I'd put forth that these are also necessary to escape poverty:

1. Lack of debt

2. Time and financial stability to pursue education

3. No dependents, be they children, sick grandparents, or other relatives in need of support

4. Good health

2/11/2011 2:56:41 PM

"If they only would do what middle class white families do ...."

57% of blacks are raised in single family homes (87% headed by women). That says to me it's a systematic problem - which increases the likelihood of poor education, instability, going to jail, etc.

"If they could just act like they were raised in a stable environment we wouldn't have these problems" ....

[Edited on February 11, 2011 at 3:39 PM. Reason : *~<]BO]

2/11/2011 3:37:38 PM

Quote :

"57% of blacks are raised in single family homes (87% headed by women). That says to me it's a systematic problem - which increases the likelihood of poor education, instability, going to jail, etc."

A systemic problem, or a cultural one? You think this problem is going to be solved by the government, but no amount of money is going to alleviate the underlying issue.

[Edited on February 11, 2011 at 3:44 PM. Reason : ]

2/11/2011 3:42:34 PM

I've never once mentioned government in this entire post ... Of course it's cultural ... I've only asked why people only talk about disadvantaged children, not advantaged ones. Wait, I know ... because being advantaged isn't a problem. In fact it's not even acknowledged ...

2/11/2011 3:48:48 PM

Quote :

"Does anyone have any data comparing economic mobility of impoverished legal immigrants over a few generations compared with impoverished non-immigrants?"

Don't have the data, but I have a guess as to what it would say...and I think it would support my earlier assertion that:

I think it's fair to say that, most of the time, kids from affluent families are brought up in an overall culture of success. They are taught to be winners, and that is the expectation. This is no surprise, as their parents aren't affluent because they fuck off all day and half-ass everything. I believe that's the bigger factor than the direct impact of dollars and cents

Quote :

"I've only asked why people only talk about disadvantaged children, not advantaged ones. Wait, I know ... because being advantaged isn't a problem."

Umm...ok, so what is it exactly that you want?

2/11/2011 5:14:37 PM

Quote :

"^^^ Nope. You can argue it was, but then the minimum wage was increased 45%. Before it was increased, unemployment among the nations lowest wage classes (recent immigrants, teenagers, high-school dropouts, non-english speakers, and the handicap) was still far higher than any other class, but they were converging. After the increase, unemployment rates diverged again. "

What years was this span? Do we know it was minimum wage or did the minimum wage just happen to go up around the time other things were happening in the economy that caused the difference?

2/11/2011 6:57:10 PM

Quote :

"Of course it's cultural"

Well fuck, we need to pour as much tax monies as we can into making these people a new culture since they clearly don't realize that the one they live now is holding them down.

2/11/2011 7:00:21 PM

Quote :

"Umm...ok, so what is it exactly that you want?"

I really don't want anything. And I know that people whom advantage has generally favored rarely admit it. I'll just have to smile when thinking about this thread and my original contention:

Quote :

"Of course all of these clueless snot-nosed brats will get into NC State, get their degrees, make good money, become Republicans, and then complain about how the biggest cause of poverty is laziness."

Quote :

" can we at least admit that perhaps genetics really does have at least something to do with it? ... Disadvantaged apparently makes them dumb though ... the gap develops from the summer where the advantaged kids are going to educational camps and the disadvantaged ones are staying at home and fucking around ... kids from affluent families are brought up in an overall culture of success. This is no surprise, as their parents aren't affluent because they fuck off all day and half-ass everything ... Poverty, for all intents and purposes, does not exist if: 1) You have no children outside of marriage. 2) You've never gone to jail. 3) You don't have attendance and attitude problems at work ... "If they could just act like they were raised in a stable environment we wouldn't have these problems" .... You think this problem is going to be solved by the government ... Well fuck, we need to pour as much tax monies as we can into making these people a new culture."

2/11/2011 7:52:43 PM

Quote :

"kids from affluent families are brought up in an overall culture of success. This is no surprise, as their parents aren't affluent because they fuck off all day and half-ass everything ..."

You dispute that this is the big factor at work here?

2/11/2011 8:30:20 PM

I think it's a little more complex than that. I think that when you're raised in a culture of intergenerational poverty there are a lot of other things in play. For instance, one psychology theory of motivation is called the IVE theory (one of many theories). This one says:

Motivation = Is something worth the effort? X If yes, do I have the capability? X If I can do it and it's worth the effort, what are the odds that I will actually receive the desired outcome?

