VOTER FRAUD

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APATHY IS FOR COWARDS
4158
Voter fraud is another one of those issues that comes up in panicked discussion way more often than it occurs in real life. People make a big deal about it as a method of attacking the other party, but the relevance is measurably rare in practice.

author=kentona
it still blows my mind that the USA doesn't have a non-partisan body in charge of elections. Canada has Elections Canada. The rest of the democratic world has figured it out. My take is that there is a lot of false pride in "American Exceptionalism" that collectively blinds them to potentially better alternatives to systems they came up with themselves.

There's definitely a lot of that sentiment in America, and to be fair to the general populace, both major parties have a vested interest in keeping our electoral system as-is. They often work together to quash any changes that could create more competition to the two-party system.

I was excited to see that British Columbia was voting on altering their voting system from First-Past-The-Post to something less one-sided (like adding secondary votes or proportional representation). It's a pipe dream, but I'd love to see something as simple as secondary votes added to Presidential / Congressional election ballots.
author=bulmabriefs144
Yes, there is the whole pages and pages of books thing. But like I say for another thread I'm a firm believer in trial and error having designed games with feature creep and finding later the features didn't always work together. Even the most book-phobic citizen can be trusted to take a look at that pipe vote they refused, and say "well, I voted no because we don't want taxes but ummm now our pipes are kinda cracked and spewing water all over my lawn. Perhaps it's time to write to the governor and ask whether he could redo the vote." Sometimes the best experience is direct experience. After all, how did those books get written? Someone screwed up.


So... When people get hurt it's time to fix things. At a cost much higher than it would have been to prevent the hurt from happening in the first time. IF enough people are affected.

This sounds incredibly sustainable.

I feel like these thought experiments aren't really thought through at all. And some of them have pretty awful implications. For example there was this bit in an earlier post:
As to something about 1 km away from a bus stop.

A healthy person can walk 6 km per hour, or make it there in 10 minutes. If you want to assert your right to vote, I think you can get off your ass and walk maybe five or ten blocks.

The implication being that only healthy people should be allowed to vote.

Not to mention that I think your elections are on weekdays, which means a twenty minute walk back and forth to a bus stop plus the bus ride (and the waiting for said bus possibly involved), all of which needs to happen during a thirty minute lunch break from work.
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
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author=Shinan
Not to mention that I think your elections are on weekdays, which means a twenty minute walk back and forth to a bus stop plus the bus ride (and the waiting for said bus possibly involved), all of which needs to happen during a thirty minute lunch break from work.


I do not want to negate your point, which is extremely valid, but most places in the US are required to give employees some level of time off (in many cases paid) to vote.
On the other hand that article also lists 22 states where there are no rules regarding required time off to vote. So while 28 (aka most) have those rules. There's still a fair amount that don't.
And some sane people hate Trump enough they don't want him in power next time, even if it means cheating MURDER.

Fixed that for you.

author=bulma
Ah, here it is. Homeless people can vote by using the location of the place they sleep as an address. No problem with that. Although it does tend to make things harder.

I have trouble believing this. I moved to a new state and was unable to vote in the midterm election due to not having an in-state ID acquiring which requires proof of 90 days of in-state residency at a fixed address.

I also think that homeless people probably aren't exactly beating down the doors to vote because you know, they're homeless and have more immediate things to worry about.

author=bulma
What typically happens when extreme leftism takes over. People die, including the people backing the movement. Anyone in favor of their own rights, should not favor any system that takes the rights of others, for they never know when they too will stop being useful and become the new oppressed.

Except this is, you know, the inverse of what's happening to this country, where a far-right movement has taken over and that is going to cause people's deaths?

Don't get me wrong, the left, I'll even go so far as saying the "alt left", definitely owns the American CULTURE, but the far right owns American SOCIETY, and culture cannot make up for society.

CanadianEh
it still blows my mind that the USA doesn't have a non-partisan body in charge of elections. Canada has Elections Canada. The rest of the democratic world has figured it out. My take is that there is a lot of false pride in "American Exceptionalism" that collectively blinds them to potentially better alternatives to systems they came up with themselves.

While not wanting to do anything the way Canada does it is a good and lofty goal...my God the American two-party first-past-the-post system is an abomination that needs to die. I'm not saying direct democracy doesn't have its issues, it very well may, but it falls under the umbrella of "VIRTUALLY EVERYTHING" that would be better than our current system.

author=Sooz
most places in the US are required to give employees some level of time off (in many cases paid) to vote.

Do keep in mind though the key word there is employees. In the "gig economy" more and more working Americans are independent contractors, not actual employees (Uber/Lyft is the main offender there, but there are tons more). I worked for years as an IC for a company that treated me like an employee and expected everything they would of me they would of an employee, but gave me none of the benefits of being an actual employee in spite of having none of the freedom an IC should have. This is pretty standard practice cause big evil corporations gonna big evil corporation. Actually I wouldn't be surprised if less working Americans were actual employees of the company they work for than at any other time in American history.
Americans love government. If the city council isn't good enough they'll form a community association. And if that's not good enough they'll form a neighborhood watch party. And if that's not good enough they'll form a housing commune. And that's just the associations for housing.

If there is an issue to tackle, the first thing americans will do is form a government.
Blue.

author=Shinan
author=bulmabriefs144
Yes, there is the whole pages and pages of books thing. But like I say for another thread I'm a firm believer in trial and error having designed games with feature creep and finding later the features didn't always work together. Even the most book-phobic citizen can be trusted to take a look at that pipe vote they refused, and say "well, I voted no because we don't want taxes but ummm now our pipes are kinda cracked and spewing water all over my lawn. Perhaps it's time to write to the governor and ask whether he could redo the vote." Sometimes the best experience is direct experience. After all, how did those books get written? Someone screwed up.
So... When people get hurt it's time to fix things. At a cost much higher than it would have been to prevent the hurt from happening in the first time. IF enough people are affected.

This sounds incredibly sustainable.

I don't care about "hurt", I care about fixing what's actually wrong. There is no reason people cannot keep things civil and try to work together for a better country.

We can come together, we can mend this country. Or we can insist on throwing down others at all costs.

