Why the hell is everything on allocation?

I'm sure yours is, being on the receiving side of the GIMME GIMME GIMME GIMME GIMME party.

You really don't have any grasp of reality, do you?

Thanks, Rich

Everybody's afraid to make any investments, because nobody knows how badly they're going to get screwed by the lame duck socialists, on top of how badly everybody (except the liberal parasites) is being screwed by socialist Obamacare.

Cheers! Rich

Why should the taxpayers have to pay the bills of those who make defective fetuses? Howcome they deserve to reap the benefits of my labor?

The one real, true answer is to simply make every single person pay their own damn bills (and those of their children, of course_, and make it _their_ responsibility to negotiate with the insurance companies; AND get the government entirely out of the equation, other than their legitimate function of providing a place for resolution of contractual disputes.

But that's too much like the Free Market (which, BTW, has been demonstrated innumerable times to WORK), and so it terrifies the statists of both polarities.

Thanks, Rich

Of course, replacing the income tax with an outgo tax makes that problem simply evaporate.

Cheers! Rich

He _found_ that assignment on his own, and the use of their equipment is a component of his fee.

I've gotten jobs like that by simply showing up.

Cheers! Rich

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Idiot. You deserve whatever you get.

How can people be so stupid that they'd sign a contract they haven't even _read_?

Thanks, Rich

Oh, just hire a bunch of illegal Mexicans, and you'll get a free pass, with Obama's amnesty for Mexican criminals. (12 million is a pretty sizeable voting bloc!)

Cheers! Rich

The argument is probably a little too complicated for you to understand, but it runs something like this

The point of universal medical health care is not look after everybody's health. This is a convenient and attractive by-product, but it isn't the point.

Universal health care exists to stop our population being decimated by infectious diseases.

The care for non-infectious diseases is just a bribe to get people to go to the doctor or the emergency room of a hospital when they get sick. The first thing the healthcare worker looks for when they get a sick patient is for evidence of a contagious infection.

If such evidence is found the patient gets whisked into isolation - so they won't infect anybody else - where they are treated by people who have been to minimise their risk of infection. The treatment may even cure the patient, but the important thing is tha the patient's chances of infecting anybody else and starting an epidemic have been minimised.

Patients who haven't got an infectious disease are rewarded by being treated for the disease they do have, so that they will come in promptly the next time they get sick. It's an expensive system, that spends most of its time treating non-infectious diseases, but it works. And it is less of a waste of money than the defense forces, who spend most of their time training to fight the last war, in anticipation of the next.

It doesn't work all that well in the United States becuase you don't actually have universal health care, and have - in consequence - a much bigger problem with multiple drug resistant tuberculosis than comparable advanced industrial countries. Russian and China, which do

- in theory - have universal health care do worse because they can't afford to spend enough on their health care systems to make them truly universal or particularly effective.

ir_

Which is great until some poor family gets infected with SARS or yersinia pestis, can't afford to go to the doctor, and stays at home to infect enough of their neighbours to start a plague.

ed

Sadly, the Free Market doesn't solve all problems. Even the US doesn't have multiple defence forces or police forces competing on price in an open market.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Aren't you forgetting to mention how royally everybody had already been screwed by Dubbya and his crew of adventurous idiots - Irak alone cost more than three trillion dollars?

And the sub-prime mortgage bubble blew up and burst on Dubbya's watch. James Arthur does place all the blame for that little debacle on the Democrats, as if they personally made all the ninja home loans, but James Arthur doesn't seem to have the capacity to blame anybody except Democrats (and the occasional socialist) for anything at all.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Rich complaining that anybody else doesn't has any grasp of reality is a trifle ironic.

In this particular case, the economy doesn't have to improve much to empty the distributors' shelves - distributors tend to run their stocks down quite rapidly when the economy goes into recession, because nobody buys anything much when the economy is going down, and the first signs of recovery do tend clean out the meagre stocks they have retained.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

has

Almost all passives, if I remember rightly. The datasheets for that sort of stuff contain much less information than semiconductor data sheets, because the parts are simpler and more nearly interchangeable.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Then howcome your Glorious Infallible Saviour, who promised to get us out of there, has escalated and expanded the assault?

Thanks, Rich

See, there you are. I didn't say "anybody else" - I said _you_.

There's no point in continuing to try to teach a brick to sing.

'Bye! Rich

We have oath sworn politicians that swear they won't, but then do very similar things.

But I am included in "anybody else".

Since Rich lives in the cloud-cuckoo-land where the Libertarians are a political party, rather than demented bunch of nutters, I'm surprised that he would quail at the prospect of getting a brick to sing.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Which of my Glorious Infalible Saviours might that be? I don't know of anybody who would fit into that catagory, but I'm sure that you have some figure in mind whom you fondly imagine might look like that to your - defective - mental model of me and the rest of the liberals who post here.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

In the scenario I was describing, it's a subsidiary that declares bankruptcy. But yes, the main company doesn't get to keep it, just as with a foreclosure the (former) mortgage holder doesn't get to keep the home. (I'm definitely not a supporter of squatters who decide to quit paying their mortgage but then refuse to move out... although if I were the bank, if it's clear to me the people in quesiton are *unable* to pay their mortgage rather than merely

I'm sure there have been plenty of subsidiaries of various large government contractors that have gone belly-up over time, effectively causing the taxpayers to lose money.

I've read your other messages, James, and while I don't think I'll have time today to reply to them, as usual I do appreciate your perspective.

What do you think of the debt commission's recommendations? Kinda telling that no politician (other than a few who are retiring or ineligible for re-election) have come out in support of it yet!

---Joel

Of course, that ignores the usual practice that, if a subsidiary is going under, you transfer out all money making assets and transfer in as many debts as possible before you sink it!

Charlie

Yes. My point was that a mortgage holder choosing to default because their home is now worth very little compared to its "expected" value is little different than a company deciding to have a subsidiary default because the subsidiary is seriously underperforming. I.e., in both cases it's "just business" -- whereas for some reason some folks want to apply a higher moral standard to home loans than those made to businesses.

Well, I'm primarily trying to advocate that I think it's in the country's best long-term interests if the banks voluntarily renegotiate, but yeah, strictly speaking you're correct in that I'm not ruling out some government intervention that would require rule changes.

It's not exactly uncommon for contracts to be litigated anyway when the outcome isn't as planned.

Oh, sure there'll be. I'm quite confident in that!

---Joel