The Libs are at it again!

Richard S. wrote:Frankly I'm getting tired of the "Nanny" mentality many of these politicians have...,

The way things are going the government is going to tax and over regulate anything that can be deemed bad for you and won't be happy until we're all safely in a plastic bubble.

Yeah, I call it the "cocoon".

mikeandgerry wrote:The government shouldn't be in the insurance business or any business.

The role of the gov is to ensure opportunity. The free market determines outcome. Liberals don't understand the difference.

Should the government get out of the quality control business? You see what happened to food quality, e.g. the peanut butter quality set by for profit business. How about drug safety?

Should we close down the Commerce Department? Standards of weight and measure are set by them. What do you think will happen when for profit business gets to say what a pound, inch, gallon, etc. is? How about time? Who is it that defines accurate time? The government. Don't care and want to go back to the Indian way, +/- a day is good enough. Do you think the GPS system will still work without accurate time? How about 60 cycle power? You want your power company to set the standards? On and on etc. There are lots of functions besides defense and freedom only the government can do.

Wrong again yanche. All of those things can ge taken care of by the private sector. Time was regulated by the railroads not the gov. Food safety can be summed up by," if people die you get sued" . What is better about some inspector getting paid off to look the other way? Business as usual. We just paid some guy to not do his job. GPS was developed for the military and kept from the public for years. Don't you think some company would have developed it and put it on the market anyway? They would have if a profit could have been made. The government does NOTHING better then the free market except waste money.

Kevin

stockingfull wrote:Hate to spoil the self-pity party but have any of you tried to buy life insurance lately in your "free market"? Just about every question those free-market insurance actuarial types ask you has to do with a risk factor having a direct statistical correlation to life expectancy. Smoker? You'll pay higher rates, if they write the policy at all, due to the cancer and cardiac risks. How much do you weigh? There's a demonstrable correlation between obesity and type 2 diabetes. High LDL? Heart risk. And so on it goes, as the same policy becomes more and more expensive as your high-risk behaviors get tallied up.
.

What a private insurance company does is completely different to what the government mandates. Insurance companies raise or lower rates across the board based on their risk including car, home or what ever else they are insuring. If I want to smoke and the insurance company says I'm going to raise your rates so be it. Instead the government is stepping in and making the cost of cigarettes so much they are no longer affordable, the decision has already been made. It's apples an oranges.

samhill wrote:Smokers put a risk to others around them,

If you enter an establishment that allows smoking you've have made the decision to do it, you have no one to blame but yourself.

leave their butts everywhere( just look around any parking lot, they use it to empty their ash trays),

Agreed, many people are pigs with their butts but have you noticed all the other garbage that litters our highways and roads? I don't know if you live in PA but we have quite a littering problem here and that littering problem includes smokers.

Yes Richard, but don't you realize that our gov. under the Saviors command will pass new laws and regulations that will mandate no littering, smoking, eating bad foods, etc. and we will all comply?

Kevin

Its just government trying to "Be All Things To All People" and they just dont care how much of your money they spend trying to save you from yourself.
And Dan757 has it 100%... they hope you croak so they get to keep your SS money

KLook wrote:The government does NOTHING better then the free market except waste money.

OK......If your house catches fire call the Acme Fire Company to come put it out. (for about ten thousand dollars, that is)
If your pleasure boats starts to sink 10 miles offshore, don't call the Coast Guard.
If a family member is kidnapped.....Call Blackwater..there won't be any FBI to help you.
No more public schools. Try sending you kids to private schools for what you pay in property taxes.
If you get laid off...try collecting unemployment from the Acme Unemployment Co & Grill
Hey......& let's do away with the silly FAA. Don't require an maintenance of airlines....Let's just TRUST THEM!....& whoever needs to use a runway...let them take-off/land with no control!
& let's trust the banks....No need for FDIC to insure your deposits, right?
Get rid of Medicare/Medicaid.....That's the way Darwin would have liked it.