One of these is the actually a hurt I'd be concerned about (actual screwed up things going on in the country). The other one (people's "feelings" being hurt) is stupid.


I feel like these thought experiments aren't really thought through at all. And some of them have pretty awful implications. For example there was this bit in an earlier post:
As to something about 1 km away from a bus stop.

A healthy person can walk 6 km per hour, or make it there in 10 minutes. If you want to assert your right to vote, I think you can get off your ass and walk maybe five or ten blocks.
The implication being that only healthy people should be allowed to vote.

A healthy person can make it in 10 minutes. A healthy person, since I don't use the metric system, walks 3mph. That's an easy walk. A person in heels, limping, carrying a burden reduces to about 1-2mph. I walked 10 min away to get to work every day. Someone really out of shape or limping might make it in half an hour. But if it is really important to you, you can make the time.

By the way, in the average city, you can still call a taxi even on city outskirts. $1-$3 per mile. 1 km is not even a mile.

Say you're incredibly unhealthy. Eat cheeseburgers for every meal, etc. That you totally CANNOT walk there, so wahhh we need to put it one block from every bus stop. What you're saying is that the government is somehow beholden to you to make healthy decisions, to the point where everything is easy. How about... hell no. By the way, I live in a small town. I either drive or walk, to the best of my knowledge, there is no bus stop. Smh.


Not to mention that I think your elections are on weekdays, which means a twenty minute walk back and forth to a bus stop plus the bus ride (and the waiting for said bus possibly involved), all of which needs to happen during a thirty minute lunch break from work.

What you said is a false theoretical. Either you work a steady job, in which case you have a car probably. Or you are riding the bus, and you can simply tell the people there "I'm gonna be late" and they may or may not be accepting. Given that they were cool with the unpredictability of bus riding, also leeway. Or you're poor and unemployed. You have all the time in the world to vote, you just need to register.

Election day is often a holiday. Midterms should be too. When you want to change a broken system, you don't just patch it and assume the other stuff will take care of itself. You fix everything so ppl are happy. Day off. Make acquiring an ID free for all legal citizens. But no delaying indefinitely to recount. No doing away with IDs for voting. If you use that day off to eat more cheeseburgers or smoke weed (dirty hippies), it is a free country. Or is it?



StormCrow, I hope you're kidding. Murder, is by definition, insane. Especially when the crime worthy of death is:
  • Abolishing the requirement that you buy insurance
  • Lowering the amount of excess regulation in general
  • Gave Israel its country back, something the UN refused to do for decades
  • He got NATO allies to kick in $12 billion more toward our collective security
  • He kept a corrupt politician from holding office.
  • And yes, mean tweets

Off with his head!

Except this is, you know, the inverse of what's happening to this country, where a far-right movement has taken over and that is going to cause people's deaths?

This is called hysteria. You hear people say stuff, and you get worked into a frenzy and you believe behavior is morally justifiable because of how "those people" are.
You know what far right ppl traditionally do? Work. What about when Obama was in office, and there were all kinds of LGBT laws, civil rights rules, an actual law saying that you must pay $250k fine for "misgendering" people? Still work. Nobody was killed in the streets. Nobody in the right burned stuff. Destroyed property. Blocked streets with protests. Hurt people. You've been duped. Far-left has taken over for the last 16 years (yes, including much of Bush's presidency). Trump voting was people having enough. And you know what? They were right.

"Going to cause people's deaths." Because I know a ton of conservatives that go to people's houses and smash them up... Oh wait, conservatives believe in privacy and owning property. What would conservatives do if they took over? Try to lower taxes so they aren't working all the time.

Apples and oranges. Moving to a new state is not having residency there yet. This is different from being homeless. You are eligible to vote in your old state (yeah, I know, that means you gotta drive back there to vote).

The gig economy you just cited is direct result of heavy-handed liberal meddling. What do you think happens when it is mandated that you have insurance as a full-time worker? They hire mostly part-timers. They find loopholes. I worked for years as a librarian (very liberal workplace), and it was very gig work, despite the fact I wanted more hours. They started nitpicking, finding reasons not to give more hours. I finally quit by boss incident (that is, I forced my boss to fire me, by writing a nasty note accusing my boss of stealing credit for my work).
I am now self-employed. Unlike you, I have a firsthand look at the sort of taxes I get to pay as owner (I'm taxed TWICE, as employee and as employer). I understand what it costs to employ someone, especially when business is bad. I understand what a sucky thing minimum wage is for small businesses, how much I would have to work to be able to afford help. And I know all the hidden regulations that goes into business. You raise taxes to pay for welfare, you wind up stiffing the small business. They wind up stiffing the employee, who voted in this system because they can't afford to pay them decently. I can work all myself for $20/hr. Or I can split with someone, then pay their insurance, pay them $15/hr (proposed minimum wage!) while I get $5/hr to keep costs low, and probably go bankrupt from expenses. But sure, tell me how this is a good idea.

Here's what is a good idea. I make $20/hr. I don't get bled dry. With the extra money, I give to charities, like the Temp Gig Workers of America (not a real charity). They too benefit. They help give back so other people can manage a living.
author=bulmabriefs144
I don't care about "hurt", I care about fixing what's actually wrong. There is no reason people cannot keep things civil and try to work together for a better country.

We can come together, we can mend this country. Or we can insist on throwing down others at all costs.

One of these is the actually a hurt I'd be concerned about (actual screwed up things going on in the country). The other one (people's "feelings" being hurt) is stupid.

Well your example implied that as long as it isn't broken there's no point fixing it. Using a water pipe as an example. So I guess I have to elaborate what I mean because I don't think your answer had anything to do with what you had said earlier.

There's a rusty old water pipe in an apartment complex. It is there and an expert looks at it and says "this needs repairs" (aka books worth of papers to go through, to get at this information). The people in the apartment complex go "nah, it's fine, the water works fine, it's always worked fine. You 'experts' just want to scam us of our money with expensive repairs."
So the water pipe is left alone.
Then one day the old pipe bursts. There's water damage all over, but not quite all over. It hits one side of the building, affecting about 30% of the people living there.
1) In a direct democracy example 70% of the people are unaffected by this and might go (not will, this is a thought experiment after all) "this doesn't affect me, I don't think we need to put any money into fixing this problem that isn't our to deal with."
So 30% of the people now live in unlivable conditions, but democracy prevailed.
2) In another version maybe most of the people in the building will go "Yeah, this needs fixing so it doesn't happen to me." They call in the experts and they say "yes, we can fix this, but it will be more than 10 times more expensive compared to when I told you it needed fixing all that time ago that you didn't bother to listen."
So they fix up all the water damage and everyone is happy. And also ten times poorer.

