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2020 Democratic Primary Race

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@DalaiLama4EverIf we let states determine everything black people would be slaves in half the states and all the dumb ass white people down south would be happy to keep working for pennies because at least they're better than someone and all the while the plantation owner would laugh at them. It's like that Dave Chappelle joke about rich white people laughing at Trump voters and calling them white trash lol. Confederacy doesn't work. It's been tried twice. It got smacked down twice. The reality is that we do need a federal government, hate to break it to you. 

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Bro... my answer to you wanting to raise the minimum wage is that I prefer Yangs UBI plan... which is a federal government program. Lol. I am on record in this thread saying I’m fine with universal healthcare. 

#HumanityFirst 

I’d rather get into more substantial discussion though if you’re up for it. Because I’m the last two pages you’ve said I’m anti healthcare (wrong) and anti government (wrong in context).

If you want to federally mandate a flat and uniform minimum wage increase what are you’re responses to:

1. Thanatos’ point (in short) saying what people in Kentucky need to live is very different than what people in other parts of the country need. 

This is something I agree with and see all the time. I’m in Iowa.... our “livable wage” is very different than it is out in LA. 

2. Why is raising the minimum wage better than UBI (universal basic income) ??

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22 hours ago, Thanatos said:

I appreciate the detailed response. I still don't get it, and I will lay out why. But first:

Guns kill quite a bit more than 10,000 people in the United States per year. Mass shootings, sure, they are less than 500, though the trend is growing upwards. But gun violence kills a lot of people. About 40,000 people died from gunshot wounds in the US in 2017. And again, its trending upwards, that was more than any year since 1968.

Medicare sucks is a huge generalization. There are plenty of people who would not be able to afford their medication at all except for medicare. Are there problems? Of course there are, but the issues are less with medicare and more with the ridiculous prices hospitals charge and insurances charge as a whole. (I am aware Medicare is an insurance, just saying its not solely an issue of theirs.)

So then to address the point. You are against medicare for all because you don't want it to come at you and yours expense. On what grounds, then, should I pay taxes to the city to support my fire department? My local police? Infrastructure for highways that I never use? Why should we not privatize all of that and just have people buy crime insurance, highway insurance- or tolls, everything tolls- and firefighter insurance? And if you don't have it and you're being robbed the police don't come. If you're on a road you shouldn't be, you're idk, arrested. And if your house is on fire, it just burns down and the firefighters don't come. Plenty of times those things are not your fault, (minus not being on the road, everyone has a GPS at this point). Why should I pay for someone else's misfortune of having their house on fire and needing firefighters? Why should my taxes go to paying the police when I haven't needed them?

Obviously, because society is better off that way. Just like it would be better off if people didn't have to grin and bear it if they have something wrong and hope its not too serious. Because what the GOP doesn't want people to know is that we still end up footing the bill. Someone shows up at the hospital, they aren't going to turn them away if they are dying. And many of those problems can be stopped for far less money if they are caught earlier, but people without insurance won't go until they are forced to. People are far happier in countries with some form of socialized healthcare, but in the US we're too busy diving under the covers at the mention of the word socialism to even consider what it would actually mean, and the fact that we already have socialist system that run just fine.

This even wraps all the way back around to gun control again. You guys, according to our poll, seem to think mental illness is a major factor in mass shootings. You know one of the biggest problems for people who have mental issues? They don't have insurance that will cover it, so they can't get treatment. 

The right's biggest lie is to tell the middle class that the poor person is the problem- You shouldn't have to subsidize the poor people. All the while the top 1% just keep taking more and more of the pot.

So you are correct. 11,000 people die a year thanks to homicides committed by firearms. There are more gun deaths but gun control inst going to stop someone from committing suicide imo. If its not a gun it will be a rope, razor blade, pills or whatever. 

Medicare sucks isnt really a huge generalization. It has some good parts but overall is ass. Patient satisfaction scores are dog shit for them. Hospitals hate it, doctors hate it, there are a few good things, mainly it costs the patient nothing. Outside of that it is a shit insurance program. 

I think you misinterpreted or I did not explain my position. I think universal healthcare being funded through taxes is not really looking at the problem and just throwing money at it. If you want to solve the problem instead of the symptoms you quickly realize you dont need a dollar bill, you need a pen. Throwing money at something NEVER works. If the war on poverty can not be solved by throwing money at it then healthcare sure as hell wont get it done. You really dont need it though. You could TRIM SO MUCH FAT off the healthcare system with looking at the problem and not the outcome but that is not a good sound bite. What sounds better to a poor voting base?

