Yeah, when I went for my immigration paperwork, there was a box for "hispanic white" and "hispanic black"
Yeah, when I went for my immigration paperwork, there was a box for "hispanic white" and "hispanic black"
- Oct 28, 1999
- 62,484
- 8,345
- 126
Originally posted by: voodoodrul
Originally posted by: Wreckem
Originally posted by: flexy
hahahaha. I read that "standard of living" all the time. Its total BOLLOCKS.
Dont get me wrong, as someone who lived 7+ years in the states its NOT my intention to bash the usa. But..please define "standard of living" ?
As an example, and i can ONLY speak for Germany now:
* health care, health insurance, social security, unemployment security
NO WAY IN HELL the us comes even close there. We pay A LOT of taxes, i totally agree....but....we also get something BACK from the taxes we pay....in the US those go to IRAQ.
* Public Transportation
*Price of groceries
Germany is known to have VERY LOW priced grocery discounters. Thats one reason Walmart FAILED in Germany since they couldnt compete with the low margins here. (This was new to me too)
* CERTAIN internet infrastructure.
Most/Many people in Europe have a 16MB/1MB DSL line....i havent even SEEN speeds like that advertized ANYWHERE over in the US...be it comcast or whatever provider i had....
Give me examples please for "higher standard of living" in the us
Edit: Yes...i agree...my personal impression is that the MIDDLECLASS is big in the states..many people DO have average jobs, barely paying bills etc..etc. Not really "poor" tho. But then there ARE many really poor people since (as said) things like unemployment insurance etc. are as good as nonexistent.
And...i dont need to mention that very known term "working poor"...the many people who work hard 40+ hrs but STILL are poor because the jobs just pay **** and no H/Ins.
Ill take this point for point.
The US has the worlds best medical care. They also produce the majority of the drugs in the world. The US ends up subsidizing the rest of the worlds medicine through our R&D.
The US is far to spread out to have a relible public transportation system. However older cities like NY and Boston have pretty good public transit systems.
Many items in the US have certain level of price controls, that keep certain items partially inflated.
Almost every first world country, besides the US heavily subsidizes their internet capabilities. The US lets free market reign. Also to be noted, the US is a LOT larger than Germany. The initial outlay costs for faster speeds is a lot costlier in the US than in Germany or any other fairly small nation.
Americans own more land. Have thier own houses. Their own cars. More luxury items. Etc etc etc...
You are wrong. The US does not have the best healthcare in the world according to the World Health Organization. Nor does our healthcare system promote longer life or a better standard of health compared to socialist systems.
And this pretty much sums it all up - From this link:
Money spent on well-applied medical technology might be worth it. But, perversely, our extra spending doesn't seem to buy us better medical care. According to virtually every meaningful statistic, from simple measures like infant mortality to more carefully constructed data like "potential years of life lost," Americans are no healthier (and are frequently unhealthier) than the citizens of countries with universal health care. Nor do Americans always get "more" medical care, as is commonly assumed. The citizens of Japan, for example, have more CT scanners and MRI machines than we do. And the French, whose system the World Health Organization recently declared the planet's best, have more hospital beds. They get more doctor visits, too, perhaps because their access to physicians is nearly unfettered--a privilege even most middle-class Americans surrendered with the spread of managed care. In fact, aside from cost, the measure on which the United States most conspicuously stands out from other advanced nations may be public opinion: In a series of polls a few years ago, just 40 percent of us said we were "fairly or very" satisfied with our health care system, fourth worst of the 17 nations surveyed.
Bump up France, or Japan, or ANY country to 300+ million people and make 60% of them overweight, if not obese and see how well their health care system can handle that stress.
Our health care technology is TOO good. We have single handidly prolonged lives that never should have been. We have hospitals full of people that actively put themselves there through their own horrible lifestyles and are running out of space for people that actually need access to care.
We've invented a better idiot. And now we're footed with the bill trying to care for them.
Just wait, the rest of the world catch up. And it won't be pretty.
France has 62 million people.. That's more than enough of a sampling pool to have a certain percentage of fools in it causing health problems for the rest of the people. There is no practical difference in the difference between populations.
I don't see how we're footing the bill when health insurance is a personal choice here in the US.
I give up on this whole thread. Incoherent ramblings of people who want to believe what they want to believe. Or what they've been told over and over by those screaming how great America is.
I have no problem leaving this whole system behind. It's the insane "freedom" clause that will prevent a reasonable healthcare system in this country for the foreseeable future, even in light of a complete failure of healthcare funding.
