How Does Republican Platform Help Middle Class?

Back in reality, the rest of the world does not find Americans quite so awesome wonderful that they will let any American who pleases emigrate into their countries; immediately confer on them all the privileges of citizenship such as access to national healthcare; and ensure that they automatically walk straight into a middle-class job equivalent to the one that they left behind.I know that taking reality into account is not in your modus operandi, but to the rest of us this might partly explain why those Americans who find foreign systems admirable try to import those systems over here rather than themselves going over there.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

But that is investment. The days when banks just put your money in a large box are long gone.

Because obviously this reduces bureaucracy, making health care cheaper. As you'd know if you'd ever bothered to find out the first damn thing about the subject under discussion. By, for example, reading this thread. When the US was founded, life expectancy was under 40 and there was nothing the government could do about it since pretty much all "health care" in those days was in fact best avoided. Ah yes, the slippery slope fallacy. While we're at it, we'd better abolish the Army in case it starts giving people ideas.Either that or we could seriously examine any such particular question on its own merits instead of by the jerk of an ideological knee. This would, of course, require actual thought, which some may find fatiguing. Yes, and in every case the figures are obviously better for me than a system in which I don't get any government health care at all however long I wait for it.That was the dumbest argument in the whole health care debate. The conservatives cried (I paraphrase): "Oh, but since the government doesn't have an infinite amount of money, government health care will be rationed! We will avert this iniquity by making sure that you don't get any. We will save you from having half a loaf by ensuring that you have no bread."Please don't do me any more favors.

One thing we always hear from the police; We have accomplished much! But much remains to be done! Considering any new discoveries or problems, what else do you expect them to ever say? Would they say; Hmm, the problem is way worse than we thought, practically no progress has been made since the first police force was established over two hundred years ago, we have a LOT to do!! The question would then be what have you done with the billions of dollars that you’ve soaked the middle class for, for 2 centuries? Or if they say; Our existence is justified, no-one will commit a crime ever again! The question to that would be; then why don’t you now unfasten your lips from the sweet flowing breast of the taxpayer and go get a job in the private sector?So you see, the police have either failed or been successful, and either way they should be abolished. That's logic ... or something. Back in the real world, someone who works for a well-funded agency is not necessarily rich. You see, that money is not all paid to the same person. If it was, he would be rich.I have noticed that economics is not your strong point. I wonder what is.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

If that was intended to be an answer to my post, then your ambition has exceeded your ability.If, on the other hand, it was intended to be a rambling incoherent series of bizarre non sequiturs, then you are to be congratulated on achieving your goal.The most foolish and footling part, by a short head, is probably the first two sentences: I was born in the UK, marc. What I am used to is a healthcare system that works. So far from thinking the American system "natural" I find it freakish and aberrant; and so far from thinking it "automatic" I know that there is nothing at all inevitable about the unique failure of America. It is not I, the liberal, but you, the conservative, who regards the status quo as "somehow natural".It is not. There is no good reason why Americans should put up with this shit except that liars have duped fools into being frightened of aspiring to anything better. "Ideological experimentations"? My dear marc, if you crawl everywhere on your hands and knees, and if you observe that everyone else in the world gets about more easily and efficiently on their hind legs, in what sense would it be an "ideological experimentation" for you to get off your knees and stand up like a man?Of course, if you never take your eyes out of the gutter in which you are crawling, you will make no such observation ...Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Surely if history has taught us one thing, it's that children named "Adolf Hitler" don't turn out all that well.

Well of course not. The fact that it's a fallacy means that it's a fallacy.And if you are implying that only liberals understand that this is so, you do a disservice to your fellow-conservatives, not all of whom are completely stupid. No, of course not. Indeed, I do not expect you to know things in general. I expect you to make stuff up and then act all piqued when it's pointed out that you're wrong.Look, you're going to do it again: See, you're making stuff up.And, amusingly, you've swung from pretending that my opinion is invalid because I'm "used to" America and "take it for granted" to pretending that it's invalid because I'm not and I don't. Perhaps you could decide which dumb ad hominem argument you wish to use and then get back to me. Or maybe you could try to think up an argument that isn't stupid ...... oh, wait. Maybe not.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

I cannot lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which specifically granted a right to Congress to confiscate income for a government run Air Force.Perhaps there doesn't need to be one. Actually, what the Tenth Amendment says is: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."You don't seem to have much luck with constitutional law, do you?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Since when did Christianity make people moral?

