I see that, but its still fun and besides, I had some time to burn.
No aid until you have actually been to college and gotten the grades?
Generations of people have supported that, and it hasn’t happened. One reason is because no one can write a law that says that one cannot do what one wants with one’s money, including sending it overseas. This is why the tax burden is mostly on the middle class.
Why? What did you or I do other than be born to “deserve” (a highly abused word these days) handouts funded by people who earned the money to pay for them? Why do only those in a certain financial strata “deserve” a better life?
OK, then can you see the results of that? Those people demanding to be rescued by the responsible?
Our culture also promotes that everyone go to college because it guarantees a job with a high salary - what society believes ain’t necessarily true. As for how do I know these folks are buying things other than insurance, well they are doing something with their money other than spending it on insurance premiums.
If/when you get into the workforce, you’ll find that even in places with great insurance coverage, people come to work sick all the time. Obamacare isn’t going to change that at all.
The average is already a bit over 2.
Which is what you said last time. And I asked what about the fact that “immigrants” flow over our border daily - do you want “natives” to keep popping out kids to balance the Great Mexican Menace? What drastic social changes?
This isn’t the graph I was thinking of - that one wasn’t in color - but anyway, it has the same problems. For one thing, you do realize that the word Medicare applies to the basic plan that comes from the government, as well as Medigap and Medicare supplement plans, which are purchased from private companies. For this graph, lets assume that the Medicare bar is just basic Medicare; basic pays around 50% so their spending per person is going to be lower than any private coverage, especially since private also tends to cover many more things than basic Medicare, such as prescription drugs, maternity and well child.
For Medicaid, I haven’t paid their claims in many years and couldn’t find anything online for current info, but back in the day they paid even less than Medicare. Since I see that it is common for doctors to refuse new Medicaid patients, it is probably still true that they are paying pennies on the dollar.
And finally, this doesn’t factor in what else private companies may be funding to benefit their subscribers. HMOs building and maintaining hospitals and clinics springs to mind. Just looking at how much is spent doesn’t translate into “private companies are wasting money”.
Nope, I pointed out the problems with your cites there too.
: boggle :
Do you think money is in infinite supply?
Obamacare is going to cost 10 of billions of dollars - how much is Germany spending on their healthcare system?
I also looked around some and found that Germany has a reasonably wide gap between the haves and have nots under Income here, that fewer than average residents think their health is good (under “Health”), and that their childbirth rates are quite low (down at the bottom under “Work-Life Balance”). All of these things make a difference and I didn’t even find anything about their infrastructure.
With Obamacare, you will have to have insurance or pay the penalty. Without it, we have MediCal.
And you don’t understand that is impossible?
No, what I have said quite clearly is that we have a ever growing segment of society that gets into financial trouble because they are irresponsible, and a significant number of those expect that someone else will bail them out.
None of those things happen overnight, nor should they be a surprise. People who end up in poverty just because of the loss of a job or because they aren’t getting raises have been living beyond their means.
It still doesn’t mean that he or anyone else in Florida were actively wooing low wage jobs. If I remember the article correctly, the rise in those jobs started before Gov Scott was even in office.
You said “the best” healthcare systems, not all other ones. OK, if you believe that our healthcare is the worst because we throw so much money at it, how does adding tens of billions of dollars to that make it better?
It depends on what you want out of it, but that may have more to do with religious beliefs there. Also, just to be clear, are you saying that people in the US pay more for their insurance coverage than those on the NHS? And, you feel the NHS is better than what we have here?
It is more which do you think is more realistic? If nothing else, four years of college, four years of med school and then residency isn’t going to be near as low as $150K. How many of those poor kids that the taxpayer shells out 100’s of thousands of dollars on actually end up being a benefit to society? Or, even earlier, how many poor kids do well enough in grade and high school to be eligible for med school? Shoot, how many of them even get out of high school?
Poor kids are generally screwed long before they get to the point where they might be thinking about going to college. For the rare truly gifted kid, there are scholarships available or they can apply for those student loans, but to give those loans to any high school graduate, for any major? All you are doing is saddling them with big debt before they’ve even had a start in life, all because there is apparently some problem with being a plumber.
Says the man who obviously didn’t read any of the thread. Any other lies you care to spread? I forget now which one was your favorite …
Sure! That’s what he means. No one goes to high school. :smack:
So, your position is that rich people have always done this, deal with it?
Not necessarily a better life, but an opportunity for it. Do you have so little self worth that you don’t believe you are worthy of the opportunity? That some other child should have it just because his parents have money? Would you rather see a poor, motivated kid get the opportunity or some rich kid that only got it because their parents have bailed them out their entire lives.
Sure, their car gets repossessed, they receive a poor credit rating that makes buying things more difficult down the road and they probably don’t have their care. How many people to you think are on welfare out riding expensive cars? Apparently only about 8% of the population receive some form of welfare, 1.7% receive most of their income from welfare. So there really isn’t THAT much of the population that receives welfare at all and nearly every thing I found on google reported that it’s. an. urban. legend.