This is what I meant with the fact that we shouldn't always have to wait until things break and people are hurt (you seemed to think "hurt" wasn't a strong enough word. I didn't want to go all the way with "killed" if a water pipe bursts, more about some financial pain).

Basically when the consequences of error are incredibly high. It's probably best not to go with a trial and error style.


On the healthy people front I'm mostly reading "We should not take incredibly simple steps to make it easier for people who already have difficulties." Correct me if I'm wrong.


And dammit I wasn't going to do this
He kept a corrupt politician from holding office.

I skimmed the linked article and I'd say that Trump has about that amount of scandals in a week. And he hasn't even been in politics that long! (so I guess he's racking up the political corruption points because he was late to the game)
Lemme ask you a pointed question Shinan, ignoring for a second your equally long post response to mine.

In the previous post, you said something along the lines of "homeless have bigger things to worry about." Obviously you think getting food and clothing is bigger priority, but there's a sort of backhanded dismissal about what said like :scoff: homeless people aren't going to win the election for us.

Having never been homeless before, you make a judgement call that they don't have IDs and can't make it to the voting booth without help. This is correct, right?

This is precisely why I defected from liberal circles, ladies and gentlemen. Sorry, I'm being offensive to Two Spirit ppl. They preach tolerance but awhile back among one of the white liberal women in protests someone asked them something and they respon that it's because of "minorities, the people below us." The people below us (can't find the quote, but here's how blacks can't vote because "they don't have IDs and can't make it to the voting booth without help." How... patronizing. Yet, you said the same thing earlier in regard to the homeless). It was a Freudian slip made by a girl who looked more like a valley girl than a serious political type, but very telling about the true mindset of a liberal. Socialist countries tend to be in theory equal while in fact have a sort of oligarchy, a small pocket of elites who make far more money than others. Why do you think that is? Rhetorical question! It's because of human nature and the fact that those who claim to be for equality are not honest with themselves and their own sense of elitism and entitlement. "I should be able to get a swimming pool cuz I'm part-Asian (or something) but I also want to make laws so that people usually can't get swimming pools. Cause of... ummm the environment. Swimming pools are bad for the environment. I'm Al Gore and I support this message."

I've been in places where the only home I had was basically a car. The first thing I did was figure out how to establish residence. I know personally that homeless do have something to add. They usually vote liberal, actually because liberals like to offer them free stuff. Free food, free clothing. Homeless can certainly vote. Republicans would offer them work, which is not as sexy, but is freedom from bread lines and a step toward normalcy. In other words, one party wants to like Oprah tell them "you get free car, and you get a free car." Only this free car literally isn't free because it comes with prize tax. No, that wasn't a metaphor, Oprah's free cars ruined several people's lives who were unaware of the tax implications. Most wound up having to sell the thing. Ultimately, this is a good analogy though. Homeless helped by the state become liberal voters, not because they are so grateful they are expressing their appreciation. Because they feel dependent. Why do you think the church has been hit by child abuse accusations on a regular basis? Or why do they want to bureaucratize such institutions into impotence (our food bank had to read out a form before letting people get food that was about three pages long)? Because someone out there wants to undermine the classic role of Christianity (and Judaism) in public charity. Why? Because those helped by the church tend to get a hand-up not a hand-out. They are put on track during the worst parts of their life and helped to get back to feeling whole again. We can't have that! We want our homeless to stay homeless. Stay dependent. Stay "below us". In fact, let's have more homeless. Like Detroit. Let's give them free stuff, which is actually not what they really need at all (the homeless sometimes get free cellphones if they live in the right area).

The homeless are certainly important to elections. In a healthy free market, they are able to start their own businesses and cut through regulations, being a street seller (in my visit to China, one of the things I noticed was a very robust street seller culture, this is basically why China hasn't gone the way of other such countries, their homeless aren't forgotten) and working one's way to owning their own shop. In a welfare state, they stand in line for foodstamps and clothing stuff, and get their free car at the expense of sending another person onto the street.

Okay, that was most of what I wanted to say about that.

---------------------------------------------

Trump has "scandals" most of which are regurgitated accusations of "collusion" with Russia and complaints about his putting ketchup on steak. I hardly think that compares with sketchy emails, owning a charity that donates most of its money back to the Clintons and acquires it from foreign interests (that's collusion right there), sex scandals (actual ones, not MeToo accusations).

Exactly if something isn't broken why ARE you fixing it?

Direct democracy is just the next step on what should actually happen, which is that we come up with a way to regionally vote for stuff. Those 30% make up 100% of that side of the bad side of the pipe. Their side ought to be fixed out of their own paycheck (national average $2500 to fix a pipe and that's probably the whole section split among those who want it fixed, let's sat 250 ppl on the bad side with the other 70% on the good side, easy tax of $10 each and the pipe is fixed, making you wonder where all the government money like $2000 on staplers goes). The 70% are unaffected until of course the same thing happens to them, then they get to be pointed at and laughed at by the 30% "we told you it needed fixing!" Your problems should be structured in a way that they are solved without hurting us, and vice versa. Direct republicanism.

slash
APATHY IS FOR COWARDS
4158
Holy shit, has this has spiralled off-topic. But since we're here...


The idea that GOP encourage "hard work" and liberals encourage "giving away free stuff" is laughable and easily disproven. It's based off the Republican idea that we live in a meritocracy - a society where hard work leads to success. Historically, however, the most hyper-successful people are those who have either inherited wealth or created it through evil means. Our president was made from his father's fortunes. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and Richest Man In The World, makes $4,000 a second because his company has been fraught with worker abuse and underpayment for a decade - "hard work" didn't lead to his wealth; creating a monopoly that screws its workers did. And as a resident of Michigan, the result of our governor "running the state like a business" led to an environmental disaster than has been plaguing a major city for years.

