US politics 2

[TrueMetis]

Ah right, thanks.

ETA you know arguably all those things are the fault of dogma rather than government.

[Andriy Czarchenko]

WW2 began way before 1942 so using 70 years as cutoff point rules it as a whole out.

[Hereward]

If government is to be solely blamed for starting WWII, then government should also be credited with ending it.

Bizarre.

[Ser Greguh]

What the fuck happened to this thread?

Oh, right, it was invaded by people whose pavlovian response to any stimulus is "Government is evil!"

[Ser Greguh]

Then stay out of what you don't know.

I think I've cracked your code:

Step 1: Make an unintelligible statement

Step 2: When someone says they don't know what you're talking about, claim victory via your cognitive superiority

Fantastic plan.

[Commodore]

Oh, right, it was invaded by people whose pavlovian response to any stimulus is "Government is evil!"

Government is force.

Force is usually, but not always, evil.

[Commodore]

http://campaign2012....dy-shows/309131

There are many signs that Obama's playing hard for North Carolina, including his holding the convention in Charlotte, but here's a new one: the Obama administration's Export-Import Bank subsidy agency just approved a $638 million direct loan to Saudi Arabia in order to subsidize a Siemens plant in North Carolina. Ex-Im states:

Duke Energy, also based in North Carolina, is another major beneficiary of Obama administration national-industrial policy, including nuclear-power loan guarantees, renewable-energy subsidies, and cap-and-trade proposals (making it a bit unseemly that Duke is financing Obama's convention).

This is much of Obama's reelection strategy: pick strategically important companies, subsidize them, and tout job creation.

This shit has got to stop.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

If government is to be solely blamed for starting WWII, then government should also be credited with ending it.

Bizarre.

True. But the ending of the war didn't exactly undo the damage that it caused.

[The GRRumbler]

Lol what amazes me in this thread is that the right-wing extremists are a lot closer to Anarquism then i ever tought.

Government is evil!!!!!!

:lmao:

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

Obviously you're the one who doesn't grasp the economic concept of a luxury good. The demand for luxury goods are tied to income, the higher your income, the more in demand the good is. Health care is a necessity good, meaning that its demand is not tied to income.

There is data suggesting that is not true.

If you're fucking sick, it doesn't matter how much money you have or don't have, you're going to be demanding health care. If you're not fucking sick, then you're not demanding health care.

You're equating "demanding" health care for a specific incident when you are sick with a willingness to support an expensive health care infrastructure.

Jesus Christ, that's like saying that food is a fucking luxury good because starving people don't have demand for food because they can't pay for it.

No, it isn't. You don't understand the concept. I mentioned that there have been a lot of papers written on this. Did you even bother to try looking anything up on this, or do you just shoot from the hip without even attempting to get minimally informed? Here's a link to one article. It argues against the hypothesis at some level, but also notes that:

While a growing literature examining the relationship between income and health expenditures suggests that health care is a luxury good, this conclusion is contentiously debated due to heterogeneity of the existing results.

http://www.york.ac.u...ts/wp/09_02.pdf

The gist of a lot of the scholarship is that health care is a luxury good on a national level, in that there is a correlation between increasing GDP per capita, and an increase in total health care expenditures as a percentage of GDP. In other words, wealthier nations tend to spend a higher percentage of overall wealth on health care than do poorer ones. That is the definition of a luxury good.

That does not mean necessarily that people run out and get more surgery just because they are wealthy, although that happens to some extent with elective surgeries. Rather, it means that as more basic needs of food, shelter, clothing, basic electrical grids, etc. are met, wealthier nations becomes more willing to spend money improving the overall health care system in terms of supporting more research, more advanced technologies/procedures, etc..

Likewise, there's also an argument that environmentalism is a luxury good in the same sense, in that wealthier countries tend to be more willing to act on environmental concerns than are poorer ones, because the poorer ones are just trying to meet more basic needs. It's the same concept.

http://www.globalwarming.org/2010/08/03/the-environment-is-a-luxury-good/

You're getting hung up on the perjorative context of the word "luxury" rather than what it means in an economic sense. But the idea that as we get wealthier and satisfaction of basic needs is more of a given, other things start becoming more important to us, is hardly bizarre or ridiculous.