No a college education does not mean that you are guaranteed a high salary and actually fault my own high school for selling this. I believe they were going for what they believed we wanted to hear, however they didn’t use money curriously enough. They use timetables and charts to show who long it would take you to earn the money to buy (fill in the blank luxury item) to illustrate it.
Sure they do, but they don’t have insurance so they are less likely to go to the doctor, more likely to go to work sick thus passing it to others, more likely to have the illness progress to something more serious that requires more extensive treatment and they are more likely to have a longer healing time.
Just barely and when you consider that not everyone has children, it kinda makes since that the folks that have them would need to on occasion have more than just one to maintain the population.
Ok, what was your argument again??
I looked at your cite (yay! a cite!) and you are correct, Germany does have a significant income inequality, but the US’s is twice what their’s is. Germany’s wealthiest 20% are 4 times as wealthy as the bottom 20%, but the US is 8 times so here his argument stands. Also, from what I read 64% reported they were in good health. The US does rate higher here with 69% reporting good health. However, we are a lot fatter than they are. As far as birthrate, Germany must be your kinda place!
Right because many young people haven’t bought insurance since for the most part, it’s more cost effective to go without, until they are in some sort of accident or struck with some horrible illness and really start to rack up the medical bills. The tax payer has always been stuck with these bills, the penalty will help here.
Again, the logic that it is impossible so why doing anything about it? Why make anything better for anybody.:dubious:
If you lost your job, you were likely living with in your means before you lost your job. And I don’t see people increasing their spending when they aren’t getting raises, unless you account for the fact that the cost of living is going up and wages are stagnant, which as been the case for the past few decades. At least for the middle and low classes.
Apparently we are ridiculously inefficient and if Obamacare meets the goals it’s reaching for, it will make our healthcare more efficient. This poll puts the US at 46 with us spending about $8,000 per capita. Way way higher than other nations.
No one is talking about sending high school drop outs to med school. I just look at average tuition before but look at this example: total loans that covered tuition and living expenses for med school and residency was about $370K but total repayment ended up being about $600K. So that loan almost profited enough to send 2 more people to med school.
As far as if it’s worth it to pay for these poor kids, what’s a better investment, sending a poor but capable kid to college or not and let them remain poor. The average amount a student borrows for college is about $27K. People with a college education are more likely to live longer, make more money, get married and have 2 kids. The returns on college loan investments are double the average return on stock market investments, and five times the average on corporate bonds, home investment and long-term government bonds. What is the return investment on people stuck on food stamps?
There are rarely kids that do well enough in high school to qualify for medical school, that is absurd. If you only get a pre-med degree, that is basically a biology degree and there is a bunch of stuff you can do with that.
Also, it’s very presumptuous to think that poor equals screwed up. If anything, poor kids rule it out because it is something they don’t believe they can afford. You don’t have to be “truly gifted” to go to college. You have to be willing to work hard. I grew up poor and have 3 college degrees now. I joined the Marine reserves after high school and worked throughout college. Sure I have some student loan debt I’m paying off now. In hindsight, with better money management skills (skills I didn’t have at the time), I could have come out better but I’m certainly better off with my education than without. Assuming I only pay the minimum required on my student loans monthly, I will have repaid twice the amount that was loaned to me. I have the ability to make a better income, doing work I love and the government will make money off those loans to be able to loan more money to kids like me who didn’t come from families that could afford to pay their kids college expenses. Also, rather than continuing my “low income” family legacy, I can afford to (and have the money management skills) to save for my children’s college so they don’t have to rely on student loans when they get to that point in their lives. I’m not the exception here. My parents weren’t irresponsible drunks that marred me for life. They were just poor and didn’t know what or how to move up in life because they weren’t educated.
Lastly, there isn’t a problem with being a plumber. There is a problem with a kid that wants to be a doctor, has the ability to be a doctor and would make a great doctor, settling for being a plumber because they didn’t come from a back ground that gave them to opportunity to be a doctor.
No, for college freshmen obviously aid would be tied to standardized test scores and high school grades.
Your article proves my point:
there are such things as capital controls. And the tax burden is still mostly on the wealthy even with all their lucky breaks.
As I said, in a society wealthy as this I think the general moral obligations we have as a society demand that everybody be guaranteed at least a certain minimum standard of living. And I think everyone deserves a better life but obviously whether one needs aid to achieve a certain minimum standards is dependent on income.
I think they’re only a small minority from all the poor people I’ve seen both in real life and online.
I don’t mean people getting a seasonal flu or cold but developing a condition such as cancer they are unaware of or are not prevented due to lack of regular examinations.
2.1 is the replacement rate not 2 and yes only a slight change (to say 2.4) can bring about noticeable and desirable improvement).