Queasy
Moderator<br>Console Gaming
- Aug 24, 2001
- 31,796
- 2
- 0
You can't compare the infant mortality rate in America to other countries. American statistics count babies that were born extremely early and unlikely to survive whereas other countries don't....more often than not, they don't even try to save the baby.
- Oct 28, 1999
- 62,484
- 8,345
- 126
I'll be spending my day tomorrow installing an EKG system in a hospital. I've got another 5 to do after that, one of which is in a 600 bed medical center. My wife routinely staffs in an ICU. How much real world experience do you have with the US health care system?
When I was in Milwaukee training for a week on a new version of my EKG system I ate dinner and breakfast every day with the director of IS for a very large hospital in Toronto. She said that the system there is in dire straights. They have people routinely waiting 10+ hours for access to ER rooms. In our largest facility the wait time is around 3 hours, we're trying to get it down to 2.5.
As a whole, our culture has lost all sense of self control, self responsibily, and our sense of entitlement has inflated beyond reproach. It's a foot on the throat of the healthcare system. We want it now, we want the best we can get, we rarely have to see the real costs, and we do nothing to prevent the need for care.
As far as infant mortality rates, I urge you to dig a little deeper. What actually goes into those statistics? How many births were actually carried to term that in other countries would have miscarried early on in the process? How many fertility drug based births resultted in a litter of 6 babies that aren't strong enough to survive...those never would have even been conceived in many other countries. Again, we are breaking the laws of bodily science that never would have resulted in life without them in the first place.
It may be a 'personal choice' for some, but it's ridiculously unaffordable for a lot of working-class citizens. My gf is young and healthy and is paying somewhere in the neighborhood of $1000/month for what is objectively pretty crappy insurance (living in Rhode Island doesn't help, since there's only one company in the state offering insurance for people who are self-employed or not working). I get better coverage from my employer for less than a quarter of the price out-of-pocket (granted, my employer is paying part of the premium, but it's still probably half the price or less for better coverage). The whole system is ridiculous. And if you're already sick with some kind of debilitating chronic condition and you lose your insurance, you are screwed. No sane for-profit insurance company is going to take on patients who will obviously require more in payouts than they can afford to pay.
Since ethically you can't just let people die if they get sick or injured and can't pay for treatment, society ends up paying for their healthcare anyway through Medicare. Medicare comes out of your taxes, so you are footing the bill for everyone anyway. Having people getting their primary medical care from an ER because they can't afford to see a doctor regularly at $100 a visit, or afford to get treatment they might need, is incredibly inefficient and expensive. That, IMO, is why you need some kind of universally available affordable insurance for basic preventative care and catastrophic illness or injury, and it needs to be mandatory for anyone who doesn't have comparable coverage from another source. Such an insurance program does NOT necessarily have to be run by the government unless no private insurer/insurers are willing to take it on.
It's the same sort of thing as mandatory minimal amounts of auto insurance -- not having it is incredibly costly for society (since auto accidents will happen and can result in tremendous medical expenses and property damage). Shortsighted people might otherwise choose to not pay short-term for insurance, gambling that they won't get in a costly accident. When they do (which some people undoubtedly will), they're financially ruined and the taxpayers have to pick up the rest of the tab. Forcing everyone to pay at least a minimal amount into an insurance pool mitigates the risk and keeps people from getting into serious trouble when low-probability events happen to them.
We spend more money on entitlement programs than defense? That's news to me. Show me proof. I'm 99.9% certain that you're wrong.
Originally posted by: Chaotic42
Probably because Israel is an ally in a very resource-rich but hostile area. We really need someone to come along and push for the development of fuel-cell technology and fusion power. Then we can pull out of the Middle East and let them be.
Melatonin must be kicking in.
We created Israel, that is why.
I have a big problem with that part of your post because it's flat out incorrect.
American internet companies are in no way part of a free market. When most regions in the US only have one high speed internet provider as part of an agreement between major broadband companies, that's not a free market. These companies are not competing with each other.
Something similar can be said of gas prices, the gas wars of the 60s and 70s with plummeting prices between street corners don't exist anymore; competing gas stations just charge the same price. The corporate executives cooperate with each other rather than undercutting each other, which ultimately only hurts the consumer (and indirectly hurts the economy as a whole, since consumer spending on non-consumables is the biggest portion of our GDP).
