On Jan 7, 2008 1:32 PM, John Oliver <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 06, 2008 at 07:45:10PM -0800, Bob La Quey wrote:
> > Why shouldn't grocery stores simply charge a flat rate for everyone
> > for a week's food then let er rip? This clearly has become popular
> > for phone services. What else might a flat rate work for?
>
> Because my weeks' worth of food would be steak, lobster, champagne, a
> fifth of booze every night, a carton of smokes, and so on and so forth?
> ;-)
So the average price (like with telephone service) would go up to cover
you and all of the rest of us. Pretty soon a norm would be found. People
who like convenience would go for it. Just like now people who like convenience
rarely shop for the lowest price.
The argument that you just made certainly must apply to those big
cafeterias that offer a wide selection of food for a fixed price. Why are
they successful?
> This leads us back to health care. We cry for "universal health care".
> We believe that, in the richest nation on Earth, nobody should want for
> life-saving medical care. Right? Well, isn't food a basic human need?
> Shouldn't we all have a basic human right to eat? Why shouldn't we be
> able to walk in to the store and take what we need, because we'll die
> without food? Simple... the grocery stores would be stripped bare
> within minutes of opening. Those who provide food would cease to do
> so... they would have no incentive to raise food beyond what they needed
> for themselves. And the health care industry faces the *exact* same
> problem... we cannot force doctors to work for free, or electric
> companies to provide power to hospitals for free, or construction
> companies to build hospitals for free.
This is a intriguing argument. Do you really think we should let people
starve in the streets? After all people can only eat so much. If food were
provided to people free of charge (i.e. the costs were covered in some
other way) do you really think they would eat a lot more or hoard food?
BTW, for what are very good economic reasons the American farm market
is far from capitalist. Indeed it is heavily subsidized and highly regulated.
Ever wonder why?
> Economics is not about "money". People get too tied up in the idea of
> money, and jealousy over those who have more of it than they do, and the
> idea that the world exists so that large corporations can bleed us of as
> much as possible. Economics is about the study of the allocation of
> scarce goods. Food is scarce... there is less of it than there is of
> potential demand. Same with medical care. What system could possibly
> work other than capitalism? My efforts are worth a certain amount of
> money. I then decide how to allocate that money to fulfill my needs and
> wants. I never have "enough", so I must prioritize and sacrifice. Yes,
> I may one day have a "need" that I cannot fulfill (say, an urgently
> necessary medical procedure that will cost $1,000,000 and that no
> insurance I have might cover). I might die because I don't have enough
> mnoney. Is that "fair"? Of course not. But it is "right", because any
> other way that we might allocate our health care will be fundamentally
> flawed and be doomed to failure.
I can assure you that our healthcare system is far from either any
capitalist ideal or almost any other form of "rational" allocation
scheme. What we have is an ad hoc system evolved from after
WW II that now is driven by a large number of vested interests.
It is _not_ capitalism for sure. Nor is it socialism. Believe it or
not Horatio there are many other alternatives under the sun.
> Doctors require years and years of education, hard work, sacrifice, etc.
> If they are not promised large six-figure salaries at the end of all of
> that, why not become a plumber instead? Sure, some people will be
> motivated enough to go through all of that to "serve humanity" and give
> their services away. But we know that "enough" will not... we have a
> difficult time getting more doctors now because of the massive burdens
> placed upon them in the form of taxes, inevitable malpractice suits and
> the coverage necessary to defend against it, etc. Canada and the UK
> have serious shortages of doctors... they come to the US to practice,
> retire, etc. and new people are not taking their place. They're
> recruiting medical students from the Third World to try to make up a
> little bit of lost ground. So, if doctors must be paid (or farmers),
> where does the money come from? Directly, from those who use their
> services? or, indirectly, from everyone, in the form of a crushing tax
> burden that lessens productivity and so the total amount of wealth
> available to everyone?
Well it has been at least 40 years since the bulk of doctors money in the
USA came from patients directly. Funny how insurance works, be it private
or public. So the "crushing burden" of bureaucracy and administrative overhead
is with us in both the government and the private insurance sectors. One
can certainly argue, and many do, that the administrative overheads associated
with redundant private bureaucracies far overshadows the cost of a single
payer system.
