The American Politics thread

[silentstriker]

I find this wholly ironic. You push for universal health care: that is not in the realms of the possible.

It's not? Wanna bet? One state already passed it, others will follow. I bet in 20 years we will have close to 100% coverage regardless of obamacare remaining or not. You can add the numbers and show how it's cheaper for everyone to be on Medicare than what we have now. Only way to avoid bankruptcy because no old person will elect anyone, ever, that will get rid of Medicare. Ever. So it's impossible to go to a free market system, thankfully.

[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWTyHbGcUQY&NR=1]Ron Paul on Earmarks[/quote]

But then don't vote against the bill. It's pretty low to insert **** you want into a bill and then vote against it in principle, letting other members pass it for you.

[Uppercut]

It's not? Wanna bet? One state already passed it, others will follow. I bet in 20 years we will have close to 100% coverage regardless of obamacare remaining or not. You can add the numbers and show how it's cheaper for everyone to be on Medicare than what we have now. Only way to avoid bankruptcy because no old person will elect anyone, ever, that will get rid of Medicare. Ever. So it's impossible to go to a free market system, thankfully.

In 2007 the US government spent just over three times as much per head as the UK government on healthcare and still only managed to cover the elderly. There's some major free-market-fail when it comes to healthcare.

[Ikki]

FOI won't solve that problem at all because the only way to test it is with an extensive study that takes years to complete. There's no point looking for hidden information because it simply isn't known.

I think we're at cross-purposes. You're arguing that the FDA is worse. I'm arguing that an entirely unregulated market is worse. I reckon we just leave it there, honestly, and let this thread get back on course.

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FTR I took an interest in American politics well before I took an interest in Aus politics (that only came recently). Don't know it as well as I should, though.

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Huntsman still looks the only remotely pragmatic candidate I can see. Would definitely consider voting him over Obama (big hypothetical though because 1. not American and 2. he's not going to get anywhere near the nom, unfortunately)

I am referring to information which is censored/hidden. Information that can't be utilised because of a lack of science is a problem regardless of whether there is an FDA or not.

That's fair enough. As an aside, I enjoyed the discussion a lot.

It's not? Wanna bet? One state already passed it, others will follow. I bet in 20 years we will have close to 100% coverage regardless of obamacare remaining or not. You can add the numbers and show how it's cheaper for everyone to be on Medicare than what we have now. Only way to avoid bankruptcy because no old person will elect anyone, ever, that will get rid of Medicare. Ever. So it's impossible to go to a free market system, thankfully.

I am not saying it is impossible to legislate it. I am saying it is impossible for it to work properly under the conditions the left cry for. It will eventually cause debt and rising prices which will cause the program to fall in on itself. Maybe even giving you another recession based on those deficits alone. What you have now is not the free market; that is the whole point of free market proponents. Most of the health insurance programs in America are subsidised.

The socialised programs many on the left advocate are pipe-dreams, myths. Someone always has to pay and the best way to keep things affordable is the free market.

[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWTyHbGcUQY&NR=1]Ron Paul on Earmarks

But then don't vote against the bill. It's pretty low to insert **** you want into a bill and then vote against it in principle, letting other members pass it for you.

It isn't. If his constituents are already paying taxes for these kinds of services then he wants them to get their money's worth. However, he is opposed to it altogether. As he explained, he may be against the income tax altogether, but if a bill is being passed he will try to get as much tax credits for his constituents as possible, as well as voting for it not to pass.

I laugh at the fact that in one instance you criticise him for being too strict ideologically; when in this case doing so hurts his constituents and doesn't further his cause any. And these are the very few grey areas he has - if it can be called grey at all. If the rest of the candidates (one whom you support, frankly) had this much intregrity America would be a much better place. His explanation is more than reasonable.

[wellAlbidarned]

Why do you have so much faith in the free market, Ikki? It's been shown again and again that unregulated markets result in accumulation of capital in a small minority who proceed to make everyone else their bitches.

[Ikki]

Why do you have so much faith in the free market, Ikki? It's been shown again and again that unregulated markets result in accumulation of capital in a small minority who proceed to make everyone else their bitches.

Because it hasn't. Quite the opposite, in fact. That regulated markets themselves stifle competition, raise prices and tend to also cause inefficiency. Take the mortgage bubble in America. Free market proponents - Austrian economists in particular - predicted it before most Keynesian/centrally-planned-economic proponents could. This is because they could see the government policies that were inflating demand and causing the bubble.

Whilst the likes of Krugman were calling for low interest rates to expand the housing market, free market proponents like Paul and Schiff predicted the oncoming onslaught with relative ease. Moreover, this is a small facet of an even bigger problem called The Federal Reserve.