- Mar 20, 2000
- 102,402
- 8,574
- 126
iirc, that's not even right, either.
i really hate when people claim that cuba has a better birth rate, based on that statistic.
also warping the statistic: the (relatively) large number of women giving birth to a 'litter' of babies after having in vitro fertilization and implantation. many of those babies die on their birthday, yet the few that live give an infertile couple their own genetic children. yet, our 'healthcare' system is penalized for it in the infant mortality statistic.
also, i don't think it is right to blame the medical industry for health failures. for some reason (and i think the doctors are partially to blame, as they have spent a century making themselves into gods) people expect medical care to find answers to all of their health problems. they want a pill or procedure that will fix all that ails them. they don't want health care, if they did they would listen when their doctor says to eat right, exercise, stop smoking, etc. further, there may be environmental factors that show up negatively in the statistics for the medical industry because we measure health as a proxy. things like poor air and food quality, for instance.
Queasy
Moderator<br>Console Gaming
- Aug 24, 2001
- 31,796
- 2
- 0
Someone provided a pie graph earlier in this thread if you want to look for it. Medicare and Medicaid alone take up more money than defense spending. Once you throw in Social Security, Welfare, and the rest, defense spending was dwarfed.
- Mar 20, 2000
- 102,402
- 8,574
- 126
52.5% of receipts go into personal transfers
either SS or medicare ALONE will be larger expenditures than defense in 2008 proposed budget.
and that doesn't even count the part the feds require the states to chip in.
To the Australians- Don't waste your time. Americans think way too highly of themselves and their country. I'd rather give up an extra 10% of my income(I pay max tax rate here in the U.S.) for full medical coverage(no having to deal with insurances refuses existing conditions) and help for the poor and elderly and children.
The problem in the U.S. is that the children of poor people suffer for their parents' mistakes or faults. They have lesser education, lesser to no health insurance, etc. People with medical conditions have it VERY difficult to become insured. Although I make well over double my wife's pay, it is HER insurance as a teacher that covers my many pre-existing conditions.
Growing up, my father being a private dentist, never was able to get great insurance. If he didn't make decent money I never would have been able to see the many doctors I had to see as a child. If I were the same person with poor parents I would have had to suffer much more because of them.
An extra 10% tax is nothing compared to helping others imo. Then again, I have more in my pension and savings than 99.99999% of my age bracket and don't spend my money like all the fools here. However, I'd still give up 10% just to help others less fortunate.
In this country getting cancer while off insurance could bankrupt you too btw. You could save up a few 100,000 and have it all go down the drain.
The problem in the U.S. is that the children of poor people suffer for their parents' mistakes or faults. They have lesser education, lesser to no health insurance, etc. People with medical conditions have it VERY difficult to become insured. Although I make well over double my wife's pay, it is HER insurance as a teacher that covers my many pre-existing conditions.
Growing up, my father being a private dentist, never was able to get great insurance. If he didn't make decent money I never would have been able to see the many doctors I had to see as a child. If I were the same person with poor parents I would have had to suffer much more because of them.
An extra 10% tax is nothing compared to helping others imo. Then again, I have more in my pension and savings than 99.99999% of my age bracket and don't spend my money like all the fools here. However, I'd still give up 10% just to help others less fortunate.
In this country getting cancer while off insurance could bankrupt you too btw. You could save up a few 100,000 and have it all go down the drain.
exdeath
Lifer
- Jan 29, 2004
- 13,679
- 10
- 81
There we go again, the problem is that you CHOOSE to give 10% more. Keep in mind what happens if you FORCE it on EVERYONE.
There are people who are already poor who will be 10% more poor, and there are people who aren't quite poor who are doing just fine on their own who now become poor, because you are forcing that extra 10% from them. And there are people who are well off who might normall be generous and contribute up to 10% on their own, but now you've taken from them and they feel bitter and wronged, so now they start itemizing, withholding contributions, etc. Nobody likes something to be taken from them against their will.
Yeah, they don't have to worry about healthcare on the off chance that they need to see a doctor once every 5 years, but in between those visits they are now 10% poorer during their rest of their lives. So now what?
exdeath
Lifer
- Jan 29, 2004
- 13,679
- 10
- 81
We don't need to pay more; we need to reallocate the money we are already paying. I.e.: kick the freeloaders off the systems we currently have so non able bodied people who are unable to help themselves can get the help they need, instead of paying for satellite TV for some trailer trash with two working arms and legs.
I'm glad you called my 'execute the freeloaders" suggestion Stalin-like, btw. Communism is "from each according to their ability" not "from each according to their willingness". In other words, Stalin was smart enough to know that even communism requires that everyone be provided with an incentive in order to be willing to put in an equal share for what they get out. In a communist society where there is no such thing as personal gain, threat of force is used as incentive. Put in your equal share or die.
