I can do you one better, Rufus, I've actually been snipped. Yet no one questions that Mrs. Likko and I are "really" married in either a legal or a social sense. This demonstrates that the extant definition of marriage already excludes conception as a necessary, much less sufficient, element.
Russell's argument is that society only cares about procreative sex; it seeks to encourage this behavior. That was the intellectual foundation for the conclusion of the Indiana Court of Appeals in Morrison v. Sadler, which is that because heterosexual sex can sometimes produce unintended children, society can rationally and legitimately offer a special kind of privilege to heterosexual couples so as to encourage them to jointly raise the children resulting from such accidental sexual encounters.
But if procreation is not really part of what marriage is, since marriage licenses are issued to couples who cannot possibly procreate (like Mrs. Likko and I), then why are we even talking about the fact that two men can't concieve?
Prof. George, the current intellectual darling of the anti-SSM movement, attempts to square this circle by arguing that heterosexual coitus is "imitative" of procreative sex, thus morally sanctionable (unlike other kinds of sexual activity), and thus appropriate to legally favor. For all the erudition George brings to the table, his argument is ultimately fancy intellectual window dressing on the core concept that the imitation of procreative sex somehow is procreative sex. Which it isn't.
Dr. George is guilty of either magical thinking (the voodoo doll somehow is the victim) or an elaborate expression of an aesthetic preference for penises in vaginas as opposed to other imaginable combinations of genetalia. Maybe Dr. Russell didn't go so far down this rabbit hole as Dr. George (I'm confident you'll correct me if I'm wrong, TVD) but if we do drill down to the end of that rabbit hole all we shall find are small round pellets that are neither appealing nor useful.
We've no way of knowing whether Art Deco gets off on lesbian porn, nor any particular concern if he does. I'll attack his arguments, but not him. What he does in the privacy of his own sock and what he looks at while he does it, is not at issue here nor should it be.
I would also not call the picture in the OP pornographic.
...you are asking institutions of state to enforce general obligations...
What do you think I do in court all day long, if not ask an institution of the state to enforce general obligations, whether those be in the form of contracts, or deeds to real property, or [gasp] marriages?
...and asking that the state, the corporation, and individuals view you a certain way and treat you a certain way. You are asking that your elective associations be sanctioned and rendered a part of social architecture.
As to the government and corporations regulated by it, I don't just ask that they treat my wife and I this way. I demand it. If my demands are not met, I will use the courts to compel recognition and sanction. To do so is my right as an American citizen.
As to individuals, at least with respect to marriage, they can do what they like. I've never argued that any individual has to personally or socially acknowledge my marriage or anyone else's.
My marriage to a woman is no less an "elective association" than it would have been had I chosen to marry a man instead. Do I have the right to ask, to demand, and indeed to compel the state to recognize my "elective association"? Bet the house on it. And my gay neighbors should have the same right.
I didn't ask Prof. George or Mr. Blankenhorn. I asked you. It sounds like you think that attraction to the same sex is a "sexual disorder," which is a proposition about which we will have to disagree. It sounds as though you claim that the sterility (by which I presume you mean "childlessness") of a relationship is causally linked to its being worthy of no more import than an ordinary friendship between men. That means you're attacking my childless, heterosexual marriage as well as those of my gay neighbors and colleagues. Sorry if I seem snippy, but an argument based on reproductive capability is personal to me, because I happen to think my marriage is just as good as anyone else's even if my wife and I haven't had children.
I do not concede that those of us who favor the legal recognition of same-sex marriage have an obligation to offer any justification for it other than that there are people who desire to be married -- as a legal proposition, the burden is on the government that offers marriage to some people but not others to justify why it treats them unequally. I do not have to offer a justification for why I engage in acts of free speech. I do not have to offer a justification for why I want to own a gun. I do not have to offer a justification for why I do not want to quarter soldiers in my own house. And so on right on down to I do not have to offer a justification for why I should be permitted to marry a would-be spouse who mutually consents to the marriage. But even if the burden were on me to offer a justification for same-sex marriage, "equal treatment before the law" would be a more than sufficient justification for it. So would a justification like "I believe that adopting same-sex marriage would be likely to improve the well-being of gay and lesbian households and their children." You might want to look up who offered that opinion.
if you are in a discussion with an ideologue and offer a pragmatic solution or view of a problem, the ideologue will attribute to you (almost of necessity) an ideology and attribute your suggestion/solution as evidence of that ideological identity.