[Ser Greguh]

You're getting hung up on the perjorative context of the word "luxury" rather than what it means in an economic sense. But the idea that as we get wealthier and satisfaction of basic needs is more of a given, other things start becoming more important to us, is hardly bizarre or ridiculous.

Not the perjorative context, the exclusivity context. In common usage, as you damn well know, "luxury" translates as "that which costs a lot and which poor people cannot afford," as in a "luxury car." The implication is clear that since you can provide data suggesting that health care is officially a "luxury" good, your political position that health care should be exclusive is inevitable, and anyone who disagrees with you just doesn't know any better.

Which is horseshit, and as clear an example of goalpost shifting as I've seen. First of all, your definition of "luxury" is oversimplified and not workable. By your interpretation (which is not correct), a 10 million dollar yacht does not qualify as a "luxury good" because someone who has $100M spends a higher percentage of his or her income on such a yacht than a billionaire does, and not the other way around. In fact, by your interpretation of a luxury good, nothing qualifies at all. Someone who has $50B and someone who has $40B can both afford anything that exists, and the person with $40B will be spending a higher percentage of their money on it, therefore anything that exists fails to qualify as a "luxury good."

The reality is that any economist will tell you that the definition of "luxury" is relatively subjective and actually falls more closely in line with the standard common usage than in your strict mathematical terms: it's a way of saying that rich people spend a greater percentage of their income on yachts than poor people do, precisely because poor people can't afford them and because far less of a rich person's money is tied up in necessities. The same holds true on a national level, and yes, extremely poor countries spend less of a percentage of their GDP on health care than rich countries do, for the same reason, which by some definitions makes it a luxury.

Your attempt to scale this observation back down to a personal level fails completely, though, due to the basic microeconomic principle of elasticity of demand. Demand for conventional luxury goods is elastic, demand for a baseline of health care is quite inelastic. Inelastic products are much more prone to market abuses than elastic products are.

[TrackerNeil]

I'm sorry, but most (if not all) mischief to date has been caused by government in one way or another. I suggest you reevaluate your evidence.

You're back! Great. I've been looking for you, because I don't believe you answered my question upthread. I'll restate it.

In 1996, Ron Paul stated that he was aware of the content of his newsletters, and yet in 2003, he denied it. What do you make of this?

[Ser Greguh]

Government is force.

Force is usually, but not always, evil.

Heh. So if government goes away, force goes away with it and evil is defeated? Such a quaint zero-sum mathematical world you live in.

Government is the regulation of force.

[lupis42]

First of all, your definition of "luxury" is oversimplified and not workable. By your interpretation (which is not correct), a 10 million dollar yacht does not qualify as a "luxury good" because someone who has $100M spends a higher percentage of his or her income on such a yacht than a billionaire does, and not the other way around. In fact, by your interpretation of a luxury good, nothing qualifies at all. Someone who has $50B and someone who has $40B can both afford anything that exists, and the person with $40B will be spending a higher percentage of their money on it, therefore anything that exists fails to qualify as a "luxury good."

No, the definition of a luxury good is quite simple: Elasticity of income increases demand more than proportionately. "10M$ yacht" is a poor example, but "yacht" is perfectly workable - someone with $100M might spend only $1M, or 1% on one, while someone with $200M would spend $10M, and someone with a couple billion might have this: http://www.yacht-sea.net/mega-yacht-profiles/octopus.html and this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatoosh_%28yacht%29

Your attempt to scale this observation back down to a personal level fails completely, though, due to the basic microeconomic principle of elasticity of demand. Demand for conventional luxury goods is elastic, demand for a baseline of health care is quite inelastic. Inelastic products are much more prone to market abuses than elastic products are.