The GOP's policies do nothing to encourage hard work - they benefit corporations, not employees. The theory is that giving a corporation more money (by cutting taxes) will help their workers, but historically, companies will just give themselves and the stockholders bigger bonuses. The lion's share of the benefit goes to a small, wealthy group, once again. This is not a meritocracy, and Republican fiscal policies do not benefit those who work hard - they benefit those who already have money, and those who make the rules.

I have problems with our Democratic party - they half-ass a lot of solutions, compromise too often, and often can't sympathize with the common worker. They're still a group of elites who make money selling their votes to lobbyists, just like the Republicans do. But at least sometimes they recognize and fight against this idea that we can rely on profit-driven corporations to run our society fairly. They recognize that not all people have the same access to education, to inherited wealth, to affordable rent, and they fight to change that. They recognize that the world we live in is not a meritocracy, and that the powerful in our society have a responsibility to help those without power.


If a company can't pay its workers a living wage, it should fail.

If a company creates unsafe working conditions and abuses the environment in an effort to save money, they should fail.

If you work 40 hours a week and you can't afford health insurance, afford a house, afford basic amenities, our system has failed you.

If people are homeless and starving and other people are rolling in billions, we're doing something wrong.

If we can't demand a fair share from our employers, we're only going to continue to get wrung out to dry while they walk away with the money we've created for them.



---

On Detroit:

The poverty in Detroit has many causes, but was primarily a result of over-dependance on the auto industry, systemtic racism, and the white flight that occurred in the mid-1900s. Detroit, home of the automobile, was a very successful city in the first half of the century. Slowly, the well-to-do auto management moved out of the city to the suburbs - Oakland County, which neighbors Detroit's Wayne County, is one of the richest in America. Those who could afford it wanted to live outside the city to raise their families - but also, there was a desire to separate from the "dangerous" elements of the city (read: white people wanted to segregate from black and hispanic people). Realtors often rejected black people who tried to move to the suburbs.

Then, as the auto industry crashed, the city itself suffered, losing the financial stability and tax income of its workers, while the surrounding wealthy, predominantly white cities were buffered by savings. To this day, Detroit has a large poor population and this has been sustained by corrupt politicians on both sides of the aisle and lack of support by neighboring cities - the educational system is still a mess, the infrastructure is a mess, and the city needs significant help and funding to recover.

There is a turnaround in progress, largely due to the multimillionaire investor Dan Gilbert, alongside others like the Ilitch family, but it has created a new rift of gentrification, slowly pushing out the poor with unaffordable rent. It stands that the current residents may simply have nowhere to go, and New Detroit will only hurt them. I have some hope, but there's no promise it will work out for the city at large. At least we're getting a new bridge to Canada, thank god (the current one is 100+ years old).
In the previous post, you said something along the lines of "homeless have bigger things to worry about." Obviously you think getting food and clothing is bigger priority, but there's a sort of backhanded dismissal about what said like :scoff: homeless people aren't going to win the election for us.

That wasn't me. I went and checked in case it had been me. But it wasn't.
Typical liberals, always blaming others. Oh wait, it was StormCrow.

Who also thinks sane people are justified in murder. :shame: :shame: :shame: There we go, I shamed StormCrow enough.

In any case, yeah. I'd like to have a voting system that is inherently more fair to minority voting districts (keeping in mind that 70% by not punishing them for the 30%, while not forcing 30% to suffer terrible piping) while not encouraging stacking the deck (as is happening in Broward County, which is now trying to tell us they need until the 20th to finish "recounting") because you don't like who's in charge. The best I could come up with is a sort of regional voting where if Bernie wins Vermont, Bernie Sanders is president of Vermont. That's scary to non-Bernie voters, but it has nothing to do with say South Carolina, as Trump is their president. If we did it this way, the people saying "Not My President" could simply move to a state (or even a county) where he wasn't. I have no problem with people who like Hillary being governed by her. '

If a company can't pay its workers a living wage, it should fail.

If a company creates unsafe working conditions and abuses the environment in an effort to save money, they should fail.

If you work 40 hours a week and you can't afford health insurance, afford a house, afford basic amenities, our system has failed you.

If people are homeless and starving and other people are rolling in billions, we're doing something wrong.

If we can't demand a fair share from our employers, we're only going to continue to get wrung out to dry while they walk away with the money we've created for them.

1. If you are a small business, you probably cannot afford to employ 50 people. So, I should fail, because it's my "duty" to employ five, ten, or twenty people and pay them full wages? **** you. I'm in a business to help the public fix their computers and maybe learn to work them better. I have no duty at all to even give people employment.

2. I agree. OSHA is there for a reason. That having been said, working at Amazon, they had things like weapons on the shelves (along with sex toys, lots and lots of sex toys). I understand that as a worker, sometimes I'm thankful for having a job, especially one that pays well, and I've been okay working there (except for some insaneness I won't get into).

3. Our system has failed precisely because: living expenses are too high, taxes are too high, and other expenses like medical are too high. So like, I checked at my health insurance like the last month of December 2017 (quit in April). They were gonna charge me $400 for insurance. I can't afford that. I was making not great, but reasonable, money part-time with few expenses. I could not afford a house but I could afford to live with my parents (which I did), and could afford to spend money on basic stuff. Having a $400 insurance would take all my money away because of some estimate that people in the city make enough to pay that easily, and also can afford $3000/month housing. That's the price of rent in DC. What would I get for such insurance? Basically no benefits. I sat down after paying a dental bill myself, no insurance, and did some math. Insurance paid barely 30% of what I was paying a month, and there were months where I simply didn't go to a doctor at all. $400/month could get me a used car in about a year or so, it could also be just dumped into a savings account and pay 100% of medical, which I decided to do. When I still had money. It turns out insurance cost has gone down in 2018 to $222. I can imagine why. People opted out. When you FORCE people to pay something regardless of their ability to pay, the system has failed. It failed for employers by forcing them to pay company insurance. It failed for employees by forcing them to have insurance or get a tax penalty. Honestly, a person can be without housing, and I've been there. But suppose we had a tax penalty for being homeless (same principle as uninsured). I'll walk you through it.