Which is how I get tarred on the same blog from time to time as a typical liberal, a dangerous conservative, and a sniveling Broderist.
Politics is the mind-killer. I like it here at LOOG because it's a place where normally, one can get away from politics and talk about either theory or policy without having to carry water for either Team Red or Team Blue. At least, as far as most of the commentariat is concerned. When something emotional like the Norway shootings happens, though, it's easy for people to allow their intellectual structures to collapse for a time.
I've come to think it's better to wait out the event and offer calm reflection than to immediately jump into the fray, especially when the facts of the case emerge in a confused fashion as they often do in the hours and days after a crisis (and my restraint has been aided in this iteration of that cycle by an unusually heavy professional schedule in meatworld).
To the fanatic, one who ought to be an ally but refuses to buy in to the fanaticism is probably worse than an enemy -- because this is not just someone who will attack and destroy you, this is someone who will betray you first. Thus,
In this worldview, it is the appeasers and apostates, the people who are supposed to protect their culture, who are the biggest problem. As Spencer Ackerman notes, Islamic fundamentalist terrorists kill far more Muslims than they do Westerners, just as Breivik chose to kill his fellow countrymen and their children.
Which dovetails into the concept that in the fight against terrorists, we are at greater risk from ourselves than we are from our enemies.
Bear in mind that according to the Pew Research Center, roughly one in twelve babies born in the U.S. are born to parents who lack legal documentation to be here (and about a quarter of all babies born here are born to non-citizens).
To adversely possess land at common law, the would-be owner must:
1) Openly, notoriously, and hostilely occupy the land for "X" time,
2) Exclude others from the land, particularly the titled owner,
3) Improve or usefully exploit the land during his occupancy,
4) Not be sued for trespass, ejectment, or some other remedy.
There are easy and cheap ways to defeat a claim of adverse possession against you. Since the use must be "hostile" to the interests of the titled owner, if the tilted owner grants consent to your use of the land, your use is no longer hostile and the claim to have adversely possessed the land will be defeated.
Many states have particular traps for the would-be adverse possessor. For instance, in California, the adverse possessor must pay all the property taxes during the initial adverse possession period, which can be something of a challenge when you aren't sent the tax bill. It sounds like in Texas, you have to publicly file your claim in court before the adverse possession clock starts to run.
So here's what happens in Flower Mound, Texas -- the original owner has walked away. The bank will eventually take title. If the bank is smart, it will realize that someone is living in its house. If I am right about Texas law, it can do that by running a relatively cheap court filing search. When it finds that Kenneth Robinson is living in the house, it can record a revocable license to permit Robinson to do this. Now, Robinson's use is permissive, not hostile.
Best of all, from the bank's point of view, is that there is nothing Robinson can do to stop them from unilaterally granting him permission to use the house.
If Robinson refuses to move, he will have to be evicted and yes, that is potentially expensive. And if a license is granted and then revoked, that means the potential recovery of money damages for the reasonable rental value of the house will be set aside, because Robinson will have lived there with the bank's permission during that time. But he very likely doesn't have any money to recover anyway, so giving up the past reasonable rental value for the time he was trespassing in the bank's house isn't giving up anything but phantom dollars nine times out of ten. And keeping the bank's title clear of competing claims is worth giving up a little bit of money anyway.
There is still the matter of getting him out of the property when the bank decides to liquidate it. Offering him "cash for keys," while morally unpalatable, often makes economic sense in situations like these.
It sounds to me like Rhesus and Dolon have the same story -- both fly off half-cocked and ill-prepared for the challenges they are going to face, and then reality gives them the smackdown. It also seems very Greek to hold them up as parallels to one another on opposite sides of the conflict.