The movement of the likes of Hayek and Friedman have been to disprove the myth that you just uttered in the above. They go as far to say that Keynes himself, had he been alive, would have renounced his old ideas and castigated his followers for taking his theories so far. It is a great tragedy that to this day your misconception still circulates among the left.

It is very easy to see why too; because prima facie, these policies appear to be very concerned with the social welfare by trying to implement legislation/bodies. Yet they are short sighted. It takes an in-depth knowledge to understand why the free market works, although it does seem counter-intuitive at first. The left use this complexity to demagogue free market proponents, however. But time and again, these issues can be resolved if one really wishes to look at issues from a non-emotive or reasoned perspective.

As Friedman himself explained, the free markets are the biggest threat to monopolies and ironically, most monopolies that have existed have had a source of government intervention/favouring. It is important also to separate de jure monopolies with de facto monopolies.

[silentstriker]

What you have now is not the free market; that is the whole point of free market proponents. Most of the health insurance programs in America are subsidised.

That's false. Medicare/Medicare are, and so are programs like CHIP but for 18-65, unless you're disabled, or below the poverty line, your insurance is not subsidized. Can you give me examples of what you mean?

[Uppercut]

Why do you have so much faith in the free market, Ikki? It's been shown again and again that unregulated markets result in accumulation of capital in a small minority who proceed to make everyone else their bitches.

...what?

[silentstriker]

...what?

Tennessee ernie Ford - 16 Tons - YouTube

About as close to a free market that you've seen in the developed world.

[Uppercut]

I never thought I'd see you make an argument with a solitary data point .

[silentstriker]

It's not an argument, I was clarifying what I thought he was probably saying.

TBF, I agree with him though, you can probably look at the disparities that exist in many countries who have almost no restrictions (developing countries). There aren't any in the developed world because I think you need to kind of stabilize a middle class for you really come out and be a developed country, which I don't think can happen under Laissez-faire capitalism.

[Uppercut]

I was just joking.

It's just an irrelevant generalisation, economic policy design is ridiculously situation-specific. And "make everyone else their bitches" is usually a bull**** emotive way of saying "employs everyone else in much, much better jobs than they had before."

[silentstriker]

Well, wasn't necessarily like that. Once you were employed, they gave you housing and food but deliberately charged you more than you made for them. So you got deeper in debt every day despite working forever. So you couldn't leave even if you wanted to or they'd want to collect on their debt. And other companies got the great idea of doing that too.

[Flem274*]

I was just joking.

It's just an irrelevant generalisation, economic policy design is ridiculously situation-specific. And "make everyone else their bitches" is usually a bull**** emotive way of saying "employs everyone else in much, much better jobs than they had before."

Alternatively, it may have been a casual way of saying "take advantage of."

[Flem274*]

In other news, Herman Cain is the first Republican candidate to get Secret Service protection.

Tbf, he might need it after revelations he's a pretender at best and a liar at worst.

[Uppercut]

It's not an argument, I was clarifying what I thought he was probably saying.

TBF, I agree with him though, you can probably look at the disparities that exist in many countries who have almost no restrictions (developing countries). There aren't any in the developed world because I think you need to kind of stabilize a middle class for you really come out and be a developed country, which I don't think can happen under Laissez-faire capitalism.

Depends what you're producing. Banana production provides no social mobility at all. You have landowners with no incentive to do anything that might change the status quo, and unskilled labourers who perenially live in poverty. Hence the term "Banana Republic", the textbook example of the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few while the rest of the country remained poor. Laissez-faire beliefs in nineteenth-century Honduras resulted in no growth at all. All they did was make bananas and send them to Britain.

Beef production provides lots of social mobility. The work involved is slightly more skilled so a few labourers have the opportunity to accumulate wealth, and there are secondary markets in packaging, treatment and transport- there's your middle class. Laissez-faire beliefs in nineteenth-century Argentina produced plenty of growth, as well as the development of a stable middle class. Conditions were perfect for beef production. Wealth trickled down. It's the perfect example of every section of society benefiting from free trade.

The right economic policy is ridiculously situation-specific. It's a shame that everyone's so interested in talking about whether free market=good or free market=bad. It's a political divide that isn't especially helpful. All of the most widely-read literature on "the economics of Latin America" is either lefty politicians ranting about how The West used the pretense of free trade to subjugate an entire continent, or neoliberals ranting about how local nationalism shut off the continent from the globe and set its development back twenty or thirty years. Neither are grounded in reality. It's ridiculous to think that you can come up with an overbearing theory of economics that applies to an entire continent, let alone the entire world. And besides, they invariably formed their theories then looked for the evidence to support them rather than the other way round.