Just for starters

It,s all about the insurance companys bottom line. Has anyone seen a reduction in there rates since we were forced by law to buckel up? Some states like MA refused to put this law into effect until the Gov thretend to cut off there road money. Now take the helmet law it,s only in effect in some states. So you have the right to bang your head on the road but not into the windshield of your own car? It's all about the insurance company's #s

Devil505 wrote:OK......If your house catches fire call the Acme Fire Company to come put it out. (for about ten thousand dollars, that is)

Local FD supported by local tax dollars is fine. It's when you start giving state or even federal tax money to FD, EMS, etc. that problems start. And suppose FD services were provided by private sector companies and they charged relatively high rates (reasonable given the demand and training, equip costs, etc. but high one time hits none the less) then what do you think would spring up? That's right, insurance carriers would start offering coverage to pay those costs. So instead of paying $200 a year in local taxes for FD services, you would pay $200 to an insurance company. There are many ways to skin the emergency services cat. Taxes is but one way, and not necessarily the best.

If your pleasure boats starts to sink 10 miles offshore, don't call the Coast Guard.

Fine. I don't see how it is a reasonable expectation that the govt would come to pluck you out of the water anyway. Particularly on rough seas or other highly dangerous circumstances. That said, they're just training or waiting around otherwise (they are still needed for search and rescue of other coast guard and LEO personnel) so why not go out and put the skills and equipment to use? I say charge those who call for rescue, just like your FD suggestion above.

If a family member is kidnapped.....Call Blackwater..there won't be any FBI to help you.

Well, depending on where the kidnapping occurs, you may have to anyway. And what often covers the cost? That's right, private travel/life insurance or some kind of corporate contract clause (serviced by blackwater types, no doubt, maybe with help from State Dept.). For domestic kidnappings, though... this is a tougher one. Unlike FD, which is handling things outside the control or perview of government responsibility, PD are the enforcers of government laws. If you have laws, you need enforcement, and I think that is reasonably provided on a tax/service basis.

No more public schools. Try sending you kids to private schools for what you pay in property taxes.

You have got to be kidding. Public education costs on average $11k+/student/yr. Private education tuition is often less than 66% of that amount. Private does not mean expensive in and of itself, it only costs more because people aren't freeloading off those without children. Reasons are many, but basically it boils down to private schools paying for teachers primarily instead of bloated administration costs, facilities costs, and paying the very expensive legacy costs of the teachers union and the federal dept of education. Sure, people only see a yearly bill for public education in the area of $2-3K, but that is because everyone without a kid in school is subsidizing the rightful education costs of that family and their kids. Maybe it is just and right that education be handled as a tax based service (I don't think so, but I won't argue the point here), but we'd all do as good as or better if we moved to a predominantly private school system paid by vouchers. We'd be able to break the strangle hold the teachers union has. We'd cut administrative costs probably in half or better. We'd give families and students flexibility to go to a school of their choosing (where the population is dense enough to support multiple schools in a region). Schools could specialize much more easily in order to compete and better serve their students and their families desires for education. Families would actually know the costs of educating their children. Even if paid primarily or entirely by a voucher check they would see the numbers and they'd understand the great benefit they're getting for their now $1-2K school tax (instead of the old $2-3K tax). Same goes for the students. Which hopefully would go a long way to turning the corner on some of these urban regions where failure is primarily about motivational and cultural/social problems, not an issue of dollars spent. And we could eliminate the god forsaken federal dept of education. If it has to be tax funded, then fund it through state and local taxes only.

If you get laid off...try collecting unemployment from the Acme Unemployment Co & Grill

Just so long as Reid, Pelosi, and Obama don't keep trying to buy off votes by extending coverage. Seriously though, wouldn't private provider unemployment insurance be great? First, premiums would be risk based and salary based. Not only risk of an individual being fired but risk they they wouldn't be able to find a job in a short period of time. Entry level employees would have to pay little since they lose little if fired and it is relatively easy to find low/no-skill employment since you aren't locked to any given industry. Highly paid people would pay higher rates, both to compensate for higher cost of payout and for trickier reemployment at the same wage. If it were through private providers, they would also, again, be in competition. I could see competitive programs being partial payout if you get reemployed at a lower wage. You could lower your premiums by getting lower payout terms (pay only 50% of salary instead of 80%, cover only 6 months out, not 12, etc.). There are lots of options and potentials here.

Hey......& let's do away with the silly FAA. Don't require an maintenance of airlines....Let's just TRUST THEM!....& whoever needs to use a runway...let them take-off/land with no control!

This is a tough one. May have struck upon another one I can't see privatizing in any significant way.

& let's trust the banks....No need for FDIC to insure your deposits, right?

Argument to be made that the banking system of this country and much of the industrialized world is evil incarnate. I don't know if it is a particularly good argument, but given the troubles we find ourselves in today even with FDIC insurance I'm left to conclude that FDIC insurance is nothing more than wool over the eyes of the American public.