Rhesus may be prepared for a fight, but he isn't prepared for subterfuge. Dolon is simply not prepared for the world at all. Hector should have put the kibosh on such a silly plan. Odd, though, that in both Euripedes and Homer there is an emphasis on the animalistic element ofhis story. Is there a play on words going on with his name in the original Greek?
I disagree. Peas are good raw, right out of the pod. Their high sugar content makes them sweet. Brussels sprouts are delicious when sliced in half, steamed in olive oil and garlic. Sadly, most markets sell sprouts when they have grown too large and tough. Lima beans I can't endorse. Fire-roasted in the pod they are not bad, but too much work for what you get.
To be clear, I am talking about actual vegetables here, not Federal budget cuts.
It's not my claim, it's Heritage Foundation's claim, and that strikes me as something of an overstatement of the claim Heritage is making. I don't think Heritage is arguing that there is no poverty anymore. Heritage's real and more modst claim, I think, is that the social welfare system is doing all the good it is ever going to be able to do right now, and extending it further will result not only in diminishing returns but increasing abuses.
My claim is that Heritage's data is suspect. It's not reasonable to measure affluence and quality of life on an index that has one-third of its measurements based upon television and things that support it. It's not at all clear to me that hunger and homelessness are truly as rare as Heritage claims. And when these programs are cut -- by which I mean absolute dollar spending on them will decrease -- it's going to suck, suck, suck, because there are lots of people who rely on them to meet the minimal quality-of-life needs like "having enough food to eat" and "living in a structure sheltered from the elements." But I am convinced that we're going to have to do it anyway because if we don't do it now, we're going to have to do it later, and at that point we're going to have to do more of it and to more people. The peas aren't going to taste any better sitting there on our plate getting cold.
I'm not trying to play games and I'm sorry if you thought I was. If you like to play games, I post a trivia question pretty much every week and this week's seems to be stumping people so far. This, however, is a serious policy discussion.
FWIW, my read of the progressive left is rather different than yours. Progressives, it seems to me, are coming to terms with accepting inflation-adjusted "constant" numbers of entitlement spending as a barely-digestible compromise. But significant expansion of social welfare support is a very real and immediate goal of that quarter of our political spectrum, an expansion to be "paid for" preferably by way of slashing military spending. To be "progressive" means, in no small part, to be commited to the idea that an expanded and strengthened regime of social welfare policies is in the national interest. Naturally, someone with that would react with revulsion at this study from Heritage.
Given that definition of what it is to be a progressive, I do not count myself among their number. I can make common cause with them on some other issues but not this one. That does not, however, mean that I dismiss poverty as an insignificant social and economic issue. I see evidence of real poverty and its tangible effects on peoples' lives every day I go to court. I don't pretend to have a silver bullet to solve the problem, either.
I'm reminded of an observation I made in January about affluence and sources of income, which I referred to as the Tennessee Taxonomy. Just because you are deriving your income from public entitlements does not mean that you are living a comfortable lifestyle -- nor does it mean you are living an uncomfortable lifestyle. Similarly, if you work for a living or if you live off of accumulated capital, this also is not necessarily indicative of the quality of your lifestyle.
Here, the question is whether someone who meets the definition of "poverty" is nevertheless able to live an affluent life. My observation was that yes, this is possible, but very uncommon. As to TVD's point that cable and indeed TV are, in fact, luxuries, we should take into account that if there is enough money to get at least one TV and some kind of non-broadcast programming into it, we're seeing someone who is not at the extreme end of the "lack of affluence" spectrum, regardless of where the money comes from.
...how much of that goes to malpractice insurance?
Less than one percent.
How much is being charged to cover the cost of people who walk into the ED, get treated, and walk out without paying a dime?
About one percent.
How much is simply part of the negotiating game that providers play with insurers
Quite a lot.
