Why wouldn’t it scale? And more importantly, if it scales fine for the oldest, most expensive, sickest people in the US — Medicare and Medicaid — why wouldn’t it for the far more healthy rest of the US?
Aren't those two unprofitable in their own right and only work because they get subsidies from the rest of the system?
I like the economics of this, I'm not sure the politics work. Lots of people believe that society has the duty to give everything to everyone. That everyone's life has the same value and all that.
As the jackboots kick her in the kidneys while someone in the room screams “STOP RESISTING”, I suppose I could console myself with the thought that I only care about law and order.
Reading over her wiki, I see *nothing* about her being physically attacked, as opposed to scorned. People think poorly of Jane because she was photographed during the war sitting on a North Korean anti-aircraft gun cheerfully clapping and applauding.
The jackboots are imaginary, something the left tells itself to justify its actions. The anti-aircraft gun was real, and presumably killed US pilots.
I don’t know why we’re assuming it can be accomplished by turning health care into a free market mirage rather than the very many more government-centric systems in other countries that have dramatically lower costs.
Multiple reasons. What other countries have had is "lower rates of cost growth", none of them have had any success at actually lowering costs.
I don't know how we can look at our system and escape the conclusion that large amounts of the cost are from rent seeking. Our system already has large amounts of government intervention and so forth, all of the big players have already taken over whatever part of the gov is supposed to be overseeing them. Bureaucracy isn't good at cutting itself.
Lowering costs will be VERY politically painful because it involves firing large numbers of people and/or lowering their pay. Governments are terrible at that sort of thing, markets are great. Every change the gov makes would be opposed by hoards of insiders and their purchased politicians claiming people will die if a change is made. Some of those claims will be correct.
People will die with any change we make. The death rate holds steady at 100%. Half of your lifetime use of medicine happens in the last year or so of life. Everyone thinks we should shift resources so they're more cost effective, most people aren't willing to face the ugly details in terms of what that means, the government is poorly equipped to deal with the implications of all that.
...the Death Star... It's not supposed to defend itself very well.
Several problems with this. First the Death Star could have defended itself against larger attack craft, even just waded through enemy fire (with it's force fields and defensive weapons), blown up whatever planet they were defending, and then left.
Second, the Death Star's purpose was strategic, not tactical. Modern day Earth has the ability to kill all life on the planet with nukes. A single Star Destroyer could do the same thing, which raises the issue of why does the Empire need the Death Star at all?
The answer is force fields. Planetary force fields are so good that it was possible for a planet to encase itself in force fields to the point where the rebels thought they could defend themselves from the empire. The Death Star's purpose was to show them that they were mistaken, it's primary weapon's function was to destroy planets by cutting through the force field guarding them.
Go re-watch the destruction of Alderaan. The beam hits the planet for several seconds, even makes the entire thing glow. That would be the forcefield resisting the beam. Then the force fields fail and boom it's over. If memory serves Vader commented at the time that calling Alderann "helpless" wasn't correct.
Because of that, the Death Star (which was a prototype after all) may have actually been a failure. If Alderann's forcefields had been stronger (which might have been possible), then it would have survived the Empire's super weapon and it would have been another day before the Empire could fire it again. The next Death Star was built so it could repeated fire the main beam and overload even the best shields and also blow up capital ships.
Trench-mounted weapons failed at their job.
Even ignoring the DeathStar was fresh off the production line and clearly hadn't had all the bugs worked out yet, it's a hair awkward to claim both that this was easy and on the other that only Vader and Luke could do this and stay alive.
Further without the vent issue it would have been pointless. It was assumed small craft could not be a threat. Without the vent the little guys just die, how long it takes almost doesn't matter.
Speaking broadly, they were less accurate than WWII anti-aircraft guns.
WW2 anti-aircraft guns didn't have to shoot at targets which can move faster than the speed of light and at distances which need to be measured in light seconds. Further those guns were for larger ships.
How many hundred Gs did the "missile" pull when it made that right-angle turn into the thermal port opening?
You're assuming the "missile" was as fast as the ships. More likely it was (by their standards) pretty darn slow. Luke's ship was able to fly multiple "size of the death star" lengths away from the DS in the time that the "missile" took to fly just it's radius.
A slow missile could also presumably be targeted a lot easier than a fast ship.
How long does he have to build the wall before he stars losing his base?
Just make a fence, hire some drones, have Trump make up a new word (air-fence?) and call it a day. Half of illegals enter legally and then overstay their visas so it won't matter.
Weirdly Trump could (more or less) continue what Obama was actually doing with different rhetoric. I think Obama has done FAR more rounding up of illegals than he wanted to take credit for... thus Obama's adventures into publically claiming he was re-writing policy.