"It is not your fault, it is this big evil kabal over here making sure you stay poor, and I dont want you to do anything, you keep being you. We will make sure that rich Kabal pays for it in blood."

OR

"There are problems with healthcare that are going to change. We need to come up with a plan that is going to make patents on drugs harder to attain for generations, and create a 10 year recovery of assets period, we are going to reduce bureaucracy and paperwork, and use federal grant money as leverage to get these things done, or even talk about taking accreditation's away from hospitals to ensure they comply with a comprehensive healthcare reform."

Its easier to pander to poor people by absolving them of responsibility for anything and saying it is not their fault there is an evil unseen hand.

And a huge reason the middle class is shrinking is because of liberal policies. Or I should say liberal fixes to conservative policies. I think we can all agree that Republicans funnel wealth to the top. Then the do-gooding liberal comes along and passes tax reform to help the poor, and they take those taxes from the middle class because the top has so many loopholes they dont pay taxes anyway. So both parties are terrible for the middle class. The Republicans are evil and the Democrats are incompetent. 

I dont mind revamping healthcare. What I dont want is my family to suffer from a standpoint of the standard of care we receive. I make more than enough to survive whatever taxes they want to throw or whatever recession is coming so the money issue is not important to me what it is the standard of care. If Macy or Gabe come down with something I dont want to be fucking around waiting 3 days to get into see a doctor because now there are 5000 people ahead of me on our hand dandy dog shit system everybody thought they wanted. If my wife were to find out she had breast cancer, I dont want to sit here and have her waiting in line with a bunch of people who are ahead of her and are so because of my dime. Nope. My responsibility is to my family, not yours or anyone elses. If every one else succeeds that is great too, but asking me to pay for others so we can all have shitty healthcare sounds like an ass plan to me. 

Here is an example. Everyone in my wife's family that was a woman has died of ovarian cancer before 55. My wife is 35. 2 years ago when we started to get a bit of wealth we decided this was a problem we could deal with ahead of time. So thanks to my bad ass private insurance we were able to have her genetically tested and see what the likelihood of her getting those cancers were by decoding the genome. It was expensive, and worth it. She has under a 10% chance of getting either and if she were we know exactly what she would have so treatment could commence immediately. So that brings us to why America has an outstanding system. CRISPR is something we are pioneering and nobody is even close. All those wonderful universal healthcare systems around the world are years behind us in technology. Of the top 15 most advanced hospitals on the planet 11 are in the US. CRISPR is going to treat things are the DNA level. Theoretically meaning that all of the conditions people have from birth or congenital defects will be fixed because we will modify the DNA. Think about that. We could see a literal wholesale destruction of diseases to children and guarantee health from birth. And the US will have it long before anyone else.  What funds this ? The government, hell no. They take a triage approach. There are limited resources and we are going to use them for cases they deem the most worthy, they wont try out the fancy new fangled technology because it is too much of an expense. FUCK THAT. 

As to public services, that is extreme. I mean I am for doing away with toll roads anyway, fire departments are closing down in mass, and people hate cops and people are leaving the job and are seeing record low recruitment because people see one 10 bad cops a year and treat them all like assholes. So we may soon find out what it looks like. I am for taxes paying for this because there are no other systems in place. Insurance covers these things. If I get in a car accident and you hit me, your insurance pays, if not mine pays. This is how it should work. It should not be up to the guy 9 cars behind me to pay for it. If I do it at work the employer should pay for it unless it is my stupidity and then my personal insurance should because it is my fault. The person who pays should be the person at fault, at least in my mind that is what makes sense. I should not ask you to pay for something you didn't do. If you didn't swill 30 2 liters and ate 16 pizzas a day for 30 years and then washing it down with some scotch and Vicodin and then smoke a pack of cigarettes you shouldn't pay for it. I own nobody anything that I did not cause to happen. 

I should not have to subsidize poor people if they have the same opportunities as everyone else. Now they dont always and that is sad, something should be done there.  The top 1% is 400,000. You really think we should tax that guy until he makes 120,000 (70%). That is fucking criminal imo. I just dont see why you guys trust the government so much. 