“doctors are a bunch of greedy fuckers”
1) What's wrong with a doctor liking money? What's wrong with a doctor charging money for her services and even withholding services for non-emergent care if payment is not apparently forthcoming? 2) Lawyers and insurance company executives are greedy fcukers too. So, it seems, are writers with children that have medical problems; despite wanting and needing his kid to receive rhinoribbonectomy, Erik nevertheless didn't want to pay more than he really had to and is not unreasonable for questioning the price for this service. Conclusion: We're all greedy fcukers and that's what makes the world go 'round. 3) In the situation described, The doctor's instructions were to charge the minimum, which doesn't sound all that greedy to me. The doctor appears to have had no particular idea what was going to be charged and the price was determined by a combination of the billing clerk and the pre-set billing codes.
The argument, of course, is that we do not need to increase, and possibly can decrease, spending on social welfare programs because "the poor" don't really have it all that bad: for the most part, they have enough to eat, they have somewhere to live, they have households that offer things that at one time were considered luxuries.
A concomitant challenge is asking what index we will use to define poverty. Is it simply income? Is it quality of life, and if so what metric will be used to define it? At your blog, I observed that if quality-of-life is measured by amenities in one's household, my relatively affluent household would look worse off than the median household of below-the-poverty-line households surveyed by the Department of Commerce.
The data and conclusions of the study might not be correct. The factual observations underlying the study are subject to challenge -- is it really true that only .06% of Americans do not have enough food to eat? Is it really true that there is so very little homelessness as the study claims? Is it right to count a refrigerator as a "luxury" amenity? After all, without one, food tends to spoil much faster raising the possibility that hunger would increase and nutrition would decrease.
But the whole article does raise a set of worthwhile questions and observations -- perhaps it is not unreasonable to say that a person with enough food to eat is "less poor" than someone who routinely goes hungry, and it might be the case that our social safety net is such that there really are only a small number of people who are routinely hungry. If that is truthfully the case, then perhaps it's reasonable to suggest that, at least, we may hold at least some portion our government's social welfare spending at its current level without violating principles of social justice.
On “Picture of the day”
I can do you one better, Rufus, I've actually been snipped. Yet no one questions that Mrs. Likko and I are "really" married in either a legal or a social sense. This demonstrates that the extant definition of marriage already excludes conception as a necessary, much less sufficient, element.
Russell's argument is that society only cares about procreative sex; it seeks to encourage this behavior. That was the intellectual foundation for the conclusion of the Indiana Court of Appeals in Morrison v. Sadler, which is that because heterosexual sex can sometimes produce unintended children, society can rationally and legitimately offer a special kind of privilege to heterosexual couples so as to encourage them to jointly raise the children resulting from such accidental sexual encounters.
But if procreation is not really part of what marriage is, since marriage licenses are issued to couples who cannot possibly procreate (like Mrs. Likko and I), then why are we even talking about the fact that two men can't concieve?
Prof. George, the current intellectual darling of the anti-SSM movement, attempts to square this circle by arguing that heterosexual coitus is "imitative" of procreative sex, thus morally sanctionable (unlike other kinds of sexual activity), and thus appropriate to legally favor. For all the erudition George brings to the table, his argument is ultimately fancy intellectual window dressing on the core concept that the imitation of procreative sex somehow is procreative sex. Which it isn't.
Dr. George is guilty of either magical thinking (the voodoo doll somehow is the victim) or an elaborate expression of an aesthetic preference for penises in vaginas as opposed to other imaginable combinations of genetalia. Maybe Dr. Russell didn't go so far down this rabbit hole as Dr. George (I'm confident you'll correct me if I'm wrong, TVD) but if we do drill down to the end of that rabbit hole all we shall find are small round pellets that are neither appealing nor useful.
"
We've no way of knowing whether Art Deco gets off on lesbian porn, nor any particular concern if he does. I'll attack his arguments, but not him. What he does in the privacy of his own sock and what he looks at while he does it, is not at issue here nor should it be.
I would also not call the picture in the OP pornographic.
"
What do you think I do in court all day long, if not ask an institution of the state to enforce general obligations, whether those be in the form of contracts, or deeds to real property, or [gasp] marriages?
As to the government and corporations regulated by it, I don't just ask that they treat my wife and I this way. I demand it. If my demands are not met, I will use the courts to compel recognition and sanction. To do so is my right as an American citizen.
As to individuals, at least with respect to marriage, they can do what they like. I've never argued that any individual has to personally or socially acknowledge my marriage or anyone else's.
