Oh, by the way Slimebeast:

If you ever feel the need, move to America.

- If you are indeed a medical doctor, expect to earn >$100,000 in America. If your good, expect $500,000.
- Work for doctors is always, ALWAYS available. You could find job placement in a matter of a day.
- Taxes are a bit lower here
- Cost of living is lower
- Find a good area, and you can find Swedish women
- If you like the cold, Ohio is a good place for that
- AMERICAN FOOTBALL
- Video games are cheaper and better access

I really don't want to be mean, but I just got rejected from a PhD today and I'm in a foul mood tonight...

So that's it? The right is correct and the left is wrong about these things? Is it really that black and white? Almost to the point of where the 'lefties' just can't grasp the concept of tax and immigration and thus all opinions they hold are wrong. Come on now. Everyone here has given some form of valid opinion.

NJ5 - I think that there would eventually be a salary cap on doctors, removing my salary example. Work would probably be available, but far more red tape, since we'd need more doctors, but have far more government intervention.

US medical facilities are severely understaffed. I worked as a medical transport officer for a year. I worked 12 hours a day, 5-6 days a week touring dozens, if not hundreds, of medical facilities across Ohio ranging from premier cancer treatment centers to hole-in-the-wall elderly care facilities. The one thing I saw was that medical staff was always in short supply.

If you want the simple economics of it: Read a medical journal in the 'employment' section. An RN (that's

If they're smart.  Right now there are no price controls in the healthcare bill.

That's why even a lot of Democrats are balking on the bill.  

What they want is for price fixing to be given to the executive branch.  (Those against the bill)

Vs the current system which has a formula which just raises the prices year to year. 

mrstickball said: Oh, by the way Slimebeast: If you ever feel the need, move to America. - If you are indeed a medical doctor, expect to earn >$100,000 in America. If your good, expect $500,000. - Work for doctors is always, ALWAYS available. You could find job placement in a matter of a day. - Taxes are a bit lower here - Cost of living is lower - Find a good area, and you can find Swedish women - If you like the cold, Ohio is a good place for that - AMERICAN FOOTBALL - Video games are cheaper and better access

That and apparently Ohio has some of the best hospitals in the world.  Or Cleveland anyway.  Even the non cleveland clinic places placed really high in numerous areas.

Don't know what makes cleveland draw so many good doctors.  Sure isn't the vibrant nightlife.

It's not that the left is always wrong as much as the left is a collection of individuals who follow ideologies that always ignore the (counter)reactions of actions taken ...

In complicated systems a (counter)reaction to an action can be disproportionately larger than the action, resulting in a system where many of the correct actions to take are based on counterintuitive reasoning. An example of this is that by reducing the cost of credit and making it far more accessable made houses less affordable because more and more people paid the same morgage payment as before to buy the same house as before but had a much larger mortgage (pushing house prices higher); and with house prices being so high, the ammount of money a person can save up as a down payment became meaningless in impacting the mortgage payments and the risk of the bank, and most modest home buyers were being pushed out of the market.

A counterintuitive way to make home prices more affordable would be to ensure that all mortgages had to be backed with a 25% down payment, a mortgage could not be longer than 15 years, and a person could not spend more than 40% of their take-home income on debt repayment ... The end result would be that (in most areas) the average home price would be below $200,000 with most starter homes around $100,000 and (over several years) anyone could save up a decent ammount for a down payment, and monthly mortgage payments would be reasonable. On top of this, people who were "Wealthy" but have poor income levels and need inflation protected investments (read: retired or nearly retired people) could invest in rental realestate because the up-front cost compared to the monthly income would be very reasonable.

When it comes to government services there are a few areas where the government can be more efficient and fair than the private sectore, but these are rare cases and it makes little sense to take money away from people who can use it well to give it to the government who can't. Certainly, it sounds great that the government will invest in areas like "Clean Energy" but if they're taking the money away from the Henry Ford of clean energy and giving it to the buggy whip manufacturers it doesn't sound so great, does it?

I do like it! Simple and fair is what I see with that. Though one severe downside to what I've seen you post in the past is that I would suspect there could be a severe drop in charity payments under such a system as charity is used as one of the loopholes. I suspect you have an answer to this issue as you've been a proponent of charity in the past?

Well written post! I do enjoy your posts even though I like to disagree sometimes.

@Slimebeast: You are Swe, therefore you are awesome. Swe is > all people in the world. Therefore don't complain, move to countries where being Swe is worshiped and you'll do great.

@HappySquirrel:

Thats the exactly same line of thought I had with regards to controling house prices. The only difference is that I go further and I would require that 'investment' properties have an even lower debt/equity ratio because the big concern I have is that it would encourage rampant home 'investment' by individuals which I would prefer to discourage. Its due to the fact that initially before people adjusted, the only people with the enourmous capital required to invest in homes would be those who already have a home.

Buying a house isn't nearly as productive for the economy as say investing in an economically viable windfarm or factory. Its something which annoys me about my country, getting into such a bad debt/GDP ratio over something as trivial and non productive as a huge, palatial home.

The problem with your theory is that, according to the economy, the 300 hours of the rich is worth much, much more than the 300 hours of the guy working at KFC.

An equal contribution in terms of one's effort would still reflect the graduated tax more than the flat one

How is a doctor's time not worth dramatically more than a person who's job requires a very basic skill set and no education, has very limited responsibility with no stress, and has no medium or long term impact on anyone?

@Squilliam

My way to make house prices more affordable was not really a suggestion of how things should be done, as much as it was a demonstration of how the simple intuitive approach to problem solving that is often taken by governments (because it is easy to sell to people) can have the complete opposite reaction that they intend.