, new strategies, and new techniques that the Police have no idea how to counteract (except with violence).
THAT is why they are so brutal and aggressive, they are shitting in their pants. So are the 1%. The only claim to power they have is an enormous amount of money, and the dollar is about to collapse. When that happens, they will have nothing.
I have seen the represenatives of the Tea party condeming the OWS movement on the news. They prefer to do everything the legal way and get crapped on as usual, never realizing that sometimes to create real change takes a breaking or bending of the current laws. I think the Tea Party is a fad that is quickly running out, OWS is a real movement for change, a revolution. If it remains peaceful is yet to be seen, but deffinitly a revolution.
Yes, I think you are right indyman.
However, do you see my point about the Tea Party people and the 'people's militia groups'?
The 1% is faced with two options, deal with the peaceful, passive resistors who may be willing to negotiate, or deal with the armed militia groups ready to sweep in and take over the Government.
Without that threat of the Tea party people, the Police might be a little less hesitant about using force.
Remember the 60s? The Hippies protested the war, and Nixon just laughed. The cops had no problems beating up the Hippies, but then the Yippies, the Weathermen, the Black Panthers showed up. Then, soldiers started mutinying in Vietnam. That's when the shit hit the fan.
So yes, when the history of the second American revolution is written, we will remember the OWS as the 'successful' ones who used passive resistance, and the 'Tea Party' people as the crazy radicals.
In the present though, I can't help but think that the 1% are a little more worried about the Tea Party people than about the OWS people, even though they are between a rock and a hard place.
I think you called it, zed.
Well, that's the way I see it.
I think though, this could be successful if the Tea Party/ Militia people and the OWS people saw themselves as being on the same side. Already, the 1% are trying to divide us by using our OWN Police force and Military against us.
Our OWN? Yes. The Police and Military are paid for out of the tax dollars that are paid by the 99%.
The 1% doesn't LIKE to pay their taxes, remember?
So really, why are the Police biting the hand of the 99% that feeds them?
Yes, racism too is another instrument used to divide the 99% into camps against each other. After all, the 1% have been fearing this day since the invention of writing. What a better way to divide and conquer than to get the 99% hating each other for minor differences such as skin colour, ethnic background, religion, politics?
don't discount them yet, anymore than they should discount OWS. MSM puts spins on things, grabbing sound bites of fringe radicals in both groups. What MSM has done to OWS, they have already done with TP.
Don't believe me? Take 5 minutes and Watch this Tea Party video and see if you think its not about Revolution for them too.
The only way to learn anything anymore to for educated opinions is to ignore MSM and listen to people in their own words.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeYscnFpEyA
teabagger
multiple meanings.
1) one who carries large bags of packaged tea for shipment.
2) a man that squats on top of a womens face and lowers his genitals into her mouth during sex, known as "teabagging" (or another mans mouth in the case of many OWS members)
3) one who has a job or talent that is low in social status
4) a person who is unaware that they have said or done something foolish, childlike, noobish, lame, or inconvenient.
5) also see "fagbag", "lamer", "noob"
Teabagger? I have no idea what your sexual proclivities are. If you are in agreement with Cut, Cap and Balance , you share TEA party values.
Why do values that make sense (whether mine do or not) have to belong to a particular party or group? I do share some values that the Libertarians tend to support, but that does not make me a Libertarian. I also think some things should be socialized, education and emergency services already are, health care should be, but that does not make me a socialist either. The difference between a TEA party member and a teabagger to me is that The Tea Party is a real movement and the teabaggers are politicians like Michelle Bachman who are likely to support any cause their corporate owners tell them to. Just like the other politicians do.
TeaBagger
Article 5 of the constitution is the only method of gaining authority to meet demands, no matter where the come from. Congress has been in violation of the constitution for 100 years for not calling an article 5 convention to propose amendments. Here is info.
Article V conference, Mark Meckler Lawrence Lessig at harvard 9/25/11-video comments http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-7ikbvu0Y8
Lessig power point on article V http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gpbfY-atMk
Lots of facts here about Article V. http://algoxy.com/poly/article_v_convention.html
Article 5 is our first and last constitutional right. If you do not use this right, we lose them all.
Free shit for all!