I appreciate your thoughtful response and respect you for acting in accordance to your beliefs. So, thank you.
(That being said, I’m not sure I understand your last sentence. My only purpose in quoting Matthew was to indicate to you that I thought you were picking and choosing. In fact, I don’t believe I’ve ever “point(ed) to Christian ideals” explicitly, and certainly not here on the Boards.)
Ah, my mistake. So, sorry in turn. My bad.
Not really sure this is the right thread to answer that.
What alarms me is the blithe assumption that you have the moral right to (a) decide what levels of happiness are appropriate for me; (b) decide that the appropriate function of government is to equalize the levels of happiness amongst all citizens; and (c) take money from some people and give it to others to accomplish those ends.
That said, I agree with you that the progressive tax system has some equity to it. But it has nothing to do with the relative happiness the various participants may experience.
Oh, thats OK, we’ll find it in our hearts to forgive your impertinence.
I’m not in a debating mood today, but this post made me a bit depressed. I have Parkinson’s. I was diagnosed quite recently, less than a year ago. The only people who know about this, online or in the real world, are my wife and my closest friend. Right now, it’s manageable, and not that big a deal, and with my medication, it’s barely visible. I have tremors, but I know how to hide it.
I have health insurance through my job, and even if I didn’t, I could probably afford the medication I take. It’s been around for a while, and there is a generic equivalent, so it’s not very expensive. And, at least for now, it works.
But Parkinson’s is (often, anyway) progressive. It’s probably going to get worse. And seeing my neurologist regularly is expensive, or would be, if I didn’t have insurance. And it’s very likely that I’ll need more, and more expensive, medication in the future. And what about new treatments in the pipeline? They’re not going to be cheap. They’re going to be so expensive that they will be beyond my reach without insurance.
If I lose my job, and therefore my insurance, I am well and truly fucked. And when I reach retirement age, without Medicare, I’d be really fucked. What private insurer is going to insure someone with a decades-long record of Parkinson’s? There’s no way I’d be able to purchase my own insurance. There’s no way I could now. I doubt very much that any insurance company will touch me. I even worry about what will happen if I change jobs. Will my new insurance carrier refuse to cover my pre-existing condition? Not that I could afford it even if insurers would take me. I’m carrying my wife on my employer’s plan right now, because she got laid off about a year ago, and hasn’t found a job yet. She’s done temp work, but that doesn’t provide insurance, and her insurance costs me more than $6,000 a year. I have no complaints about my income, but no real possibility of increasing it significantly, either, and $6,000 is not pocket change to me, not by a long shot.
If I were a citizen of just about any developed nation other than the United States, the only thing I’d have to worry about is the disease itself. But I’ve got all this other crap to keep me awake at night.
Sorry about the rambling. This thread just made me think a bit, and also got me a bit depressed.
This is why I support UHC, despite otherwise being Libertarian. :mad:
Broad brushes.
I do believe that there are conservatives who, in absolute good faith, believe that certain policies will produce the greatest good for the most people. And it is quite likely that their vision of the best possible society isn’t all that different from mine, in that they believe, at some time in the future, when they succeed in persuading everyone that their political philosophy is the best possible philosophy, that a society with opportunity and equality (of opportunity, not outcomes) and security and freedom for all will emerge. As a liberal (progressive, social democrat, whatever), I hope for those very same things. I disagree with conservatives on the road to those goals, but I’m betting that in the end, there are plenty of conservatives who hope for the same things I do.
So I don’t think that conservatism is evil, or acting in bad faith. I think it’s misguided (and I understand that conservatives think the same of liberalism).
But these tea party people seem to me to be an entirely different kettle of fish. There’s something mean-spirited in them. And there seems to be an unsavory streak of racism there. And a lot of anger and fear.
Not if you get another job that offers health insurance. (I know, here comes the BUT BUT BUT crowd to spin all sorts of yarns . . .)
Looking at UHC v. No UHC just from a health care perspective doesn’t tell even half the story. UHC requires higher taxes, which necessarily reduces economic activity. So, if you want to think about an alternate universe where the US has UHC, you can’t just think “I wouldn’t have to worry about paying for health care.” You also have to think “The job I have may not exist.”
A job whose healthcare might not cover him due to his preexisting condition.
And yet even without a job, at least he wouldn’t have to worry about treatment. Our economy must be on fire what with the low taxes from not having UHC, right?
“Yarns”, then? Making up stories to play upon the sympathy of the gullible and weak?
Exclusion of pre-existing conditions isn’t a “yarn.” It’s a fact. In the absence of legislation prohibiting them from doing so, insurance companies will naturally (and do) exclude from coverage those who have known conditions that may require expensive treatment. Or at least exclude that condition from coverage.
I didn’t use any definition at all, but as it happns, most rich people never earn a dime of it. We have a very small, parasitic overclass that needs to be punctured and drained.
Jesus said to pay your taxes.
This is an utterly false and disingenuous of progressive ideology, and a callow dismissal of your civic responsibility.
Then why should they give even one shit about yours?
Since Bricker doesn’t want to try this one, I will. I think that we need to get back to a society where personal responsibility is expected, where people actually wait until they can afford it to buy things, who only have as many children as they can realistically comfortably raise and who do not have them as teens or underemployed singles. This would make a big cut in the number of uninsured and unisurable, to the point that it would be far easier for the government to take care of those people who “fall thru the cracks”. Instead of wanting and expecting to live in a nanny state, people need to get back to taking care of themselves.
In the case of group insurance thru employers, there are laws that don’t allow them to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions, as long as a couple of requirements are met.
I’m not asking anyone to.
So you think we should do away with credit card companies, home and car loans and any other kind of credit, as well as insuring that both birth control and abortion are legal, cheap and easily accessible?
As to your first point, my goal is not to put some kind of cap on your happiness levels. My belief is that if this passes, the worst that will happen to you is that you will grumble about it for a few days or weeks and then carry on with your affairs like you did before. Aside from that, it won’t put any measurable crimp on your lifestyle whatsoever. But it will make a huge difference to millions of people and prevent a great deal of abject suffering. That’s why I sleep easy at night and don’t fret about the morality of my position.
Point B, equalizing happiness is an impossible task. Equality, in and of itself, is not my aim. A better description of my aims is to maximize overall happiness amongst the populace.
Point C, the ship has already sailed on the issue of income taxes. You’re about a hundred years too late. It’s in the Constitution as a legitimate government function, along with “promoting the general welfare.”
I don’t worry so much about assuring happiness, I’ll settle for preventing misery and hopelessness, and figure happiness can pretty much take care of itself.
That’s more than most people do, good on ya. Seriously.