Ron Paul - Wait, what?

[mrstickball]

makingmusic476 said:

Rpruett said:

makingmusic476 said:

He wishes to cut back the role of government in all areas of life, which is not always a good thing.  For example, I think healthcare is a necessary service that should be provided by the government, like defense, law enforcement, fire protection, and roadways.  This is obviously something Ron Paul disagrees with. And we are actually the only major western power that does not provide universal healthcare to its citizens.  For some reason we choose to spend our money on soldiers and bases instead of doctors and hospitals.  

1. Who cares about Healthcare?  The problem in America isn't the lack of Healthcare, its the lack of affordable healthcare.  As for the quality of Healthcare? It's still one of the best if not the best in the world.   The question is, reducing the cost,  the answer is not involving the government in that process.

I actually think the government should start funding post-secondary education for its citizens as well. I believe an equal opportunity meritocracy is best for its people, and in our current society healthcare and a college education are necessary to do well in life.  Those who can't afford such things are going to be inherently disadvantaged vs those who can.  Any two people with equal intellect, physical ability, and work ethic should be able to make it similarly far in life (barring the impact of random chance), regardless of their ability/inability to afford such things.  Publically funded post-secondary education, however, is also something he would be against.

2.  Why fund secondary education when not everyone is a scholar.  Why shouldn't everyone have to live on their own merit good or bad?

He's proud of having never voted to raise taxes.  Fuck that, I say.  Cut military/drug spending and increase taxes, then spend that money on paying down our debt and heavily improving our infrastructure (healthcare, education, internet access, mass transit).  This will provide jobs, improve our economy, and make life better for all Americans.

3.  We don't need to raise any taxes, we need to stop spending absurd amounts of money on BS programs.  We're already over taxed.

And lastly, there are his economic policies.  His favor of the Austrian school of economics scares me, given the power "too big to fail" corporations have over us already. We should never allow any non-government entity to have that much sway.  At least the government is kept somewhat in line through elections.  Or revolution, if need be.

4.  We should never allow a government entity have that much sway.  I would far prefer business to have power than government.

Plus, he wants to return us to the gold standard.  When will people realize that gold, just like paper money, is only as valuable as we perceive it to be?  Anything we might want to use as a universally accepted payment for goods is going to have a relative value, and basing our money on gold doesn't change that.

5.  No, you're wrong.  Paper money is a fiat currency.  Drastically different than gold.  Absolutely wrong. 

 

In the end, the economy is the current most important issue on the table, and I don't think he'll handle that well, as much as I love his other ideas.

6.  What is bad about his economic policy?  Not spending money?  Going back to the gold standard?  Cutting taxes and putting more money back into every citizens pocket? 

 

1.  Yes, costs are a major part of the issue.  Interesting fact is that countries like the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Australia, Japan, and South Korea spend almost half per capita on healtchare than we spend in the US, and that's a biproduct of providing universal healthcare for their citizens:

And we're a far cry from having the "best" healthcare in the world.

Healthcare, like roads, is an essential service that provides consumers with relatively limited access to competition.  This inhibits free market forces from properly effecting prices like in other, more competitive markets (luxury goods like consumer electronics).  People will rarely refuse healthcare if they need it, and this allows prices to unjustly balloon, which is partially why increases in healthcare costs in the US have far outpaced inflation for years (2006, http://www.shrm.org/hrdisciplines/benefits/Articles/Pages/2011CostTrend.aspx2011).  This is also why around 60% of those who file for bankruptcy in the US do so because of unexpected medical bills.  

A public or single-payer healthcare system both removes the profit motive driving privatized healthcare and removes much of the bureaucracy and administrative costs that come with a privatized system.  You won't have issues with hospitals having to make deals with multiple insurance agencies, or patients having to find a hospital that supports their insurance company under a fully nationalized or single-payer plan.  Everything would be streamlined considerably.  For example, South Korea has an excellent single-payer healthcare system.

Even in a privatized system with lowered costs, you would still have some people going without proper medical care, and this is not just in today's society.  Should we also prohibit access to police and fire protection based on one's income?

2.  Those who aren't scholars simply won't partake of the offered education.  Even if someone of lesser intelligence decides to give school a shot, if they drop out within only two weeks, what costs have they added to the total?  It would actually be hard for someone to abuse a social service like education, because only those sticking with and passing classes are those adding to the service's total cost.