No I suspect that mass Mexican migration (and of Latin Americans in general) will slow down in the next few decades. And I mean such as ensuring that immigrant children go to schools where the majority of people to English to encourage assimilation by being exposed to English-speaking settings most of the time.
Medicare supplement plans aren’t really comparable to purely private health insurance plans-they are regulated by the government to control costs and define benefits. And for the record I don’t support a pure single-payer system either but rather something like Germany or current Obamacare where the costs of private plans are controlled and benefits are defined to ensure greater access.
And I explained them.
Money is certainly not infinite but we have more than plenty here to achieve reasonable health spending.
Also tens of billions dollars is a few drops in a bucket in regards to government spending. And as I said before Germany spends less on healthcare due to it being able to negotiated far lower prices.
Income inequality is spreading everywhere in the Western world (due to various factors) but its pretty well known that the US is far more unequal in income than virtually any other industrialized country on Earth. And Germans always struck as prone to hypochondria-actual results show them far healthier than the average American (same with Brits and others).
Its true German childbirth rates are low and this is a potential problem for them that hopefully the German government will control or reverse.
That depends on my income and California already has fairly generous welfare policies anyways. What if circumstances drive me to another state which is far more stringent?
Of course absolute equality of opportunity is impossible in this Fallen world. But that’s not my point-by analogy we have police forces to prevent and suppress crime even though we know crime will still occur regardless. We can increase equality of opportunity and past attempts to do so have been successful at doing so.
And there is no statistical evidence to suppose this. If there is, they’re but following the examples of the wealthy.
:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
Because it has been a policy in Florida for a long time.
Because the money will be spent in a more rational manner.
Back atcha:
**Originally Posted by Qin Shi Huangdi **
No, college aid should be tied to one’s grades and performance in college
Emphasis mine.
My position is that no one has yet been able to figure out a way to force rich people to give up a significant portion of their income, so planning on funding something that way is probably going to end up the way it always has - at the door of the middle class.
I suppose the difference is our definitions of opportunity. I don’t define it as being handed something.
The difference is, the parents are paying for the rich kid to go to college. Why should anyone expect that some random stranger to should for anything for their kid?
We were discussing why people cannot be bothered to be responsible and buy insurance, or how people end up poor.
There must be states that don’t pay out much (are there any non-welfare states?) because California has a much higher percentage
Your cites are a bit weak. The first one has this - “The Los Angeles Times reported in 2010 that twenty-four percent of new welfare applications in San Diego County contain some form of fraud. However, this statistic was misreported and the actual figure is probably considerably lower” (emphasis mine). Your second cite says that “accurate figures are hard to come by” (not surprising) and repeated that “probably” thing. Then he takes a stat about unemployment insurance fraud and translates that into “Less than 2% of all people on welfare in the USA commit fraud”, despite the fact that unemployment insurance isn’t welfare. The last cite was better, tho they included unemployment insurance too, and showed that fraud in food stamps was a problem earlier.
Don’t know why I did that since we weren’t talking about fraud, but anyway …
Do you really believe that? How many of your co-workers have gone to the doctor when they get a cold or flu?
I understood that stat to mean that those with children have just over 2. It would be idiotic to look at the whole population and not just those with children, or even those of child bearing age.
I don’t know, there isn’t enough of the original conversation left to tell. I don’t even know the subject.
I’m not trying to compare Germany to the US, I am just picking out things that they may be spending less money on in order to fund the things the kid likes about that country. Not having piles of extra people running around is probably the most important one.
Generally, young people get health insurance when they start planning on having children (well, those who have any money anyway) because they don’t want to have to spend their own money on pre-natal, delivery and all the well baby stuff. Which ends up being just like those who don’t think insurance is “cost effective” until something happens to incur a pile of bills. For some reason, people will buy auto insurance even tho most never use it, but they cannot apply this same sort of responsibility to their health.
He doesn’t want better, he wants everyone to have the same - how did he put it? - starting point? He wants responsible parents to pay to college educate their kids and the kids of those parents who don’t have the money. He thinks we should pay to send every kid to med school whose skills run in that direction. He wants everyone to be at the very least middle class if not wealthy; he’s very fixated on getting money, but not really earning it.
Now, has there ever been a time in history when there hasn’t been poor people, mid level people and rich people? Do you think it’s possible that every child born has the potential to go to and do well in college? Is it even a good idea, or do we just keep bringing folks up from Mexico and points south to do the grunt work? How long do you think people will put up with having to pay for all of these things for all of these kids they don’t know and had no hand in creating or raising? Humans cannot be forced into little slots dictated by society or some ruler, not for long anyway.
Logical reasoning would indicate that this would obviously not apply to one’s freshman year in college.
Which is false-plenty of tax increases have been laid at the feet of the wealthy.
I suppose the difference is our definitions of opportunity. I don’t define it as being handed something.
As a social right
Plenty
In either case income inequality does not help your argument.