Johnny is homeless. In addition to struggling for food and water and some sort of shelter, and being in so much pain that he drinks some of what he makes, winds up paying the government $350 despite having no means. Failing to do so, they start repossessing his remaining property.
Jerry has always had an apartment which charged $200 a month. It was a dump, but he lived modestly, and used the savings on other things. Then government programs instituted housing standards, meaning alternate housing programs do not meet "housing standards" get a penalty similar to Johnny's (Trump had a stopgap for insurance where people were minimally insured, but this is not exempt from the Obamacare mandate, as I know from trying to apply for that instead) making the same dump now $550. Jerry worked and saved for the day when he can own a home (which btw, he would be surprised to know doesn't exempt him from now paying property taxes or having his house seized), but now must look for an $800/month home which meets those standards. He is paid $450 every two weeks (Walmart, only at Walmart), which made sense with $200/monthly but now means he has $100 for groceries, makes too much for foodstamps, and then is taxed on the amount he makes yearly by Medicare and Social Security, leaving less than $100 per month on groceries. He can instead sell his house and live in his car just so he'll manage to eat something, but he'll still pay $350 tax for not having a house. This is what individual mandate is. This is why it matters that someone tried to repeal it, this is why we must never have it again, even if next election a liberal candidate wins.
Typical conservatives, failing to see the bigger picture
Corfaisus
"It's frustrating because - as much as Corf is otherwise an irredeemable person - his 2k/3 mapping is on point." ~ psy_wombats
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author=bulmabriefs144
Basically, a cross-section of very diverse groups. And those people could vote on the president based on how he did in terms of speeches and what he promised.


Because RMN is very touchy about how you use its Youtube tag, just skip ahead to 0:31 to see why I have a problem with this.

Let's get a bunch of idiots from all walks of life to listen to what a person has to say from a well-organized script that speaks favorably about all the things general people generally want, because surely from that, we'll make an informed decision. While we're at it, let's put signs in people's yards telling them the name of our candidate of choice and a word that makes them seem like a good person.

"I like him."
slash
APATHY IS FOR COWARDS
4158
1. If you are a small business, you probably cannot afford to employ 50 people. So, I should fail, because it's my "duty" to employ five, ten, or twenty people and pay them full wages? **** you. I'm in a business to help the public fix their computers and maybe learn to work them better. I have no duty at all to even give people employment.

That is not what I said. You don't have to hire anyone, if you don't want. But if you do hire someone, you should have to pay them a fair wage. If you can't afford to pay them a fair wage, then your company is not solvent and yes, you should fail. If you only work for yourself, you can decide what your own fair wage is. But for those you employ, a fair wage should be at the bare minimum enough to live, eat, and own a home, without needing food stamps or welfare.

2. I agree. OSHA is there for a reason. That having been said, working at Amazon, they had things like weapons on the shelves (along with sex toys, lots and lots of sex toys). I understand that as a worker, sometimes I'm thankful for having a job, especially one that pays well, and I've been okay working there (except for some insaneness I won't get into).

The GOP is adamant that removing regulations is good for our economy, when it mostly benefits company owners. "Don't test drugs before we sell them", "don't dump coal refuse into local rivers", "don't ignore air pollution", and "enforce basic safety measures on oil rigs" are all standards that have come under fire by the Trump administration and Republican members of Congress. These are all policies that can and will harm our people, our environment, our country, and the entire globe - and cutting them has saved less jobs and instead just given more profits to corporate owners and shareholders.

3. The individual mandate...

The individual mandate came about in order to pay for covering people with pre-existing conditions. Before the American Care Act, insurance companies would simply choose to not cover people with any disease they saw fit, including cancer, diabetes, lupus, depression... pregnancy, acne, asthma, tinnitis... Anyone with those conditions could be denied by insurers, meaning that if they got sick - say, someone born with diabetes getting cancer - they would be, to put it simply, fucked. They could be out hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to treat cancer, and no insurer would give them a chance. They would inevitably go bankrupt unless they were wealthy, which saddles the hospital - and eventually the unwilling public - with the bill. You were paying for that cancer treatment with your taxes, whether you knew it or not.

So, while I agree the individual mandate is not a fantastic solution, it was part of a vast improvement to our medical care system that even saves us money. A much cleaner solution that would save us money would be a single-payer system (or "Medicare for All" paid for by taxes and lowering our costs through collective bargaining. This would save us the tons of tax costs that come from people without insurance being treated in ER, and force down the exorbitant medical costs (medical costs in US are higher than any other country despite often leading to sub-quality treatment). It would also remove the demand for employers, large and small, to cover their employees' health care. Win/win, eh?
I wouldn't mind John Brain take over the world if he decreased spending and taxes.

Kentona, here's the bigger picture then. Or rather the smaller picture, because it uses Detroit as a case study.

The poverty in Detroit has many causes, but was primarily a result of over-dependance on the auto industry, systemtic racism, and the white flight that occurred in the mid-1900s. Detroit, home of the automobile, was a very successful city in the first half of the century. Slowly, the well-to-do auto management moved out of the city to the suburbs - Oakland County, which neighbors Detroit's Wayne County, is one of the richest in America. Those who could afford it wanted to live outside the city to raise their families - but also, there was a desire to separate from the "dangerous" elements of the city (read: white people wanted to segregate from black and hispanic people). Realtors often rejected black people who tried to move to the suburbs.

Then, as the auto industry crashed, the city itself suffered, losing the financial stability and tax income of its workers, while the surrounding wealthy, predominantly white cities were buffered by savings. To this day, Detroit has a large poor population and this has been sustained by corrupt politicians on both sides of the aisle and lack of support by neighboring cities - the educational system is still a mess, the infrastructure is a mess, and the city needs significant help and funding to recover.

There is a turnaround in progress, largely due to the multimillionaire investor Dan Gilbert, alongside others like the Ilitch family, but it has created a new rift of gentrification, slowly pushing out the poor with unaffordable rent. It stands that the current residents may simply have nowhere to go, and New Detroit will only hurt them. I have some hope, but there's no promise it will work out for the city at large. At least we're getting a new bridge to Canada, thank god (the current one is 100+ years old).