Oh yes, I missed that one. So, here's a story showing how conservative cuts in socialized medicine have caused pain and suffering to patients because they have to wait a long time for the government to supply them with necessary operations.The conclusion our friendly neighborhood conservative wishes to draw from this? That there should be no socialized medicine at all, so that people would have to wait for ever for the government to supply them with necessary operations.When British conservatives cause hunger by taking away half the loaf, American conservative logic decrees that the situation could be remedied by ensuring that we have no bread.

No. How's that been working out so far? Wouldn't the same degree of moral hazard apply to having private health insurance?But in either case there are other incentives not to be a tub of lard. And even from a medical point of view, there's not much the government or private insurance can do for someone who's really determined to "dig his grave with his teeth". You could ask that of anything that saved a company money, but it's not something one usually worries about. I've not seen you fretting about what would happen if oil prices came down. And expenditure. Only if they've been subsidizing an otherwise uneconomic car-insurance business with profits from health insurance, and presumably they're not stark raving mad and they haven't. People in other nations manage to drag themselves to work with the incentive of actual money. I don't know of any country (perhaps North Korea?) where the government has a monopoly on health care. Is there any reason to suppose that America is uniquely likely to make a mess of what other nations seem to do quite well?You could use this sort of vague anxiety as an argument against doing anything, but it's not a very good argument unless you can justify it.

But of course other countries have gone even further in this direction and aren't so fat. So I would be skeptical about any suggestion of a causal relationship. Other counties have legal systems and are more environmentally conscious than the US (and I don't see how environmentalism cn screw up healthcare, nor do you suggest it). Ah, so you've found something you like about communist dictatorships. Sure, they have a tyrannical despotic government, but at least that government can screw up the environment and screw the people who live in it.Me, I think that that's one of the many downsides of communist dictatorships, but then I'm not a conservative and find less to admire in such regimes than you do.Behold the image of your utopia: And the people who try to stop that from happening here you describe as self-serving? Well, I suppose since they like water that isn't red and air that isn't opaque they might be actuated entirely by selfish motives --- but given that you and I share those same preferences, it must at least be admitted that, even if inadvertently, they've done the rest of us a few favors.

Ah, so this is what freedom looks like. Yeah, that's what the huddled masses were yearning to breathe.The Chinese government, not noted for its trenchant self criticism, admits that Chinese air pollution kills, annually, 50,000 newborn babies alone.Now, call me old-fashioned, but as far as I'm concerned my freedom to swing my fist ends just in front of your nose.You seem to have a broader interpretation of freedom, which encompasses the freedom to poison people so long as you're making a profit from it. Perhaps you could find some quotation from the Founding Fathers to that effect; or perhaps not.Until the blessed day comes when polluters have the freedom to put whatever they like into the air you breathe and the water you drink, the option is still open to you to take individual action in the cause of liberty by contacting your nearest polluter and volunteering to drink their toxic waste for them. Let us know how you get on.