Even complete and wholesale deregulation would do what for medical prices?
First, the best example we have of what happens with wholesale deregulation is medical prices for the treatment of pets.
2nd, even if you assume that prices for a human system must be higher just because we care about that more so demand will be higher, there's *still* a lot of problems in the system which *strongly* suggest the system could be made cheaper.
A almost total lack of transparency for prices/safety means right now it's impossible for consumers to price shop. 3rd party pays means there's often to reason to price shop.
Multiple aspects of the system reduce supply, for example the number of doctors is reduced because training spots is limited; and also reduce competition (for example epi-pens).
And then there are aspects of the system which encourage over consumption, pay by piece/test, defensive medicine.
2.) Non-liberals (or folks such as Dark Matter, however he identifies) argue that liberals ought not complain because no one is/will be dying in the streets.
Oh, I'm all over the place.
And my point is Liberals need to pick their battles. If you react every time he's an ass, then he owns you.
He'll have policy proposals out there which matter, and you'll be complaining about some outrageous tweet which is totally off topic. Trump is sucking all the oxygen away from his opposition by deliberately mis-channeling your outrage.
Dark Matter: The very understandable opposition to Trump is being drowned out by the hysterical wailing.
Mike Schilling: He’s spoken with a foreign leader to interfere with American foreign policy while still a private citizen. Not only does that violate all norms of behavior for presidents-elect, it’s against the law.
Great example. So how much time/whitespace have we spent talking about *that* as opposed to him being an ass with the X-mas greeting and proposing having his daughter as first lady?
I’m just going by what I heard the right-wing noise machine say: Hillary was going to be the death of capitalism, democracy, and Christianity.
I was going to say something spiffy about it being pre-game noise, but I don't actually remember any of that. She was another step in the wrong direction, but hardly the last step.
As evidenced by the hoards of roving Democrats laying siege to the land.
How many riots did we have after the election? How many people, apparently seriously, thought that Trump's election meant they personally were now in danger?
The Imperial Presidency has not, yet, grown to the point where it's a life or death matter.
You're assuming what you're trying to prove, that for the GOP it was a life or death matter. They walked into this thinking they were going to lose, their temper tantrum should have been before the election.
Sure, but even by those standards I think we're cutting new ground.
Some is the whole "didn't start mourning until after the election" bit. Most elections have the winner known weeks or months in advance. Even in 2000 both sides knew losing was at least possible. The Dems though they had it in the bag.
Some is losing to Trump, specifically. At various points in the election there was speculation that he was a Dem plant.
Having said all that, I do wonder if it goes further than that and speaks poorly for the long term stability of the country. If it's actually a matter of life or death for the top guy to be yours, then every election needs to have the rule book tossed out.
Normally Presidents are... Presidental. They skate above things with other people (often the VP) take the role of the designated bad guy.
Thing is, no one is under the illusion that Trump is a nice guy.
Or that the Dems are going to take losing to him with composure and good cheer.
I'm not sure there was any low hanging fruit there. Trump is, once again, diverting attention from things that matter (what he's doing) to things that don't matter (what he's saying).
White people generally; wealthy people without exception, want the cops to not only minimize crime, but minimize the perception of the possibility of crime.
Sure.
And that gets us right into a structural account of why cops kill black folk.
You're assuming what you should be trying to prove. The implication of your statement is police shootings are actually a white thing. That if those white people would stop being so racist then the shootings would drop dramatically. At its root, this is an emotional argument, with some of these videos being it's most powerful support. "Emotional" isn't the same as "right" or "wrong" so let's tease out the missing details.
The best data we have shows the following: Adjusted for situation, blacks are underrepresented in police killings. That implies that it's actually whites who have issues with being shot without justification. "Adjusted for situation" often means "attacking the police".
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/23614-study-by-black-harvard-economist-refutes-black-lives-matter-s-claim
The original study is below, here's a quote, "Given the stream of video “evidence”, which many take to be indicative of structural racism in police departments across America... the results displayed in Table 5 are startling. Blacks are 23.8 percent less likely to be shot by police, relative to whites. Hispanics are 8.5 percent less likely to be shot but the coefficient is statistically insignificant" (page 23).
http://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/empirical-analysis-racial-differences-police-use-force
What it comes down to is the police (even racist police) already view shooting someone as a life changing event which should be avoided if at all possible.
IMHO police reform is a good idea. I don't see the need for government unions whose purpose is to prevent accountability/reform and lobby for more government/higher taxes. Using the police as revenue raisers is a bad idea. But most police reforms won't reduce the number of dead bodies because the problems we have are different than what the emotional argument assumes.
Escalation isn’t a solution unless everyone is willing to end up dead over some stolen cigarillos.