My marriage to a woman is no less an "elective association" than it would have been had I chosen to marry a man instead. Do I have the right to ask, to demand, and indeed to compel the state to recognize my "elective association"? Bet the house on it. And my gay neighbors should have the same right.
"
I didn't ask Prof. George or Mr. Blankenhorn. I asked you. It sounds like you think that attraction to the same sex is a "sexual disorder," which is a proposition about which we will have to disagree. It sounds as though you claim that the sterility (by which I presume you mean "childlessness") of a relationship is causally linked to its being worthy of no more import than an ordinary friendship between men. That means you're attacking my childless, heterosexual marriage as well as those of my gay neighbors and colleagues. Sorry if I seem snippy, but an argument based on reproductive capability is personal to me, because I happen to think my marriage is just as good as anyone else's even if my wife and I haven't had children.
I do not concede that those of us who favor the legal recognition of same-sex marriage have an obligation to offer any justification for it other than that there are people who desire to be married -- as a legal proposition, the burden is on the government that offers marriage to some people but not others to justify why it treats them unequally. I do not have to offer a justification for why I engage in acts of free speech. I do not have to offer a justification for why I want to own a gun. I do not have to offer a justification for why I do not want to quarter soldiers in my own house. And so on right on down to I do not have to offer a justification for why I should be permitted to marry a would-be spouse who mutually consents to the marriage. But even if the burden were on me to offer a justification for same-sex marriage, "equal treatment before the law" would be a more than sufficient justification for it. So would a justification like "I believe that adopting same-sex marriage would be likely to improve the well-being of gay and lesbian households and their children." You might want to look up who offered that opinion.
"
Then please consider my misstatement of your position a platform upon which you may expound upon what you contend is the true argument.
"
Better than a toaster!
"
To be fair, Art Deco has actually stated, in the most succinct fashion imaginable, the true argument against same-sex marriage.
"
The wallpaper on my phone is this image, which I'm sure you've seen before.
On “My first piece in ‘The Atlantic’”
You also get republished this way. See, for instance:
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/642436-fantasy-s-spell-on-pop-culture-when-will-it-wear-off
Why Richard Dawkins would care about your piece, other than that he liked it, is sort of beyond me.
"
Oh, and be sure to update your bio. You've earned bragging rights.
"
That is a major feather in your cap. Congratulations!
And a good piece, too.
On “Curb Your Dogma”
Which is how I get tarred on the same blog from time to time as a typical liberal, a dangerous conservative, and a sniveling Broderist.
Politics is the mind-killer. I like it here at LOOG because it's a place where normally, one can get away from politics and talk about either theory or policy without having to carry water for either Team Red or Team Blue. At least, as far as most of the commentariat is concerned. When something emotional like the Norway shootings happens, though, it's easy for people to allow their intellectual structures to collapse for a time.
I've come to think it's better to wait out the event and offer calm reflection than to immediately jump into the fray, especially when the facts of the case emerge in a confused fashion as they often do in the hours and days after a crisis (and my restraint has been aided in this iteration of that cycle by an unusually heavy professional schedule in meatworld).
On “Breivik’s Cold Logic”
To the fanatic, one who ought to be an ally but refuses to buy in to the fanaticism is probably worse than an enemy -- because this is not just someone who will attack and destroy you, this is someone who will betray you first. Thus,
Which dovetails into the concept that in the fight against terrorists, we are at greater risk from ourselves than we are from our enemies.
On “Explosions, shootings in Norway”
I see that the shooting suspect was described as blond and Nordic looking.
On “Rumors of the Democratic Party’s Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated”
Bear in mind that according to the Pew Research Center, roughly one in twelve babies born in the U.S. are born to parents who lack legal documentation to be here (and about a quarter of all babies born here are born to non-citizens).
Whether those people came here intentionally to have a so-called "anchor baby" is a doubtful proposition in my opinion, but there is some basis in fact to the legend.
FWIW, I find the term moderately offensive. It's impolite but there are worse things you can call someone.
