A question on general economic theory and the role of government

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard

Originally posted by: sandorski
fail troll

Yes, you're right: anyone with whom you can't successfully browbeat down with a litany of logical fallacies must be a troll. Brilliant!

fail again

 

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: Infohawk

Originally posted by: miketheidiot

I'll skip the other stuff and just move to the inevitable end of the discussion, free markets cannot work effectively in the healthcare industry because one of the most important prerequisites for functions markets is completely impossible, that is that you cannot have informed consumers. Without informed consumers, you don't have free markets, especially when you have a market where people are desperate to be healthy (or alive) and will pay any amount of money without empirical evidence, and furthermore doctors in most systems have every incentive to sell them as much healthcare as possible since they get paid more to do more (note that more is not better, and they generally have proven to be inversely correlated)

the main broken part of the government solution, medicare, is that it plays into this system.

Add to this the fact that every insurance provider has a different setup for paperwork and payment polices and the lack of IT in hospitals, and so forth, and you have a free market disaster that gives much worse results and costs more.

Why can't you have informed consumers of healthcare?

are we going to start mandating 4 years of med school for all citizens? Most people don't even have a vague understanding of how the body works.

this isn't a hard concept, there is a reason doctors have to go to 8+ year of highly specialized schooling to do what they do. Saying that a doctor and a patient are on equivalent negotiating fields is insane.

 

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard

Have you considered the reasons why charity is limited in scope? I will list a few:
1. Government taking dollars that would otherwise go to charity. If I weren't paying for government social programs, I could (indeed, would) give more money to charities that work to accomplish the same ends. Since charities are almost always more efficient in such pursuits than government, my finite resources would achieve more good than they do under the current system.
2. Charities cannot simply print money: they utilize their finite resources to attack infinite problems in the best way that they can. Government or, at least, our current government (including the last several administrations), looks at these infinite problems and attempts to solve them outright. This is absolutely a fool's errand and is a huge contributor to the massive debt we have incurred.

since your thinking on poltical and economic matters is very very limited, i'll make this very clear.


Government can change the law. Charities can't. See the difference? If you are still too dense to get it, i'll write a wall-o-text for you.



the government taxation hurts charities line is a load of shit, the average person pays about 40% of their income in taxes, and donates about 2% of their income to charity (a very vague definition of charity). As you should be able to see, there is a little problem with charity being able to fix societies problems

 

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard

Originally posted by: sandorski
fail troll

Yes, you're right: anyone with whom you can't successfully browbeat down with a litany of logical fallacies must be a troll. Brilliant!

when was the last time you posted something that wasn't a logical fallacy? Certainly not in this thread.

 

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard

Originally posted by: Craig234
You're delusional to try to argue that charitable contributions would be anywhere near the amount people pay in taxes. 'Point of a gun', remember?

I never said they would be. See below for the reason: people like you.

As for the government 'printing money', the problem is inflation. How has inflation been for a very long time now? Red Herring issue.

That doesn't even make sense in the context of what I said, which was that the difference between government and charity is that charity is forced to acknowledge and act as if it has finite means, whereas the government does not. At least, does not for now. Not long in the future, the debts will be called in. Make sure you send me an e-mail and let me know how that government-based "social welfare" is working out for you then, if you still have electricity, a computer, and internet access.

think we just got a slippery slope, emotional appeal, and at least one logical fallacy.

Face it - you have chosen an ideology that requires you to claim the government is massively 'inefficient', which prevents you from any sensible view.

I haven't chosen any ideology.

now your just trolling

It could be a lot more than that if people like you would put their faith in other people rather than in the government. Charity is a niche because people like you have relegated it, contenting themselves with their ideology: I paid at the office, so why should I give you any money? Whatever helps you sleep at night, I suppose.

charity is niche because people are greedy, there are free-rider problems, because it has no power to change the problems whose symptoms it exists to treat. Do you realize how childishly naive you sound?

Your biggest failing as a political debater is that you don't understand that the government will always fall short of the need. The need is infinite and always will be.

close is better than nothing. 'Charity' is a joke, a bandaid to be placed a on broken system.

 

[brencat]

Originally posted by: miketheidiot
the average person pays about 40% of their income in taxes, and donates about 2% of their income to charity (a very vague definition of charity). As you should be able to see, there is a little problem with charity being able to fix societies problems

Think about what you just said...40% of your income going to taxes. Now while it's not quite that bad (yet), doesn't it strike you unfair that govt is taking your personal property for common good you might feel is unnecessary, much of which might be done by individuals as they see fit?

