My comment from MP Obamacare Replacement Freedom?
"From Wikipedia "Freedom from Want: The right to an adequate standard of living is recognized as a human right in international human rights instruments and is understood to establish a minimum entitlement to food, clothing and housing at an adequate level. The right to food and the right to housing have been further defined in human rights instruments."Ironically this piece MP Chronic Absenteeism posted today also and I am sure I will be adding comments. My points will be the usual...
Usually a set of societal behavioral expectations come with rights. Especially if society is going to tax some citizens at much higher amounts in order to provide others with that food, clothing, housing and now healthcare.
I mean we require that citizens pay those higher taxes, it is their responsibility as part of our society... With this in mind, what is the responsibility of those who receive the gifts from society? I mean they are not earning these items... They are purely gifts from the generosity of their fellow citizens.
Our society spend trillions of dollars per year on these gifts and on our public education system. What should we expect in return from the recipients?
I ask because ACA was a very large tax / cost increase that funded in essence a "health insurance welfare" system that has no work requirements. Now that certainly did provide many citizens with the freedom to have health insurance while other citizens were forced to pay a large portion of their bills. In essence one group of citizens were freed from a burden and it was placed on the shoulders of another for better or worse.
- What is wrong with these Parents?
- What is wrong with our society to allow this?
19 comments:
How's a person with stage 4 cancer going to fulfill a work requirement?
The cost of health care is increasing, generally. What would be nice is to give consumers the freedom to stop such increases, but no one seems to be proposing that. The fact is, the cost of health care has to go somewhere. We do have the option to establish death panels which can deny health care coverage to individuals for various reasons, but we have chosen so far not to do that.
--Hiram
Freedom is something we trade all the time. People who have jobs trade the freedom to do what they want all day in exchange for a paycheck. In terms of cost, I am not free to name the price of any given product I want to buy. The guy selling the product isn't free to name any price he wants, assuming that is, that he wants to sell it.
I am often asked why Republicans who are so good at winning elections, once they are elected, govern so atrociously. Part of the reason is that they campaign on buzzwords, not policy, and that once in office, policy not buzzwords is what is needed. What is happening to Republicans over health care, is a recent, and a particularly vivid, example of that.
--Hiram
Seems to me we go wrong when we say or believe that "society" can "provide" these things. The only wealth-- the ability to do things for people-- comes from people working, so paying people to not work is doubly destructive of wealth. "Society" doesn't have one thin dime to give away, unless it gets together and forcibly takes it from somebody. Now, if somebody WANTS to give something to someone less fortunate, that should be applauded, and if "society," through government, wants to encourage the kind of society where that takes place, great. That is not what we have become and it is getting worse.
Jerry,
Please remember that people have not one thin dime unless a government exists...
Without the government our property rights are non-existent... Anyone with a bigger gun could take them away.
It is interesting how Liberals insist that everything is society's...
And Conservatives insist that everything is the individuals... :-)
Seems to me we go wrong when we say or believe that "society" can "provide" these things.
Well someone is providing things, whether it's society or a particularly asocial hermit.
""Society" doesn't have one thin dime to give away, unless it gets together and forcibly takes it from somebody. "
Then why I am I getting invites to all these charitable events?
"Now, if somebody WANTS to give something to someone less fortunate, that should be applauded, and if "society," through government, wants to encourage the kind of society where that takes place, great. "
Well, thanks for the applause I guess, but usually I don't care whether I get applauded or not.
--Hiram
Some people here use "society" and "government" interchangeably, and in my mind they are linked but not equal. You get /invites/ to participate in charity, from which you get to choose, but you get /mandates/ from government to subsidize whatever government decides to subsidize. Now, if government were to offer you a tax return that said, "please check off those expenditures to which your taxes should go," like some of those checkoff boxes on the tax return, we might see "society" and "government" align more closely.
I will applaud you for contributing to charity. I will NOT applaud you for asking government to extort money from me to give to their idea of "charity." Same reason I quit giving to United Way. /I/ want to decide, and I find the private charity far more efficacious than government welfare.
Sorry... You get the benefits of being a member of this society and you get the head aches... Probably much better than anarchy where everyone gets to choose everything.
False choices. How about limited government?
Our government is limited today... Just not as limited as you wish they were.
And thus a "mixed economy." So, are you in favor of the depth and reach of the current system, and believe every dollar is being well spent? Are you at all concerned that the US now ranks #17 on the index of economic freedom? Down 10 percentage points since Obama was elected?
Well it is a Heritage Foundation scoring tool... So I am not sure what I think.
And that we have the scores are so tight it may mean nothing. And it is interesting that most of the countries scoring higher are little itty bitty economies.
I think what is most interesting is that, as you say, "scoring is tight" within the top 20, but everybody else has more or less maintained their score, while the US dropped 10 percentage points. On either a relative to others or comparative to our past basis, something is wrong with our "mix."
We went from 80 to 75... And it looks like they changed their methodology to include debt. Now Obama and the GOP Congress were getting close to controlling deficits... I am concerned Trump and the GOP Congress are going to blow that wide open again like Reagan and the Bushes did.
"Large budget deficits and a high level of public debt, both now reflected in the Index methodology, have contributed to the continuing decline in America’s economic freedom. Having registered its lowest economic freedom score ever, the United States is no longer among the world’s 15 freest economies.
The anemic economic recovery since the great recession has been characterized by a lack of labor market dynamism and depressed levels of investment. The substantial expansion of government’s size and scope, increased regulatory and tax burdens, and the loss of confidence that has accompanied a growing perception of cronyism, elite privilege, and corruption have severely undermined America’s global competitiveness."
Looks more like 85 to 75 as I read it. Anyway, it seems to be a fair observation of the state of things. Do you quibble with that assessment? Do you believe our economic freedom did NOT suffer under Obama? Or do you just not want to blame him for the economy, after 8 years to "fix" it?
I believe several issues contributed to the change.
60% Heritage changed their criteria
20% Obama and Dems passed ACA, Regs, Let Debt Grow, etc
20% Bush and GOP drove up Debt and fought Obama's stimulus / infrastructure proposals.
I cannot say you are wrong on that, and Heritage admits that changing their criteria did have an effect, but was that change a proper one, more reflective of the reality? If so, then Obama did in fact create 80% of the situation, and the 20% you assign to the GOP is questionable. Saying the GOP "drove up debt" while Obama was the one that doubled it doesn't sound quite logical.
Congress sets the budget and taxes, not the President... If the debt grows they own a large share of the issue.
Fact check please. Republicans in Congress DID vote to restrain the budget growth, but Democrats in the Senate refused to consider any budget with cuts in it. Now if you want to say that DEMOCRATS in Congress own a large share of the issue and Obama owns the rest, I will accept that. In any event that monstrous debt – over 100% of GDP – has no doubt constrained our economic freedom.
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