Get rid of Medicare/Medicaid.....That's the way Darwin would have liked it.

I trust my life and health to my own survival choices more than I do Daschle's "people expect too much from the health system" mentality and the Stimulus Bill's Health Czar and Board of Health Decision Makers. I do not know where the idea that people are entitled to non-emergency health care came from, but the idea that making it a government tax funded service is going to improve matters is insane given all the evidence to the contrary. Not saying the current government regulatory scheme of private providers is ideal, far from it, only that nationalizing health care strikes me as the most foolish notion to ever cross the national agenda.

Yanche wrote:

mikeandgerry wrote:The government shouldn't be in the insurance business or any business.

The role of the gov is to ensure opportunity. The free market determines outcome. Liberals don't understand the difference.
.

Should the government get out of the quality control business? You see what happened to food quality, e.g. the peanut butter quality set by for profit business. How about drug safety?

Should we close down the Commerce Department? Standards of weight and measure are set by them. What do you think will happen when for profit business gets to say what a pound, inch, gallon, etc. is? How about time? Who is it that defines accurate time? The government. Don't care and want to go back to the Indian way, +/- a day is good enough. Do you think the GPS system will still work without accurate time? How about 60 cycle power? You want your power company to set the standards? On and on etc. There are lots of functions besides defense and freedom only the government can do.

I never said that government should be eliminated; Quite to the contrary, it needs to stick to its constitutional mandates and forget about being IN business. Without a doubt the government has a regulatory role. It is that role that provides opportunity. But for a government to attempt to guarantee outcomes is NOT their role and never has been their role.

The businesses that the government IS in, in an attempt to guarantee outcomes are: insurance (social security, medicare, business bailouts, and soon health insurance), and mortage banking (Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae), among other programs. Their performance in these areas is dismal. There is no social security trust fund that is funded and their business model is not self-sustaining in the long term without huge tax increases and benefit decreases. Similarly, Freddy and Fannie have contributed greatly to the current financial meltdown by having a business model that doesn't adhere to the basic tenents of economics.

As for regulation, yes, that is the government's job. However, do you really think they have done a good job at that? That peanut factory was cited two years ago for salmonella and the feds didn't follow up sufficiently nor shut them down. The CFTC has allowed an ongoing manipulation of the commodities markets in precious metals and the SEC stuck its head in the sand with regard to regulating derivatives exposure (though congress is at the root of that problem). As for drugs, the feds have approved many drugs that have killed or damaged people. As for protecting the border, which is a PRIMARY duty of the federal government, they have, in effect, allowed an invasion of this country that is bankrupting California and other border states. The list of federal failures is long and expensive.

What is wrong is the notion that the Constitution guarantees you a job, a retirement income, or a handout except the most basic of temporary sustenance. What the Constitution guarantees is a framework for you to sustain yourself. Namely, a republican form of government, justice, a national union, common defense, domestic security, infrastructure, regulated banking and money, regulated commerce and personal civil rights. They summed it up as providing for the general welfare (as in the aforementioned list), not the specific welfare of citizens. In other words, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness (not a guarantee of happiness).

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

And to reiterate:

The role of the government is to ensure opportunity, not outcomes. The free market determines outcomes. Liberals don't understand the difference.

stockingfull wrote:Think about it: should people be "free" to use opium? And, if they do, should we give them health care? Food? Shelter? .

Yes. No. No. And No.

jpete wrote:
Yes. No. No. And No.

Succinct and to the point.

mikeandgerry wrote:The role of the government is to ensure opportunity, not outcomes. The free market determines outcomes.

What a naive concept Mike.
Think of our economic system as just another man made game. The free market will create/operate TEAMS & these teams will always want to win. Baseball teams will "Look the other way" while its player take steroids & business "Teams" will try to fix prices, bribe Congressmen with "Campaign Donations,etc. in order to unfairly ensure a good outcome for their team............So.........in order to have any "game" remain playable...you need RULES & referees/umpires to make sure the rules are being followed. Sometimes these umpires may be bad at their jobs & other times the "Teams" may try o interfere with them to guarantee a favorable outcome for them...but to say that no rules or umpires are needed is to deny that HUMANS are imperfect & require ways to prevent cheating. Government is the only "Umpire" in this game.
If the present economic crisis has shown us anything, it is that we need to let these Constitutionally mandated "Umpires" do their jobs!