Donn,
First, taxes were at their highest in 1982 under Republican Reagan. Second, I’m glad you feel that way, I wonder if you'd feel that way when they tell you they could no longer afford to pay your salary so go get a job at a private school and make less money with no retirement benefits. Of course, there'd be no unions so they'd collude to make your salary as low as they could while the people at the top would drive to work in Jags. I wonder if you'd feel that way when the roads were no longer repaired or had to pay toll at all the private roads or if the parks were no longer maintained or charged entrance fees or if the police were for hire only and if you’re poor, no crimes would be solved or if the fire department decided to haggle with you outside your burning house, don’t have the money?? Let it burn. I wonder if you'd feel that way if you were having a stroke and your wife had to strike a deal with the paramedics before they'd render any care. Would you feel that way when the economically lowest children couldn’t get an education and ended up either trapped in a life of poverty, crime or ill health because they couldn’t afford an education or health care either. The problem is, we ALL use the public commons and we should all pay our share. Public Parks are for everyone, not just those that can pay the entrance fee and people like you MAKE the case it’s not your problem but you avail yourself of these perks and YOU, personally, make your living off it. Your stance is EXTREMELY hypocritical.
Laissez Faire? You make the late 1800's early 1900's sound like a utopian paradise which it was, if YOU happened to be in the upper 1%. For the rest it was endless labor, no retirement, no healthcare. There were NO child labor laws and children worked for 12 hours a day. How many women were locked in sweatshops for 16 hours a day? How many died from fires because they locked the doors to keep them in and they were supposed to pee in a bucket in the corner? Education? Only for the wealthy that could pay for it. Low oil costs? Of course, he drove all the competitors out of business and paid his employees pennies a day with no retirement, health care or even guarantee of a job tomorrow. Carnegie? The other "Robber Barons"? You’ve got to be kidding me, I mean seriously, even with the insanely biased media, you'd be hard pressed to find someone else that would call THAT era a "utopia." Those guys gave a lot in their old age when they came to terms with their mortality and were scared shitless at the thought there might just be a hell waiting for them and ALL they were doing was trying buy themselves a spot in heaven. Bill Gates was completely unscrupulous and stole a lot from a lot of people and NEVER compensated them for their work. I know some people that worked for him. One was a designer that did a lot for him and he was fired when he had the temerity to ask for a raise. Mr. Gates isn’t doing any of THAT "giving", that’s his wife driving the charity, there was a Rolling Stone interview with the two of them a couple months ago and HE said he wouldn’t do it if his wife wasn’t the driving force.
Finally, how dare you blame this financial mess on the Democrats, do you think we don’t remember GW saying "we're gonna make this an ownership society" in 2002 as he loosened the regulations to allow this insane gambling with our monies? I remember it quite clearly and I remember the Dems telling him it would be a disaster if he continued to loosen the regulations. Regardless of how you say it, this is HIS baby, period, end of story. The Stock Market is gambling and if not regulated, they can lose ALL our monies. Thank god they didn’t let him put Social Security on the Stock Market or who knows how many elderly people would be screwed now. I have a friend, kept trying to get me to take my Florida Retirement System cash out of the system and put into the investment company he worked for, showed me all his clients portfolios, how they were making 5 times what I was. I got jittery and, in the end, told him "no". His company went under last week. I wonder if his clients have any pension left? I only gotta go 9 more years and I could retire with $3500 a month for the rest of my life, if I make it to 62? $5,600 a month till I die. I won’t be rich but I'll make it, thank god for the state. I wonder if those OTHER teachers he represented are in as good shape? Somehow, I doubt it.