You can see how big a part that efficacy plays in motivation. First of all, they don't think they can do it, and second, if they do do it they feel they just might get screwed out of it.

That is just one factor. They have not had stable environments or good role models, etc.. eyedrb sent me a pm recommending a book called:

A Framework for Understanding Poverty

http://www.amazon.com/Framework-Understanding-Poverty-Ruby-Payne/dp/1929229488/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1297393155&sr=1-1

I've scanned through that book before and found it enlightening. I think it's easy to minimize the effects of intergenerational poverty, especially when you haven't lived it, but I think it will take more than just saying, "Hey, just act like middle class white kids" ....

2/11/2011 9:46:06 PM

Quote :

"d357r0y3r: A systemic problem, or a cultural one? You think this problem is going to be solved by the government, but no amount of money is going to alleviate the underlying issue."

I'd argue it's mostly systemic, and the government definitely could change some of the circumstances that lead to current conditions. The gender ratio disparity is too great for any culture of any "race" to overcome...in other times and places, they might have turned to polygamy by now. Basically, there aren't enough men to go around, and when there is a lack of one gender (again, regardless of race or culture), you will always see less marriage and less stability in relationships.

There aren't enough (desirable) men to go around because the men are: dead from drug-related violence, infected with HIV/AIDS (often from drugs), in prison (often for drugs), unemployed or lowly employed (no sweet manufacturing jobs, no post-secondary education, criminal record--for drugs or even pettier stuff they got targeted for more than other groups), less educated than black women, more likely (than black women) to be gay, more likely (than black women) to be dating outside their race, etc... Of course, of the desirable men that are available, some of them are hard to land because they've got five different women after them at a time. Women think it's a competition, and men (like a lot of men of every race) think it's the greatest thing ever and don't plan on settling down anytime soon.

And, yeah, a lot of that is systemic (drugs/prison, education, jobs/economy, healthcare), not cultural. Of course, this isn't supposed to apply to all black people, but if you want to look at broad trends, these details are a thousand times more compelling to me than this idea that their culture just doesn't jibe with marriage. Given the dearth of men, some black women should consider dating outside their race and/or do what they already do: raise their children together without mentally depending on the notion of a man.

[Edited on February 11, 2011 at 10:05 PM. Reason : ]

2/11/2011 9:58:50 PM

^^ all of those things are what I'm saying. Their disadvantage is mostly not due directly to a shortage of dollars.

2/11/2011 10:24:52 PM

^^^I found a copy at a Salvation Army about 12 years ago and it opened my eyes.

2/12/2011 2:34:58 AM

Admittedly, I haven't spent a lot of time studying this subject because...well, I'm a middle class white guy that can't comprehend it, but I know I've made a similar statement before when I have read these types of stories:

http://sparkaction.org/node/149

This woman needs to ditch her home and move in with extended family for however long it takes to save some money, get some training, and then strike out on her own. Yes, I realize that not every person that is on welfare/subsidized rent has an option to share housing space, but I'd be surprised if it isn't the majority that could do this. The benefits of moving in with family members are manifold. Rent is saved plus there are other people to help raise the children...you know, it takes a village and shit.

I'm pretty sure our neighbors to the south do exactly this when they come here in search of a better life, why should those born here behave any differently?

2/12/2011 10:58:34 AM

Quote :

"And, yeah, a lot of that is systemic (drugs/prison, education, jobs/economy, healthcare), not cultural. Of course, this isn't supposed to apply to all black people, but if you want to look at broad trends, these details are a thousand times more compelling to me than this idea that their culture just doesn't jibe with marriage. Given the dearth of men, some black women should consider dating outside their race and/or do what they already do: raise their children together without mentally depending on the notion of a man."

I can't really disagree with that. It might not come as a surprise to you that, in all four of those areas, I think we would all benefit from much, much less state intervention. In the case of drug prohibition, black communities suffer the most, and the fact that men are put in jail for extended periods of time for doing/dealing drugs is a huge detriment to the culture itself. Clearly, public education has been a failure. As far as the economy goes, the recession we're experiencing is a direct result of the government - this shit didn't just happen because of freely acting individuals. Health care has become unaffordable because of the state's tax policy and subsidies.