Maybe because auto insurance is required by law at least in California.
That’s rubbish-I meant equality of opportunity not equality of results which I’ve pointed out at least a thousand times. And I think those who can’t earn money or are not able to earn enough money should be aided.
No but we’ve reduced the gap significantly.
No but those children who do have the potential should go to college regardless of income.
So then who do you suppose should do the grunt work?
How long do you think people will put up with having few opportunities for the future and lacking in basic living standards?
Neither can humans at least those with political and economic consciousness and living in a wealthy society stand to watch drastic inequality of income.
Living within your means includes not running up a pile of debt, and having money set aside for an emergency. There are plenty of people who are carrying too much debt and/or have little in savings, so the loss of a job would bankrupt them within 2-3 months if not sooner.
How is that? If we have been ridiculously inefficient with the huge amount of money we’re already spending, how will throwing even more into that same pot make us more efficient?
I don’t know, the kid seems to be getting to that. He wants everyone to have the ability to go to college, so if poverty, drugs, crime, etc is keeping poor kids from finishing high school, his next logical step is to want more money used to keep them in high school, and getting grades that will get them in college.
If he makes it thru med school and residency, if he gets licensed and employed and if he pays off the loan. And the profit from the loan isn’t enough to send even one more to med school, much less two.
They don’t have to go to college to not remain poor. I only made it thru high school, and I am not poor. Of course, a high school education meant more back then.
Well, yeah - what I meant is how many of them do well enough in high school that med school is even a consideration?
I didn’t say screwed up, I said screwed - being poor creates all kinds of road blocks to a higher education other than money. They are less likely to graduate high school if nothing else.
No, but you should be to earn scholarships.
There you go, a way to earn a college education without expecting others to pay for it or running up a pile of debt.
And you think it was a good, responsible thing for them to do, to have children?
Piffle. No one has to settle, he would just have to wait a bit longer than someone who can actually afford the tuition.
Your assertion was that the current recession is why we have a big deficit, and my cite showed that we’ve carried a deficit for decades. The recession made more deficit, but we’ve been in the red for a very long time before that.
Tens of billions of dollars worth?
So, your answer is that simply because you were born, you think that those who have gone forth and earned their money should spend some of it on you? Those minimum standards are more than food, shelter, health care, public education and the ability to get loans for advanced education?
Online is not reality. Your real life experience, all 16? years of it, doesn’t match my several decades worth.
Um, people don’t infect others with cancer. Regular examinations that catch cancer? The only thing I’ve ever had that might come under that heading were the annual exams I had to have while I was still on The Pill. Which women can get for cheap or free thru Planned Parenthood. That’s it, and I’ve had insurance continually since 1982.
What do you base that on?
You are unaware of what a disaster that has been? Our public schools are not there to teach children to speak English.
Your claim was that government run health plans were better at controlling costs (without defining what that meant) than private health insurance companies. There are plenty of regulations controlling private plans, so the Medicare ones are not that unique.
You keep saying that like there is some pile of money laying around that doesn’t belong to anyone. Besides, what you said was “Funding does not significantly affect anything else.” Whether or not there are a bunch of rich people in this country with money you think they should be spending on others doesn’t have anything to do with you saying that spending tens of billions of dollars on heathcare wouldn’t significantly affect anything else the government funds.
Why would you think that?
That has nothing to do with whether or not you will have insurance next year if Obamacare is rolled out.
I’m not sure what the police and crime has to do with expecting others to fund your college education. And unless you are advocating forcing the rich to give you money for free, you will never have equal opportunity with their children.
Uh huh. No stats on the number of people who were bailed out of mortgages on houses they couldn’t afford? No stats on the number of people who run up credit card debt and then just declare bankruptcy? No stats on the number of people who could have purchased insurance but didn’t and then had big medical bills?
Following the example of the wealthy? If the wealthy were doing these things, they wouldn’t stay rich long.
Don’t roll your eyes kid, it’s one of the biggest issues we have these days. Living within one’s means doesn’t mean they can pay all their bills, it means they aren’t living on credit.
Cite?
By the US government? Creator of the $50 hammer?
You seem to be completely incapable of thinking logically or have no clue how higher ed works. To go to medical school you obviously have to go and complete undergraduate course work. Sure, you bachelor may be in pre-med, which you can do a lot with even if you opt to not go on to med school. You do well in high school, you can get accepted into college. You do well in college, you can get accepted into grad school if you want. You have to qualify for college.
That’s the thing. It’s not significant. They pay less of the percentage of their income in taxes than the middle class. There have been many instances in the past where the rich have paid more of the taxes. It’s the recent past few decades where they have enjoy contributing so little.
Then call it an investment. In the end, society as a whole benefits from sending capable people to college.
Why did the banks expect tax payers to bail them out after they pushed and sold bad mortgages to the point that it caused a recession? Why do rich people believe they should contribute to a society that they profit so much from?