As for the costs of private vs nationalized education, the same issues with healthcare apply.  College costs are also far outpacing tuition, despite larger class sizes and less services now being offered at many schools compared to several years back.

And the fact of the matter is, a college degree is now crucial for a vast majority of decent paying jobs on the market, unlike several decades ago.  Not allowing someone of intelligence to pursue such a career path merely because they cannot afford it is unjust.

Plus, a more educated society is better for everyone involved.

3.  People who think we're blanketly "overtaxed" usually don't understand the value of taxation, or the value of a society pooling its resources for the common good of its people.

I agree that we are over-taxed in certain ways.  For example, I think the amount of people's money that is spent on funding overseas bases is far too much.  However, I think the amount of people's money going towards our highway system, for example, is perfectly fine.  I would appreciate more of our current tax dollars going towards services that are benefitial to myself and others, and an increase in taxes in addition to that if it would allow for an ever higher standard of living for the majority of the population.  Public healthcare and post-secondary education are examples of this.

4.  Why would anybody trust a corporation with power more than a government?  At least we can vote/force politicians out of government.  If a corporation becomes equally as powerful as a government, through monopolies and what have you, we'd first have to deal with the government's implicit support of the corporation before doing anything to reign in the corporation.  

While young, corporations are held accountable both to each other and to consumers, but once they reach a certain point, both these forces have little effect on a corporation's power.  At this time, corporations are only held accountable to the government, which is in turn held accountable to the people.  Without the government holding corporations at bay, we're fucked. 

5.  The only difference between paper money and gold-backed money is that gold can only be mined at a certain rate, while the fed can print as much money as it wants.

Ultimately, the main issue still remains.  The value of gold is not and never will be universal, and its value will fluctuate based on how it is viewed in the marketplace.   Right now the value keeps going up and up and up, but it's only a matter of time before people realize that the item they have (a shiny chunk of rock) is considerably less valuable than what they're paying for it.  It's a bubble, just like land.  Only, unlike land, people aren't getting loans to buy it.

6.  Letting corporations run wild in the name of "freedom"?

1. Despite said countries having universal healthcare, it shouldn't be a ringing endorsement to assume that if such measures were taken in the US that cost curves would bend significantly in the same manner. I could offer our education system as a prime example. We have full socialization of the system, with 90% of students being enrolled in government schools. Despite that, our costs are far higher than European schools, and provide far worse scores and graduation rates than Europe.

In the case of healthcare, I could point to both Medicare and the Veterans Administration as proofs that government involvement in our health care system doesn't provide cheaper or more better health care. Rather, both cost significantly more than private care among any and all metrics with Medicare enrollees costing about 60% more than private enrollees, and VA recipients being about 80% more than private enrollees. The VA is a great example - they do all care in-house for their patients, therefore there is little to no billing. Despite that, their costs are higher, not lower, than private plans.

Additionally, the data you presented doesn't take into consideration the fact that there are other significant influencers on the cost of care in America that aren't presented nor discussed in your data sets, such as obesity.

 

2. Go look at the rate of enrollment in schools via federally-funded tutions. Look at the laws surrounding college tuitions as of late. The reason cost is increasing so much is that the government is incentivizing higher education and increasing the costs assosicated with college. You argue that costs don't increase much if a student goes to college for 2 weeks and drops out, but that is not the problem. The problem is what we face today - that many men and women get major loans for 4 year and 6 year degrees, finish their education, and cannot find a job because the government subsidized their education in horrendous fields of work. One such example are people with Masters Degrees in Gender Studies. Thousands get the degree each year, yet there are only a handful of positions available each year. The result are people with educations and no jobs, which were funded by the taxpayer, thus creating a huge burden to the taxpayer.

 

3. Examples of what we 'need' are entirely your opinion. Personally, I'd rather keep my money and spend it on my neccessities and get a much better deal than let the American government take my money and decide what I can and cannot have. They did it with my education, and I would prefer not to let them do that with my body, my house, or my internet.

 

4. Can you give an exact, specific example of government's absolute neccessity in reigning in a corporation? Can you give me an exact example of a corporation obtaining a monopoly which was to the detriment of the populace? Also, if monopolies are so bad if corporations have them, then why are you pushing government monopolization of education, health care, and other areas as neccessities? Please don't be so hypocritical.

 

5. I'd argue that mining gold is a better way to obtain currency to trade than let the government magically create it out of paper.