The point is, we can look at these "cultural issues" and find the government is the main cause, so yes, the problem is rooted in systemic issues. The issue is that most "compassionate liberals" don't want to address the hard issues (drug prohibition, the tax code, etc), they'd rather just throw money at the problem. I'd rather treat the disease, not the symptoms, and the state is a cancer.

[Edited on February 12, 2011 at 1:35 PM. Reason : ]

2/12/2011 1:31:50 PM

The two factors are how hard you work and the expected value of the thing you are doing.

Poor people work very hard at things that have a low expected value. They never realize that there is a smarter way to make your work pay off. They don't have the connections to get the opportunity to do high value work (the #1 way to be successful), and they don't know how to go about getting these connections.

People who are well-off know or learn by osmosis what activities have a high expected value. The option to do something stupid simply never comes up. Since people who are well off intelligently invest their labor, they don't have to work as hard to get a good payoff.

Finally, people who work hard and do highly valued activities make the most bank.

2/12/2011 2:21:51 PM

There is actually a lot of good commentary in this thread. I actually learned a few things.

I never did really think poor people were that way for a 'simple' reason, but I'd be prone to chalk it up to 'environment' and note that it's 'complicated'. For issues like this that are very impactful, sensitive, and multi-faceted, people like myself tread carefully to avoid claiming more than what we know. But there's another take on this, which is that we all are members of the American community, and we all have responsibility regarding the issue to some extent.

If everyone just stays in their castle, the issue will only become progressively swamped deeper in misinformation and mutual misunderstanding and spite. I suppose this is where I show some degree of pride in being American. Throughout the history of our society we have small empires grow and collapse, and I think it's the most that we can ask for that our civil society itself endures and outlasts the ebb and flow of class lines. I believe this perspective should only strengthen our nature to ultimately tear down walls, and trying to make money while doing it.

It might have been nice had the civil rights movement given way to a real movement to address the underpinnings of generational poverty, but I believe that something larger is afoot that, at minimum, delay such an evolution. Globalization I think throws a wrench in all of this, although it's a temporary one. I believe what we've done is to import the middle class (or their labor) from less developed nations (not the same as poor) and this has given us all-too-much kindle to add to the fire of class hostility in the US. The middle class looks at other like middle class folk who "made it" by supplanting the labor of the historically poor and repressed blacks (with some whites) in our nation, while the poor has more reason than ever to cry foul at greater income inequality, stagnant wages, and abuse of the system by the powerful.

Too much of the US population is marginalized, but they are in an unfortunate situation where they can't really hope to reach a critical mass, allowing them to demand structural changes that could change things - not that they even know what the issue is in the first place, or that I do. Things look hopeless, but unless we're on the cusp of dark ages, I don't believe it can stay that way.

2/12/2011 4:55:59 PM

^^^I'm ready to legalize drugs! I've also taken to a couple of your other ideas.

What would you do with the tax code?

2/13/2011 12:34:17 AM

BridgetSPK, don't take d357r0y3r too seriously. His thinking generally runs the gamut from "A" to "A" - i.e. government is the cause of all our problems, and business can do no wrong.

[Edited on February 13, 2011 at 9:51 AM. Reason : *~<]BO]

2/13/2011 9:48:46 AM

I still want to see this magical school where the remedial class is all respectful.

---

There's been a lot of talk about some causes of the problems with our schools -- poverty, absent parents, etc. I wonder if it would do us some good to consider the proximal cause, the one that, from what I can tell, is directly responsible for most of what's wrong with the school system.

An attitude that manifests itself in various ways is that proximal cause. I guess the most commonly studied variant is the attitude of "don't act white," which has its own flavors, but anybody who was a good student and got attacked or made fun of by bad students has seen something similar. Somehow a broad section of society has gotten it into its head that excelling at school and not acting like an asshole is desirable. It's not lack of opportunity or means. It's an active opposition to pursuing legitimate success.

This is what we should be studying. We should have started a while ago, because by now it's so entrenched in this country that it will be very difficult to identify the causes and possible solutions. It's not just money -- rich people appalled at the idea of hard work or studying are nothing new. Look at Paris Hilton. More to the point, look at the fact that there are apparently people who idolize and want to emulate Paris Hilton.

It's not stupidity. At least, not in the way we generally think about. I'll mention again the several students I've encountered who clearly understood their material better than anybody else in the room but still acted like colossal jackasses because appearing to do well would bring the derision of their peers.