One of your reasons for not helping poor people is because of your belief that they are lazy and that people on welfare are too busy buying expensive cars and living out of their means, thus frauding the system. My argument is against your basic assumption. If my cites are weak, counter. Why isn’t unemployment insurance welfare? How exactly do you define welfare.
Yep and this thread is suppose to be about the underperformance of conservative states, so…
[QUOTE]
Do you really believe that? How many of your co-workers have gone to the doctor when they get a cold or flu?
[QUOTE]
Depending on how bad it is, plenty. Are you saying that without medical treatment, you will recover just as fast? How many people don’t get yearly exams because they can’t afford it. My insurance does not cover my yearly exam at the gynocologist and that appointment cost about $400.00. Thankfully that will change under Obama care.
No, it’s the average number of children a woman can be expected to have in her life time.
Well if I recall correctly, Germany came into the conversation as a comparison with the US and how some social factors in place make it comparable or better than that of the US. Besides, the things you pointed out were wrong or it’s worse in the US than there.
I don’t know what motivates young people to get insurance. I got it because I got a job where my employer was offering it. I had no immediate reproduction plans. The jobs I had in college didn’t offer it. Considering how much I got sick vs how much my monthly premiums would have cost, and what risk my lifestyle incurred, it wasn’t cost effective. I question the cost effectiveness of it now. When you add the monthly premiums, meet the deductibles and pay the percentage that left over they don’t cover, my insurance provider makes plenty of money off me. If I didn’t have kids, I would be more open to other options.
From what I’m reading, he believes people should have the same opportunities. Just because people give you money, doesn’t mean you will be better off. Before you even get considered for the money, a college has to accept you and you have to work you butt off learning the material so you can graduate. The point is that society gets a lot more return on the investment when it’s spent on educating and training the population rather than just giving them some food or a place to live.
No, those groups have always existed, but the community does better when there is so much discrepency between their rich and poor. The more middle class the better.
No and if people are happy with a job that requires otherwise then that is their choice. My brother is perfectly content with a life where he works at a pizza joint with enought money to pay for his rent, video games and marijuana consuption. (And no, he doesn’ t have children). Again, the point is not that all children will go to college but if you qualify for it and want to, your parents income status should not disqualify you.
As I understand the situation, we weren’t bringing them here, they were coming over illegally and employers were taking advantage of the cheap labor. Maybe if certain employers find a portion of the population in such a legally disadvantaged position that they didn’t even have to pay them minimum wage, they would have to pay American workers a living wage. There will be people around to do the grunt work, if not, a college education doesn’t mean you don’t have to cut your own lawns.
Take care of them or no, they aren’t going anywhere. It’s not like if you don’t feed the poor, or give them medical care or send them to college they are no long a problem. The reason people support social measures is because in the long run, it’s a better option than allowing these people to remain ignorant and poor. Food stamps and housing aleast says that the government cares enough for you to make sure you eat and have roof over your head. Education is an attempt to give people the resources to over come their problems. If you do well enough and are willing to work hard enough, you can go to college and learn to become even more valuable to society by being a computer programer or engineer or nurse or maybe even a doctor. There will always be people that are poor and sometimes that will be because they are lazy and irresponsible. They are making a choice, you are correct. But, more often than not, people are not even getting the opportunity, it’s not their choice, they aren’t even getting a chance.
I agree, but you can hardly say someone was living out of their means if that means they were living at a certain rate and then lost their job. Especially if they were living within their means prior to losing their job. Or if it took a long time to find another job. During the recession people were going months or years with no job.
The point is that other countries spend considerably less and have better health care. It’s going to require a lot of re-adjustment which will initially cost more money, but if we were more efficient with our money, imagine the type of healthcare we could provide to everyone. Besides, one of the biggest reasons for the Obamacare push was because medical care has increased so much causing insurance to be unaffordable and employers to stop offering it.
Not what I read and medical school is like the peak, not the starting point. The starting point would be more associate and bachelor degrees because it is much more beneficial to more people. I know of several people that didn’t graduate high school, mature a little and go back to school in their 20’s or 30’s. There aren’t many people willing to put in the work to get through medical school. And again, you assumption that poor people are riddled with drugs and crime is false. I could get into arrest rates for various classes and races and issues with class treatment in our criminal justice system but that is for another thread. Poor people are not so different.
This paper states the 10 year completion rate for medical school students is 96%. This paper states the attrition rate of 5.7% which is pretty close to the other source.
Also, physicians have to lowest default rate on student loans. The director of student aid reports a default rate of 0 for medical school loans. However Penn State is near ivy league so before you mention that, Eastern Virginia Medical School reports the same. Here is the national default rate from 05-07.
Graduate school students reports the lowest drop out rates because it’s much less likely for people to put that much time it, get to that point and then drop it. Your argument is slightly better for 2 or 4 year degrees but only slightly. If you look at proprietary schools, those are a problem, but the goal is to tie student loans to the school’s performance, so these schools with high drop out rates or high rates of unemployed students, will hopefully not be able to get federal funding in the very near future unless their performance improves.