Marx
Marx,
I will address each point you make in the order in which you made it. Public Schools: Education is not a right. It is a responsibility. If you wish to be competitive in the 21st Century, there are skills you must acquire. Nobody can do this for you. You think government is the best facilitator of this personal objective. The failure of the public school system is profound evidence to the contrary. Privatizing public schools would vastly improve education in this country. Nobody who wanted a primary or secondary education would be denied. All one needs to get a great education is a library card. Students could choose from a potpourri of options, from countless private schools, home schools, Socratic seminars with the neighborhood guru, charity schools funded by philanthropy, or charity vouchers to enable needy children to choose whichever private school they like... If one wishes to go further, get a bachelor’s degree, Masters, or PhD, etc., College entrance exams [created by each private institution] would be the gate keeper. Advanced degrees would be funded much like they are today: pre-paid college funds, college-funded scholarships, private scholarships, corporate grants, charity grants, low-interest loans, a rich mom and dad. Competition in every aspect of the private education business would: 1. increase the supply of educational alternatives [rather than the pathetic one-size-fits-all system we have in place today]; 2. drive down the cost of an education as schools compete for the best students and more students opt for self-education; and, 3. yeild much higher wages for great educators who could sell their scarce services to the highest bidder. Now this would be change I can believe in! If you insist on keeping the failed, publicly-funded school system we have in place today, then permit me to improve existing schools by instituting some market reforms. 1. Give principals [along with faculty, parents, and students] real power to hire and fire teachers. Every school I’ve ever worked for was staffed by people who had no business in the classroom...at least 25% of the faculty... terrible teachers. Your union works to protect their jobs...why? Because people have a right to a paycheck? I think not. In every other industry incompetent, do-nothing, know-nothings are fired. Under your rules, teachers have to commit felonies to lose their jobs! Here’s an interesting statistic for you: In 1981 the US National Education Association reported that 36% of teachers said they would probably not go into teaching if they had to decide again. A major reason was "negative student attitudes and discipline". (Wolfgang and Glickman) So why were those nearly 40% still teaching? Once failed, why didn’t they “decide again?” Why didn’t they leave the profession for one better suited to their talents? When realtors fail to sell houses, they leave the profession to find a job that pays or they starve. When actors fail to get the part audition after audition, they wait tables. When politicians lose elections they become consultants. But, when teachers fail, they stay in the classroom. These teachers do incredible damage, year after year. 2. Give school administrators a budget [like a pro football team] and let teachers negotiate their worth to the school with the stakeholders. A teacher’s worth should be determined by their value to the school, not how long they’ve been in the teaching business. This is the way things work in every other industry...why not teaching [arguably the most important industry of all]? Your precious, dead-Fat-Tornillo-like, embezzling bureaucrats won’t let it happen. They have you convinced you need them to protect your job. I’d be making so much more if not for these duce-bags [Deliberate misspelling. Don’t want to trigger filters]. The best accountability system in any industry is unfettered success for those who achieve, and un-cushioned failure for those who don’t. If failure has real consequences, fewer people will fail. People will discover their better self...achieve real self-esteem. Cynics, like you, doubt unleashed mankind is good enough to achieve great results. That’s why you always invite the nanny-state to come in and control everything and everybody. If it weren’t so sad, it would be laughable... You think politicians and bureaucrats can create and maintain a better system than private individuals pursuing their own self-interest. You think self-interest results in immoral, vile men bashing each other over the head for scarce, finite resources. You think Karl Marx was right! Capitalism invites limitless possibilities. Bill Gates’ empire was built on two things: brain matter and photons. There is no limit to the abundance of wealth that can be created...not by the few, but by the multitudes, if only they are free to make it happen. The command economy you endorse is limited to whatever possibilities a handful of politicians can come up with. Do the math: billions of unfettered minds at work trying to achieve their rational, self-esteem or a handful of powerful elite determining what’s good for everybody. Which system grows innovation and abundance? History [and to a small degree, China’s decades-old movement to the right] certifies the success of the former.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Yellow Dog [Part 11]
Donn,
Sure, if your basic premise were true and it isn’t... because GW and the Conservatives have been running this mess for 6 of the last 7 years...THAT’S everything: the judiciary, the Senate, the House and the executive branch. I find it amazing that there are people out there that STILL blame the Dems when they haven’t even been able to hold a meeting in the last 6 years. No, this mess belongs TO the conservatives. Are you familiar with the Conservative philosophy of "Starve The Beast"? Basically, it says, spend, spend, and spend until you bankrupt the nation and THEN you can eliminate ALL the social programs and worker protections with the phrase "sorry, there’s just no more money." I believe that the Conservatives are trying to turn the USA into a nation of the super wealthy and of a worker class...a small middle class, or managerial class, and a warrior class. That’s it, no more. So, for them, you’re either super rich, a soldier, a manager or a worker. They want to eliminate the "nouveau rich" with a Wall Street crash and eliminate all movement between the classes. Take a look around you, THAT’S what’s happening now.
Marx
Marx,
It has become quite clear to me now that you did in fact drink the Cool Aide!
First, I am not a Republican. I'm not a conservative. I am a capitalist. But, what does any of this have to do with my philosophical classroom scenario? Is what I describe true or not?
There are no pros to discuss with regards to socialism and/or communism. Once justice is sacrificed, nothing good can come of it. Sure it might seem good to you or me, low-paid teachers, but it’s not good. There is a much better solution, and it’s completely just to all. It’s called laissez-faire capitalism. It works like your classroom...students who work hard and produce something of value reap the benefits of their efforts. Students who don’t...fail. [We’re not talking about mentally disabled people here, Marx, less than 1% of the population; we’re talking about that 30% who choose to drop out, have multiple babies before graduation, party and sleep, who demand you pay their medical bills.]