But baseline is itself a very fungible thing: is a bone marrow transplant baseline? What about thirty years ago? Is an artificial heart baseline?

Let's go with something simple: is replacing some sinew in one knee, which allows someone to walk without a cane, but otherwise makes no difference in their survival prospects, ability to work, etc. baseline?

[Brienne the Beauty]

Lol what amazes me in this thread is that the right-wing extremists are a lot closer to Anarquism then i ever tought.

It's nuts, but it's a big thing in America at the moment. Google "libertarianism" if you can't believe it.

When I was a teenager, all the lefties were anarchists, and I thought it was stupid then. Now I am older, all the right-wingers are anarchists, and it's still stupid.

[Brienne the Beauty]

Apparently everything, ever, is a luxury good according to the right. So the poor who want food, shelter and basic medical care are exactly equivalent to the rich who want foie gras, mansions, and botox.

And, what's more, the poor are worse because they clamour so hard for food, shelter and medical care. They should learn restraint like the rich, who are quite capable of putting the desire for a yacht off to next year if there's a financial squeeze this year. Yes, if your children are hungry, you should tell them to pipe down and learn patience like the rich children do when asking for a pony. If you have cancer, you should save up for chemotherapy, like a responsible person should. Those wretched, grasping poor people! It is lucky we have the rich as an example of financial restraint.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

Not the perjorative context, the exclusivity context. In common usage, as you damn well know, "luxury" translates as "that which costs a lot and which poor people cannot afford," as in a "luxury car."

Except I'm not talking about "common usage". I have specifically referenced, from my first post, that health care may be a luxury good in the economic sense, which is not the same thing as what "luxury" means may mean in common usage.

The implication is clear that since you can provide data suggesting that health care is officially a "luxury" good, your political position that health care should be exclusive is inevitable, and anyone who disagrees with you just doesn't know any better.

I implied nothing of the sort. You've made a speculative inference, and are all up in arms because of an argument you thought I was going to make.

Which is horseshit, and as clear an example of goalpost shifting as I've seen.

You were the one who moved the goalposts, not me.

First of all, your definition of "luxury" is oversimplified and not workable.

I didn't define "luxury". That's a pretty amorphous concept that could vary a lot between people. I simply used a rather common definition (not mine) for the economic concept of a "luxury good". Not the same thing at all.

By your interpretation (which is not correct), a 10 million dollar yacht does not qualify as a "luxury good" because someone who has $100M spends a higher percentage of his or her income on such a yacht than a billionaire does, and not the other way around. In fact, by your interpretation of a luxury good, nothing qualifies at all. Someone who has $50B and someone who has $40B can both afford anything that exists, and the person with $40B will be spending a higher percentage of their money on it, therefore anything that exists fails to qualify as a "luxury good."

The elasticity may vary at different income levels and between individuals, but it remains true that extremely wealthy individuals still spend a higher percentage of their income on yachts than do the vast majority of people, who can't afford yachts at all. So the good remains a luxury good in a macro sense.

The reality is that any economist will tell you that the definition of "luxury" is relatively subjective and actually falls more closely in line with the standard common usage than in your strict mathematical terms

The definition of "luxury" is subjective. Among economists, the definition of a "luxury good" is not, though you may see variations on the precise working.

The same holds true on a national level, and yes, extremely poor countries spend less of a percentage of their GDP on health care than rich countries do, for the same reason, which by some definitions makes it a luxury.

Er, yes. So you do understand it?

Your attempt to scale this observation back down to a personal level fails completely, though

Your attempt at reading comprehension fails completely as well, so we're even. I made no "attempt to scale this observation back down to a personal level." Here's what I said -- rather than trying "to scale this down to an individual level", I actually took pains to emphasize that this applies on an national level:

The gist of a lot of the scholarship is that health care is a luxury good on a national level, in that there is a correlation between increasing GDP per capita, and an increase in total health care expenditures as a percentage of GDP. In other words, wealthier nations tend to spend a higher percentage of overall wealth on health care than do poorer ones. That is the definition of a luxury good.