This is the same government that implemented mass incarceration, they privatized the prison systems, created PAC's and Super PAC's, has toppled regimes for oil creating generational instability and hatred towards us, Have created the war on drugs to drive up cocaine prices so they could make a profit through drugs and illegals arms deals, the same government that uses our social security fund to fund wars,  basically the same government that has created the worst problems we have. Oh and by the way somehow lets epstein get killed on suicide watch, after he warns he has been "roughed up" lets his ass get suicided to protect the top. These are the people you want me to trust with my family's healthcare and give my guns too? Have you lost your fucking mind. 

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That last line wasn't a shot, just illustrating how crazy I would have to be.

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On 8/18/2019 at 2:51 PM, Omerta said:

So you are correct. 11,000 people die a year thanks to homicides committed by firearms. There are more gun deaths but gun control inst going to stop someone from committing suicide imo. If its not a gun it will be a rope, razor blade, pills or whatever. 

Completely and utterly disagree. Guns being readily available is proven to increase suicides. A lot of suicides are spur of the moment, they've finally worked themselves up to it. A gun makes it easy. It's much harder for other methods.

Medicare sucks isnt really a huge generalization. It has some good parts but overall is ass. Patient satisfaction scores are dog shit for them. Hospitals hate it, doctors hate it, there are a few good things, mainly it costs the patient nothing. Outside of that it is a shit insurance program. 

All insurance is ass. That was my point. There is nothing that different about Medicare from any other standard insurance. Only the top-of-the-line private insurance does anything better, and they're normally very expensive. For a lot of people, Medicare is the sole reason they are alive, because it allows them to purchase things like insulin for $300/mo instead of $1000/mo.

I think you misinterpreted or I did not explain my position. I think universal healthcare being funded through taxes is not really looking at the problem and just throwing money at it. If you want to solve the problem instead of the symptoms you quickly realize you dont need a dollar bill, you need a pen. Throwing money at something NEVER works. If the war on poverty can not be solved by throwing money at it then healthcare sure as hell wont get it done. You really dont need it though. You could TRIM SO MUCH FAT off the healthcare system with looking at the problem and not the outcome but that is not a good sound bite. What sounds better to a poor voting base?

You have to be able to fund things. "You can't throw money at shit" has been the right's battlecry for everything from healthcare to public schooling. Without funding, you're going nowhere. If you fund something and then wash your hands and say well that's all there is to it, sure you're gonna fail. But funding something is a huge part of helping the problem.

"It is not your fault, it is this big evil kabal over here making sure you stay poor, and I dont want you to do anything, you keep being you. We will make sure that rich Kabal pays for it in blood."

OR

"There are problems with healthcare that are going to change. We need to come up with a plan that is going to make patents on drugs harder to attain for generations, and create a 10 year recovery of assets period, we are going to reduce bureaucracy and paperwork, and use federal grant money as leverage to get these things done, or even talk about taking accreditation's away from hospitals to ensure they comply with a comprehensive healthcare reform."

Its easier to pander to poor people by absolving them of responsibility for anything and saying it is not their fault there is an evil unseen hand.

If you really think poor people have some sort of responsibility for the skyrocketing price of insulin or other prices the insurance companies have made up, I really don't know, lol. Your two statements are not mutually exclusive. We can do all that AND also lower the prices everywhere AND give people medicare for all.

And a huge reason the middle class is shrinking is because of liberal policies. Or I should say liberal fixes to conservative policies. I think we can all agree that Republicans funnel wealth to the top. Then the do-gooding liberal comes along and passes tax reform to help the poor, and they take those taxes from the middle class because the top has so many loopholes they dont pay taxes anyway. So both parties are terrible for the middle class. The Republicans are evil and the Democrats are incompetent. 

Agreed, mostly. I will say the only party that is trying to fix the issue is the left here. The right just wants us to continue trickle down economics.

I dont mind revamping healthcare. What I dont want is my family to suffer from a standpoint of the standard of care we receive. I make more than enough to survive whatever taxes they want to throw or whatever recession is coming so the money issue is not important to me what it is the standard of care. If Macy or Gabe come down with something I dont want to be fucking around waiting 3 days to get into see a doctor because now there are 5000 people ahead of me on our hand dandy dog shit system everybody thought they wanted. If my wife were to find out she had breast cancer, I dont want to sit here and have her waiting in line with a bunch of people who are ahead of her and are so because of my dime. Nope. My responsibility is to my family, not yours or anyone elses. If every one else succeeds that is great too, but asking me to pay for others so we can all have shitty healthcare sounds like an ass plan to me. 