The problem with modern countries like USA, Britain, Australia, is we think we are so morally advanced that we have become political pussies unable to enforce anything anymore. Basically, our own systems of law and politics are run like the UN. Like sanctions, we can slap on threat after threat and keep passing law after law stating that something is wrong. But what use is it if we don?t actually back up those threats with force?
For example, if someone doesn?t pay their bill, you can keep sending collection notice after collection notice, and they still don?t have to pay. It?s considered unethical to garnish wages because then we are making them one of the ?poor and suffering? and trying to oppress them. If you throw them in jail until they pay, you are violating their rights. Basically they can do whatever they want without any repercussions. Threats now are meaningless.
For example, lets say someone orders a meal in a restaurant knowing that they don?t have the money to pay, with the intent to steal their meal. Would people here consider it ethical then for the restaurant to have the right to detain the person and require an exchange of labor equal in value to the meal? Most people will say no, and give you some story about violating his rights, forced slavery, etc. Everyone will agree it's wrong to steal food, but nobody will agree on proper punishment. And that is the problem. What use is a nation of law and principles if nobody wants to enforce it? It's the same thing with kids, everyone agrees kids are out of control these days, but nobody wants to allow effective punishment because 'its not riiiiiggghhttt waaaa waaa waaa'
Freeloading social services that you could do without is theft, and it?s draining the system. The solution is NOT to make the public pay MORE into the system. You will just get more freeloaders. Then what? In a modern capitalist society, what methods shall we put in place to ensure that everyone puts in what they take out, and who will be the judge of who needs and doesn't need a public service?
...and what if they get in a car accident and need months of hospital care, surgery, and rehab (that they can't possibly afford, or would have to spend the next 50 years paying off)? Or if they get cancer and need surgery and months of expensive chemotherapy? These things will happen to some people. Society as a whole has to pay for their medical care unless you want to just let them die, or do the minimum required and kick them back out on the street as soon as they're not in critical condition.
Because of the ethical concerns in healthcare, you can't really choose to not pay for it. And because it's way more efficient to let people have ready access to doctors and preventative medicine than to treat heart attack victims when they show up at the ER, it's better IMO to have everyone pay up front and have access to reasonable insurance coverage.
I'm not aware of a general consensus that garnishing someone's wages is 'unethical'. If you have a debt and you can pay it, you should (and, in the US, you must; if you won't do it willingly your assets will be seized and/or your future income garnished). Throwing people in jail because of debt they can't pay is pointless and fairly cruel, which is why we don't have debtors prisons anymore.
The diner committed fraud. What do you want to do, kill him? You can't make him work it off, and locking him up doesn't really accomplish anything. If he had any assets you could take them.
Fraud and corruption on some scale are inevitable. It is, sadly, the way some people are. I mean, you had people taking advantage of natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina to make a quick buck, which is incredibly depressing.
You do what you can to stop it.
exdeath
Lifer
- Jan 29, 2004
- 13,679
- 10
- 81
Yeah its a moral issue, but it's one that needs to be addressed. You can't help everyone, no matter how hard you think you can try. Resources are limited. Want a real life moral choice? What if you have one liver, and you have two patients who need it. One is an alcoholic and this is his third liver transplant, the other is the victim of your car accident. The alcoholic was in line first and the accident victim just arrived in the ER. Who deserves the liver more and who makes that decision? Guess what, no matter which one you choose, you have just let somebody die, so the basis of the argument that we have to be fair and help everyone who needs help is now irrelavent because you can't help everyone.
You can't help absolutely everyone. At what point do you come to terms with that, and start coming up with some criteria to seperate people who are just unfortunate and people whose problems are self inflicted and who don't need it as much? As long as we have to make that choice, we might as well agree on who needs it more and quit wasting money on the people we CANT help, because they take it from people who need it more.
And yeah right, how many times are you going to treat someone for heart disease and they still smoke and weigh 300 lbs and continue eating supersized fast food meals three times a day while they watch TV 6 hours a day. So much for preventative maintenence. People don't listen to their privately paid doctors, why would they listen to 'free' doctors just because I'm paying for them?
Really, where do we draw the line between helping people with genuine need and requiring personal responsibility? And who gets to draw that line and by what standards?
Thats what I want to know, where do we decide personal responsibility comes into play and how do we enforce it?