> Yes, I know... "all members of society should be happy to pay those
> taxes because they might someday need care". Well, we already have
> that. It's called insurance. I can opt to pay every month in case I
> need care, or I can keep that money and be responsible for any costs
> that arise.
And when you keep the money do we let you die in the street?
> The same goes for food... the farmer raises a surplus of grain or cows
> because he sells it for a profit. That's where our food comes from.
> Money allows us to acquire goods and services that we could not get by
> direct barter. My skills would be of little use to a farmer, so he
> would not trade me a meal for some computer work, except maybe very
> occasionally. I could try to barter my labor to someone who then
> barters theirs to a blacksmith who then barters his to the farmer, but
> that gets messy. Money lets me exchange my labor for a
> commonly-accepted medium which I can then use for any good or service I
> desire. That's a fundamentally sound system. Like I said, it isn't
> "fair", and it sometimes does not work as quickly as we'd like or in the
> exact way we wish it would, but it *works*. The more we tamper with
> that system, to try to get more "fairness" or "equality", the worse off
> we are overall.
John, John, you make statements, assertions, as if they were true
simply because you make them as statements. Can you provide
even minimal proof that
"the more we tamper with that system, to try to get more "fairness"
or "equality", the worse off we are overall."
I have spent the last week reading quite a good book that would
argue that what you are saying is economic nonsense. It turns out
that systems that distribute income more equally come into an
equilibrium where the total output of goods and services is far higher
than those that do not. Why? Simply because poor people spend
more of their income than the rich and so if you provide the poor
with more income (by transfer payments, like taxes) they spend it
and the overall production of the society needed to provide the
goods and services needed goes up.
This is a very interesting result, one that is both easy to model
and easy to show that it has worked in actual situations.
Now I realize that you do _not_ believe this but there is a _lot_ of
economic evidence e.g. the recovery of the US economy from the
Great Depression by spending on WW II that supports this statement.
That spending by the government on armaments during WW II put
many unemployed people to work and, guess what, gave them incomes.
That money was derived from almost confiscatory taxes on the wealthy
and by monetary policies (printing money) that are wholly under government
control.
What, other than blind ideology do you use to support your statement?
"the more we tamper with that system, to try to get more "fairness"
or "equality", the worse off we are overall."
Can you give me some data?
Inquiring minds want to know.
> > Why, for instance, should Puerto Ricans have no foreign policy or
> > currency being essentially a colony of the USA and at the same
> > time no right to vote for President and no representation in the
> > Congress of the USA?
>
> I couldn't agree more. Why should we continue to provide for their
> defense, etc.? Why can't we just sever all ties to Puerto Rico and stop
> spending US dollars there? All of a sudden, the "separatists" would
> scream bloody murder as loudly as they could.
No the separatists would not. They do _not_ see any huge foreign threat
to Puerto Rico.
As I understand it, and I know very little about it, there are three groups:
1) Those who favor the status quo.
2) Those who favor Purto Rican statehood.
3) Those who favor independence, with varying degrees of association
with the USA.
I simply brought Puerto Rico up as an example of a situation where there
are multiple alternatives that have different implications, not certainly
as a situation that I have any passionate or well thought out ideas about.
> A perfect example of the coin having two sides. Puerto Rico could rise
> up and rebel. They could throw the US out. We did it with England 230
> years ago.
<sarcasm>
Yeh and look how much freer and better off we are than our
Canadian cousins who decided not to do it.
</sarcasm>
As it turns out there is this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rico_Democracy_Act_of_2007
>Would we fight to keep it? I don't know. I don't know that
> we care, or that Puerto Rico would be worth fighting to keep. Maybe
> those in Washington believe that it would be worth fighting for. Maybe
> we'd win and write history books that say we were right. maybe they'd
> win and write history books saying they were right. But Puerto Rico
> doesn't want independance nearly badly enough to try to get it, and we
> want to retain it enough to do so, so the current situation is "right".
"Might makes right, eh?" We follow your logic where it leads and all
those Jews who died in concentration camps did just not want life
badly enough during the time in question. This is such BS that I
do not even know where to start.
Sigh,
BobLQ
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