So waiting lines. While its true that if its not that severe, you will have to wait, its not true that people with actual emergencies that are time sensitive- such as breast cancer- have to wait longer than they do now. Also, think about this one. Why are there more wait times? Because there are more people in the hospital. What you are basically saying is "fuck the people right now that can't afford insurance, we can't have them able to go to the hospital and get treatment because then we'd have too many people seeking treatment and we'd cause backups." You have a severe lack of empathy, my friend. Sure, your primary responsibility is to your family, but you also have a responsibility to the good of society. 

Here is an example. Everyone in my wife's family that was a woman has died of ovarian cancer before 55. My wife is 35. 2 years ago when we started to get a bit of wealth we decided this was a problem we could deal with ahead of time. So thanks to my bad ass private insurance we were able to have her genetically tested and see what the likelihood of her getting those cancers were by decoding the genome. It was expensive, and worth it. She has under a 10% chance of getting either and if she were we know exactly what she would have so treatment could commence immediately. So that brings us to why America has an outstanding system. CRISPR is something we are pioneering and nobody is even close. All those wonderful universal healthcare systems around the world are years behind us in technology. Of the top 15 most advanced hospitals on the planet 11 are in the US. CRISPR is going to treat things are the DNA level. Theoretically meaning that all of the conditions people have from birth or congenital defects will be fixed because we will modify the DNA. Think about that. We could see a literal wholesale destruction of diseases to children and guarantee health from birth. And the US will have it long before anyone else.  What funds this ? The government, hell no. They take a triage approach. There are limited resources and we are going to use them for cases they deem the most worthy, they wont try out the fancy new fangled technology because it is too much of an expense. FUCK THAT. 

When I say the US doesn't have the best healthcare system in the world- or even close to the best- it's not because we arent at the top tech-wise. What good does a great advance do your citizens if only the top 2-3% can afford it? It's far better for the nation as a whole to have 200 hospitals that are good and people can afford them, than 11 hospitals that are exceptional that only a few can afford to go to. Also, yes, it is normally the government who funds it, through grants. A lot of medical advances come from universities, which comes from the research done there, which is funded by government grants. Private insurance sure as hell wants you to believe they fund it- and I'm not saying they don't chip in- but it is in fact the government that funds it.

Now CRISPR itself is rather cheap. It's less than $100 for the materials, I don't know how much they charge in practice, though. To prove my point, CRISPR was discovered by someone who is at UC Berkeley, at least she has the patent. And her research was funded by grants. Which is funded by the government. So ironically, your argument that the government doesn't fund anything is undermined by your own example. And the government is still pumping money, resources, and time into this one.

As to public services, that is extreme. I mean I am for doing away with toll roads anyway, fire departments are closing down in mass, and people hate cops and people are leaving the job and are seeing record low recruitment because people see one 10 bad cops a year and treat them all like assholes. So we may soon find out what it looks like. I am for taxes paying for this because there are no other systems in place. Insurance covers these things. If I get in a car accident and you hit me, your insurance pays, if not mine pays. This is how it should work. It should not be up to the guy 9 cars behind me to pay for it. If I do it at work the employer should pay for it unless it is my stupidity and then my personal insurance should because it is my fault. The person who pays should be the person at fault, at least in my mind that is what makes sense. I should not ask you to pay for something you didn't do. If you didn't swill 30 2 liters and ate 16 pizzas a day for 30 years and then washing it down with some scotch and Vicodin and then smoke a pack of cigarettes you shouldn't pay for it. I own nobody anything that I did not cause to happen. 

Of course its an extreme example, but thats the point. Its the same logic you use to deny everyone else the right they have to healthcare. You pay for my home to be put out if its on fire. We all do. We all pay for police, we all pay for roads, (I hate toll roads, too, but that was actually my point- the roads that aren't tolls are paid for by taxes). Yet somehow the idea that we all pay for healthcare is anathema to people who are against it. 

I should not have to subsidize poor people if they have the same opportunities as everyone else. Now they dont always and that is sad, something should be done there.  The top 1% is 400,000. You really think we should tax that guy until he makes 120,000 (70%). That is fucking criminal imo. I just dont see why you guys trust the government so much. 

I think we should have taxes on them that allow other people to have healthcare instead of not, because that's a public service. If that's 70%, then yes. (It's not, though.) Far more of a crime to have a bunch of people uninsured than for some rich guy to be less rich. Again, why should you have to pay for firefighters or police? What's the difference between that and paying for someone to see the doctor? And AGAIN, paying for it up front in terms of letting them go to the hospital is most of the time far cheaper in the long run than letting them wait until they need chemotherapy or any other number of expensive medical procedures to keep them alive. Are you advocating letting them die rather than spend the money we currently do on them? That's the only way you save money here.