Everyone? One person can escalate, one person can prevent deescalation, and if that someone is willing to die or kill over some stolen cigarillos, then society is faced with the problem of what to do with him.
And the police are going to be implementing for whatever society wants to do about people like that.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Liberals are Smug”
I've got no clue what you're referring to. And "Jane Fonda Beaten" doesn't show anything useful in google.
Link?
"
Aren't those two unprofitable in their own right and only work because they get subsidies from the rest of the system?
"
I have problems with the idea that we can put roughly 25 cents of tax on a transaction that earns 2 cents of profit.
I have larger problems with the calm assurance that no one will change their actions and we'll raise as much money as predicted.
"
I like the economics of this, I'm not sure the politics work. Lots of people believe that society has the duty to give everything to everyone. That everyone's life has the same value and all that.
"
No, they're just suggesting that he won the election because of Russian hacking.
"
Reading over her wiki, I see *nothing* about her being physically attacked, as opposed to scorned. People think poorly of Jane because she was photographed during the war sitting on a North Korean anti-aircraft gun cheerfully clapping and applauding.
The jackboots are imaginary, something the left tells itself to justify its actions. The anti-aircraft gun was real, and presumably killed US pilots.
"
Multiple reasons. What other countries have had is "lower rates of cost growth", none of them have had any success at actually lowering costs.
I don't know how we can look at our system and escape the conclusion that large amounts of the cost are from rent seeking. Our system already has large amounts of government intervention and so forth, all of the big players have already taken over whatever part of the gov is supposed to be overseeing them. Bureaucracy isn't good at cutting itself.
Lowering costs will be VERY politically painful because it involves firing large numbers of people and/or lowering their pay. Governments are terrible at that sort of thing, markets are great. Every change the gov makes would be opposed by hoards of insiders and their purchased politicians claiming people will die if a change is made. Some of those claims will be correct.
People will die with any change we make. The death rate holds steady at 100%. Half of your lifetime use of medicine happens in the last year or so of life. Everyone thinks we should shift resources so they're more cost effective, most people aren't willing to face the ugly details in terms of what that means, the government is poorly equipped to deal with the implications of all that.
On “Regarding the Thermal Exhaust Port “Design Flaw””
Several problems with this. First the Death Star could have defended itself against larger attack craft, even just waded through enemy fire (with it's force fields and defensive weapons), blown up whatever planet they were defending, and then left.
Second, the Death Star's purpose was strategic, not tactical. Modern day Earth has the ability to kill all life on the planet with nukes. A single Star Destroyer could do the same thing, which raises the issue of why does the Empire need the Death Star at all?
The answer is force fields. Planetary force fields are so good that it was possible for a planet to encase itself in force fields to the point where the rebels thought they could defend themselves from the empire. The Death Star's purpose was to show them that they were mistaken, it's primary weapon's function was to destroy planets by cutting through the force field guarding them.
Go re-watch the destruction of Alderaan. The beam hits the planet for several seconds, even makes the entire thing glow. That would be the forcefield resisting the beam. Then the force fields fail and boom it's over. If memory serves Vader commented at the time that calling Alderann "helpless" wasn't correct.
Because of that, the Death Star (which was a prototype after all) may have actually been a failure. If Alderann's forcefields had been stronger (which might have been possible), then it would have survived the Empire's super weapon and it would have been another day before the Empire could fire it again. The next Death Star was built so it could repeated fire the main beam and overload even the best shields and also blow up capital ships.
Even ignoring the DeathStar was fresh off the production line and clearly hadn't had all the bugs worked out yet, it's a hair awkward to claim both that this was easy and on the other that only Vader and Luke could do this and stay alive.
Further without the vent issue it would have been pointless. It was assumed small craft could not be a threat. Without the vent the little guys just die, how long it takes almost doesn't matter.
WW2 anti-aircraft guns didn't have to shoot at targets which can move faster than the speed of light and at distances which need to be measured in light seconds. Further those guns were for larger ships.
You're assuming the "missile" was as fast as the ships. More likely it was (by their standards) pretty darn slow. Luke's ship was able to fly multiple "size of the death star" lengths away from the DS in the time that the "missile" took to fly just it's radius.
A slow missile could also presumably be targeted a lot easier than a fast ship.
On “Liberals are Smug”
Controlling the growth? Yes. Reducing cost? No.
And the missing question in there is how much would UC cost in addition to what we already do?
The story of Universal HC in the USA is one of states attempting to implement it and stopping either before or after it blows up the budget.
"
Just make a fence, hire some drones, have Trump make up a new word (air-fence?) and call it a day. Half of illegals enter legally and then overstay their visas so it won't matter.
