tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post7456589586862602753..comments2023-10-31T03:18:26.963-07:00Comments on Great Guys Weblog: Exceptionally ExceptionalBrethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15063508651955739056noreply@blogger.comBlogger71125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-44763339304056379902016-11-14T15:00:14.173-08:002016-11-14T15:00:14.173-08:00Skipper,
Down here, the usual amount you would ge...Skipper,<br /><br />Down here, the usual amount you would get is $700 per year per student.<br /><br />You wouldn't find schools for your kids at that price. Nowhere. Which says a lot about our public schools. <br /><br />There are no end of people leaning right-wing who look at US voucher system and say we should do it here too. And they even say we already spend too much with public education!<br /><br />Of course, they mostly have never walked into a typical public school. They sure know it all from the magazines they read. We have been having a wave of pseudo-Conservative (even pseudo-Libertarians) down here, and they are as dumb as our previous wave of pseudo-Socialists.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Clovishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08921327103613284595noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-22959962611130951872016-11-14T12:05:18.110-08:002016-11-14T12:05:18.110-08:00The point is: suppose you delete the public school...<i>The point is: suppose you delete the public schools and give that money to people as vouchers. Can you find schools that charge $4500 per year for your kid? <br /></i><br /><br />Vouchers are supposed to equal the per capita funding schools receive.<br /><br />Those 20 kids bring $4500 each to whatever room they sit in, and for whatever school they go to, that is their income. That is exactly how public schools are funded. Hey Skipperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10798930502187234974noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-86684995932531551632016-11-14T11:15:17.118-08:002016-11-14T11:15:17.118-08:00Skipper,
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Let's say there are 20 kids in a...Skipper,<br /><br />---<br />Let's say there are 20 kids in a room, each bringing $4500 to the table per school year (low amount in the US, IIRC). That means the school somehow has to cover the teacher's salary and overhead within $90,000 per year.<br /><br />Doesn't sound like an insurmountable challenge to me.<br />---<br /><br />The point is: suppose you delete the public schools and give that money to people as vouchers. Can you find schools that charge $4500 per year for your kid? <br /><br />Suppose you can't, and that you are poor enough to not have money to top it up. Then what?Clovishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08921327103613284595noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-74057881581542336102016-11-13T11:44:57.953-08:002016-11-13T11:44:57.953-08:00I don't know about your evidence, but it sures...<i> I don't know about your evidence, but it sures fit mine. Down here you wouldn't pay a good private school with the money a voucher system would give you.</i><br /><br />That's as may be. In the US, SFAIK, vouchers provide the same per capita funding as the public schools receive. Now, that might not pay for a good private school, but that money will create a supply that does not now exist because of the government monopoly.<br /><br />If the goal is to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic, with some history thrown in, how much should it cost to provide a building and teachers to do just that? Let's say there are 20 kids in a room, each bringing $4500 to the table per school year (low amount in the US, IIRC). That means the school somehow has to cover the teacher's salary and overhead within $90,000 per year.<br /><br />Doesn't sound like an insurmountable challenge to me.<br /><br /><i>And apparently, you worry not a bit that you can produce such contradictory statements in the same letter. <br /><br />How come that govt monopoly did not make a rubbish of an education for your children?</i><br /><br />Please re-read what I have said above. I am quite certain I explicitly stated that education is heavily dependent upon culture. In well to do neighborhoods, there are many highly educated parents that can compensate for the <i>horrible</i> math instruction.<br /><br />My children, particularly my daughter, hated math flashcards. But someone had to drill the basics into their heads, and Lord knows the schools had stopped. I could go on, but the essential point is that the teachers' colleges are primarily indoctrination centers. They graduate drooling innumerates. They indoctrinate -- when my daughter was a junior in High School, she had to read a book containing 50 essays that were supposed to be excellent examples of the genre. Somehow that book managed to pack in 50 tedious examples of prog bollocks, and not even one from Christopher Hitchens. <br /><br />Again, I could go on. The point here is that the school selected books for attitude adjustment, not for literary quality. To make matters worse, they were selected by women for women. Guess what -- if you want to destroy a boy's desire to read, that is the perfect way to do it.<br /><br />People who live in nice neighborhoods are the kind of people who can compensate for that. We, in effect, provided school choice, in that we could teach them the math and provide the books that the school system would not.<br /><br /><br />Over roughly 10 years up to 2014, the Anchorage school system's funding increased by 30% per student.<br /><br />Impact on achievement scores or graduation rates?<br /><br />Nil. Nada. Zilch. Squanto-moto.<br /><br />Square root of heck all.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Hey Skipperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10798930502187234974noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-92165070130708643562016-11-10T15:49:18.090-08:002016-11-10T15:49:18.090-08:00Skipper,
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You are assuming a fact not in evide...Skipper,<br /><br />---<br />You are assuming a fact not in evidence: good schools require more money per student than vouchers would provide. Actually, that assumption is directly contrary to evidence.<br />---<br />I don't know about your evidence, but it sures fit mine. Down here you wouldn't pay a good private school with the money a voucher system would give you. Actually, nor a bad private school either.<br /><br />The average expenditure per student of public schools would pay 1 to 3 months of a typical reasonable private school in any big Brazilian city, depending on the city and state. By reasonable I mean one not fancy at all, average middle class type. And not included any further costs with food, clothes or basic individual supplies/books.<br /><br />If you take the worst private schools, that voucher would still make you short of half a year in payments.<br /><br />----<br />There is much more to how much students learn than schools. Teachers unions are a disaster. And government monopolies tend towards rubbish.<br />[...]<br />My kids have always gone to public schools. With a few exceptions — a few instances of ideologically biased teachers and curricula, and the aforementioned pedagogical nonsense in math — their educations have been quite good.<br />----<br />And apparently, you worry not a bit that you can produce such contradictory statements in the same letter. <br /><br />How come that govt monopoly did not make a rubbish of an education for your children?Clovishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08921327103613284595noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-80312726744636241942016-11-10T10:31:11.220-08:002016-11-10T10:31:11.220-08:00Skipper, not so sure that upscale neighborhoods ha...Skipper, not so sure that upscale neighborhoods have the better schools anymore. When schools got nationalized, local school boards had little autonomy and had to kowtow to the teachers' unions -- not so sure private schools are little better. My Yale-connected granddaughter went to arguably the best private schools in the country from pre-school through 12th grade and was subjected to the same leftwing propaganda as the public schools.<br /><br />Here's a true story that happened a couple of days ago. A good friend has a five (5) year old great-granddaughter in kindergarden in an <b>very</b> upscale neighborhood in south Florida. She came home and told her mother that they voted for president at school that day. She voted for the pretty lady because the other person was mean-looking and the teacher said he was a very bad man.erphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09826044412670324694noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-37652434002231313822016-11-10T08:54:58.869-08:002016-11-10T08:54:58.869-08:00[Hey Skipper:] How so? You seem to be falling prey...<i>[Hey Skipper:] How so? You seem to be falling prey to a close relative of the lump of labor fallacy — lump of schools. Assume there is price super-inflation in good schools. And the reaction to that would be …? More schools.<br />---<br />[Clovis:]Yes, more (good) schools but at prices above the voucher - which was my sole point. </i><br /><br />You are assuming a fact not in evidence: good schools require more money per student than vouchers would provide. Actually, that assumption is directly contrary to evidence.<br /><br />For example, if memory serves, the per student funding of Washington DC school system is one of the highest in the country, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/dc-schools-budget-includes-wide-range-in-per-student-spending/2015/04/23/4e1027f0-e919-11e4-9767-6276fc9b0ada_story.html#comments" rel="nofollow">and the schools in the worst areas get far more than those in good neighborhoods.</a>.<br /><br />And the schools getting the most money are absolutely sucktastic. <br /><br />Which means several things. Above a certain, and not awfully high amount, there is no correlation between funding and education quality. There is much more to how much students learn than schools. Teachers unions are a disaster. And government monopolies tend towards rubbish.<br /><br /><i>Is [poor performance down to inner city culture]? US performance does not look restricted to poor kids and schools only.</i><br /><br />I take those numbers with a grain of salt — not that they are necessarily wrong, but they <i>might</i> very well be looking at different populations. For instance, in Germany kids take aptitude tests at about 12 yrs old. The top 30% or so track into university prep educations, and the rest into trade related stuff. <br /><br />If the math tests are given to just the 30%, then the results will be skewed because the German test population is different in a fundamental way from the US test population. I don't know if this is true, but I can't tell from the article if it isn't. (Similarly, infant mortality stats are skewed against the US, because the US definition is far more inclusive than most of the rest of the world.)<br /><br />Regardless of that, the teachers' unions impose teaching colleges on us. Consequently, US pedagogy is a mixture of delusion and marxist derived claptrap. Math education is among the worst. My kids did well in math in part because their parents are proficient in the subject and motivated to get the basics right.<br /><br /><i>Did you ever use public schools in your life, either to you or your children? How was the experience? </i><br /><br />My kids have always gone to public schools. With a few exceptions — a few instances of ideologically biased teachers and curricula, and the aforementioned pedagogical nonsense in math — their educations have been quite good.<br /><br />Perhaps that might have something to do with the fact that we have been able to afford to buy houses in well to do neighborhoods, and well to do neighborhoods are striking for two things: near absence of social pathologies, and the very high proportion of two parent families. <br /><br />Can't help but think there might be a relationship between the two.<br /><br />Hey Skipperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10798930502187234974noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-74020784079008797422016-11-10T06:33:54.732-08:002016-11-10T06:33:54.732-08:00Skipper,
Your cost shifting argument looks an int...Skipper,<br /><br />Your cost shifting argument looks an interesting one. I would need to think and read more about the subject, before saying anything.<br /><br />---<br />How so? You seem to be falling prey to a close relative of the lump of labor fallacy — lump of schools. Assume there is price super-inflation in good schools. And the reaction to that would be …? More schools.<br />---<br />Yes, more (good) schools but at prices above the voucher - which was my sole point.<br /><br /><br />---<br />Quality super-deflation is a tougher nut to crack, because it isn't an economic phenomena. After all, we already have that without vouchers.<br />---<br />We do, the difference being that we would add an economic pressure to it, over the other possible points you mention already in action.<br /><br />---<br />Some, perhaps most, of that is down to inner city culture.<br />---<br />Is it? US performance <a href="http://educationnext.org/us-students-educated-families-lag-international-tests/" rel="nofollow">does not look restricted to poor kids and schools only</a>.<br /><br />---<br />BTW, I find the hypocrisy of many people against vouchers nauseating — Pres. Obama, I'm looking at you. You oppose school choice, and send your kids to Sidwell Friends. And every progressive that checks out the schools before deciding where to buy a house. You all suck.<br />---<br />Did you ever use public schools in your life, either to you or your children? How was the experience? <br /><br />Clovishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08921327103613284595noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-51145873910236590342016-11-03T04:24:22.518-07:002016-11-03T04:24:22.518-07:00[Clovis:] How about re-reading what I wrote about ...<i>[Clovis:] How about re-reading what I wrote about the expanding circle of moral regard, and how American exceptionalism made for more fertile ground, and how revolutionary changes happened here with a conspicuous lack of violence.<br />----<br /><br />You say the civil war was conspicuously lacking of violence?</i><br /><br />No, I didn't come close to saying that. The US has experienced revolutionary changes over the last 50 years with regard to blacks, with relatively little violence. Not none, but taken over the entire period, not much.Hey Skipperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10798930502187234974noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-52832599323251479672016-11-03T04:17:18.229-07:002016-11-03T04:17:18.229-07:00Yes, let's do that. Let's make government ...<i>Yes, let's do that. Let's make government to hand out a $2000 voucher for each citizen yearly, to allow him to spend with dentistry. And another voucher to allow citizens to pay for veterinarians for their pets. <br /><br />What do you think will happen with prices of those services afterwards?<br /></i><br /><br />Good point. Government backed loans have driven college costs through the roof.<br /><br />So that could well leave a mark. However, my proposal isn't for a voucher of some amount for each citizen, but rather a voucher amount that tails off with income. So most wouldn't get anything, which means the affect would be much less. Also, unlike colleges, which are almost a fixed quantity, the market can easily and quickly respond to greater demand in dentistry and vet care. After all, if there is more money to be had, it isn't as if more won't enter those professions. Supply and demand.<br /><br /><i>I don't know which voucher model you have in mind. I have the following: all public schools are closed down, and all revenue used to pay for them is translated into a voucher to each parent to spend with his kids. <br /><br />You are providing parents both a choice, and also most probably nullification of the voucher purchasing power over the years - either due to price super-inflation (in good schools) or quality super-deflation (in the bad ones).</i><br /><br /><br />How so? You seem to be falling prey to a close relative of the lump of labor fallacy — lump of schools. Assume there is price super-inflation in good schools. And the reaction to that would be …? More schools.<br /><br />Quality super-deflation is a tougher nut to crack, because it isn't an economic phenomena. After all, we already have that without vouchers. Some, perhaps most, of that is down to inner city culture. The rest comes from retarded pedagogy peddled by brain dead teachers' colleges. Those two phenomena feed on each other. After all, outside inner cities where resident fathers are nearly as rare as unicorns, there is far more likely to be parental resources to counteract the crap teaching that goes on even at good schools (math education is notoriously bad.) Also, there's the selection problem — if schools are allowed to get rid of problematic students, then they will concentrate in horrible schools. Of course, we have a selection problem now: problematic students help turn schools horrible.<br /><br />BTW, I find the hypocrisy of many people against vouchers nauseating — Pres. Obama, I'm looking at you. You oppose school choice, and send your kids to Sidwell Friends. And every progressive that checks out the schools before deciding where to buy a house. You all suck.Hey Skipperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10798930502187234974noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-44546914615506797332016-11-03T03:04:46.139-07:002016-11-03T03:04:46.139-07:00[Clovis:] Can you prove [medical cost shifting], o...<i>[Clovis:] Can you prove [medical cost shifting], or should I take your word for it? </i><br /><br /><a href="http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/2/2/20.full.pdf" rel="nofollow">Here.</a> (That is from 1983, but it appears to apply all the way up to Obamacare. Google [health care cost shifting] then set a custom date range for before 2010. I was too lazy to do that.)<br /><br /><i>In recent years, an increasing gap has arisen between the actual cost of serving a Medicare or Medicaid patient and the reimbursement a provider can expect from government for this service. The gap has arisen because government does not shoulder a portion of the costs of serving people who are ineligible for government programs yet cannot pay their bills, as well as a share of common costs involving outlays for research, teaching, and others. Furthermore, even the direct costs of meeting the hospital needs of Medicare and Medicaid patients are reimbursed by government at rates that fall well short of full economic costs. For example, Medicare will pay hospitals only for its pro rata share of depreciation based on an asset’s original costs, which is far below its re- placement cost. <br /><br />The government justifies the gap between actual total costs and reimbursement by insisting that it is only doing what any prudent purchaser would do, namely, it is paying doctors and hospitals only for the costs strictly and directly attributable to serving government beneficiaries. <br /><br />The prudent purchaser argument–that a payer should not pay for any costs generated by any other payers’ patients–seems reasonable. But it raises the troublesome question of who will pay those costs of doing business that cannot be directly allocated to any particular patient. If these direct costs are not shared as common costs, they will end up being paid by those enrolled with a minority of charge-paying private insurers. <br /><br />The shortfall in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement of doctors and hospitals has led these health care providers to shift the unreimbursed costs of serving government to private sector payers. The shift occurs when hospitals charge some patients more for the same service than others. People who pay hospital bills themselves, or are insured by either a commercial insurance company or by an employer directly, pay more for the same service than Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. Payments to hospitals by Blue Cross/ Blue Shield plans seem to fall somewhere in between government reimbursement and payments by commercial insurers. Simply put, through the cost shift, private patients subsidize public pro- gram beneficiaries.</i><br /><br />I have direct personal experience of what is described in the last para. And Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement has gotten much worse since this was written.Hey Skipperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10798930502187234974noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-82613938721503361982016-11-01T07:53:27.342-07:002016-11-01T07:53:27.342-07:00Skipper,
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Did it occur to you that one of -- i...Skipper,<br /><br />---<br />Did it occur to you that one of -- if not the primary -- reason for that is cost shifing?<br />---<br />Can you prove that, or should I take your word for it?<br /><br /><br />---<br />How about looking at medical sectors where cost shifting and government interference is far less. Dentistry, for instance. Or optometrists and lasik eye surgery. Cosmetic surgeons. <br /><br />And, especially, veterinarians.<br /><br />About that: medical procedures on dogs and cats are just as complex as the same procedures on humans. Why, then, are they so much less expensive?<br />---<br />Yes, let's do that. Let's make government to hand out a $2000 voucher for each citizen yearly, to allow him to spend with dentistry. And another voucher to allow citizens to pay for veterinarians for their pets. <br /><br />What do you think will happen with prices of those services afterwards?<br /><br /><br /><br />---<br />I'll take the easy one first. School vouchers provide parents a choice, they do not provide anything like a minimum income. <br />---<br />I don't know which voucher model you have in mind. I have the following: all public schools are closed down, and all revenue used to pay for them is translated into a voucher to each parent to spend with his kids. <br /><br />You are providing parents both a choice, and also most probaly nullification of the voucher purchasing power over the years - either due to price super-inflation (in good schools) or quality super-deflation (in the bad ones).<br /><br />Clovishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08921327103613284595noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-42757432195693278782016-11-01T07:42:02.815-07:002016-11-01T07:42:02.815-07:00Skipper,
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Accountability in the military isn&...Skipper,<br /><br />----<br />Accountability in the military isn't nearly what it should be — I know this from very personal experiences — but it is far greater than in the political realm. [...]<br /><br />[After a list of punished officers] For having a consensual relationship with a subordinate.<br />----<br /><br />I wonder what accountability means for you. What you have shown, up to now, is that the paranoia over sex, widespread in the American society, translates to the Army too. Oh, what a surprise! And that's accountability?<br /><br />Pray tell me, can you point out a civilian institution accused of <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-audit-army-idUSKCN10U1IG" rel="nofollow">fudging its numbers</a> by more than $9 Trillion (you read right, trillion) dollars?<br /><br />Let's take take the Army response to that:<br /><br />"The spokesman downplayed the significance of the improper changes, which he said net out to $62.4 billion. “Though there is a high number of adjustments, we believe the financial statement information is more accurate than implied in this report,” he said."<br /><br />Which means, in the best case scenario, they fudget it by only $62 billions? It dwarfs any corruption scandal we have had down here in Brazil. <br /><br />I don't see much accountability even where there should be numbers being counted!<br /><br /><br />----<br />How about re-reading what I wrote about the expanding circle of moral regard, and how American exceptionalism made for more fertile ground, and how revolutionary changes happened here with a conspicuous lack of violence.<br />----<br /><br />You say the civil war was conspicuously lacking of violence?<br /><br /><br />Clovishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08921327103613284595noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-63703381523501277642016-10-30T06:23:13.555-07:002016-10-30T06:23:13.555-07:00Skipper, funny thing too about veterinarians -- it...Skipper, funny thing too about veterinarians -- it's harder to get into a vet school than med school, so they get the better/smarter people and they don't have to put up with government interference.<br /><br />It's hard to convince people like Harry, but back in the day, single practitioner doctor's offices dotted the landscape even in our low to middle-middle class Queens NY neighborhood. People weren't dying in the streets and there were many old people, newborns made it okay, so health care was affordable and the non-system worked. Of course, that was before preventative medicine was born, the same preventative medicine that is now, after many decades of milking the system, under attack as "overkill." <br /><br />In the very low income areas, there were free clinics and major hospitals had free clinics too, many once a week, where the even toney Park Avenue doctors volunteered their time.<br /><br />So since then as the compassionates have perfected healthcare into just another arm of government, it's outrageously expensive with bills of 30 and 40 thousand dollars for simple procedures like my recent gallbladder removal make it prohibitive for most people other than left wing elites to pay. Last time I calculated our yearly costs some years ago, it was over $14,000 for all the << free stuff >> we get!<br /><br />The charges for three hospitalists for the four days I was under their "care" was $6,000. Time spent with me in total by the three was less than 20 minutes. On our bill, was an additional $600+ to the discharging doctor for filling out the form.erphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09826044412670324694noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-61257597433683717692016-10-30T04:45:15.724-07:002016-10-30T04:45:15.724-07:00[Clovis:] You look to think that, by doing so, th...<i>[Clovis:] You look to think that, by doing so, that total amount must be less than now. I presented evidence that, in the least, says it is not a straightforward case: the private system has shown higher costs and higher growth of costs. </i><br /><br />Did it occur to you that one of -- if not the primary -- reason for that is cost shifing?<br /><br />How about looking at medical sectors where cost shifting and government interference is far less. Dentistry, for instance. Or optometrists and lasik eye surgery. Cosmetic surgeons. <br /><br />And, especially, veterinarians.<br /><br />About that: medical procedures on dogs and cats are just as complex as the same procedures on humans. Why, then, are they so much less expensive?<br /><br /><i>I am not sympathetic to the idea of a specific minimum income for specific areas: like healthcare or school vouchers.</i><br /><br />I'll take the easy one first. School vouchers provide parents a choice, they do not provide anything like a minimum income. Right now, the law in most states requires that the per capita school funding, paid for entirely out of taxes, may be spent only at state run schools, infested with unions that shouldn't exist in the first place. School vouchers provide the per capita funding to the parents instead, and gives them the power to decide where that money should be spent. There are downsides and complications, no doubt. But just as certainly, there are very real downsides to many state run schools, and all teachers' unions.<br /><br />As for healthcare, there are two problems: cost and affordability. Obamacare did nothing for cost, and could not possibly have done, because all it did was redistribute income and impose coverage. It didn't touch medical standards or tort reform, nor did it so much as glance in the direction of perverse incentives: people need to pay something at the point of consumption.<br /><br />Using veterinary medicine as a model -- pretty much a free market, with almost no insurance involvement, prices for comparable procedures are roughly a tenth of what they are for people. Replacing an ACL on a dog? <a href="javascript:void(0);" rel="nofollow">$20-50,000.</a><br /><br />Ten to twenty times as much for essentially the same damn thing. Why?<br /><br />If human healthcare had to contend with something like the same market forces as veterinarians do, and did not impose tort and associated defensive medicine costs as is the case now, then why should we not expect prices to go down? Which means the minimum income should go down, not up.<br /><br />That's the cost side. If Obama had tackled that first, then the affordability problem would have been a lot simpler, because fewer people would be too poor to provide for themselves.<br /><br />But he didn't, did he?<br /><br />Hey Skipperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10798930502187234974noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-1949601383418922222016-10-29T01:38:09.976-07:002016-10-29T01:38:09.976-07:00Skipper,
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The point, which you seem to be mis...Skipper,<br /><br />----<br />The point, which you seem to be missing, is that if there are no income barriers to purchasing health coverage — in other words, a sector specific guaranteed minimum income — then all existing government spending happens in a different way. Therefore, adding individuals' spending to existing government spending amounts to counting twice what only exists once.<br />----<br />I did not add govt spending to individual spending. I only deleted all present govt spending and used it as a first number to calculate how much the richer would need to subsidize the poor on health care under your plan.<br /><br />You look to think that, by doing so, that total amount must be less than now. I presented evidence that, in the least, says it is not a straightforward case: the private system has shown higher costs and higher growth of costs. And I've chosen data up to 2011 so you could not blame ACA just yet.<br /><br />I am sympathetic to the idea of a general minimum income for people. I am not sympathetic to the idea of a specific minimum income for specific areas: like healthcare or school vouchers.<br /><br />And it is about price setting theory, again. <br /><br />A general minimum income is money the person will use in the market out there, ANY market out there. Which is a better approximation of a ideal free market.<br /><br />A specific mininum income is money you will use only in a specific - and possibly far from ideal - market. Health care happens to hardly be a market attending those simplistic 'ideal' conditions. They are less constrained by supply and demand, and can better insulate themselves against competition.<br /><br />The end result is: in such specific markets, chances are high that your minimum income soon won't be minimal at all. Where you would have a median or average to set the line of cut (below which people get money), that line will move to be your floor.<br /><br />So, in brief words, I see your plan as getting the worse from both capitalism and socialism at the same time. Clovishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08921327103613284595noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-46224966968836719592016-10-28T09:00:27.747-07:002016-10-28T09:00:27.747-07:00What I take from the above cases is: if you are a ...<i>What I take from the above cases is: if you are a very big Chief, like Patraeus, be sure you can do whatever you want, no one will get you while in the Army. Only make sure you do not go to work as a civilian in the CIA, the privilege package there isn't that big.</i><br /><br />Aside from the apparently unimportant facts that he trashed his military career, and has a conviction record he has to report. For a, in the grand scheme of things, a trivial violation compared to Hillary!'s email server.<br /><br />Accountability in the military isn't nearly what it should be — I know this from very personal experiences — but it is far greater than in the political realm. I personally know of an officer who spent time in jail because of an affair with an enlisted subordinate. I personally know of an officer who had been promoted to general, then, when certain facts came to light, was threatened with a court martial if he didn't resign at a lower rank. <br /><br />For having a consensual relationship with a subordinate.