True, maybe there won't be as many parks with nice gazebos or brick lined crosswalks in town, or old-fashioned green street posts instead of the normal metal ones, but hey the "rich" are mostly paying for all that so whatever right?

I'm totally fine with necessities -- schools, police, fire, emergency services, road maintenance. But we've gone WAY beyond necessities (sorry, welfare and cheap drugs don't count in my book) and people have reached the breaking point.

If this keeps up, you are going to see a backlash at the polls something fierce in 2010. And it's going to be at both the national and local level.

 

[LunarRay]

We all would love to pay a million $ in taxes for the obvious reason. But that brings up a point, I think. Why not simply never bother with gross earnings. Live according to Net earnings. When you seek a job or a raise or any thing simply look to the Net as being the real income and act accordingly.

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: miketheidiot
close is better than nothing. 'Charity' is a joke, a bandaid to be placed a on broken system.

Start counting now and post back when you get close to infinity.

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: LunarRay
We all would love to pay a million $ in taxes for the obvious reason. But that brings up a point, I think. Why not simply never bother with gross earnings. Live according to Net earnings. When you seek a job or a raise or any thing simply look to the Net as being the real income and act accordingly.

Because that number is depressingly low, thanks to people like miketheidiot who think they deserve a chunk of my income to subsidize their favorite charity - the government.

 

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: brencat

Originally posted by: miketheidiot
the average person pays about 40% of their income in taxes, and donates about 2% of their income to charity (a very vague definition of charity). As you should be able to see, there is a little problem with charity being able to fix societies problems

Think about what you just said...40% of your income going to taxes. Now while it's not quite that bad (yet), doesn't it strike you unfair that govt is taking your personal property for common good you might feel is unnecessary, much of which might be done by individuals as they see fit?

True, maybe there won't be as many parks with nice gazebos or brick lined crosswalks in town, or old-fashioned green street posts instead of the normal metal ones, but hey the "rich" are mostly paying for all that so whatever right?

I'm totally fine with necessities -- schools, police, fire, emergency services, road maintenance. But we've gone WAY beyond necessities (sorry, welfare and cheap drugs don't count in my book) and people have reached the breaking point.

If this keeps up, you are going to see a backlash at the polls something fierce in 2010. And it's going to be at both the national and local level.

no, i'm not bitter, and tax rates are actually higher if you count state, sales, property, etc taxes.

and no, i would not have a problem with them being higher and would perfer them to be higher to pay for more things if necessary, but thats an entirely different topic.

 

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard

Originally posted by: miketheidiot
close is better than nothing. 'Charity' is a joke, a bandaid to be placed a on broken system.

Start counting now and post back when you get close to infinity.

talk about a non-relevant point. Of course that seems to be the theme of your posts.

 

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard

Originally posted by: LunarRay
We all would love to pay a million $ in taxes for the obvious reason. But that brings up a point, I think. Why not simply never bother with gross earnings. Live according to Net earnings. When you seek a job or a raise or any thing simply look to the Net as being the real income and act accordingly.

Because that number is depressingly low, thanks to people like miketheidiot who think they deserve a chunk of my income to subsidize their favorite charity - the government.

good find a new country then. I'm sorry that living in a representative democracy is so difficult for you.

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: miketheidiot
talk about a non-relevant point. Of course that seems to be the theme of your posts.

You just said that the government comes "close" to meeting the infinite needs of the people. Therefore, this counting bit is actually a very good analogy to get the concept of infinite through to you. Now, start counting.

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: miketheidiot
good find a new country then. I'm sorry that living in a representative democracy is so difficult for you.

I have no problem living in a representative democracy. The problem is that people like you think people like me don't deserve representation because people like me don't agree with people like you.

 

[fskimospy]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard

Originally posted by: miketheidiot
good find a new country then. I'm sorry that living in a representative democracy is so difficult for you.

I have no problem living in a representative democracy. The problem is that people like you think people like me don't deserve representation because people like me don't agree with people like you.

You are confusing 'losing' with 'not having representation'. It's not that you don't 'deserve' representation, we just had an election to see who best represented the wishes of the country, and you lost.

It happens, deal with it.

 

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard

Originally posted by: miketheidiot
good find a new country then. I'm sorry that living in a representative democracy is so difficult for you.

I have no problem living in a representative democracy. The problem is that people like you think people like me don't deserve representation because people like me don't agree with people like you.

when did i say that? I advocate the government to take on positions that i endorse, just as anyone else, and accept the fact that i will not always (or even often) get my way, wereas you go in a tizzy about me oppressing you and your utopian delusions on the rare occasion that i (sort of) might get my way instead of yours. Who exactly is the dude having the problem with representation here, certainly not me.