Capitalism did not cause the current crisis or any economic crisis in our country’s history. Every crisis has been caused by government intervention in the economy of one kind or another. Government intervention actually prolongs the periodic slowdowns all economic systems must endure.
Laissez-faire capitalism has not existed in this country since the Lincoln administration’s transcontinental railroad...It has been nearly totally dead since the Sherman and Clayton Anti-trust laws of the 1890s, when the politicians invented the “monopoly myth,” and used the myth to create fear and hatred for the producers. Men like JD Rockefeller [and one hundred years later, Bill Gates]—self-made men, who were better than the competition, who grew their own personal wealth and the wealth of the world of people who benefited from their efforts—were demonized by the socialist press, the rent-seeking competition they buried, and politicians in Washington, both Dems and Reps, who saw an opportunity to grow their own personal wealth [doing favors for their friends] and power [clubbing the great entrepreneurs to death]. While JD Rockefeller controlled Standard Oil the price of kerosene dropped from .65/per gal to .18/per gal. [Once the government had taken over Standard and busted it up into Chevron, Mobil, Exxon, etc. a federal petroleum regulating agency [I can’t remember the name of the agency] created the petroleum CARTEL we call “Big Oil” today. Once the agency went to work, the price of gas in this country doubled over night.] Consumers benefited from Rockefeller’s efficiency. The politicians came in and busted up his company and argued they were doing it for the good of the consumers! A tremendous lie, you still believe.
A more recent example: Bill Gates’ success wasn’t hurting consumers. He put wonderful new tools on the desk of tens of millions for pennies...he made Google, Ebay, Yahoo! etc., etc., possible for a one-time fee, the cost of his software. We could never pay Gates what he’s worth. But Netscape complained to Utah Republican Orin Hatch... Waa! We can’t compete, they cried. Hit him over head, they demanded...Bill Clinton saw an opportunity to make people like you happy, and spent the later half of the 90s clubbing a great company to death. Software prices went up dramatically as Gates spent hundreds of millions trying to save his company from unscrupulous politicians working their brutal magic for their rent-seeking cronies at Netscape and others who could not compete in the free market with Microsoft.
Government has only one tool, Marcus, FORCE. Whenever it is used, what you are witnessing is not capitalism. Government has no role to play in a capitalist economy, except to prosecute fraud and mediate contractual disputes between private parties. In fact, government is the only entity capable of creating and sustaining a monopoly. The Post Office, for example, was a monopoly for the first two hundred years of US history. When the rules were changed to permit competition a billion dollar private company was created, Brown; then another billion dollar industry, Fed Ex; still another, DSL. Millions of real jobs created. [A real job is one that grows the economy. Jobs like ours, paid by tax dollars, don’t grow the economy.] In a free market, in any sector, profit invites competition. If government stays out of the way, monopolies, like McDonalds in the late 40’s, don’t last long. If there’s money to be made, competitors emerge and create Burger King, Wendys, Checkers, Jack-in-the-box, etc. We now have fast food in abundance and prices have grown slower than inflation in the fast food industry. My father’s 1990 car phone cost him thousands. My cell phone [a much better phone] was free. My father’s 1980 beta VCR cost him thousands. I think I paid $30 bucks for my last VCR...$50 for my last DVD player. The reason? Government didn’t mess with the electronics industry, for whatever reason. True capitalism resulted in abundance, lower and lower prices, countless producers, and wonderful innovation. THIS SCENARIO WOULD BE TRUE IN EVERY ASPECT OF THE HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY AS WELL IF GOVERNMENT WOULD STAY OUT OF THE WAY.
In a capitalist economy businesses succeed and businesses fail. There are no government bailouts. Businesses regulate themselves because there are real consequences for failure. A businessman who was responsible for the distribution of contaminated baby milk, for example, would never work again. His reputation would forever be ruined. In a capitalist system your product and your word are sacred: failure in either realm and you’re finished.
FDR would have served the country well had he encouraged the private sector to invent the 401k, or the 403b, or any private IRA you like. My grand parents would have left me millions had they been investing in a retire account that grew with the country’s economy...compounding interest can be your friend, Marcus. The pittance you MIGHT draw from the SSA is a pathetic government program that does not grow wealth at all. It maintains the status quo, i.e. an inch above poverty.