Weirdly Trump could (more or less) continue what Obama was actually doing with different rhetoric. I think Obama has done FAR more rounding up of illegals than he wanted to take credit for... thus Obama's adventures into publically claiming he was re-writing policy.
"
You left out "expand government".
That quibble aside, yep. Fiscal conservatives typically get screwed by the GOP the moment they get the ability to spend other people's money.
"
First, the best example we have of what happens with wholesale deregulation is medical prices for the treatment of pets.
2nd, even if you assume that prices for a human system must be higher just because we care about that more so demand will be higher, there's *still* a lot of problems in the system which *strongly* suggest the system could be made cheaper.
A almost total lack of transparency for prices/safety means right now it's impossible for consumers to price shop. 3rd party pays means there's often to reason to price shop.
Multiple aspects of the system reduce supply, for example the number of doctors is reduced because training spots is limited; and also reduce competition (for example epi-pens).
And then there are aspects of the system which encourage over consumption, pay by piece/test, defensive medicine.
"
Sounds like a good prescription for defeat in detail.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeat_in_detail
"
Oh, I'm all over the place.
And my point is Liberals need to pick their battles. If you react every time he's an ass, then he owns you.
He'll have policy proposals out there which matter, and you'll be complaining about some outrageous tweet which is totally off topic. Trump is sucking all the oxygen away from his opposition by deliberately mis-channeling your outrage.
"
Great example. So how much time/whitespace have we spent talking about *that* as opposed to him being an ass with the X-mas greeting and proposing having his daughter as first lady?
"
The very understandable opposition to Trump is being drowned out by the hysterical wailing.
"
Monster? Because of a tweet which didn't kill or injure anyone?
At the moment he's lacking social skills and/or deliberately manipulating people by pushing their buttons.
"
I was going to say something spiffy about it being pre-game noise, but I don't actually remember any of that. She was another step in the wrong direction, but hardly the last step.
"
How many riots did we have after the election? How many people, apparently seriously, thought that Trump's election meant they personally were now in danger?
The Imperial Presidency has not, yet, grown to the point where it's a life or death matter.
"
Very, very well put.
"
You're assuming what you're trying to prove, that for the GOP it was a life or death matter. They walked into this thinking they were going to lose, their temper tantrum should have been before the election.
"
Sure, but even by those standards I think we're cutting new ground.
Some is the whole "didn't start mourning until after the election" bit. Most elections have the winner known weeks or months in advance. Even in 2000 both sides knew losing was at least possible. The Dems though they had it in the bag.
Some is losing to Trump, specifically. At various points in the election there was speculation that he was a Dem plant.
Having said all that, I do wonder if it goes further than that and speaks poorly for the long term stability of the country. If it's actually a matter of life or death for the top guy to be yours, then every election needs to have the rule book tossed out.
"
Maybe.
Normally Presidents are... Presidental. They skate above things with other people (often the VP) take the role of the designated bad guy.
Thing is, no one is under the illusion that Trump is a nice guy.
Or that the Dems are going to take losing to him with composure and good cheer.
I'm not sure there was any low hanging fruit there. Trump is, once again, diverting attention from things that matter (what he's doing) to things that don't matter (what he's saying).
On “Give This Man a Promotion”
Sure.
You're assuming what you should be trying to prove. The implication of your statement is police shootings are actually a white thing. That if those white people would stop being so racist then the shootings would drop dramatically. At its root, this is an emotional argument, with some of these videos being it's most powerful support. "Emotional" isn't the same as "right" or "wrong" so let's tease out the missing details.
The best data we have shows the following: Adjusted for situation, blacks are underrepresented in police killings. That implies that it's actually whites who have issues with being shot without justification. "Adjusted for situation" often means "attacking the police".
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/23614-study-by-black-harvard-economist-refutes-black-lives-matter-s-claim
The original study is below, here's a quote, "Given the stream of video “evidence”, which many take to be indicative of structural racism in police departments across America... the results displayed in Table 5 are startling. Blacks are 23.8 percent less likely to be shot by police, relative to whites. Hispanics are 8.5 percent less likely to be shot but the coefficient is statistically insignificant" (page 23).
http://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/empirical-analysis-racial-differences-police-use-force
What it comes down to is the police (even racist police) already view shooting someone as a life changing event which should be avoided if at all possible.
IMHO police reform is a good idea. I don't see the need for government unions whose purpose is to prevent accountability/reform and lobby for more government/higher taxes. Using the police as revenue raisers is a bad idea. But most police reforms won't reduce the number of dead bodies because the problems we have are different than what the emotional argument assumes.
"
Everyone? One person can escalate, one person can prevent deescalation, and if that someone is willing to die or kill over some stolen cigarillos, then society is faced with the problem of what to do with him.
And the police are going to be implementing for whatever society wants to do about people like that.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.