And... this is a nice story. But it omits several nice details assuming all or any is true. Questions which should be asked. Like... "why did the management move to the suburbs?" And "why, after the auto industry crashed, wasn't there small start up companies picking up the pieces?" (Here's an interesting fact. Money, like water or matter/energy, doesn't just disappear. It goes somewhere. So, where'd the money go?) And "if it was both sides' fault, why is it that 1962 onward, the mayor has been Democrat?" And "How did a thriving auto industry simply crash?"

https://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2013/07/30/5-ways-liberalism-destroyed-detroit-n1651524

Because people never read links, I'm gonna quote it here.

Let's start with the last one first. Why did a thriving industry crash? Because of unionization. You see, aside from straight up competition or poor business decisions, for three big companies to all fail requires something else. High regulation (prohibiting companies from making decisions it needs to), high taxes (prohibiting money from being saved for more resources), and high involvement from third parties (unions are one, but not the only one, teachers get to deal with "specialists" and their crackpot teaching theories) all work to stifle business.

The Big 3 automakers could afford unions when they practically had a monopoly on auto production in the United States. However, once they started facing real competition from overseas, the unions made them less and less competitive. The unions forced the companies to pay out more than market value for their workers, put stifling work rules in place that made flexibility and innovation difficult, and created generous pension plans that are proving to be unsustainable.

Eventually because of the unions, the Big 3 automakers had to deal with significantly larger costs per car than their overseas competitors and they took it out of the only place they could: the cars. As the quality of their products dropped, their competitors took an ever larger share of their market, and there were fewer jobs to go around.

Why did white flight happen? Because of riots and agitation. Whites and blacks can live together in a city. In my town, it's very mixed, but it's also very very conservative. When push comes to shove, the only reason whites really leave a city is because they feel unsafe there.

(Stuff about gun control, let's skip this...) it's not a surprise that crime is a problem in Detroit. However, the issue goes much deeper than that. In case you haven't noticed, in a conflict between a cop and a criminal, the hearts of liberals almost always seem to bleed for the thug. Combine that with the liberal tendency, when money gets tight, to cut essential programs instead of their perks and the goodies they hand out to their supporters, and you end up with a police department that is both dramatically underfunded and completely incompetent.

Detroit was a heavily segregated city and in 1967, there were black riots. After that, white flight to the suburbs began. This was dramatically exacerbated when Coleman Young became Detroit's first black mayor in 1972. Young was cut from the same cloth as men like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, but unlike the two of them, he actually had power. Young systematically drove white government employees out of their jobs so they could be replaced by blacks, was hostile to the white suburbs, and was generally perceived as anti-white. Naturally, a lot of white people just left, which reduced the population and significantly cut into the tax base.

Oh look, that also answers more about where the money went. They took it with them. No industry to pick up the pieces. And bye bye white people. By the way, to say that whites are the only income is extremely racist. Black middle class people were also a key part, and they left too as a result of black on black crime.

What about why the mayor being Democrat makes a difference? The quick non-quote version is they overspent.

Detroit's tax base has been plunging like an anvil dropped into the Marianas Trench and so, in true liberal fashion, liberals have raised taxes to make up for it instead of cutting spending. "The city's per-capita tax burden is the highest in Michigan. Detroit has the country's highest property taxes on homes, the top commercial property tax and the second-highest industrial property tax." Unfortunately for Detroit, you can't get blood from a stone. As jobs and wealth fled the city, there was simply less cash available for big government programs, pensions, and the incredibly generous, but almost completely unfunded union health care program.

Ever notice that the bigger government seems to get, the less it does anything well? Citizens of Detroit could tell you all about that. The school system is horrible, which explains why a staggering 47% of the population is illiterate. In addition, 40% of the street lights don't work, only about 1/3 of the ambulances are running, and 2/3 of the parks have been closed since 2008. Just to give you an idea of its priorities, an independent report in 2012 suggested the city fire 80% of the Water and Sewage Department including a horseshoer" that it has on staff even though it has NO HORSES.

All of the things you mentioned were technically true. They were just gross omissions.

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As for individual mandate, I will always say "lose/lose, eh?"

Why? Because I understand what insurance is for. It's not to cover people.

In the case of "pre-existing conditions" which btw is a buzzword, we're gonna talk about Triage.

When an emergency room or a disaster site is overwhelmed with patients, it's important that the real medical professionals be able to sort patients out in order of who needs the most help. This is called the triage process. Specifically, a trained medical professional balances the patients' urgency, or need for care, and the likelihood of survival if they receive such care. It sounds morbid, but it really is the most efficient way to help the greatest number of people in a dire situation where there aren't enough doctors or nurses to help everyone at once.

The concept of triage originated during World War I, when medical staff were coping with mass numbers of injured soldiers. At this time, the triage system was relatively basic and included only three categories: those who would live without medical attention, those who would die even with medical attention, and those who would survive only if they received medical attention. Luckily, these horrific conditions are infrequent and people don't often have to make such difficult decisions that are literally ''life or death'' scenarios.

This not only saves money, it saves lives. When you force people to treat all people with insurance because of some government mandate, you hamstring Triage. That dying person with the incurable disease will be kept alive (even against their wishes), the person you could have treated, the hospital is now understaffed for the man with multiple stab wounds, and the person who has a simple cold now has doctors working to cure their cold which will go away on its own.

Cancer is actually in two triage categories. Most people die within five years (despite insufferable people with anecdotal stories about how their cousin beat cancer with chemo, the fact is that it costs roughly 10x what effective medicine should, and their recovery has more to do with them being supportive and helpful than chemo which without help, fails roughly 95% of the time). However dietary studies have found that a lower sugar and low additive diet helps curb the growth of certain cancers, massively So either they die despite the hospitals, or the live without them. In either case, the doctors don't REALLY cure cancer.

Acne is a non-medically-urgent condition. It is completely optional to treat this condition, and the sooner they leave this to just dermatologists (which, like plastic surgeons, should not be considered doctors as to insurance), the better it would be for all in medicine. Speaking as someone who had creams smeared all over them by overbearing parents, I absolutely hated acne treatment.