Finally, the weak are never left to die, particularly if their weakness is something beyond their control...mental retardation or a debilitating illness in mid-life after years of productive work. Americans are the most charitable people on Earth. Social Darwinism is a most cynical myth: It charges that men climb the ladder of success only by kicking the other guy in the face, that somebody’s always getting screwed when men live by trade, that people will never choose to help one another. You agree with this leftist, middle school lesson, and then compound the failure of its conclusion by arguing that benevolent, all powerful government will do better. Sure...it’s easy to be charitable with somebody else’s money! Rockefeller passed on more than 90% of his fortune, not to his kids, but to several endowments: Medical research and education. Bill Gates has used his money to save millions of lives in Africa and countless state-side educational programs. If the government got out of the charity business, subsidizing poor people and broken companies, tax-payers would get to keep 2 TRILLION of their dollars a year—that’s right, Marx, entitlements consume half of our government’s budget annually. Private charity would increase tenfold. We could pay back China in six months. We could pay off the entire national debt in five years if we nixed just two programs: Social Security and Medicare. You want to grow these disastrous programs. Half the country agrees with you. If you win, we all fail.
Donn
Sure, if your basic premise were true and it isn’t... because GW and the Conservatives have been running this mess for 6 of the last 7 years...THAT’S everything: the judiciary, the Senate, the House and the executive branch. I find it amazing that there are people out there that STILL blame the Dems when they haven’t even been able to hold a meeting in the last 6 years. No, this mess belongs TO the conservatives. Are you familiar with the Conservative philosophy of "Starve The Beast"? Basically, it says, spend, spend, and spend until you bankrupt the nation and THEN you can eliminate ALL the social programs and worker protections with the phrase "sorry, there’s just no more money." I believe that the Conservatives are trying to turn the USA into a nation of the super wealthy and of a worker class...a small middle class, or managerial class, and a warrior class. That’s it, no more. So, for them, you’re either super rich, a soldier, a manager or a worker. They want to eliminate the "nouveau rich" with a Wall Street crash and eliminate all movement between the classes. Take a look around you, THAT’S what’s happening now.
Marx
Marx,
It has become quite clear to me now that you did in fact drink the Cool Aide!
First, I am not a Republican. I'm not a conservative. I am a capitalist. But, what does any of this have to do with my philosophical classroom scenario? Is what I describe true or not?
There are no pros to discuss with regards to socialism and/or communism. Once justice is sacrificed, nothing good can come of it. Sure it might seem good to you or me, low-paid teachers, but it’s not good. There is a much better solution, and it’s completely just to all. It’s called laissez-faire capitalism. It works like your classroom...students who work hard and produce something of value reap the benefits of their efforts. Students who don’t...fail. [We’re not talking about mentally disabled people here, Marx, less than 1% of the population; we’re talking about that 30% who choose to drop out, have multiple babies before graduation, party and sleep, who demand you pay their medical bills.]
Capitalism did not cause the current crisis or any economic crisis in our country’s history. Every crisis has been caused by government intervention in the economy of one kind or another. Government intervention actually prolongs the periodic slowdowns all economic systems must endure.
Laissez-faire capitalism has not existed in this country since the Lincoln administration’s transcontinental railroad...It has been nearly totally dead since the Sherman and Clayton Anti-trust laws of the 1890s, when the politicians invented the “monopoly myth,” and used the myth to create fear and hatred for the producers. Men like JD Rockefeller [and one hundred years later, Bill Gates]—self-made men, who were better than the competition, who grew their own personal wealth and the wealth of the world of people who benefited from their efforts—were demonized by the socialist press, the rent-seeking competition they buried, and politicians in Washington, both Dems and Reps, who saw an opportunity to grow their own personal wealth [doing favors for their friends] and power [clubbing the great entrepreneurs to death]. While JD Rockefeller controlled Standard Oil the price of kerosene dropped from .65/per gal to .18/per gal. [Once the government had taken over Standard and busted it up into Chevron, Mobil, Exxon, etc. a federal petroleum regulating agency [I can’t remember the name of the agency] created the petroleum CARTEL we call “Big Oil” today. Once the agency went to work, the price of gas in this country doubled over night.] Consumers benefited from Rockefeller’s efficiency. The politicians came in and busted up his company and argued they were doing it for the good of the consumers! A tremendous lie, you still believe.
A more recent example: Bill Gates’ success wasn’t hurting consumers. He put wonderful new tools on the desk of tens of millions for pennies...he made Google, Ebay, Yahoo! etc., etc., possible for a one-time fee, the cost of his software. We could never pay Gates what he’s worth. But Netscape complained to Utah Republican Orin Hatch... Waa! We can’t compete, they cried. Hit him over head, they demanded...Bill Clinton saw an opportunity to make people like you happy, and spent the later half of the 90s clubbing a great company to death. Software prices went up dramatically as Gates spent hundreds of millions trying to save his company from unscrupulous politicians working their brutal magic for their rent-seeking cronies at Netscape and others who could not compete in the free market with Microsoft.
Government has only one tool, Marcus, FORCE. Whenever it is used, what you are witnessing is not capitalism. Government has no role to play in a capitalist economy, except to prosecute fraud and mediate contractual disputes between private parties. In fact, government is the only entity capable of creating and sustaining a monopoly. The Post Office, for example, was a monopoly for the first two hundred years of US history. When the rules were changed to permit competition a billion dollar private company was created, Brown; then another billion dollar industry, Fed Ex; still another, DSL. Millions of real jobs created. [A real job is one that grows the economy. Jobs like ours, paid by tax dollars, don’t grow the economy.] In a free market, in any sector, profit invites competition. If government stays out of the way, monopolies, like McDonalds in the late 40’s, don’t last long. If there’s money to be made, competitors emerge and create Burger King, Wendys, Checkers, Jack-in-the-box, etc. We now have fast food in abundance and prices have grown slower than inflation in the fast food industry. My father’s 1990 car phone cost him thousands. My cell phone [a much better phone] was free. My father’s 1980 beta VCR cost him thousands. I think I paid $30 bucks for my last VCR...$50 for my last DVD player. The reason? Government didn’t mess with the electronics industry, for whatever reason. True capitalism resulted in abundance, lower and lower prices, countless producers, and wonderful innovation. THIS SCENARIO WOULD BE TRUE IN EVERY ASPECT OF THE HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY AS WELL IF GOVERNMENT WOULD STAY OUT OF THE WAY.
In a capitalist economy businesses succeed and businesses fail. There are no government bailouts. Businesses regulate themselves because there are real consequences for failure. A businessman who was responsible for the distribution of contaminated baby milk, for example, would never work again. His reputation would forever be ruined. In a capitalist system your product and your word are sacred: failure in either realm and you’re finished.
FDR would have served the country well had he encouraged the private sector to invent the 401k, or the 403b, or any private IRA you like. My grand parents would have left me millions had they been investing in a retire account that grew with the country’s economy...compounding interest can be your friend, Marcus. The pittance you MIGHT draw from the SSA is a pathetic government program that does not grow wealth at all. It maintains the status quo, i.e. an inch above poverty.
Finally, the weak are never left to die, particularly if their weakness is something beyond their control...mental retardation or a debilitating illness in mid-life after years of productive work. Americans are the most charitable people on Earth. Social Darwinism is a most cynical myth: It charges that men climb the ladder of success only by kicking the other guy in the face, that somebody’s always getting screwed when men live by trade, that people will never choose to help one another. You agree with this leftist, middle school lesson, and then compound the failure of its conclusion by arguing that benevolent, all powerful government will do better. Sure...it’s easy to be charitable with somebody else’s money! Rockefeller passed on more than 90% of his fortune, not to his kids, but to several endowments: Medical research and education. Bill Gates has used his money to save millions of lives in Africa and countless state-side educational programs. If the government got out of the charity business, subsidizing poor people and broken companies, tax-payers would get to keep 2 TRILLION of their dollars a year—that’s right, Marx, entitlements consume half of our government’s budget annually. Private charity would increase tenfold. We could pay back China in six months. We could pay off the entire national debt in five years if we nixed just two programs: Social Security and Medicare. You want to grow these disastrous programs. Half the country agrees with you. If you win, we all fail.
Donn
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Yellow Dog [Part 10]
Donn,
This is NOT a discussion about the pros and cons of communism although, I could argue and very successfully that our health system is completely out of control, and I could argue that it’s very disingenuous of you to trash socialized medicine when that’s what you enjoy as a teacher. I am talking about the fact that you’ve been lied to and you seem to want hang on to it despite the fact that you’re actually speaking to someone that has traveled more extensively in China than I have here in the US. Let’s examine your quote; "when we read history or watch the news or read someone's eye-witness account, or whatever, we have to take our values with us." What do YOU think THAT does? You’re reading biased reports and you’re asking your students to add their own personal biases to it? That just gets you further and further away from the truth until you might as well just read some nice historical fiction by Anne Rice. I also don’t recall anyone saying that we should have socialized medicine. What I DO see is people saying EVERYONE should have access to bare minimum healthcare. How many billions do we spend every year because the poorest of the poor don’t have access to preventative medicine and end up in trauma and emergency care? What we have now is system that is so out of control that people that have Healthcare are being turned away to die.