This is the same government that implemented mass incarceration, they privatized the prison systems, created PAC's and Super PAC's, has toppled regimes for oil creating generational instability and hatred towards us, Have created the war on drugs to drive up cocaine prices so they could make a profit through drugs and illegals arms deals, the same government that uses our social security fund to fund wars,  basically the same government that has created the worst problems we have. Oh and by the way somehow lets epstein get killed on suicide watch, after he warns he has been "roughed up" lets his ass get suicided to protect the top. These are the people you want me to trust with my family's healthcare and give my guns too? Have you lost your fucking mind. 

And you would have private insurance that makes up prices for services handle it. None of these things have any bearing whatsoever on whether government run insurance would be better than private insurance. The government privatized the prison system because they got lobbied for it, and you're right we need to change that too. 

 

Edited by Thanatos
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On 8/19/2019 at 1:06 PM, Thanatos said:

 

We will have to agree to disagree here. Most people who are suicidal will try multiple times and if a gun isn't present they will try other methods. I think most people that are truly suicidal will find a way to get it done. Personally I dont give a shit about suicide or people who commit suicide. My disdain for them is well documented on this site, and I dont think it needs to be rehashed here.

Not all insurance is ass though. That is my point. What you are saying, or at least what I am hearing, when you say medicare for all is," Pay more for a shittier product." It is really hard to sell me on that. Patient satisfaction surveys who have medicare are also hating it. I can tell you from what I hear that Hospitals try to get people with Medicare out the door because there is no money to be made there. Medicare is paid off of how the patient feels they are treated, which if we are being fair, if you are in a hospital you are probably not in the greatest of moods. This is a true statement medicare has patient satisfaction as a methodology for deciding how much to pay a hospital for their services. How insane is that? There is a reason hospitals just want to do the minimum required and get them out the door and down the road to the next hospital. Imagine what is going to happen to doctors and hospitals if their reimbursement for services is on the whim of a patient. Not good. 

"You cant throw money at things" might be the battle-cry of the right, but you have to admit they are right. 

This result would be shocking, even if we had not spent $21.5 trillion “fighting poverty” over the past 50 years.  Here’s why.

Between 1967 and 2012, U.S. real GDP (RGDP) per capita (in 4Q2013 dollars) increased by 127.3%, from $23,706 to $52,809.  In other words, to stay out of poverty in 1967, the two adults in a typical family of four had to capture 26.9% of their family’s proportionate share of RGDP (i.e., average RGDP per capita, times four).  To accomplish the same thing in 2012, they only had to pull in 12.1% of their family’s share of RGDP.  And yet, fewer people were able to manage this in 2012 than in 1967.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiswoodhill/2014/03/19/the-war-on-poverty-wasnt-a-failure-it-was-a-catastrophe/#1dc3dbbf6f49

I am not going to make you the argument that Republicans are right often, but they are right here. I use this so often because it seems like such a simple solution doesnt it? There is a lack of money here, lets throw money at it (21.5 Trillion) to balance it out. It fails. If throwing money at a problem works then how the hell did all that money from taxes and put into supplemental programs create our current economic climate of wealth distribution at the top. This is insane when you think about it. Telling the government to throw money at a problem is never a fix. WE are fixing a symptom and not the cause, but to many people are out for the rich guys blood. They want to see him murdered in taxes, that is how you excite a base.

If we did all the things I said we would save money for better healthcare. I dont see the need for shitty insurance at that point.  I dont think poor people cause insulin prices to go up. I also dont think I did either so it shouldn't come off my back. See what I am saying? You are taking money from people who did not create the problem so you can throw more money at it. If we didnt create the problem, how are we the solution. Fix the problem at its source, and dont just take the easy option of taking from people who worked their ass off to get where they are only to fail at fixing it. Medicare sucks. Medicare tells you it sucks, the patients tell you it sucks, doctors and hospitals say it sucks, I dont know why we ignore all that and tout it as a good thing. It simply isn't. WE are not looking at attacking the SOURCE OF THE PROBLEM, we are looking at ways to make the rich guy pay for the poor guy who isnt his responsibility. 

When something is free people use it for menial shit. Instead of going to the doctor for a sore throat, buy some cepacol and move on. It is not so much the waiting lines for me though. It really is the standard of care. I dont want to see some tired doctor and overworked staff at the end of the day who are just waiting for their shift to be over because they have been getting inundated with bullshit all day.  Then think about how overworked a system will become. Do you think that when they start taking this out on doctors that more people are going to sign up to go to school for the better part of two decades, to become overworked and make less? I doubt it. The real problem here is America is never going to go full liberal and if thats the case you will never solve the real problem because people are to affixed on the wrong thing. 

As to the lack of empathy. Thats fair. As far as owing society...I dont OWE them anything. People in society owe themselves. It is not up to me to help you and change your life, that is up to you. This whole, "The bootstraps thing is outdated" is horseshit. I did it. I have given society 83 field jobs as of yesterday, over 100K in taxes, 4 office jobs, and a reliable service that everyone needs. My job is done. Those 83 people earn every cent of over 1,000,000 dollars I put into the economy every year. AS far as I am concerned if you havent done more than that dont tell me that I owe society anything. I have given society enough, and yet its idea is to tax me more. Get fucked. Or at least until you can prove to me it wont be a fiasco like our social nets now.

AS to funding. You are wrong. The money that colleges get is funded in large part by big pharma. Gasp, those evil people doing research and funding it to create new medicine. 

https://thevaccinereaction.org/2018/04/big-pharma-pays-universities-for-most-medical-research-in-u-s-today/

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2475454

Private sector pays for most of it

https://www.berkeleywellness.com/healthy-community/health-care-policy/article/who-pays-medical-research

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/03/data-check-us-government-share-basic-research-funding-falls-below-50

 

The materials of CRISPR is cheap. The two decades of research is not.

IF we all pay for healthcare now, why would I be interested in still paying for healthcare for everyone and having my insurance get worse. DO you understand how this is a tough sell? The taxpayer picks up ER visits for people who cant pay anyway, as well as a host of other services. The only thing we dont really cover right now is mental health, which we should take more seriously. 

I got 70 percent because that is the number that people cite when talking about the 50's and the American dream and so on. WE should NEVER make a guy pay more than half of his wealth through government sanctioned theft.  I dont CARE for what reason. I also think you would be surprised how much philanthropy pays for.

 

And the last statement is my point. We handed the penal system over to the government from the states and BAM its privatized anyway. So if that is the end game why not fix the real problem and leave our corrupt government out of it? There is no good to come from a corrupt government interfering in anything. 

 

 

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Guns causing suicides to be more frequent is not an agree to disagree thing. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/guns-and-suicide/

It's simply a fact. Also wrong is the idea that most people who want to commit suicide, will. There are 45 attempted suicides for everyone one that succeeds. 

I admit I was wrong on the funding thing, I was looking at what funds science, and not medicine in particular, article was lumping them together. 

I thin, however, we're just going around in circles here. You're stuck on not taxing rich guys more, you'd rather have poor people not have insurance, when it comes down to it, though you'd really prefer a system that does neither, which frankly, IMO, is a pipe dream.

You still don't explain why everyone has to pay for firefighters and police but not for medical care, as in what the difference in logic is. 

Doctors and nurses are already overworked because the hospitals, in their infinite wisdom, decide that they need to do 12-16 hour rotations so the patients deal with the same people? I'm not sure on the logic here, that's what I've been told is the logic.

Insurances and hospitals already literally make up prices for shit, so yeah I'm okay with not paying the hospital $10 for a single tylenol pill.

I'm not arguing that medicare isn't ass, all insurance is ass. I deal with the fuckers every single work-day. They are all a bunch of money-grubbing, corner-cutting, how can I fuck the patient over to save my company money, scumbags. All of them. To argue that since the current medicare is ass and therefore medicare for all will be ass is just not really an argument. They're two entirely different entities.

I really don't get where you're talking about your insurance getting worse. It would be taken out of your taxes, the vast majority of people that pay for health insurance would pay less. If we want to have like a ranking system or something where you can pay more for more service or something, that's fine. I really don't think its a tough sell at all if you have empathy for your fellow humans. 

I never said you owed society something, I said you had a responsibility to it. That's pretty different to me. Everyone in this country has a responsibility to others. It's great that you've created 83 jobs for people. If you're unwilling to wait a little longer for a cold to get some antibiotics, in order so that other people can see the doctor at all, that's just something that yes, is hard for me to grasp. We would rather have a society where people who are unsure about whether or not something is worth going in for just sits on it and hopes its not life-threatening? Really? The current status quo is insane. We have people rationing insulin and dying because they don't get enough. But god fucking forbid the government "steals" more money from people who can afford it to literally save other people's lives.

I deal with this shit every day, as I said. It makes me upset that people lack empathy so much that they dont want to pay a bit more so that other people can afford the medicine they need to be healthy.

Edited by Thanatos
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It's also interesting that besides the US, the only countries without universal healthcare have been ravaged by colonialism. The US is probably the only country without universal healthcare that anyone in their right mind would want to live in. You know, all those shit hole countries that we sanction, impose dictatorships and steal their resources and exploit their labor and massacre or fund the massacre of their people? To be fair they're not all just former/current US colonies but I bet they're all part of those "free trade" agreements. Lol

You guys say taxation is theft buy I say austerity is theft. 

Edited by seanbrock

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Hey Sean, I think you missed my last post in minimum wage. Scroll up like 3-4 posts, brother.

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Minimum wage isn't enough. Trillions of dollars have been extracted from the middle class over this 4 decade long corporate coup. Only the one percent has benefitted from increases in technology and these trade deals. The rest of us have been told we need to go into indentured servitude for our education with no promises of a job when we're done or to work 2-3 jobs in a service industry or some other low paying job that you have to hope offers benefits. We need to trust bust, we need to democratize the workplace. We need to take the money back that these people have stolen by gaming the system. This whole conservative idea that the only responsibility corporations have is to make the max profit for their share holders is literally poisoning our water supply and destroying the planet. It's not just Republicans though. This is what happens when you have two right wing parties and everyone else is pushed out of the political system. Regular people get fucked. Plain and simple. 

Edited by seanbrock

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$15 isn't even a living wage unless we're talking strictly basic needs. And even then, most people are so unfathomably stupid that by the time they join the working class, they've racked up massive credit debt and can't stay afloat. I like the concept of UBI Do away with other taxpayer funded public assistance programs and go with $1000-1500 UBI.

Edited by BwareDWare94

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1 hour ago, BwareDWare94 said:

$15 isn't even a living wage unless we're taking strictly basic needs. I like UBI. Do away with other government programs and go with $1000-1500 UBI.

To me UBI seems like another corporate welfare scheme. The tax payers are still covering the cost of employment. Also, why wouldn't we bump it up to 2k or something and only give UBI to people that actually need it? 

I think a jobs guarantee would be much better because it actually adds value to the economy. People get free training/education to rebuild and build new infrastructure and help clean up the environment. 

Just wanted to add that a jobs guarantee is also a much better solution to cleaning up neighborhoods than gentrification too. If you started giving people in the hood or in the sticks jobs pensions and a good wage they would repair their own neighborhood not only with their new found skills and knowledge but their new found money. Much better than being stuck in the projects or on section 8 barely surviving off food stamps, welfare and selling drugs.

Edited by seanbrock

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8 minutes ago, Thanatos said:

$15 is absolutely a living wage in the midwest. And we are talking basic needs only. I'm not paying for people to get a big flatscreen TV. I could survive off $15/hr easily.

Yeah but to his point 15 in some places isn't enough. It would be really fucking easy to determine what living wage is by location. It's just a matter of political will. I think everyone would agree that we don't need to be paying for people to live in luxary buy innocent kids shouldn't be going hungry or without healthcare. Isn't it like 1 in 5 kids live in poverty? That's unacceptable in the richest most powerful country in world history that prides itself on freedom. Freedom and poverty are pretty damn close to polar opposites. Poverty and stress also effect academic performance and general health both physical and mental.

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On 8/21/2019 at 12:51 PM, Thanatos said:

$15 is absolutely a living wage in the midwest. And we are talking basic needs only. I'm not paying for people to get a big flatscreen TV. I could survive off $15/hr easily.

That's not true. Yes, our housing is cheaper but we have more unpredictable variables in our expenses. For instance, our vehicles deal with much, much more varied weather. When the thermostat reads -fuckyou a good portion of the year, shit goes to hell faster. Same with our homes. If an individual doesn't have a propane furnace in their home, or very, very good insulation and windows paired with electric heat, their winter utility bill can be massive.

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You shouldnt buy a home on min wage

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Not in a large city, no. It'd be impossible to pay off, but in rural America houses aren't massively overpriced like they are anywhere close to a concrete jungle. Problem is, it's hard to stay afloat when your utilities by themselves can triple or quadruple in the winter if your house isn't in good shape

Edited by BwareDWare94
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6 hours ago, BwareDWare94 said:

That's not true. Yes, our housing is cheaper but we have more unpredictable variables in our expenses. For instance, our vehicles deal with much, much more varied weather. When the thermostat reads -fuckyou a good portion of the year, shit goes to hell faster. Same with our homes. If an individual doesn't have a propane furnace in their home, or very, very good insulation and windows paired with electric heat, their winter utility bill can be massive.

Its absolutely true. I am surviving on $12/hr. I would thrive on 15. Wear jackets indoors, use electric blankets instead of heating a room, and invest in good insulation.

I do agree with you on buying a home though, I think its one of the fastest ways to get out of poverty actually. They are cheaper than apartments, so as long as you can somehow come up with the down payment, you should absolutely buy a home that you can afford. 

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10 hours ago, Thanatos said:

Its absolutely true. I am surviving on $12/hr. I would thrive on 15. Wear jackets indoors, use electric blankets instead of heating a room, and invest in good insulation.

I do agree with you on buying a home though, I think its one of the fastest ways to get out of poverty actually. They are cheaper than apartments, so as long as you can somehow come up with the down payment, you should absolutely buy a home that you can afford. 

Renting is one of the biggest costs of being poor. It costs a lot of money to live in poverty.

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11 hours ago, Thanatos said:

Its absolutely true. I am surviving on $12/hr. I would thrive on 15. Wear jackets indoors, use electric blankets instead of heating a room, and invest in good insulation.

I do agree with you on buying a home though, I think its one of the fastest ways to get out of poverty actually. They are cheaper than apartments, so as long as you can somehow come up with the down payment, you should absolutely buy a home that you can afford. 

I say this being guilty of it myself at times, but no one individual is proof of truth or falsehood. I think we're in the same boat as far as our thoughts on personal accountability--I, for one, would bet every dime I have that most minimum wage workers will be just as broke at $15/hr as they are now because being broke is almost always a sign of poor spending habits, but I do not consider $12/hr a living wage. I'm 100% positive you are underpaid because the intellectual capacity you display on this forum indicates exceptional general competence and, finally, I'm not sure I view $15/hr a living wage either. The average person has more, often much more, than basic expenses. I make $17/hr and still scratch and claw in my strictly 40 hour week winter months

Edited by BwareDWare94

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Enter children into the equation. Say both parents make 15 an hour and they have two kids. They're fucked lol. Do we tell poor people not to have kids if they work minimum wage? What if they're religious and don't believe in contraception? 

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I don’t think utilities are typically the main problem in owning a home when it comes to cost. Plus telling them just to “ buy an electric blanket” or “ invest in better insulation” when their house is cold is incredibly short sighted.

You’re hungry? Just go buy more food... duh you dummy !

I have more to contribute but my break is about over. Gotta go pound out that kinda livable wage 

 

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3 hours ago, seanbrock said:

Enter children into the equation. Say both parents make 15 an hour and they have two kids. They're fucked lol. Do we tell poor people not to have kids if they work minimum wage? What if they're religious and don't believe in contraception? 

Fuck yes tell them that. God damn I am so tired of seeing this shit. Two dumbasses fuck and either the kid or the taxpayer suffer. It is such bullshit. Dont have kids if you cant afford them on your own. How is this not common fucking sense?

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2 minutes ago, Omerta said:

Fuck yes tell them that. God damn I am so tired of seeing this shit. Two dumbasses fuck and either the kid or the taxpayer suffer. It is such bullshit. Dont have kids if you cant afford them on your own. How is this not common fucking sense?

Lol I hear you but people with more money have less kids on average too. This would create a lot of problems. 

"In Japan, employers often struggle to fill job vacancies. Spending on health care and pensions has swollen Japan’s public debt to more than twice the size of its economy. The International Monetary Fund has estimated that the country’s annual economic growth could be 1 percentage point lower for the next three decades because of Japan’s aging population. That means the country’s economy, forecast to expand 1 percent this year and next, may stagnate further"

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-14/humans-having-fewer-babies-is-a-big-economic-problem-quicktake

 

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36 minutes ago, Omerta said:

Fuck yes tell them that. God damn I am so tired of seeing this shit. Two dumbasses fuck and either the kid or the taxpayer suffer. It is such bullshit. Dont have kids if you cant afford them on your own. How is this not common fucking sense?

 

Fucking without contraception should be a damn crime at this point. It's no longer just a pregnancy risk between two people.

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