The school system can't do much of anything to fix the problem, because the whole issue centers around ignoring and resisting authority. Appealing to the parents won't do much, because most of the time they have the same attitude. Hell, even providing up-close-and-personal experience with what can happen when you have this attitude -- jail, poverty, death -- appears to be doing approximately shit.

2/14/2011 12:12:04 AM

Fuck 'em, then. When you put it that way, it sounds like we don't even have a problem. I've gotta have somebody to pay a few bucks to for them to do menial tasks that I don't feel like fucking with, and you're describing a bunch of volunteers.

2/14/2011 12:24:17 AM

Believe me, I always want to say "Fuck 'em" as well. But it's not sustainable in the long term. A teeming mass of deadbeats is not going to maintain a superpower.

We need to figure out how to neutralize this problem. We do that, and we've got the world's third largest population combined with its largest economy combined with an education system that wouldn't be half bad if the students gave a shit, and we get to rule the world for the next 500 years.

I believe it can be done. It may require significant paradigm shifts in educational thought. It may require mandatory military service and fucking cages for bad students, for all I know. But it can be solved. What I fear is that ultimately it may require separating problem students almost completely from their parents and neighborhoods, which could prove...problematic.

2/14/2011 1:08:18 AM

Quote :

"What would you do with the tax code?"

I'd probably start by nixing the tax write off businesses get for providing health care. The problem, as I see it, is the interconnectedness of employment and health care. The risk inherent to such a system as we have today was made evident in the most recent crisis - waves of people being laid off, and unexpectedly having to deal with purchasing new insurance or extending their coverage through COBRA, both of which can be very costly, especially if you're older and have a family. The issue of pre-existing conditions is exacerbated by employer provided benefits - if insurance were purely private, and paid for directly by the individual, you wouldn't lose coverage if you lost your job.

Another thing to consider is the market distortions associated with having a third party payer, i.e. your company pays for your insurance that pays for your health care. We don't want a price structure where all employees, regardless of health, pay basically the same premiums. That's not how insurance should work. It's almost the equivalent of mortgage backed securities, if only in the sense that good is bundled in with the bad and a discount rate is provided in exchange for volume. The third party payer system is, I think, contributing to a rise in health care costs. There could, however, be overall deleterious health effects among the population - more people are disconnected, at least in a financial sense, from the true cost of their health problems. This, in turn, could be a contributing factor in health neglect.

Ideally, businesses would have no incentive to provide health benefits, anymore than they'd have an incentive to provide meals, shelter, or transportation. The employee is better able to decide what to purchase, and would rather have additional wages. The people were duped, believing that benefits were somehow a "bonus," when in reality, it just meant they were getting paid less. End the tax write off for companies, and give it to the individual - we already see this in the form of HSAs, but if we could see a broad end to employer provided insurance, I think we'd see premiums come down for most (but certainly up for some) and health care costs come down.

Quote :

"His thinking generally runs the gamut from "A" to "A" - i.e. government is the cause of all our problems, and business can do no wrong."

It's hard to take you seriously when you say things like this. Do you even read my posts? Businesses do wrong all the time, and in many instances, they've got the go ahead from the government, even if what they're doing is wrong. I'm for fair and honest competition in a free market, which isn't what we have today. The politically well connected pick the winners and losers.

[Edited on February 14, 2011 at 1:56 AM. Reason : ]

2/14/2011 1:48:00 AM

Quote :

"We need to figure out how to neutralize this problem. We do that, and we've got the world's third largest population combined with its largest economy combined with an education system that wouldn't be half bad if the students gave a shit, and we get to rule the world for the next 500 years."

I don't care much for the site I got that image from, so no comments directed at that. But the facts are facts.

Our educational system looks pretty good from this perspective. Our Asians outperform almost all other Asian nations. Our whites outperform nearly all white nations. Our Hispanics outperform all other Hispanic nations. And our blacks outperform all other black nations.

Our combined total is not impressive, but in this light, there is something to be happy about.

No matter who you are, the United States is the best place to get your education.

2/14/2011 3:32:23 AM

GrumpyGOP, I thought you would relate to disaffected people who don't buy in to the system. ?

^I agree with you that the system is not horrible the way people make it out to be.

But the image and commentary you've provided don't really make sense. