Hee! Hee! Hee!

system.http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Aefficiency

That's easy: mortgages.

-- Cheers, James Arthur

That's a good example. Infinite benefits, to be paid by someone else. Economists call it "moral hazard." In GM's case it was demanded by the unions.

Pelosicare is the same theory.

-- Cheers, James Arthur

Easy. There are two aspects to it. 1) Per person, it pays out loads more in costs and benefits than it gets in contributions. As long as you have more contributors than recipients, it floats. 2) Whilst it still floats, any funds that pile up are lent to the Treasury to fund deficit spending (the national debt), e.g., instantly raided, replaced with IOUs.

So, the contributed money is gone, spent the moment you send it in. And yes, the plan is to tap the next working class, etc., as you stated.

-- Cheers, James Arthur

In an earlier post you spoke of the importance of not just the Founder's words, but interpreting their intent. They left us a boatload of clear writings on this, but rather than drag all those out to divine their intent we can just ask one simple question:

If the Founders' intent were for the federal government to provide social services--to feed and clothe and shelter the poor--why didn't they? Why didn't any of the presidents Washington, Madison, Jefferson, or Adams--founders and authors of the Constitution all--do that?

Had they no poor people, no hungry? No sick? Or did they just not think the _federal_ government should do that?

(Of course the States could, if they wanted to.)

-- Cheers, James Arthur

Hi Jim,

I tend to agree... it is a shame that the various legislators were willing to allow that in for the sake of getting the rest of the bill passed. That's politics for you, I guess.

Jim, I'm happy that you seem very sure of yourself on many issues here, but personally things don't seem all that black and white to me.

[etc.]

Those are good points, but the fact that other country's healthcare systems have various problems that lead their people to seek out healthcare in the U.S. doesn't really bolster the argument that the U.S.'s system is the best. After all, plenty of people in the U.S. travel out-of-country to get various medical procedures done as well, particularly for anything expensive like surgery (see:

.

The Oregon plan here has always been, "we have so many dollars funded... let's go down the least of procedures sorted by best efficacy per dollar and allow those procedures... when we run out of money, nothing else is allowed" -- hence as funding grows or shrinks (largely in sync with the economy) and various changes make procedures more or less expensive, the allowed list of procedures naturally changes.

The same thing happens with any insurance plan, it just tends to be less dynamic as private companies have better resources to buffer income and expense changes at least for awhile. (Plus insurance plans rachet up the rates 10% per year to keep up with the costs -- I doubt any legislator could get away with jacking up taxes 10% per year!)

I think this is going to change over the next few decades -- I wouldn't be surprised if the new leader became, say, India... or maybe even China given enough time.

I'm not certain my high school even offered Civics... if they did, it must have been any elective, because I never took it.

I did have an economics class in high school taught by a very liberal, ex-hippie kind of guy. Pretty much everyone got A's, regardless of how much you had actually learned. :-) His favorite book was, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance."

---Joel

You've never heard of "shopping around?"

I don't need some bureaucrat to tell me if I'm getting a good deal on a house loan - it'll be obvious, and competition will keep prices down.

Please explain how government intrusion into your home mortgage deal is a better deal than the Free Market again? Where does the money come from to pay the bureaucrats?

Thanks, Rich

Perhaps because the problems of the poor weren't quite as severe due to the greater integrity of the family and religion integrated into daily life? Additionally, don't discount how much easier it was to just "survive" if you were a physically sound white man:

-- "Living off the land" was easier, since there were a lot more places you could go hunting and camp than you can today

-- Picking up a temporary job wasn't a big deal: Seasonal farm work required little more than your being physically fit and showing up each day. (Today even many minimum wage jobs require background criminal background checks, credit checks (!), psychological profiling (!), etc... and getting a slightly better job doing nothing more than, say, selling test equipment, often requires a 4-year degree.)

-- While health care wasn't nearly as advanced (many more people just died), getting something like a broken arm set or having a baby didn't cost the equivalent of 3 months wages.

I don't have any sort of delusion that life 200+ years ago was easier than it is today -- by all accounts, for the average man it was *much* harder, with far less leisure time and far fewer opportunities. But the "rules of the game" (how to be a productive member of society) were much simpler, and as such less personal support (entitlements) were needed as well.

If the founders were writing up the constitution today, I believe that they'd have included many of the entitlements that exist today.

---Joel

It will if somebody doesn't stop the rising tide of Communism currently emanating from Washington, DC.

I wasn't a draft card burner either. I dodged the draft by enlisting in the USAF. The avowed purpose of the 'Nam invasion was to "stop the spread of communist aggression."

When (and why) did the country decide to go over to the other side?

Thanks, Rich

Why look no farther than Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, the FHA, Ginnie Mae, the fine job they've done for us, and how well that's been working out.

My neighbor's a banker. He said after Clinton's Community Reinvestment Act passed the govm't came around giving seminars: "You _will_ make these loans," they said. And they were right.

-- Cheers, James Arthur

It was already out in pretty strong force during the war, with the hippies and Jane Fonda and all...

Because we lost.

Wrong. The "poor" today are *filthy* rich by 1780s standards.

You clearly have never studied the FF.

"Joel Koltner" wrote in news:93mLm.211994$ snipped-for-privacy@en-nntp-05.dc.easynews.com:

the "progressives" have been working towards communism since the early

1900's;the Fabian Society goal was socialism. The big tilt was in the 1960's,after "progressives" infiltrated the education system.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
localnet
dot com

krw wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

We didn't "lose",we GAVE UP.(led of course,by the "progressives".)

there's a big difference between losing and giving up.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
localnet
dot com

He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day?

Seriously, I thought the idea was that we *gave up* because otherwise *loss was imminent*, you know? (Like telling your boss you quit because you've gotten word you're going to be fired...) It's not like the U.S. public had the nerve to go and, e.g., nuke the Vietcong either, AFAIK.

I believe that even Bush would have gotten out of the Middle East if the body count had started to climb remotely close to the nearly 60,000 U.S. servicemen who died in Vietnam.

That's a big deal! That's your government, and it's telling you stuff that isn't true.

Here's a more current example:

These are typical. This is how government works.

That's why we guys just a little further down the road from you are more skeptical. We've heard the theories, heard the promises, and we've seen what actually happens in practice. Many times. We've seen the potholes.

And I've recently come to understand that it's for structural reasons, that it's inherent. It's just the nature of the beast.

It's not a bad beast--it has its uses--you just don't want that beast everywhere doing everything. That *is* bad.

Fortunately the Founders foresaw that and laid plans against it, to restrain it. Hence, our Constitution.

-- Cheers, James Arthur

The general US public is now populated by fairies. What do you expect?

While you bathe in your happiness, I'm looking for ways to preserve (and move) my family into a non-communist society. ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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If you wanted a President with balls why didn\'t you elect Hillary?

Basically: The number of jobs reportedly due to stimulus spending is highly inaccurate... and generally errors on the "far too high" side.

OK, but I'm not convinced private industry is that much better. The article states that the errors were generally from people who didn't understand the instructions -- not attempts to knowingly fabricate "positive" results -- and I can tell you from first hand experience that this happens all the time in the private sector. Things like, e.g., private hospital patient databases tend to be completely riddled with errors.

No argument there.

---Joel

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message

Hmm... which countries look promising, in your view?

If you believe -- as Yanik does -- that the U.S. is the still greatest country in the world, even if it's headed rapidly downhill, do you really think things are so bad that just leaving makes more sense than trying to fix the problems? Sounds like pulling out before an imminent loss, you know? :-)

Hey, people like those newpaper editorials you write, right? -- You might be getting through to a lot more people than you know...