Hamilton was a prominent Founder.It seems that once more you are in need of a history lesson. I shall address it to the forum in general, because experience teaches me that there is little hope that you will profit by it. Article One Section EightFor those unfamiliar with the question, let's start by looking at Article One Section Eight of the Constitution.In the preamble, it says: The part in bold is known as the "general welfare clause".The article then lists various specific things that Congress should do with the powers granted in the preamble, beginning with: ... and continuing in this vein. You can read the whole thing here.These specific and listed functions of government are called the "enumerated powers". Madisonians and HamiltoniansThere are, or were, two views as to what all this actually means.The Madisonians (as represented by James Madison) held that Congress had only those powers which were enumerated. The preamble (they said) merely served to explain the purpose for which those powers were granted.One point should be made clear. The Madisonians did not necessarily think that the enumerated powers listed all the things that a government should do, but that they listed all the things that it could do. That is, some of them thought that the government should have wider powers, but they thought that it would take a constitutional amendment to grant those powers. For example, Madison himself was in favor of a national university; he just thought that it would require a constitutional amendment to establish one.We cannot, therefore, say with any confidence that Madison and the Madisonians would have been against such useful institutions as (for example) the EPA in themselves, as being an unwarranted extension of governmental power; only that they'd have thought that such agencies would need to be established, if at all, by a constitutional amendment.By contrast, the Hamiltonians (as represented by Alexander Hamilton) maintained that the preamble granted Congress "plenary", "indefinite" and "comprehensive" powers to act for the general welfare and common defense, and that it could therefore do so in ways that were not enumerated.Here's how Hamilton himself explained it. The italics are his, not mine. It is interesting to note that both Madison and Hamilton were involved in drafting the Constitution, and both future Hamiltonians and future Madisonians voted to adopt the Constitution --- apparently with no common understanding of what it meant. One might even speculate that the language was deliberately ambiguous, so as to achieve a superficial and temporary consensus. The Verdict of HistoryIn this case it is therefore particularly useless to enquire as to the intentions of the Founders and Framers, because they did not in fact possess a common intent. We must turn instead to the verdict of history and of the courts.So let's look at what actually happened. The Madisonian interpretation was a dead letter from the word "go". The first palpable breach of Madisonian principles was in 1791, when the 1st Congress voted in favor of Hamilton's proposal for the First Bank of the United States, over the protests of Madison, who complained that it was not within the enumerated powers of Congress. Nor was it. The verdict of Congress and ultimately of history was that this didn't matter a damn and that Hamilton's interpretation of the General Welfare Clause should stand.It is true that the first time the Hamiltonian interpretation was challenged (and upheld) in court was during FDR's New Deal, but this is not because up to that point the government had behaved in a scrupulously Madisonian manner. On the contrary, it had behaved with a full and free Hamiltonian laxity. By the time the issue got to court, Hamiltonianism was a fait accompli and Madisonianism a dead letter. The Zombie WalksNow let's bring this up to the present day. Modern conservatives, appalled by the prospect of "Obamacare", have attempted to revive the corpse of the Madisonian doctrine and have sent it to blunder in a zombie-like fashion through the passages of public discourse.It is worth noting that these same conservatives only a few years ago when Republicans were in power did not (for example) demand the abolition of the Air Force on the grounds that only an Army and a Navy were enumerated. Nor did they then cavil at Republican innovations which were not enumerated. "No Child Left Behind"? Not enumerated, but no problem. "Faith-Based Initiatives"? Not enumerated, but still a splendidly conservative scheme. Where were our brave defenders of the Constitution then?It is droll that marc should complain about the supposed "historical illiteracy" of the left when conservatives have apparently forgotten, not merely the words of Hamilton and the acts of the 1st Congress, but the views which they themselves held (at least tacitly) not four years ago.And indeed, for the most part, they still do hold those views. Our gallant band of faux-neo-Madisonians are still not calling for the abolition of the Air Force. It seems that in their eyes the only things that are unconstitutional for want of being enumerated are the things that they dislike. "Obamacare" must perish for want of enumeration, thus spake James Madison --- but if Obama wants to keep the equally unenumerated Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, then here's a health to Hamilton, long may he prosper!The only reason that I don't condemn this as the most bare-faced hypocrisy is that I think that most of them are too stupid to fully apprehend the ludicrous and untenable nature of the position they've adopted.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't see where the Founders said that I should be the judge of how much arsenic in your soup is too much. They did not merely entrust me to know that too much arsenic would cost you your health and your life and leave it up to me to decide whether that was a price I was willing to pay. Quite so. This, for example, is a shade of gray. Indeed. This is why back in the real world the EPA wouldn't prosecute someone for releasing a single atom of arsenic into a river or a single molecule of smoke into the air. And you will be delighted to know that this is not what they do.Indeed, the EPA, being a government agency, is not capable of making a profit.Now if you have a quarrel with some particular standard they've set, then feel free to write to your Congressman. For example, the current acceptable level of arsenic in your drinking water is .01 ppm. If you think that this should be higher so that someone other than you can make more money, then by all means start a campaign. You could call it Concerned Citizens for Carcinogens, or CCC for short.But complaining about the very existence of the EPA seems fatuous; as does envying the Chinese.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.