On “Adverse Possession”
To adversely possess land at common law, the would-be owner must:
1) Openly, notoriously, and hostilely occupy the land for "X" time,
2) Exclude others from the land, particularly the titled owner,
3) Improve or usefully exploit the land during his occupancy,
4) Not be sued for trespass, ejectment, or some other remedy.
There are easy and cheap ways to defeat a claim of adverse possession against you. Since the use must be "hostile" to the interests of the titled owner, if the tilted owner grants consent to your use of the land, your use is no longer hostile and the claim to have adversely possessed the land will be defeated.
Many states have particular traps for the would-be adverse possessor. For instance, in California, the adverse possessor must pay all the property taxes during the initial adverse possession period, which can be something of a challenge when you aren't sent the tax bill. It sounds like in Texas, you have to publicly file your claim in court before the adverse possession clock starts to run.
So here's what happens in Flower Mound, Texas -- the original owner has walked away. The bank will eventually take title. If the bank is smart, it will realize that someone is living in its house. If I am right about Texas law, it can do that by running a relatively cheap court filing search. When it finds that Kenneth Robinson is living in the house, it can record a revocable license to permit Robinson to do this. Now, Robinson's use is permissive, not hostile.
Best of all, from the bank's point of view, is that there is nothing Robinson can do to stop them from unilaterally granting him permission to use the house.
If Robinson refuses to move, he will have to be evicted and yes, that is potentially expensive. And if a license is granted and then revoked, that means the potential recovery of money damages for the reasonable rental value of the house will be set aside, because Robinson will have lived there with the bank's permission during that time. But he very likely doesn't have any money to recover anyway, so giving up the past reasonable rental value for the time he was trespassing in the bank's house isn't giving up anything but phantom dollars nine times out of ten. And keeping the bank's title clear of competing claims is worth giving up a little bit of money anyway.
There is still the matter of getting him out of the property when the bank decides to liquidate it. Offering him "cash for keys," while morally unpalatable, often makes economic sense in situations like these.
On “Euripides: Rhesus and overenthusaistic coyotes”
Sorry, I was unclear -- I was referring to Dolon, not Rhesus.
"
It sounds to me like Rhesus and Dolon have the same story -- both fly off half-cocked and ill-prepared for the challenges they are going to face, and then reality gives them the smackdown. It also seems very Greek to hold them up as parallels to one another on opposite sides of the conflict.
Rhesus may be prepared for a fight, but he isn't prepared for subterfuge. Dolon is simply not prepared for the world at all. Hector should have put the kibosh on such a silly plan. Odd, though, that in both Euripedes and Homer there is an emphasis on the animalistic element ofhis story. Is there a play on words going on with his name in the original Greek?
On “Mascots, justice, and the role of Harry Potter and Katniss Everdeen”
Damn you damn you damn you damn you, RTod. I have work to do here.
Instead, I got only 28 out of 45 correct.
On “Bad prices, public spending, and poverty”
I disagree. Peas are good raw, right out of the pod. Their high sugar content makes them sweet. Brussels sprouts are delicious when sliced in half, steamed in olive oil and garlic. Sadly, most markets sell sprouts when they have grown too large and tough. Lima beans I can't endorse. Fire-roasted in the pod they are not bad, but too much work for what you get.
To be clear, I am talking about actual vegetables here, not Federal budget cuts.
"
It's not my claim, it's Heritage Foundation's claim, and that strikes me as something of an overstatement of the claim Heritage is making. I don't think Heritage is arguing that there is no poverty anymore. Heritage's real and more modst claim, I think, is that the social welfare system is doing all the good it is ever going to be able to do right now, and extending it further will result not only in diminishing returns but increasing abuses.
My claim is that Heritage's data is suspect. It's not reasonable to measure affluence and quality of life on an index that has one-third of its measurements based upon television and things that support it. It's not at all clear to me that hunger and homelessness are truly as rare as Heritage claims. And when these programs are cut -- by which I mean absolute dollar spending on them will decrease -- it's going to suck, suck, suck, because there are lots of people who rely on them to meet the minimal quality-of-life needs like "having enough food to eat" and "living in a structure sheltered from the elements." But I am convinced that we're going to have to do it anyway because if we don't do it now, we're going to have to do it later, and at that point we're going to have to do more of it and to more people. The peas aren't going to taste any better sitting there on our plate getting cold.