Until someone can tell me how we seperate people in genuine need and people with self inflicted problems in order to decide whose life is more valuable in a scenaro like above... I don't want to hear anything else about 'ethics in healthcare'. Some people will not get help, even with 98% taxes to fund public systems. How do you decide who those people will be? If you can't answer that and make a decision, you are not in any position to tell the rest of us who needs what and who it is acceptable to take from in order to make it happen.
And I don't want to hear any more 'what if's' about normal responsible people in random circumstances until someone comes up with a solution to keep out the people who are just in it for the free ride. Because everyone acknowledges that the fraud and corruption is a problem, but nobody wants to propose a way to deal with those problems because it's unfair and unethical to decide that one person needs a service less than another.
SHENS. Pic of bill and pic of girl that isnt grossly overweight, smoking, and born with 3 types of genetic disease.
because we give and give and give?
It is impossible to live off minimum wage?
The rich get richer and most everyone else get's poorer...
The rich get richer
It is impossible to live off minimum wage?
The rich get richer and most everyone else get's poorer...
The rich get richer
That's a VERY different situation.
Actually, there are protocols for deciding what patients get transplant organs over others. You have to do things like weighing need/immediacy against the expected benefit of the treatment. The alcoholic probably would not have gotten a first liver transplant unless he was relatively young and wanted to make lifestyle changes, and probably would not have gotten a second period, since he would just drink through that one too. You normally wouldn't just throw a donor organ into someone coming through an ER door either; for one thing, it would be exceedingly rare for it to even be a match to the patient, and testing for that alone would take days.
I'm all for personal responsibility -- but yes, if they have a heart attack and call 911, you have to help them in the short term regardless of how stupid they are. Ethically, you don't really have a choice. Are you going to tell them they deserve to die because you don't think they've done enough to promote their own health? Are you really saying you think you could make that choice? It's one thing if you truly can't help them -- they need a heart transplant, but they're old and in bad health and there are too many people in front of them on the list. But you can't withold treatment just because you feel they don't deserve it.
I'm not talking (necessarily) about people who "don't listen to their doctors". There are real problems with people who can't afford to go to see a doctor because they don't have medical insurance. Now, they might not have medical insurance because they don't give a ******. IMO, since society will end up paying for their care anyway if they truly need it, not giving a ****** shouldn't be an option. But many people with low incomes simply can't afford it.
You can't really draw that line in the vast majority of cases. It's an ethical nightmare.
...if you feel comfortable making that decision, you can be the one that tells people they deserve to die because you don't feel it's worth it to spend the money to help them.
For a lot of services, it's not unethical. If someone is faking an injury to draw unemployment benefits, or abusing their doctor to score some Vicodin -- cut them off. No system will be free of fraud and abuse (including our current one), so playing the "we can't have universal healthcare because people will abuse it" card is meaningless.
When you start talking about life-and-death decisions, in most cases you don't get to decide who is needier. You help everyone you can that wants to be helped.
exdeath
Lifer
- Jan 29, 2004
- 13,679
- 10
- 81
Once again we arrive at the fundamental problem of all socioeconomic systems.
So where do I draw the line and say, alright, I've helped enough, but now you want more and it's taking it's toll on my lifestyle now, if you take anything else I am going to start shooting people to protect what I've earned, or what little I've been allowed to keep? Do I make that decision when I have to sell a car because my taxes go up again and I can't afford to keep that car? Or do I make that decision when I am in a hospitol bed and someone has decided that someone else needs that liver more than I do?
Who decides how much to take from who and who needs it the most? There is no answer to that question, and that is why problems like this will exist as long as humanity exists. The fundamental question of who gets what.
exdeath
Lifer
- Jan 29, 2004
- 13,679
- 10
- 81
No, fundamentally, it is the SAME situation. Thats what people fail to understand.
You are arbitrarily deciding what to take from whom and who to give it to at the most fundamental level: life itself.
If you can't eve decide on something as important as who should live and who should die, then how can you decide who gets to keep something as trivial as their money, and who gets to take it?
I'm not posing this dilemma to be mean and cruel, as I said already, this is the ultimate problem of human society that has plagued all societies since the beginning of time.
TRENDING THREADS
-
Discussion Zen 5 Speculation (EPYC Turin and Strix Point/Granite Ridge - Ryzen 9000)- Started by DisEnchantment
- Replies: 25K
-
Discussion Intel Meteor, Arrow, Lunar & Panther Lakes + WCL Discussion Threads
- Started by Tigerick
- Replies: 23K
-
Discussion Intel current and future Lakes & Rapids thread- Started by TheF34RChannel
- Replies: 23K
-
-
Facebook
Twitter