Tinnitis has home remedies. You do not need to see a doctor about ringing in your ear. It should be assessed if the tinnitis will lead to hearing loss, and if it won't, it's probably the type that results as a reaction to certain drugs (quinine, aspirin, caffeine, and certain antibiotics). Gingko biloba, zinc, and things like lipo-flavonoids can also treat this stuff.

Asthma sometimes results from being out of shape. When it has other causes, yes, treat it.

But the doctors are right for alot of these. They don't wanna treat you, then they don't have to treat you. Any field has the right to decide what it will and won't treat. If someone is woefully underfunded, and the patient asks them to treat their sickle-cell anemia, the hospital has the right to send them elsewhere or simply tell them they don't do that.

When not every disease is looked at (ideally, they could send you somewhere that will help), it helps the customer too.

author=Adam Smith
The most basic laws in economics are the law of supply and the law of demand. Indeed, almost every economic event or phenomenon is the product of the interaction of these two laws. The law of supply states that the quantity of a good supplied (i.e., the amount owners or producers offer for sale) rises as the market price rises, and falls as the price falls. Conversely, the law of demand (see
DEMAND) says that the quantity of a good demanded falls as the price rises, and vice versa. (Economists do not really have a "law" of supply, though they talk and write as though they do.)
One function of markets is to find "equilibrium" prices that balance the supplies of and demands for goods and services. An equilibrium price (also known as a "market clearing" price) is one at which each producer can sell all he wants to produce and each consumer can buy all he demands. Naturally, producers always would like to charge higher prices. But even if they have no competitors, they are limited by the law of demand: if producers insist on a higher price, consumers will buy fewer units. The law of supply puts a similar limit on consumers. They always would prefer to pay a lower price than the current one. But if they successfully insist on paying less (say, through PRICE CONTROLS), suppliers will produce less and some demand will go unsatisfied.

What happens if the prices is not paid by the consumer? It continues to rise, as per supply and demand. Insurance is not for protection of the consumer. It's for the merchant, to make sure someone pays. The solution to high medical prices, then, are making sure people can pay for wanted goods, and to screen out unwanted triage by making it unaffordable.

As such, I have no sympathy at all for people with so-called "pre-existing conditions" despite having a number of them over the years (rolandic seizures, attention deficit, schizoid personality disorder, etc). Many of these are not medically treatable, but they are medically preventable, by a clean and wholesome life. If you don't smoke, you are unlikely to have asthma or emphysema. If you don't eat too much salt or sugar, you're unlikely to have many other conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, and water retention. If you don't drink, they don't have liver problems. They did the crime, they're still fine if they change their ways. Or they can just deal with it, like I have with having sucky blood sugar. But patients don't want to change, they want the doctor to tell them they're cured. That you fail to accept that some things about yourself you will need to change (fine by itself) but expect other people to fix your problems (not as cool), means you have personally worsened the state of insurance and medical costs. You and the 500 other people with restless leg syndrome.

In other words, people with hypochondria and those with incurable diseases are both disrupting triage and raising prices for other people. And they have no guilt or remorse about raising other people's insurance to unpayable rates. Well, since you don't care that I was going to have to pay $400 per month despite not making anywhere near that per month, I guess I have no sympathy for those conditions.
slash
APATHY IS FOR COWARDS
4158
Let's start with the last one first. Why did a thriving industry crash? Because of unionization. You see, aside from straight up competition or poor business decisions, for three big companies to all fail requires something else. High regulation (prohibiting companies from making decisions it needs to), high taxes (prohibiting money from being saved for more resources), and high involvement from third parties (unions are one, but not the only one, teachers get to deal with "specialists" and their crackpot teaching theories) all work to stifle business.

Unionization is one reason of many. Others were rising foreign oil prices and rising competition in the 1970s. Condemning the unions is easy, but lazy. Automobile regulations should be considered vital, unless we want cars that will get us killed and workers being maimed by machinery.

Why did white flight happen? Because of riots and agitation. Whites and blacks can live together in a city. In my town, it's very mixed, but it's also very very conservative. When push comes to shove, the only reason whites really leave a city is because they feel unsafe there.

Incorrect. White flight was well underway nationwide over a decade before the Detroit riots, beginning with the desegregation of schools after WW2. In Detroit, white flight was part of what led to the riots, as whites opposed to multiracial schools and neighborhoods, and moved to wealthier areas in the suburbs. This, alongside increased automation, the slow decline of automobile sales, the construction of highways through black neighborhoods, led to the city itself becoming very poor and unstable and eventually the riots.

Oh look, that also answers more about where the money went. They took it with them. No industry to pick up the pieces. And bye bye white people. By the way, to say that whites are the only income is extremely racist. Black middle class people were also a key part, and they left too as a result of black on black crime.

It's not racist to point out that, due to our country's systemic racism, white people were both better paid and given better jobs in Detroit at the time. Again, due to redlining, white fear, and other racist housing policies, it was much more difficult for PoC to move to predominantly white suburbs. Many simply did not have the choice.

The aftereffects of white flight are still here today. I was born in Oakland County and now lives in Washtenaw County, and I've been adjacent to the suburbs of Detroit my whole life. They are predominantly white. The city itself has been gutted and poor for a long time, and a major reason behind all of it was our country's unquestionable racism at the time and today. It hasn't recovered and very few have been willing to acknowledge it or do anything to support it.

pre-existing conditions

You misunderstand what I described. Before 2010 and ACA, someone born with a genetic condition like ulcerative colitis could be denied all insurance covering that disease. This is why we demanded companies cover those conditions, and why the mandate required insurance. Again, it is a flawed solution. We should be covering health care regardless - our nation has the money. We can afford it.

If our country's medical system cannot support people who are born with diabetes or tinnitus, or who break a leg or get cancer, it has failed us. If our insurance policies are unaffordable, they need to go. Our country is not measurably unhealthier than others - we smoke less and (despite stereotypes) are not overly obese, and we don't see the doctor more often.

