I only need one: the United States of America.
Just about every war, mass persecution, mass murder, and mass violence from the near distant past onwards has been organised,endorsed and sanctioned by the State; by some top down authority. Very little human on human tragedy has been at the hands of minimal or hands off governments. Most occur when States overreach, clamp down on some poor bastards, some movement, some religion, some percieved threat or challenge both real and imagined. These range from The Reformation, the Counter Reformation, authoritarian Monarchy, Cromwellian Purtanism, Jacobians, Bonapartism, anti Bonapartism, Slavery, the Scramble for Africa, the Crimean War, the Boer War, the Spanish American War, pre WWI Nationalism, pre WWI Empire, WWI, the Russian Revolution, Stalinism, Fascism, Naziism, WW2, post colonialism, the Berlin Wall, the crushing of the Hungarian uprising, Mao’ism, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Iran/Iraq War, Gulf War I and Gulf War 2. Just a few examples of non minimal government inflicting immense misery and cruelty.
Back to health care, Dr. Gruber says some unhelpful stuff again:
But is he wrong, or just too uncomfortably honest for you?
That’s not for us too say. It’s simply a worthwhile exercise to post the clip and let others make up their own mind. The most interesting thing in the clip imo is not his comment describing voter stupidity but his statement that transparency is bad.
Of course it’s for us to say. Where the hell do you think you are?
Gruber’s statement about transparency is an inevitable consequent of his statement about stupidity. You can’t deplore it acontextually.
Gruber, like many elites, prefers rule by elites rather than rule by the people. Too bad Congressmen are also not elites, and thank goodness for ACA that they didn’t read it either.
If by “elites” you mean “smart, competent people”, then what’s your beef?
If you’re persisting with this “didn’t read it” shit, then here’s a hint: You’re one of the people he’s referring to.
Eh? I can deplore it any way I wish. I can jump to almost any conclusion about taxation, government, or Obamacare that I want to from his statement. The conclusion I come to is that in regards to funding Obamacare politicians and bureaucrats believe transparency is bad. I also tentatively conclude that less transparency in government finance is the goal of many in Washington.
And you know why, too.
“Death panels”.
“They didn’t let anyone read it”.
For a couple of examples.
First, are we a people who rule a government, or a government that rules a people?
Secondly, elites are often smart, but competence is a trait that tends to be unrelated to brains and social status. That lesson should have been well learned after the “Best and Brightest” debacle of the 1960s.
I’d much rather have the government run by career Army NCOs than Harvard grads.
Just you keep changing the subject like a good apologist. We have it from the horses mouth, transparency is bad for Obamacare financing. If transparency is bad for Obamacare it’s likely bad for a whole host of Government bills, programmes and legislation. I make no more claims about Gruber’s statement than that.
The reason transparency is a problem is not only the electorate’s stupidity. It’s the catering to that stupidity by a major party willing to tell them any lie it takes to protect the interests of their *true *constituencies. Sadly, any effort to make things better for people has to take into account the openings left for it to be lied about. That’s Gruber’s point, and he’s right.
Gruber is 100% right if your goal is to do what you think is good for the people against their will. I just don’t see that as a proper role of government. Nor do I think that experts necessarily know what’s good for the people better than the people themselves. Besides, such a concept goes against the very principles our nation was founded upon.
“Against their will” is an interesting concept if that will is the result of being consistently and heavily lied to, isn’t it? So is “knowing what’s good for them”. “The principles our nation was founded upon” don’t include lying to the people, but that’s what your guys have been doing anyway, isn’t it?
Do please note the polls that show each of the major features of Obamacare showed strong public support anyway, but only the package that had the name of the Socialist Kenyan Muslim on it ever had negative support. Do also please note that you yourself vociferously support fully repealing it and then reinstating it virtually intact except without his name on it. :rolleyes:
How much public support does the part where you lose your health insurance have? The individual mandate? The highest taxes and fees? The Medicare Advantage “savings”?
You can make any policy look like it’s popular if you cherry pick the good parts and ignore the downsides. If I was a pollster I could make free trade look like the most popular policy ever.
Does anyone have any numbers on how many people lost their insurance, and why? I haven’t heard much about it, other than as a talking point, since that first wave of reports that were mostly found out to be either untrue or decisions by the insurance companies that were unrelated to the ACA.
As to the mandate and the taxes, are you really surprised that Americans want benefits but they don’t want to pay for them? Hell, that’s the American way!
A realize that. But you can’t poll the good stuff without also polling the tradeoffs Sure, Americans want everyone covered. But how much are they willing to pay for that? Americans want better insurance and more protections. How much are they willing to pay for that?
Are insurance prices going up as fast as before?
Also, how many people lost their insurance and didn’t get other insurance to make up for it?
So the thousands of years of evidence you said you had wasn’t intended as a factual statement?
Also, since you’re basing your assertion on only one data point, the economy did very will under the Clinton tax rates. We should go back to that then, right?