Again we're back to whether individuals deign to tolerate majority rule. - Edit 2
Before modification by Joel at 14/12/2010 07:42:32 PM
Both when you use it directly (which I have yet to do with a stealth bomber, unless Civ II counts) and when you indirectly benefit from a larger and healthier (thus cheaper and more productive) labor and technical pool.
Larger and healthier labor/technical pool? Last time I checked, those people were the ones who were more capable to buy their own health insurance...not be forced to buy it. I understand and acknowledge that there are a great many exceptions (those that work for small business for instance).
Or can't afford the rising costs of company health insurance programs, or didn't qualify because their company limits them to the legal maximum number of "part time" hours so they don't have to pay benefits, etc., etc. Part of the irony here is people insisted 15% of the country "chooses" to be uninsured and inflate everyones healthcare costs when they can't afford unexpected costs passed along to others. The mandate on the public prevents them (and hospitals and private insurers) "forcing" people with insurance to eat their inflated costs. Now the same people who rejected a universal healthcare program out of hand because freeloaders would abuse it are complaining that people aren't allowed to freeload off it. The bottom line is that they can afford healthcare on their own (for now... ) and apparently don't mind an unaccountable private insurer forcing them to eat the costs of those who can't, as long as it's not an accountable GOVERNMENT doing it.
As for taxes: You tax people with money; taxing people with no money tends to build deficits (not that it stopped Reagan, of course). If I can pay taxes for an Iraq invasion illegal under international law simply because a majority of our elected representatives voted for it, you can pay taxes for a perfectly constitutional healthcare bill a majority of those same representatives voted for as well.
How does taxing people with no money build deficits? Everyone has money....even if its just a little. As we already stated, not everyone is taxed. But you actually made my day with this paragraph. I had to smile.
No, everyone DOESN'T have money, even a little, and that's usually the disconnect here. At least the guy I used to work for who liked to say, "If you have more than $10 in your pocket you should be a Republican, " acknowledged that didn't mean everyone should be GOP. My mom still tells the story about my father walking with a gas can to buy a quarters worth of gas to get them home. Guess what: Most of the people in that boat still need healthcare (e.g. it took a doctor to do moms C-section) and when they can't pay they either do without or you pick up the tab. Mom also tells the story of how, a couple years before that awful socialist LBJ passed Medicare, her grandfather died of a clot because he couldn't afford his blood thinning meds. I'm glad I was able to make you smile all the way up in that ivory tower though....
Taxing people with no money builds deficits because it doesn't automatically reduce government spending, just government revenue. Cutting taxes while increasing expenses does it even faster though, another big problem with the unnecessary Iraq war in defiance of international law.
Iraq invasion illegal under international law"...that makes me laugh for several reasons. The first of all was that Saddam violated the treaty from the 1st Iraq war by even firing on an airplane. Secondly, international law means exactly nothing. It has absolutely no juris-my-diction over the US. *laughs* (I just watched the original Matrix yesterday)
I wasn't aware Saddam had fired on an airplane prior to the invasion. He did target several with radar guided SAMs--during the Clinton administration, prompting the targeted fighters to destroy the SAMs and cruise missile attacks against the rest, along with Republican criticisms that unthreatening Iraq didn't warrant that expense. Five years later nothing had changed except that they had the White House and then demanded a multi-trillion dollar invasion, all while demanding tax cuts that they're STILL demanding despite resultant deficits.
The pretext for our Iraq invasion, once the case for Saddams involvement in 911 was exposed as a lie, was that he was his violation of a UN resolution requiring WMD inspections (i.e. violated international law). Sure, the US can become one of the rogue states at whom Bush liked to waggle his finger, but you can't invade in defiance of international law on the grounds the country invaded violated international law. Well, I guess you can try if you believe in picking and choosing which democratically enacted laws you'll obey, but it's incredibly hypocritical.
And the Health Care Legislation is not Constitutional (hence the court debate and its eventual overturning). The Government has no such authority to *force* anyone to buy something that they don't want to buy. Period and full stop.
The healthcare bill doesn't FORCE anyone to buy anything, period and full reverse. Neirth of us like the law. That makes it unpopular, not illegal.
Meh. A lot of folks would like to pick and choose what taxes they do and don't pay and each thing on which those taxes are spent. Of course, if every government expenditure without unanimous popular approval were unconstitutional I'd have gone to the SCOTUS when I was "forced" to subsidize SUVs for people who didn't need my help buying expensive, global warming, foreign oil dependent and unsafe road hogs. As the Republicans will remind us all when they have another legislative majority, if you don't like the law you change it, not get a judge to illegally annul it.
This paragraph is so much blah blah blah. I didn't like the US car industry bail out either, but I deal with it, because it didn't *force* me to buy an American made car. It forced me to support an industry which was loosing money hand over fist (for whatever reason).
~Jeordam
Right: We were forced to subsidize an inefficient and expensive auto industry through taxes, but not to buy their products, just as we're now forced to subsidize an ineffecient and expensive healthcare industry, but not to buy their products. Both suck, but both are legal. We always come back to this, whether it's Iraq, auto subsidies, healthcare or whatever: If you like the law it's automatically legal and any judge who says otherwise is a judicial activist; if you dislike the law it's automatically unconstitutional and any amount of judicial activism against it is not only acceptable, but obligatory. That makes further discussion pointless, because whether I, the government or anyone is right or wrong is wholly dependent on whether we agree with your consistent positions, and I believe too strongly in consistent ethics to be "right" at that price.
The whole "Saddam broke international law, so we had to break international law to uphold international law" argument is so much more revealing than anything I could say. Forcing me to pay for other peoples SUVs is wrong but legal; forcing me to pay for their healthcare, illegal. Once again, watching Republicans contort arguments and try seizing the moral highground is like watching a drunken blind man play Twister in the dark.