True but weren’t you complaining a few pages ago about how you couldn’t get food stamps or medical care when you needed because you weren’t disabled or had children? Anyway, the point is you are right and no one is talking about making college mandatory. It would just be for people that can and want to.
I don’t know, but I can’t imagine it being very many. In high school, Med school is a distance goal. The kid probably isn’t even sure about med school. They will have time to consider that when they are getting their biology degree as a precursor, it thats what they want. They can decide if they want to, and there they will have to show medical schools that they perform at the necessary level.
Ok, it’s still presumptious. We are assuming that the person that would get these student loans do not have the other road blocks, meaning they can succeed in college and want to. It’s a poor investment choice to send a high school drop out to college until they have past the necessary test to show they can do it and a college has accepted them.
I imagine truely gifted do.
True, but in the end I still ended up with some. I’m not going to judge others for not taking my path and my options weren’t available for everyone. Especially if at the end of the day, by and large, all parties are better off when everyone has the opportunity to get educated.
I personally, really appreciate them having all 4 that they had. (I’m the baby). It really doesn’t matter now. The point is they did and I’m hear. We can start another thread on irresponsble parenting and what to do about teenage birth rate. We may even agree. I don’t believe many people believe a child should suffer for the mistakes of the parent if the community has the opportunity to assist so the parent’s mistakes aren’t repeated.
I don’t believe you can work and go to medical school??? But ok, on the hypothetical plumber’s salary, if all income went to save for medical school, he would be saving for approx 7 years. I used the amount borrowed by the real life example ($370K) which covered all school and living expenses for a student through medical school and his residency. Or, he could spend that 7 years going to med school and finishing his residencency and proceed to his $150K a year job (on the low end) and in the same about of time have school done, 7 years of professional experience and have made $1,050,000 worth of income. Sure it’s a gamble. He might not graduate, or might not find a job, but it’s actually a pretty good gamble for medical school students.
We haven’t had a deficit for “decades”, considering we ran a surplus for several years under President Clinton. And the deficit’s primary cause is the recession.
I’m not sure what you mean here, but yes due to the disproportionate share of the wealth the upper income people, most of the taxes is paid by them.
http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/12/news/economy/rich-taxes/
It’d include a few other things such as means of communication and access to information to help find jobs (although those can perhaps just be included in a minimum income or negative income tax).
When did I say such conditions were contagious. Such conditions however do lead to high medical costs and people being unable to work.
Because of EVerify and similar programs along with the rising prosperity of most Latin American countries.
This really depends on the school district (which turns this into a question of funding). My school district has integrated non-English speakers fairly well for example.
I meant total costs. And that is why I support regulated private plans (which is what the German system and Obamacare is)-not necessarily just public health plans.
I mean the wealthy are not significantly affected by having say 45% of their income taxed rather than 35%.
What do you mean? Why would I think German birthrates are so low or why would I think that the German government would try to reverse it?
But what about the year after or a decade later?
I mean even though we can never supress crime totally we fund police forces to keep in under control as much as possible. Similarly policies to expand equality of opportunity will never fully achieve it, but we can (and have) made great improvements. And the last sentence is something I’d expect a Communist to say.
No stats on the number of unemployed? No stats on wage stagnation? On growing income inequality?
Not if they just bankrupt other people.
It doesn’t take into account that some jobs may only pay enough to survive paycheck to paycheck or that something like a fire or an illness may occur to wipe out any existing savings.
Florida, for example, is a “right-to-work” state indicative of such policies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law
And the atomic bomb and the interstate freeways and landing man on the moon.
Well, beyond the fact that I never assume anyone is coming from a position of logic, it is entirely possible you were suggesting that students actually prove they can hack college and are going to do well before we give them money.
I didn’t say that taxes hadn’t been assessed on the wealthy, I said no one has yet been able to figure out a way to force rich people to give up a significant portion of their income. You should check out the ways that folks can sidestep paying all the tax they owe.
That isn’t an answer.
You do not have co-workers.
And yet, you never mentioned it until I did. And it is my questions that you fail to address, not an argument I haven’t made. Not that income inequality has anything to do with it, other than it is apparently your hot button.
A bare minimum, that many folks don’t even bother to get. Intelligent, responsible people buy more than the minimum requirements because it’s a good hedge against having to pay 100’s of thousands of dollars because of an accident. Yet these same folks won’t buy health insurance, especially if they are young and childless.
What’s rubbish is that I didn’t say anything about results. I said that you want everyone to have that equality of opportunity, except I said starting point, and if someone doesn’t have the money to be equal, you expect they should get it from strangers, whether they want to or not, whether the recipient has earned it or not.
Uh, you just got done complaining about the widening gap between the haves and have nots …
On their own dime, sure!
Kids like you, to work your way thru college, or to earn extra money while still in high school. You are not seriously suggesting that we import a bunch of poor uneducated Mexicans so we have people to mow our lawns and collect our trash are you?
According to the cite I posted awhile back, people living in poverty - especially those born in it - tend to just give up. For those who still want to make something of themselves, there are a lot of opportunities for improving their standard of living that don’t include someone else paying for it. Of course, almost all of them mean that the kid born to poverty won’t end up being a doctor, but that is the lot of many middle class kids as well. When I left my parents house, they were middle class but there still wasn’t any money to send me to college, or trade school for that matter.
Piffle. You don’t want to be poor? Go forth and fix that. Be responsible for yourself. Humans with “political and economic consciousness” aren’t interested in being whined at by someone demanding they be made rich.
No, their high school record and standardized test scores (which in the case of the SAT is explicitly designed to predict college-readiness) would give a good indication.
The wealthy are not gods who can’t be made up to give over their treasure, they can and have been taxed a large chunk of their income.
Social rights are a politically legitimate concept.
Classmates then. 16 and 17 year old are not little children they they do miss school and go to the doctor’s when they have a cold or flu.
You used income inequality as a way to show that Germany is inferior despite its social spending.
Automobile accidents even bad ones are rather more likely than suddenly getting cancer at 25 or 30.
I was speaking in the context of decades (ie comparing now to say the 1960s and '70s) in that case and in the context of centuries (ie comparing someone in the Victorian Age to now) right now.
That’s nice slogan but most people would disagree.
No. Professional and unionized sanitation workers should collect our trash. As for other menial work, those can be done by youths on the side and/or other unskilled workers.
Maybe this is why they give up? After all if improvement is so uncertain and little that it won’t even give a bright kid a college education, why bother? Middle-class kids obviously also should get education aid (again the amount being dependent on various factors).
Except plenty of political and economically conscious people are demanding their fair share.
The hell? Go back and look at what you quoted, if not the discussion that led up to it. Qin was talking about getting funds to go to college, that’s it. It had nothing to do with med school or a BA or any of the other thinks you went on about.
Which means you are agreeing with what I said - if rich folks have a long history of being able to get out of paying their full tax, why would any intelligent person expect to get tens of billions of dollars from them for a new program?
Capable? Probably. Do you know for sure that all or even a majority of the kids that get handed things end up being a benefit to society? You are assuming that just because they go to college, they are going to end up well.
I don’t know, I am neither a banker nor a rich person.
No, I am against willy-nilly handing people things just because they fall into a certain strata of income, and I am definitely against the fact that almost all welfare revolves around paying to raise children. There is also a lot of fraud (which of course is hard to cite because, you know, fraud is illegal) but that isn’t the only reason why I think at least California’s welfare system should be radically redone. Like, WTF is it allowing EBT to be used at McD’s?
Welfare is what people get for nothing; you don’t have to have worked a day in your life to receive it. Unemployment insurance is paid into by your employer when you work, and is only available under certain terms. I think the employee also ends up paying taxes on the amount the employer pays but I’m not sure about that part.
Threads wander around all the time, but addressing things at a poster that the poster hasn’t been addressing themselves doesn’t make any sense.
For a cold or what people call the flu? Yes, if you mean going to the doctor type of treatment. Most of the time when I used to get those bugs at work and felt like living crap, I’d call my dr’s nurse and be told there wasn’t anything they could do about it because it was a virus.
As I said, you can get your yearlys from a doctor at Planned Parenthood. Or not get them. Neither my husband nor I have every had a yearly exam other than when forced to do so because of medication, but if you want to go in for that yearly, great have at it. Too bad others are now going to help you pay for it.
The stat is how many children people are having on average, not how many we expect them to have.
If they were wrong, take it up with my cite. Qin wanted to compare Germany to the US, but only in the narrow area he is interested in, and was trying to claim that paying for those things couldn’t possibly be taking money from other things governments pay for, which is completely illogical.
And yet, you applaud the government forcing everyone to buy it?
Well sure! But our boy here thinks that “same opportunities” means he should be sent to medical school. And that every poor kid should be given the opportunity to gamble with taxpayer money by going to college - here in California, if you graduate high school/get a GED you can pay the tuition and go to community college. In some cases, you don’t even have to have the diploma/GED. I really don’t think it’s a good investment to pay to send kids who barely stumble out of high school to college.
I agree, I am just pointing out to Qin that never in history has everyone been on the same level.
So you think that if poor kids are fixated on being rich, and won’t be happy unless they are doctors and lawyers, we should give them the money to go to college? God forbid that anyone be unhappy in their job, I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who will be content to be plumbers, garbage men and bus drivers their whole lives. I spent almost 40 years as a keypuncher more or less, and it was boring as hell but it paid well. Not all jobs are fulfilling.