Ms. Robin Whitelock, a teacher here at Filer Middle School developed cancer, she had MDCPS healthcare Insurance, she got some chemo and some radiation therapy and then the insurance company told her she had exhausted her medical insurance limits and they would only pay for hospice care until she dies. She appealed, they rejected her appeal, she went to the Red Cross, who she donated money to every year and they told her she made too much money to qualify so, she died. Meanwhile, I know you reject this, in China, EVERYONE is guaranteed bare minimum healthcare. Sure, if you’re wealthy or have Health Insurance you can get better but EVERYONE gets the least amount even the foreigners and the doctors I saw in China say more and more Americans are coming to them for care. I went there for Dental Care, my dentist here in America wanted to charge me $7,000, the Chinese dentist did ALL the work for about $300. Like I said, most of our physicians and dentists want to be millionaires and helping people has become a secondary issue. I remember my childhood pediatrician often telling my mom "pay me when you can" or saying things like "no charge, I know with 3 boys it gets expensive." I gotta laugh, there is NO way I would hear THAT today. The FIRST thing a doctor says today is "how will you pay me?" The strict "let the markets regulate themselves" just doesn’t work.
Case in point, the current Financial Crisis is directly related to this greed factor. No regulation means, collusion, collusion and rape the public until they have no more to give. As for your points about giving things to the D and F students. I guess provisions for the mentally and physically impaired isn’t important to you. When FDR became president, the elderly were working until they were used up and then in the streets begging until they died, with no healthcare or social structure to help them. There were no Pension Plans and employers didn’t give a dam. THAT sounds like what you’re espousing because THAT’S what happens when your plan plays out to its natural conclusion. Free markets, let the buyer beware, no regulations, no social structures...Social Darwinism. I dunno, to me? That sounds like hell on Earth.
Marx
Marx,
My quick response: I'll work on my response to everything you said...but please respond to the logic of my classroom analogy...what I have described is precisely what has happened and will continue to happen in this country if we continue to operate as if feelings are a means of cognition. Feelings are a result, not a cause. You reverse the Law of Causality and arrive at irrational, destructive, unworkable solutions.
Donn
This is NOT a discussion about the pros and cons of communism although, I could argue and very successfully that our health system is completely out of control, and I could argue that it’s very disingenuous of you to trash socialized medicine when that’s what you enjoy as a teacher. I am talking about the fact that you’ve been lied to and you seem to want hang on to it despite the fact that you’re actually speaking to someone that has traveled more extensively in China than I have here in the US. Let’s examine your quote; "when we read history or watch the news or read someone's eye-witness account, or whatever, we have to take our values with us." What do YOU think THAT does? You’re reading biased reports and you’re asking your students to add their own personal biases to it? That just gets you further and further away from the truth until you might as well just read some nice historical fiction by Anne Rice. I also don’t recall anyone saying that we should have socialized medicine. What I DO see is people saying EVERYONE should have access to bare minimum healthcare. How many billions do we spend every year because the poorest of the poor don’t have access to preventative medicine and end up in trauma and emergency care? What we have now is system that is so out of control that people that have Healthcare are being turned away to die.
Ms. Robin Whitelock, a teacher here at Filer Middle School developed cancer, she had MDCPS healthcare Insurance, she got some chemo and some radiation therapy and then the insurance company told her she had exhausted her medical insurance limits and they would only pay for hospice care until she dies. She appealed, they rejected her appeal, she went to the Red Cross, who she donated money to every year and they told her she made too much money to qualify so, she died. Meanwhile, I know you reject this, in China, EVERYONE is guaranteed bare minimum healthcare. Sure, if you’re wealthy or have Health Insurance you can get better but EVERYONE gets the least amount even the foreigners and the doctors I saw in China say more and more Americans are coming to them for care. I went there for Dental Care, my dentist here in America wanted to charge me $7,000, the Chinese dentist did ALL the work for about $300. Like I said, most of our physicians and dentists want to be millionaires and helping people has become a secondary issue. I remember my childhood pediatrician often telling my mom "pay me when you can" or saying things like "no charge, I know with 3 boys it gets expensive." I gotta laugh, there is NO way I would hear THAT today. The FIRST thing a doctor says today is "how will you pay me?" The strict "let the markets regulate themselves" just doesn’t work.
Case in point, the current Financial Crisis is directly related to this greed factor. No regulation means, collusion, collusion and rape the public until they have no more to give. As for your points about giving things to the D and F students. I guess provisions for the mentally and physically impaired isn’t important to you. When FDR became president, the elderly were working until they were used up and then in the streets begging until they died, with no healthcare or social structure to help them. There were no Pension Plans and employers didn’t give a dam. THAT sounds like what you’re espousing because THAT’S what happens when your plan plays out to its natural conclusion. Free markets, let the buyer beware, no regulations, no social structures...Social Darwinism. I dunno, to me? That sounds like hell on Earth.