<br /><br /><i>Maybe mine was a poor phrase, but I surely counted on your good attention. Last time I checked Russia was not 90 years ago. </i><br /><br />Yes, it was a very poor phrase.<br /><br />No, Russia was more like 115 years ago. Our Civil War came more than 50 years before that, and a century before communism's disdain for the individual gave us the gulag, mass executions, and the holodomor. <br /><br />Or every instance of class warfare ever.<br /><br /><i>History is actually a lot richer than that. You may enjoy checking this timeline. </i><br /><br />You are making one of the most common logical errors to be found: judging people long dead by contemporary moral standards. Then compounded that error by apparently not reading your cite. What about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_slavery_timeline#1900.E2.80.93present" rel="nofollow">1900-present?</a><br /><br />How about re-reading what I wrote about the expanding circle of moral regard, and how American exceptionalism made for more fertile ground, and how revolutionary changes happened here with a conspicuous lack of violence.<br /><br /><i>It may come as shock to you, but the USA does not have a monopoly, nor a primacy, on morality. </i><br /><br />Not nearly as much as the shock to you that I never made that claim.<br />Hey Skipperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10798930502187234974noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-86440682995891582772016-10-28T09:00:08.150-07:002016-10-28T09:00:08.150-07:00[Clovis:] Of course, Skipper. You just found the f...<i>[Clovis:] Of course, Skipper. You just found the final solution to healthcare, how come no one ever thought about that?<br /><br />The only reason you spend $1.17 Trillion health care is because anything govt touches is mightily inefficient, you just take it away and costs can only be lower! <br /><br />Oh my, what those facts are doing there, messing up my theory? No, just forget you saw that, it is rubbish.<br /> </i><br /><br />Did you read what I wrote? I'm going with "no".<br /><br />If you count current spending on health care, and then add spending by different means that displaces current spending, then you are double billing. <br /><br />The point, which you seem to be missing, is that if there are no income barriers to purchasing health coverage — in other words, a sector specific guaranteed minimum income — then <b>all</b> existing government spending happens in a different way. Therefore, adding individuals' spending to existing government spending amounts to counting twice what only exists once.<br /><br />That should be obvious enough, and doesn't require any speculation. <br /><br />Changing health care coverage in this way will have knock-on effects, which are more speculative, but can't be ignored. When people can trade coverage costs, then they get price sensitive. Because I am fortunate enough to earn enough money to purchase coverage (Extremely important factor here: because my employer purchased on my behalf health care coverage does not show up as income, then I am not taxed on it. That means I pay 28-35% less for exactly the same thing than someone who is paying out of pocket. Because progressives are beholden to unions — one of which I am a member — Obamacare didn't touch this hideous moral offense.)<br /><br />So why hasn't anyone thought of it?<br /><br />I can only guess.<br /><br />The first, and most obvious answer is that there are no end of things I haven't taken into account. <br /><br />Following that, in decreasing order of probability: Progressives think people are stupid, and require the close embrace of mother government to save them. Conservatives can't stand the thought of people getting that which they haven't earned.<br /><br />There's a reason I posed this in the first place. I am certain that if honestly posed, selling this kind of redistribution to the conspicuously fortunate among us — one of whom is me — would be a slam-dunk. It puts government in the position of leveling the playing field, addresses an obvious need, preserves the power of the market, and gives the well off an opportunity to feel good about themselves.<br /><br />Put differently: politicians are pathetic reptilian assholes. That they haven't thought of something is no indictment of the idea.<br />Hey Skipperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10798930502187234974noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-81123427587265360042016-10-28T07:19:45.041-07:002016-10-28T07:19:45.041-07:00Skipper,
---
Also, you are double billing my pro...Skipper,<br /><br /><br />---<br />Also, you are double billing my proposal. [....] The net cost to the budget will be less than $1.05T, perhaps much less. <br />---<br />Of course, Skipper. You just found the final solution to healthcare, how come no one ever thought about that?<br /><br />The only reason you spend $1.17 Trillion ion health care is because anything govt touches is mightly inefficient, you just take it away and costs can only be lower! <br /><br />Oh my, <a href="http://www.nber.org/digest/feb16/w21815.html" rel="nofollow">what those facts are doing there</a>, messing up my theory? No, just forget you saw that, it is rubish.<br /><br /><br /><br />---<br />No, let me help you with your misconception. There isn't enough accountability in the military, but there is far more than in the rest of government. Compare Patraeus v. Clinton. Or these guys. Or these.<br />---<br />Really?