How would txation for universal healthcare be theft

i have an orange. it's orange.

i know crap when i see it, and i avoid stepping in it.
i will recomend you read atlas shrugged by ayn rand, a worthwhile read. i would say required.

Know? How can you claim to know when you can't even dispute it. Surely if you know you'd be able to at least do that. Rawls didn't claim that he just knew. He did what a philosopher does: he reasoned it out; he argued. You aren't attacking his argument as 'poison'. You are dismissing it, and on that account cannot claim to simply know it's false.

I would say Rawls and Singer are required readings, especially with reference of ethics in the modern age. Rand is on my list of 'to read'.

__________________
Smith: Why do you do it? Why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you’re fighting for something? For more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom? Or truth? Perhaps peace? Yes? No? Could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson. Vagaries of perception. Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself; although only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now. You can’t win. It’s pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Anderson? Why? Why do you persist?

To elevate Creationism to the level of Science is to debase Science to the level of superstition.

If winning the war on terror means that we must abandon the rule of law and fight terror with terror then we have already lost.

No offense, but if you can't use known facets of human nature, and historical precedent, to extrapolate out the logical outcome of small groups of people being gazillionaires and controlling all the resources while others live on a few dollars a day with nothing of their own...well, I would say my imagination is quite superior to yours.

Seriously, Objectivism is unworkable in a human population. People are social by nature. No cult is going to teach, beat or breed it out of them, any more than Mao could beat, brainwash or shoot the individualist streak out of people back in the Cultural Revolution. The social and individual aspects of our identities are ingrained--you're talking something about a one notch below the laws of gravity and thermodynamics in terms of a phenomenon you can take to the bank and cash.

You get a group of thousands, even hundreds, heck--even a couple dozen--people together, some are going to end up in charge. You run any group of people over a critical mass--psychologists and political scientists may argue over the exact number, but none deny the existence of that critical mass--and they will distill out into leaders and followers.

The reason why our Constitution and system work, whereas strict Marxism and Objectivism do not, is because the first was built in accordance with human nature, whilst the second and third deny it, or believe it can be changed so we can all live a "better way." When we landed men on the Moon, we did so accepting the laws of gravitation and physics, and working with them. If we had gone the route of Marx and Rand, and built the Apollo program believing the laws of nature would change themselves to suit us...well, suffice it to say the outcome would have been a lot less positive...

__________________
"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite."
-- Kenneth Galbraith

Myth? I have an Uncle who was a self-made millionaire, a family friend who is a self-made millionaire. Both were self-made men. I am not a millionaire but I have my own business and what I have is totally self-made. Rawls is wrong in his claim that the successful have some innate talent that robs them of their claim to virtue. Neither I nor the two others I mentioned have any particular talent at all. What they had was a dedication to a specific goal and the willingness to put forth whatever effort was necessary to achieve it.

He is right on one count, however. My Uncle, the family friend, and I all owe our success to the fact that we were born in the greatest nation known to mankind--the USA. Since for most of human history man was born into servitude, poverty and tyranny, it is pure luck that I was born here and not in, say, North Korea. But that in no way diminishes what I or anyone else accomplishes here. If I have an obligation to anyone or anything it is to Liberty and Capitalism, for without those I would be a serf, a slave, locked in some dungeon or dead. Without liberty, effort is pointless, without capitalism, effort is worthless. So I suppose that within the confines of some Marxist hellhole, Rawls theory has some merit, because in such a world, effort has no merit.

But the self-made man is very real, and he is all around you. He is, more than likely, responsible for the existence of most everything you encounter in every day life. He is the one who knows the difference between the earned and the unearned--a lesson Rawls never learned.
Thats great. As I said before, you are an incredibly bright guy. I wish I was half as smart as you are when I was 18. I hope you read Rand soon, I would be genuinely interested in your take.

__________________
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.--Milton Friedman

OBAMACARE: TAXES FOR EVERYONE
OBAMACARE: TAXES FOR EVERYONE at DickMorris.com

By Dick Morris
09.23.2009

Published on TheHill.com September 22, 2009


Now that the various healthcare plans are being reduced to print, the financial details are emerging and with them a fundamental conclusion is becoming evident: The Obama plan is a giant tax increase for much of the American people (not just the rich).

Start with the mandate that falls on those whose welfare is the supposed object of the entire program — the uninsured. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the average uninsured person or family will have to pay between 15 and 20 percent of his or their total income on health insurance (counting premiums, deductibles and co-payments) before any of the subsidy in the Baucus bill kicks in. Even in the more generous House bill, the tab that the uninsured must pay is very, very high.


Most uninsured would likely be quite happy to avoid paying this much of their income for health insurance. But they will be forced to shell out the money under the program. Others would want catastrophic coverage (which for the young would likely not be too costly) but the Obama program requires comprehensive insurance that is costly to satisfy the government requirement.

Having spent the entire campaign speaking about “affordable” coverage, it turns out the program is not at all affordable, but a massive new tax on the average uninsured American.