"
I'm not trying to play games and I'm sorry if you thought I was. If you like to play games, I post a trivia question pretty much every week and this week's seems to be stumping people so far. This, however, is a serious policy discussion.
FWIW, my read of the progressive left is rather different than yours. Progressives, it seems to me, are coming to terms with accepting inflation-adjusted "constant" numbers of entitlement spending as a barely-digestible compromise. But significant expansion of social welfare support is a very real and immediate goal of that quarter of our political spectrum, an expansion to be "paid for" preferably by way of slashing military spending. To be "progressive" means, in no small part, to be commited to the idea that an expanded and strengthened regime of social welfare policies is in the national interest. Naturally, someone with that would react with revulsion at this study from Heritage.
Given that definition of what it is to be a progressive, I do not count myself among their number. I can make common cause with them on some other issues but not this one. That does not, however, mean that I dismiss poverty as an insignificant social and economic issue. I see evidence of real poverty and its tangible effects on peoples' lives every day I go to court. I don't pretend to have a silver bullet to solve the problem, either.
"
I'm reminded of an observation I made in January about affluence and sources of income, which I referred to as the Tennessee Taxonomy. Just because you are deriving your income from public entitlements does not mean that you are living a comfortable lifestyle -- nor does it mean you are living an uncomfortable lifestyle. Similarly, if you work for a living or if you live off of accumulated capital, this also is not necessarily indicative of the quality of your lifestyle.
Here, the question is whether someone who meets the definition of "poverty" is nevertheless able to live an affluent life. My observation was that yes, this is possible, but very uncommon. As to TVD's point that cable and indeed TV are, in fact, luxuries, we should take into account that if there is enough money to get at least one TV and some kind of non-broadcast programming into it, we're seeing someone who is not at the extreme end of the "lack of affluence" spectrum, regardless of where the money comes from.
"
Less than one percent.
About one percent.
Quite a lot.
1) What's wrong with a doctor liking money? What's wrong with a doctor charging money for her services and even withholding services for non-emergent care if payment is not apparently forthcoming? 2) Lawyers and insurance company executives are greedy fcukers too. So, it seems, are writers with children that have medical problems; despite wanting and needing his kid to receive rhinoribbonectomy, Erik nevertheless didn't want to pay more than he really had to and is not unreasonable for questioning the price for this service. Conclusion: We're all greedy fcukers and that's what makes the world go 'round. 3) In the situation described, The doctor's instructions were to charge the minimum, which doesn't sound all that greedy to me. The doctor appears to have had no particular idea what was going to be charged and the price was determined by a combination of the billing clerk and the pre-set billing codes.
"
The argument, of course, is that we do not need to increase, and possibly can decrease, spending on social welfare programs because "the poor" don't really have it all that bad: for the most part, they have enough to eat, they have somewhere to live, they have households that offer things that at one time were considered luxuries.
A concomitant challenge is asking what index we will use to define poverty. Is it simply income? Is it quality of life, and if so what metric will be used to define it? At your blog, I observed that if quality-of-life is measured by amenities in one's household, my relatively affluent household would look worse off than the median household of below-the-poverty-line households surveyed by the Department of Commerce.
The data and conclusions of the study might not be correct. The factual observations underlying the study are subject to challenge -- is it really true that only .06% of Americans do not have enough food to eat? Is it really true that there is so very little homelessness as the study claims? Is it right to count a refrigerator as a "luxury" amenity? After all, without one, food tends to spoil much faster raising the possibility that hunger would increase and nutrition would decrease.
But the whole article does raise a set of worthwhile questions and observations -- perhaps it is not unreasonable to say that a person with enough food to eat is "less poor" than someone who routinely goes hungry, and it might be the case that our social safety net is such that there really are only a small number of people who are routinely hungry. If that is truthfully the case, then perhaps it's reasonable to suggest that, at least, we may hold at least some portion our government's social welfare spending at its current level without violating principles of social justice.