Marx
Marx,
My quick response: I'll work on my response to everything you said...but please respond to the logic of my classroom analogy...what I have described is precisely what has happened and will continue to happen in this country if we continue to operate as if feelings are a means of cognition. Feelings are a result, not a cause. You reverse the Law of Causality and arrive at irrational, destructive, unworkable solutions.
Donn
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Yellow Dog [Part 9]
Marx,
Of course, I’m not missing your point at all. I understand the concept of media bias. I know that thirty people can witness the same event and write thirty different stories. This is not a new idea. That is why when we read history or watch the news or read someone’s eye-witness account, or whatever, we have to take our values with us.
I don’t reject Michael Moore, for example, because he creates entertaining movies and calls them documentaries, or because he cuts and edits film to make people look ridiculous, uncaring, dishonest, or whatever he wants them to look like. I hate Michael Moore and his movies because he is a collectivist-altruist, cynical, hypocritical collection of raw sewage. He is a statist and a socialist. When I show his films in my classes I always point out to my students that Moore is a talented film-maker and an excellent propagandist for his cause. What I reject is his cause. Take Sicko, for example. Moore makes the case for universal health care. I don’t care if all of Moore’s video or none of his video is doctored, altered, pure fiction or gospel truth...It wouldn’t matter if every sick person shown in the movies was a Hollywood actor reading a script, or my next door neighbor, or me! I reject entirely [philosophically] with every fiber in my being his first premise: People have a right to health care. This is an irrational and dangerous position to hold if you believe in liberty. Health care—hospitals, doctors, and prescription drugs COST MONEY. Nobody has a right to anything that costs money. We all need health care, but the fact that people need food, clothing, and shelter does not give anyone a right to these things.
Wealth doesn’t just “exist.” Wealth is created. Individuals have an absolute right to the wealth they create. In a free, capitalist system individuals come to the market place to trade with other individuals, value for value. My paycheck represents real work, real value that I have created. People can not morally consume more than they produce. One who produces nothing has nothing to trade. What do they bring to the market place? 1. their tears [the moochers] or 2. their guns [the looters]. Looters and moochers offer nothing of value in exchange for your productivity... Looters steal your wealth by force; moochers count on your acceptance of the altruist code and “guilt you” into handing it over.
The welfare state is actually a combination of the two: collectivist-altruist politicians are guilted into forcing taxpayers to hand over their wealth. In other words, they use the tools of the looter to achieve the immoral goal of the moocher!
In his films. Moore uses both, too. He appeals to his audience on a purely emotional level. [Nobody likes to see human beings suffering, particularly when they did nothing to deserve their condition.] The altruist Moore uses your own guilt to soften you up to the point where you gladly leave reason at the door...Like Hitler he calls his followers to ACT! Don’t think. ACT! Something, ANYTHING must be done! Then he sics the politicians on you. Politicians, of course, produce nothing. The only tool they have at their disposal is force. Through the progressive tax code, socialist politicians force the producers to hand over the products of their labor so that their wealth may be distributed to others, people who did not produce it. This forced sacrifice “for the greater good” is nothing less than extortion.
Altruist-collectivists sacrifice JUSTICE and reward sloth and indifference to reality. Their socialist schemes destroy economic freedom, destroy liberty and ultimately enable the politicians to destroy the producers.
Try this experiment with your classes. After your next test tell your students that you’re going to add up all of the points everybody made and divide them evenly among all of your students. Students who made Ds and Fs will think this is a fine idea...they’ll be getting something of value for nothing. You’re the government, so of course you can force the A and B students to hand over the points...They will undoubtedly [and correctly] believe that your system is unjust, but you have the power to imprison them or even execute them, so they’re not going to give you too much of fight. They’ll get permits and protest a bit, here and there, but they’ll never attack you personally. After a while the producers, the A and B students, will stop trying so hard to get ahead. What’s the point? There will be fewer points to go around...the D and F students will demand more...they will believe that they are entitled to it...Good grades are my RIGHT! There are more of them than A, B, students by now...you’ve done the math...there are fewer points to go around. You’ll try to persuade your former A and B students to work harder “for the greater good,” for the “motherland,” for your brother-men. Before long that empty promise will fail, too. My right to keep the A that I earned is the greater good. Justice is a greater good. Eventually, you will have to crack down on the dissidents, start detaining your former A and B students, force them to study after school...set quotas based on their pre-experiment test scores...Finally, you will announce your Four Year Plan and promise that if everybody does their DUTY to the STATE that all will be better for it on graduation day four years hence.