They are legal and illegal, and unless they are picking fruit or hanging out at Lowes, they are making at least minimum wage (which isn’t supposed to be a living wage). The guy that cuts our lawn works very hard but makes well over minimum wage, the guy next door drives a forklift in a warehouse, the guy across the street and down one is a mechanic. None of this required a college education and these folks are all solidly middle class. But if we are going to send all of our poor “natives” to college, who is going to do these other jobs?
They are getting all kinds of chances and because it all comes without them having to earn it, far too many just figure they are entitled to a free ride. We already pay to educate them thru high school, yet I think it was a majority? of them can’t even do that. Handing people things without them having to do anything at all to earn them hasn’t been working; don’t you think that throwing even more money at this problem isn’t likely to do anything positive?
Losing one’s job has nothing to do with whether or not they were living within their means prior to that. The loss of the job only shows up how the person was living prior to that - if beyond their means, they are going to have bills coming in that there is no way they can pay. People living within their means have money set aside for emergencies, such as job loss and experts say it should be 3 - 6 months worth of living expenses.
When the recession first started, both my husband and I were out of work having both been laid off. We made the eight months without having to liquidate anything out of our retirement because we tightened our belts, and didn’t really have much we had to pay on. No credit card bills, no car payments, no home equity loan or second mortgage. And we still live that way, even tho if my husband gets laid off after next April, he could just retire if it looked like he wasn’t able to get another job. There is always a chance something will happen.
Everyone keeps saying that somehow the US government is going to change it’s ways and be efficient with our money, which I seriously doubt could ever happen, but no one ever says what they mean by that. What is supposed to happen that will make us more efficient?
You aren’t following the conversation here. I said that Qin wants taxpayers to pay to send everyone to college and pointed out all of the stumbling blocks there are for poor kids, which included my cite for how many don’t even finish high school. You picked out just that last part and said we aren’t talking about sending high school dropouts to college. OK, fine, I go with that (should have kept you on point) and said what you quoted, about how the next logical step in the welfare chain would be to spend money on making sure poor kids stay in high school and get good enough grades to go to college. Then you respond with the above? How does any of that apply?
So, I post a cite and you don’t even read it. OK.
Any information on where those students came from? Those stats mean nothing if it turns out that a vast majority of them came from families who had college funds for them and/or they worked to raise the money, as opposed to students who have had everything handed to them along the way.
No, I wasn’t complaining, I was merely stating fact - I also stated that I wouldn’t have taken welfare. And I didn’t say anything about making college mandatory; what I said was college isn’t necessary to not be poor.
They don’t have to decide in high school but they do need to have good enough grades to be considered to move up the ladder of schooling if they later want to be a doctor.
You still aren’t responding to what I say - I have said absolutely nothing about sending high school dropouts to college. You have no idea what it’s like to live below the poverty level, do you?
Some debt is not a pile of debt, and everyone does have the opportunity to get educated - the issue at hand is the idea that the taxpayer should be responsible for kids past high school.
God I’m tired of that argument. OK, how about not rewarding people for bringing children into poverty? Can we at least quit doing that? Because as long as we keep doing it, the parents mistakes are going to be repeated - history has shown us that.
Probably not, but you can work, save and then go to school.
I’d rather he not gamble with my money. You know, like the banks did? You all who want to pay to send these folks to school, there are lots of scholarship funds you can donate to.
I take it you ignored the cite I just gave you that shows we have been running a deficit for decades? Oh wait, you didn’t ignore it because you responded to it. Go back and look again. It clearly shows that, while it’s gone up and down, the deficit’s primary cause is not the current recession. The current size, sure; the fact it exists? No.
I am asking you if you realistically think you will be able to get tens of billions of dollars out of the wealthy in the next 10 years to fund Obamacare.
Did you read your cite or just the heading? It supports my point of view on what the rich pay, not yours.
More and more stuff you want others to pay for and give you.
You said people coming to work and infecting others, leading to low productivity. Good job on ignoring everything else I said there.
Your school district doesn’t have near the number of non-English speaking children that the southern schools have.
“Total costs” isn’t a definition. Do you even know what those costs are?
Why do you think a) the government should do anything at all regarding something like that and b) why should it be reversed?
Unless the law changes, it will be the same.
None of this shows that you have any idea why it is there cannot be equality of opportunity in any society - there will always be some who are better off or smarter or faster or whatever than others.
No, actually, your stance that the rich should give money to the poor so that everyone is on essentially the same plane is far closer to communism than anything I’ve said.
None of that has anything to do with people being irresponsible with their money, except its a great example of how such people think. It’s always someone or something elses fault, never that they’ve been blowing money like crazy.
Shit happens, but I imagine you are more thinking of people who are raising children on jobs at WalMart or McDs. Those people are living well beyond their means, so it’s really only a matter of when and not if they have an issue that drop them right into poverty.
That has exactly zero to do with the idea that Florida is actively wooing low paying jobs.
Which have nothing to do with how mishandled government money is.