You cannot apply the laws of supply & demand to healthcare, as it is an inflexible good. Unlike strawberries or peanut butter, people need healthcare to live, and they will pay what they have to. You don't have the ability to haggle prices when you have head trauma, or cancer, or a gunshot wound.
Not talking about Detroit anymore. You wanna believe something, whatever. I don't have to believe as you do though. That's kinda the point of most of this thread, people trying to impose their will on others, cuz they can't keep their shit together and deal with stuff they might not like.

You clearly are allergic to links so I'll post it here. As much as you ppl (used unironically, I swear) swear you're not racist watch this video and tell me what you think.


(Translation: "voter ID is racist", but we don't think blacks are smart enough to use the internet, have the resources to have ID, and can't find a DMV without help. We see blacks as victims not as people. That's actually quite patronizing, and yes extremely racist.) Here's the truth about so-called racism in Detroit. Suppose as you say, a black guy was manager material. They first and foremost were popular enough that it wouldn't seed jealousy with coworkers if they were raised to assistant manager or manager. Also, we're ruling out the Peter Principle (that once they get promoted, it turns out they're really incompetent at the job), and saying that yes they deserve it, yes they've earned it, and yes the company is able to do so without making headlines in a world that still has Jim Crow laws. Yeah sure. But I bet that guy wouldn't be the guy quotas would pick to be manager. They'd be offended at the idea that workers should deserve their job, and would choose who they thought "needed" it most. Hiring basically on the color of one's skin without regard to merit. There word for that... hold on... ummm... oh yea! Racism.
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You're misunderstanding something. There are very very few actual genetic disorders. Cancer isn't one, although doctors routinely wave around the genetic abnormality thing. It's a result of lifestyle, mainly high exposure to carcinogens. Epigenetics is just a fancy word for "it's not really genetics, it's lifestyle degrade of the body." Down syndrome is one. Type 1 diabetes is one. Sickle-cell is one. Siamese twins, that split lip thing, and deformed fingers and toes are one. Those are genetic. Many many so-called genetic disorders aren't actually genetic. They are inherent familial disorders. That sounds like genetic, right? No. It's like, children have started being born with IBS because of an increasing junk food diet in American culture. Or everyone in your family has thyroid problems, not because of genes but because nobody in your family eats fish. There is an epic amount of not owning problems in the medical field.

Oh can't I? Because I can readily compare three aspects of life to others in terms of pricing according to inflation, and these are are standouts. These are: higher education, housing, and medicine.
Housing has mortgage and I think there are loans you can take out toward buying. You effectively can borrow against the value of the house, meaning you are offsetting the price somewhat. The whole house flipping thing doesnt help either. Adam Smith mentioned risk as a source of price. So, you have people buying beyond their real means, and yup the price increases. Cars have all those financing deals, so yeah, pretty much the same issue. But not nearly to the extent of housing, education, and medicine. Why because there isn't a real sense of being stuck without a car like a house. Using a bus is an option, whereas being homeless is seen as such a pariah that parks, forests, and even shopping centers go out of their way to make it so you can't sleep much of anywhere. This sort of absolute 100% necessity. Demand.

Higher education, "EVERYONE NEEDS TO GO TO COLLEGE". What do you think happens when demand approaches 100% despite rises? Yeah, it gets sucky real quick. They also have student loans, and increasing government involvement. Many colleges seem to spend more on the swimming pools than the actual education materials.

Medicine has insurance, not as in other insurace against emergencies (compare to fire or flood insurance) but in case of cost. But cost is not a what-if, it's a how much. And again "EVERYONE SHOULD GET HEALTH INSURANCE" not to prevent any incidents, but actually so the insurance can act as a sort of debt collector, making sure you pay.

All three have demand close to 100%. All three offset their payment with some other means of buying, and no surprise, all of these are hyperinflated, because people will never say "this is too much" since they generally see it as "someone else is paying." Why doesn't it occur to any of you to say, "I don't care that someone else is paying, it's not right. It's one thing for family or friends to help me out because they love me, it's another to be a mooch and take advantage of people who you never asked permission to help. I'm not letting them pay, I don't need this."

I think one of you said that if all that crap couldn't be earned with salary, the system has failed. At what point would medical insurance costs have to be for you to say, "I'm not paying this"? $400 was too low. Let's say $800 a month. Still not worried? Next year it's $1600. People still can pay, because they're earning six figures and visit everyday. $3200. A month. Sounds absurd? Good, I'm trying to get under your skin a bit. When prices get out of control but people keep buying, eventually some people taper off. This is when the price also tapers off. When insurance stops saving money, it's not really insurance. When everyone HAS insurance, insurance has itself (not even the medicine, which is already expensive) become a commodity. That's exactly what happened.

I get warts on my finger. The price of removal can be up to $610 for freezing. That's absurd. Dental work? $190, just for routine checkup. Prescription medicine, some of which is placebo? Don't ask. It got too expensive for most people to even think about paying, so they just blindly put it on their tab, rather than figuring out whether the doctor was lying about it being genetic, they just kept shelling out money. What if bread cost that much? $500 for a slice of bread, $2500 for a whole loaf. But don't worry, we'll let you take out a food loan.



slash
APATHY IS FOR COWARDS
4158
Quick reply:

1. Your "belief" about the history of Detroit means nothing in the face of written fact. Do some research on the subject. Uninformed opinions can't change the past, no matter what our President argues.

2. No one said all progressives aren't racist; I know I've personally held shitty beliefs in the past and have worked to change that. The Democratic party has created and enforced racist laws in the pass. But the GOP is on another level, and has had no qualms destroying the marginalized for cheap gain. The current administration is an exemplar of hate.

3. I... can't tell what you're trying to argue about health care. Like, there's zero train of thought in those six paragraphs or so. Health care is expensive, but people need it to live, so we need to find a way to make it affordable for everyone.


This is all incredibly off-topic. I got involved because you posted a multitude of bad information and outright falsehoods about both Detroit and the Republican Party, but I can tell now you're only skimming my posts for things to retort to. I hope all my long-winded posts will be useful for someone else, at least, since I think this is really running its course.
I liked them slash. What I'm getting from bulma is a lot of hogwash, and very specific hypotheticals with the assumption that I am going to apply the logical fallacy of generalization to them to support his point.
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