 

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard

Originally posted by: miketheidiot
talk about a non-relevant point. Of course that seems to be the theme of your posts.

You just said that the government comes "close" to meeting the infinite needs of the people. Therefore, this counting bit is actually a very good analogy to get the concept of infinite through to you. Now, start counting.

since you are playing asinine semantics here, perhaps the substitution of the word closer for close will get you off your moronic non-point.

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: RedChief
So instead of drug company who knows what drugs have a potential future and which do not, you want to put this in the hands of a bureaucrat? You want the government to decide who wins and who looses?

Oh, and that overhead from stockholders is nothing compared to the overhead of government bureaucracy.

Waht you are proposing is essentially what happens under communist systems of government (aka the government funds R&D). How many drugs came out of the Soviet Union, Red China, the eastern bloc, Cuba, or North Korea?

Finally profits do not get taken out. Profits is what remains after R&D, overhead, marketing, production, etc. Additionally, drug companies understand that new drugs provide them new revenue sources which therefore add to there bottom line.

Ah, the old cliche right-wing blather about 'bureaucrat', the scare word drug out to try to prove how big bad evil inefficient government will equal Stalin.

Complete down to the misspelling 'looses'.

It really just shows the hatred of *democracy* the radical right has.

These are the same 'bureaucrats' who could do something like coordinate the efforts to set up polio vaccinations - who are serving government *that can e voted in and out of office and who has an agenda to serve the public interest*, when it's not beign corrupted by the big pharma companies you want to simply give all the power to instead of to democracy. And it pretends the private side doesn't have 'burreaucrats' serving that organization whose agenda is profit, not the voter interest.

News flash - you can't tell the difference between democracy - the public elects a government who funds R&D in the public interest - and communism. You are the enemy of democracy, but you say you are the enemy of communism because you don't know the words you use.

There aren't any bureaucrats - and worse - at private roganizations?

 

[imported_inspire]

Originally posted by: Craig234
You're jumping around on me a bit here now, though.

First you suggested that since drugs are more complicated than firefighting, that was a reason to question the government's capability.

Moreso the validity of your analogy. I relied on my personal experience working in Pharma R&D more to come to the conclusion that the government's capability to effectively and directly intervene is suspect.

So I responded with complex things the government did.

Then you switched it to the issue of the moon landing being new - which actually strengthens my previous point.

Craig, let's be reasonable and actually consider this. When the government put a man on the moon, nobody else had done it. Nobody else had the technology or the capability or the desire. Had there been dozens of other companies who had dozens of other successful moon landings, Id imagine the government would have sought some level of cooperation with private industry rather than simply trying it all by themselves. I'm not switching anything here - I'm simply being critical of your analogy.

Well, the government has run major war factories fine just as the private sector has. It's run the Tennessee Valley authority, it built the Hoover Dam.

It runs Medicare more efficiently than the private sector runs private medical insurance.
There's just nothing to suggest that it can't do these things.

All very true. I'm not meaning to speak categorically here. Those are salient points.

Now, you do run into problems when you take it too far - point to any communist nation for the examples.

If the government took over the computer game industry tomorrow, I think you could expect a steep decline in the quality of titles.

Sure - I think if you take anything too far you run into trouble.

But as you noted, we're sort of gettng outside the topic - the question of whether the government can do it is sort of built in as an assumption it can, more than a debate issue.

Right, we're more or less discussing whether it should than whether it can.

On top of that, they'd be subject to FDA regulation, which would create all kinda of conflict-of-interest messes that would have to be avoided.

I don't see that as much of an issue. Anyone familiar with the government environment knows that generally, it's especially strict on itself - with rare exceptions.

The typical objection to governmentisn't that they relax the rules for themselves (Congress excepted), but that there's too MUCH red tape as they follow every regulation carefully.

But there's a bunch of things to consider that are specific to the Pharma industry - like patents, for example. Would patents acquired as a result of direct government intervention be privately heldby the government? Or would they be nationalized and licensed to generic manufacturers? If so, how quickly would this happen, because we typically continue to gather safety and stability data while a drug is marketed, for surveillance purposes. How would the landscape of IP laws regarding biologics and NMEs change? Would it remain competitive? How would generics compete with a government-based manufacturer?

It would certainly add a dimension that I don't think any of us have fully considered. Can it be done? Sure. Can it be done well? We'd need to know a lot more and spend at least as much time thinking about that.

In the end, the issue will balance itself as long as it is thought through.

 

[Craig234]

nm

 

[piasabird]

What is the stupid question?