After graduation, your former A and B students will either:
>flee to the West where [still] one can keep most of the products of their labor [the US is the world’s greatest beneficiary of Eastern brain drain];
>join their former oppressor, become a card-carrying member of the collective elite, and take the club to the next generation of suckers...er...ah...brothers.
Donn
Of course, I’m not missing your point at all. I understand the concept of media bias. I know that thirty people can witness the same event and write thirty different stories. This is not a new idea. That is why when we read history or watch the news or read someone’s eye-witness account, or whatever, we have to take our values with us.
I don’t reject Michael Moore, for example, because he creates entertaining movies and calls them documentaries, or because he cuts and edits film to make people look ridiculous, uncaring, dishonest, or whatever he wants them to look like. I hate Michael Moore and his movies because he is a collectivist-altruist, cynical, hypocritical collection of raw sewage. He is a statist and a socialist. When I show his films in my classes I always point out to my students that Moore is a talented film-maker and an excellent propagandist for his cause. What I reject is his cause. Take Sicko, for example. Moore makes the case for universal health care. I don’t care if all of Moore’s video or none of his video is doctored, altered, pure fiction or gospel truth...It wouldn’t matter if every sick person shown in the movies was a Hollywood actor reading a script, or my next door neighbor, or me! I reject entirely [philosophically] with every fiber in my being his first premise: People have a right to health care. This is an irrational and dangerous position to hold if you believe in liberty. Health care—hospitals, doctors, and prescription drugs COST MONEY. Nobody has a right to anything that costs money. We all need health care, but the fact that people need food, clothing, and shelter does not give anyone a right to these things.
Wealth doesn’t just “exist.” Wealth is created. Individuals have an absolute right to the wealth they create. In a free, capitalist system individuals come to the market place to trade with other individuals, value for value. My paycheck represents real work, real value that I have created. People can not morally consume more than they produce. One who produces nothing has nothing to trade. What do they bring to the market place? 1. their tears [the moochers] or 2. their guns [the looters]. Looters and moochers offer nothing of value in exchange for your productivity... Looters steal your wealth by force; moochers count on your acceptance of the altruist code and “guilt you” into handing it over.
The welfare state is actually a combination of the two: collectivist-altruist politicians are guilted into forcing taxpayers to hand over their wealth. In other words, they use the tools of the looter to achieve the immoral goal of the moocher!
In his films. Moore uses both, too. He appeals to his audience on a purely emotional level. [Nobody likes to see human beings suffering, particularly when they did nothing to deserve their condition.] The altruist Moore uses your own guilt to soften you up to the point where you gladly leave reason at the door...Like Hitler he calls his followers to ACT! Don’t think. ACT! Something, ANYTHING must be done! Then he sics the politicians on you. Politicians, of course, produce nothing. The only tool they have at their disposal is force. Through the progressive tax code, socialist politicians force the producers to hand over the products of their labor so that their wealth may be distributed to others, people who did not produce it. This forced sacrifice “for the greater good” is nothing less than extortion.
Altruist-collectivists sacrifice JUSTICE and reward sloth and indifference to reality. Their socialist schemes destroy economic freedom, destroy liberty and ultimately enable the politicians to destroy the producers.
Try this experiment with your classes. After your next test tell your students that you’re going to add up all of the points everybody made and divide them evenly among all of your students. Students who made Ds and Fs will think this is a fine idea...they’ll be getting something of value for nothing. You’re the government, so of course you can force the A and B students to hand over the points...They will undoubtedly [and correctly] believe that your system is unjust, but you have the power to imprison them or even execute them, so they’re not going to give you too much of fight. They’ll get permits and protest a bit, here and there, but they’ll never attack you personally. After a while the producers, the A and B students, will stop trying so hard to get ahead. What’s the point? There will be fewer points to go around...the D and F students will demand more...they will believe that they are entitled to it...Good grades are my RIGHT! There are more of them than A, B, students by now...you’ve done the math...there are fewer points to go around. You’ll try to persuade your former A and B students to work harder “for the greater good,” for the “motherland,” for your brother-men. Before long that empty promise will fail, too. My right to keep the A that I earned is the greater good. Justice is a greater good. Eventually, you will have to crack down on the dissidents, start detaining your former A and B students, force them to study after school...set quotas based on their pre-experiment test scores...Finally, you will announce your Four Year Plan and promise that if everybody does their DUTY to the STATE that all will be better for it on graduation day four years hence.
After graduation, your former A and B students will either:
>flee to the West where [still] one can keep most of the products of their labor [the US is the world’s greatest beneficiary of Eastern brain drain];
>join their former oppressor, become a card-carrying member of the collective elite, and take the club to the next generation of suckers...er...ah...brothers.
Donn
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