Then there is the tax on health insurance premiums that is to finance about a quarter of the subsidy for the uninsured. This tax, billed as only to be levied on “gold-plated” policies, will, in fact, reach down to the average American. The Baucus bill specifies that the tax of 35 percent would be put on all premiums over $8,000 for an individual and on proportionately higher premiums for families. Current estimates are that about one-tenth of the current health insurance policies would be taxable. But the $8,000 premium level that will trigger coverage is not indexed for inflation, let alone for medical inflation, which typically runs twice as high. ObamaCare will take effect in 2013. By then, the percentage of Americans subject to the tax will doubtless expand dramatically. Indeed, this trigger is a new Alternative Minimum Tax waiting to happen. As inflation pushes more and more Americans into tax eligibility, it will become a universal health insurance excise tax of 35 percent. While the tax will be imposed on health insurers and employers, it will, obviously, be passed along to the policyholders.

So if you are insured, you will increasingly have to pay 35 percent more for the privilege. And if you are uninsured, you will have to pay one-fifth of your income in premiums, deductibles and co-payments before any subsidy kicks in.

And then there is the final piece of the puzzle — the $500 billion cut in Medicare that will pay for the bulk of the subsidy under the bill. We are literally slicing services to the elderly in order to transfer healthcare to others. Obama’s claim that only “waste and inefficiency” in Medicare will be cut is, at best, disingenuous. Most of the cuts will be in reimbursement for doctors and hospitals. That will lead to less care, shorter office visits, fewer tests, fewer surgeries and less care. And it will lead to fewer doctors. As a result, a survey by the Investor’s Business Daily indicates that 45 percent of all doctors would “consider retiring or closing their practices” if the Obama bill passes. The result will be a greater scarcity of medical services, even as the patient load expands by at least 30 million people.

Each of these fiscal pieces is movable. The left will pressure Obama to increase the subsidy to the uninsured. But that will necessitate raising the Medicare cut borne by the elderly or increasing the tax on health insurance policies — or adding to the deficit. Any of these options will alienate moderate senators. Balancing these competing priorities only works if the taxpayers don’t know what is going on.

If the average middle-income American family realizes that it will have to pay one-third more for health insurance or the uninsured learn that they will have to pay a fifth of their income to get insurance, they will make their dissatisfaction felt by their Democratic senators.

All of which begs the fundamental question: How willing are Democratic congressmen to commit political suicide? Are they willing to lose the elderly and to antagonize the uninsured as the health insurance cops chase them around the block? When does JFK’s comment kick in: “Sometimes party loyalty asks too much”?

I like the way the bible words it a little better :

And these things, brethren, I have in a figure transferred to myself and to Apollos for your sakes; that ye might learn in us not to think of men above that which is written, that no one of you be puffed up for one against another. For who maketh thee to differ from another? And what has thou that thou didst not receive? Now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it? -I Corinthians 4:6-7

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. -James 1:17

__________________
"For those who believe, no proof is neccesary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible."

-Stuart Chase

You mean, you got lucky.

I guarantee you there are millions upon millions of people in this country alone who work just as hard as you do, and likely quite a few of those who work harder, yet were not lucky enough to be able to leverage that work into oodles of cash.

Again, I'm not saying you didn't work for it. You may have even "worked hard" for it. But there's a significant element of luck in what you did, whether you realize it or not.

__________________
"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite."
-- Kenneth Galbraith

I haven't read Rawls, but can someone direct me to the work that holds the claim that the self-made have innate talent that robs them of virtue?

That's kind of, like, exactly what I believe.

Virtue, by definition, must be self-made; what exists as facticity is given, not earned.

__________________

Now you finally understand what Rawls is telling you - without the inheritance of a good combination of those particular variables your personal efforts would have been totally futile. More broadly, without a good combination of those variables the 'self-made man' cannot possibly occur. This 'self-made' man owes his entire fortune not only to his own efforts, but to the broader conditions that made those efforts meaningful and translatable into profit. This is why I can't agree that any man can ever be fully 'self-made', when the conditions of his success, apart from his own efforts, are extrinsic to him. Any man that presumes himself entirely 'self-made' without paying due acknowledgment to the broader conditions beyond his control that assured the precipitation of his success, is engaging in an arrogance. That is why I said earlier that I prefer to view Rawls not as someone who is demanding that I surrender my claim to an earning, but rather, as someone whose philosophy offers a humbling recognition of how I came to be in such a position in the first place.

Note though that when Rawls speaks of abilities/talents, he refers (at least I presume that he does) to every ability that a person possesses and is not responsible for by virtue of it emerging from factors genetic or environmental that the individual had no control over (i.e. was not responsible for). He then argues that since one is not responsible for all the abilities one uses to 'earn', then one cannot (on the basis of axiomatic premise 1) earn anything at all.

I already remarked that I must disagree with him there because he fails to consider my individual decision to cultivate those abilities and employ them strategically according to my will. It is clear that I am responsible for such an action, and therefore, (according to premise 1) I might possibly deserve something - if I follow that line of reasoning (this is called the 'mixed view').

At the moment I'm reading through some Hume and Sartre. Hopefully I'll have time to cover Rand, even if only superficially. Apart from that (and the reason for the note in my signature) is that the Semester is almost over and I've still got heaps to read for Psychology and Biology. Hence, if I cease to respond on CF for a while you'd have a good idea that's what I'd be doing.

__________________
Smith: Why do you do it? Why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you’re fighting for something? For more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom? Or truth? Perhaps peace? Yes? No? Could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson. Vagaries of perception. Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself; although only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now. You can’t win. It’s pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Anderson? Why? Why do you persist?

To elevate Creationism to the level of Science is to debase Science to the level of superstition.

If winning the war on terror means that we must abandon the rule of law and fight terror with terror then we have already lost.