I think what you've done here is anticipate an argument you thought I was going to make, and are attacking that argument -- "health care is a luxury on an individual basis" -- before I've made it. The problem is that I didn't intend to make that point at all, so you've been wasting ammo on the wrong target. The argument as to whether or not healthcare should be a right isn't dependent upon a technical definition of the phrase "luxury good".

The only relevant application of this concept in health care (at least to me) was that some nations collectively spending more than some others on health care is not inherently a negative because it is a luxury good. And you'd expect wealthier countries to spend more on health care than less wealthy countries.

Referencing the WHO report, there are aspects of the U.S. health care that are rated No. 1 in the entire world. Look it up for yourself if you care to read it. So, the discussion point would be that we have this system because U.S. consumers value some very particular aspects of our health care delivery system, and that those aspects they value are expensive. I personally think it is a waste of money in many respects, but then, for those who can afford it (as compared to poorer people in less wealthy nations) their preference for those aspects is a form of luxury good.

Just as one example of that, a lot of Americans really dislike the concept of HMO's because they want the freedom to choose their own doctors, specialists, etc., even though HMO's are cheaper. And they want the absolutely newest, cutting edge drugs to be covered by their insurance, even though the marginal benefit is small, and they demand MRI's, etc.. Those are luxury-good type of decisions in a macro sense. Again, I think there's a lot of money being wasted.

[Brienne the Beauty]

Healthcare is a luxury good. That's so utterly alien I don't even know how any one can think that. I used to think Ebenezer Scrooge was an absurd character, exaggerated to the point of cartoonishness, but then I talked to the US extreme right online, and realized he was drawn from life.

Some forms of healthcare are a luxury. Plastic surgery for vanity's sake springs to mind. Wanting brand-name drugs when your illness can be fixed perfectly well with generics, yes, that's a luxury. But wanting chemotherapy when you have cancer, antibiotics when you have an infection, anti-depressants when you are depressed - that's not a luxury but a necessity.

Just because the dirt poor people of the Third World don't have healthcare doesn't mean it is a luxury. They don't have clean water either, but that does not make clean water a luxury. They don't have enough food, but that does not make food a luxury.

[lupis42]

Healthcare is a luxury good. That's so utterly alien I don't even know how any one can think that. I used to think Ebenezer Scrooge was an absurd character, exaggerated to the point of cartoonishness, but then I talked to the US extreme right online, and realized he was drawn from life.

Some forms of healthcare are a luxury. Plastic surgery for vanity's sake springs to mind. Wanting brand-name drugs when your illness can be fixed perfectly well with generics, yes, that's a luxury. But wanting chemotherapy when you have cancer, antibiotics when you have an infection, anti-depressants when you are depressed - that's not a luxury but a necessity.

Just because the dirt poor people of the Third World don't have healthcare doesn't mean it is a luxury. They don't have clean water either, but that does not make clean water a luxury. They don't have enough food, but that does not make food a luxury.

It's not a question of whether it's a luxury, FLOW is making a point out of economics, and the econ term for a good where consumption rises faster than income is a luxury good - as opposed to goods where consumption actually falls as income rises, which are inferior goods - dietary staples are one example - people get more money, they buy less rice and beans and eat meat and veggies instead.

As far as forms of healthcare being a luxury, though even you agree that some are, and we agree that some aren't - what we probably disagree on is where and how to draw the line.

[TrackerNeil]

Healthcare is a luxury good. That's so utterly alien I don't even know how any one can think that.

Brienne, I hear you. Although we can bicker about what the word "luxury" means, I don't think any rational definition would include, say, medical treatment for cancer, or a broken leg, or even strep throat, as a luxury.

Evidently, in your country right-wing means "want to trim back entitlement programs", but in America it means repealing Social Security**, privatizing Medicare, and relaxing child labor laws. We in America don't believe in half-measures, so our conservatives want to take us back to the 19th century. Hell yeah.

**An unconstitutional Ponzi scheme