<br /><br />What I take from the above cases is: if you are a very big Chief, like Patraeus, be sure you can do whatever you want, no one will get you while in the Army. Only make sure you do not go to work as a civilian in the CIA, the privilege package there isn't that big.<br /><br />If you are a bit of a lesser Chief, well, don't mess up with the wrong people just yet, for they can finally stop giving cover for you after 10+ years.<br /><br />Oh, and the last link is all about making sure your inferiors keep knowing their places, there are no lack of arbitrary laws to throw at their faces whenever needed.<br /><br />Thanks, Skipper, for proving my point. I couldn't do better myself, ever.<br /><br /><br />---<br />[Clovis] Last time I checked, relatively very few of those places had slavery.<br />Russia didn't have slavery? What the heck do you call serfdom, or the gulag?<br />---<br />Maybe mine was a poor phrase, but I surely counted on your good attention. Last time I checked Russia was not 90 years ago.<br /><br /><br />---<br />Outside the West, the notion that individuals possess inherent rights simply did not, and mostly still doesn't, exist. Within the West, that notion is most prominent in the Anglosphere, and within the Anglosphere, has its most explicit expression in the US.<br /><br />Nothing religious about that, it's all a matter of history.<br />---<br /><br />History is actually a lot richer than that. You may enjoy checking this <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_slavery_timeline" rel="nofollow">timeline</a>.<br /><br />Or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_women%27s_suffrage" rel="nofollow">this one</a>.<br /><br />It may come as shock to you, but the USA does not have a monopoly, nor a primacy, on morality. <br />Clovishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08921327103613284595noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-30710088538720828682016-10-28T04:06:02.927-07:002016-10-28T04:06:02.927-07:00Harry, until you provide your definition of rightw...Harry, until you provide your definition of rightwinger, I will continue to use the generally accepted definition used in the media which is a fascist, i.e., a socialist who prefers crony capitalism to a totally state controlled economy.<br /><br />Congratulations on reading Acton. Please explain how and why that pertains to the <i>price of tea in China*</i>.<br /><br />*For Clovis: Saying from the old days denoting a nutso/off-the-wall non sequitur.erphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09826044412670324694noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-50291696788411851582016-10-28T00:31:15.792-07:002016-10-28T00:31:15.792-07:00[Harry:] There's your actual evidence, Skipper...<i>[Harry:] There's your actual evidence, Skipper.<br /><br /></i><br /><br />That's not evidence, that is more bloviating. <br /><br />Here is your assertion: <i>I can think of plenty of areas inside the West where [the assertion individuals possess inherent rights] doesn't exist, and even if I limit myself to the Anglosphere it would take me many days to list them.<br /> </i><br /><br />Amount of evidence, or even explanation, you have provided: zeeeeeeero.<br /><br />Pretty much par for your course.Hey Skipperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10798930502187234974noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-51004700259152211412016-10-27T23:46:21.953-07:002016-10-27T23:46:21.953-07:00'Who knew?'
I did not call him a fascist,...'Who knew?'<br /><br />I did not call him a fascist, I called him a poster boy of the rightwing, which he is. <br /><br />I have read Acton, which is more than you have. I purchased my highly-subsidized copy of his lectures on the Confederacy -- he loved it -- from a rightwing publishing concern.<br /><br />There's your actual evidence, Skipper.Harry Eagarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04196202758858876402noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-41261780970741338702016-10-26T15:13:40.658-07:002016-10-26T15:13:40.658-07:00[Harry:] I can think of plenty of areas inside the...<i>[Harry:] I can think of plenty of areas inside the West where it doesn't exist, and even if I limit myself to the Anglosphere it would take me many days to list them.<br /><br />We could start with the rightwingers' poster boy Acton, for example.<br /></i><br /><br />How about you start with actual evidence, since your bloviations are so notoriously unreliable.Hey Skipperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10798930502187234974noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-45651856357780027342016-10-26T13:08:39.387-07:002016-10-26T13:08:39.387-07:00Harry -- Wow ! Acton a fascist? Who knew?Harry -- Wow ! Acton a fascist? Who knew?erphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09826044412670324694noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-23051029997987686602016-10-26T12:22:13.058-07:002016-10-26T12:22:13.058-07:00'Outside the West, the notion that individuals...'Outside the West, the notion that individuals possess inherent rights simply did not, and mostly still doesn't, exist.'<br /><br />I can think of plenty of areas inside the West where it doesn't exist, and even if I limit myself to the Anglosphere it would take me many days to list them.<br /><br />We could start with the rightwingers' poster boy Acton, for example.<br /><br />Harry Eagarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04196202758858876402noreply@blogger.com