American Budget Cuts

So you are advocating that an organization be constructed which has a complete monopoly and retains its revenue flow by force, instead of a system where companies must continually fight to avoid being so gosh-darn efficient.Well that makes perfect sense. And being government-run prevents fraud how exactly? Is there some sort of secret switch that makes laws apply more effectively in that case? AARP. Risk pools. Heck, just negotiate an individual plan with a financial institution. The fees may be high, but did you really expect something for nothing? I understand you feel that way. But also understand that you are proposing to take people's money, the fruits of their labor, and give it to other people who you think deserve it more. Your solution appears to be "At the point of a gun." Its not really something the public sector could deliver either. Its paying a bill in an intrinsically unfair manner. The free market disagrees with your assessment.

I don't consider it a waste to have my money go to people who care about their employees and their community. I find it disappointing that you would consider this to be a waste. It is called premiums, something the insurance company takes in while the consumer is healthy. When the consumer becomes ill they no longer insure them, and for some strange reason they don't refund those premiums. This is all done in the name of profit. There is plenty of that as well.

Health care should be given on the basis of need while taxes should be based on the ability to pay. That is, unless, you think the poor should not get medical care.

Well, obviously. But I would do that even if making money was my absolute lowest concern, because you stipulated that it was identical in any other way, so it would basically be free money. (Who wouldn't take free money?) The question is - would I take a job that paid as much but:1) the job was located somewhere I didn't want to live? (No, but someone who was primarily motivated by love of money would.)2) the job was doing something I didn't like to do? (No, but someone who was primarily motivated by love of money would.)3) the job would cause harm to me or my loved ones? (No, but someone who was primarily motivated by love of money would.)4) the job would cause harm to society in general? (No, but someone who was primarily motivated by love of money would.)Almost everybody rejects employment on these and other criteria, even where they stand to gain monetarily. Certainly having children is not a money-making proposition; quite the opposite. Getting married may or may not be but relatively few people make the decision on those grounds.The people who are genuinely motivated by nothing more than avarice are sociopaths, and thankfully they're quite rare. Sure, that's how I know it's true:"Leverage ratio" is the ratio of income to debt.This last graph is particularly damning evidence of a shift in policy that resulted in an enormous theft of GDP gains by the wealthiest 5%.Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Reduced 4th graphic width from "700" to "600".

Thats an emotional argument, not an economic truth. Its an inefficiency no matter how good it makes you feel. So you are still arguing that they don't fulfill their contracts. Some people cheat others by saying they will sell them something and then after being paid don't deliver. Is that a criticism of the idea of selling things? Apparently that is what you are arguing. The fact that sometimes people break the law and cheat people doesn't qualify as a criticism of the proper system of exchange.

All of those graphs and charts show that the richer are getting richer, and that the gap between the rich and poor is growing. But the real income of the lowest 5% of the population still increased over the last 50 years.So you either didn't understand the data or misrepresented what it indicated.

Sorry, I don't think that Communism is either a practical or an ethical economic system.

Nope, I'm just demolishing that old and tired canard that "private corporations are oh-so-much more efficient." In fact, they have an inherent incentive not to be. What being government-run? Presumably it prevents fraud by making it harder to defraud the government. But if you want me to be more specific than that you have to tell me what you're talking about. Risk pools that no one can profitably insure. After all, if the premiums to cover the payouts are more than anyone in the pool can afford who is actually going to buy your insurance plans? You can't make money off of plans nobody will buy. Isn't that something you just said, in fact? Right. For instance, doctors who are saving people's lives instead of the financial lords and masters who are ruining people's lives.Do you really blanch at the notion that different people deserve different outcomes as a result of their different actions? Surely that's not something we have to argue about. You believe that some people deserve money more than others. I believe the exact same thing. We just have an argument about which people those actually are. I don't think the IRS has guns, actually. Or indeed has ever used violence to collect taxes. For the most part people voluntarily follow established tax law because they agree with the notion of funding the governments whose services they benefit from. I disagree. The people being paid are the doctors who provide medical care, and they're being paid for providing medical care. What's unfair about that? Who else should be paid for providing medical care if not medical providers? Right, but you've already agreed on how the "free market" can be fundamentally misled and perverted by the profit motive.

Really? Every American family is engaged in it. I think something that works for every single American family is probably fairly practical. As far as ethics go - I don't know, something strikes me as unethical about demanding that children not receive the benefits of their parent's income and expenditures unless they're making just as much money as their parents. Is there a lot of demand for the labor and skills of one-month old infants?Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

No, their real income decreased. ("Real income" is a function of share of GDP earned as wages or salary.) Their actual income increased relative to their income in 1979, but the tricky problem about being paid in 2011 is that you can't go back and spend it in 1979, you have to spend it in 2011.Every graph I posted proved that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer; you just didn't know how to read them.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

It is only an inefficiency if you consider profit as your only motivator. It is a criticism of a system driven by profit instead of helping people. It isn't against the law, that's the whole problem. Some of this was fixed in the health care bill that was signed into law not too long back.Also, other countries pay way less per capita than we do, and they get better care. Guess what? Their health care systems are government run. Ours is run by private enterprise. What does that tell you?Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

Actually, it's socialism, not communism. It is the same method that we use for schools, roads, etc. We educate children based on their needs, not their parents income. Why not run health care the same way?

Are you at all aware of human nature?Are you aware that those who are productive will not carry those who are leeches forever? Especially when the leeches demand more and more and produce less and less. That is communism for you. And that is why it has failed everywhere it has been tried. Just look at the shining examples of communistic societies: start with North Korea, for example.Sorry, but you are thinking like a college sophomore who has been exposed to too many economics courses. (That's not a compliment.)

No, they still have an incentive to be efficient. The flaw is that you equate profit with an inefficiency. What do you think happens to the profit? Do they eat it? Does it magically vanish?Your main argument hinges on assuming that a portion of the population getting paid is an "inefficiency". It may be an inefficiency in the transaction of the consumer's money for a good, but it isn't an overall inefficiency for the economy. To spell it out for you, if you are arguing that there are inefficiencies when people break the law then people are still capable of breaking the law when the government has monopolized the market. If a company can promise payment and then simply not fulfill that promise then so can a government agency.And the government agency is immune to lawsuit! And again you are just talking out your ass here. If the premiums were twice what the payout could possibly be, of course there would be profit. There couldn't conceivably not be profit. The issue isn't that the people can't be profitably insured, its that the people can't pay. It has nothing to do with insurance, its about people wanting something they can't afford.Thats like saying bread can't be sold profitably because there are some people out there who can't afford bread. I don't support your desire to steal from people who earned their wealth fairly, even if you think you have a good cause. Then you are an idiot. The money is being taken against people's will and the benefits given to those who haven't earned it. I don't think I have...

There is a reason once someone becomes an adult they are allowed to leave their family unit and become financially independent.And I was talking about large-scale economics, not "small village" units.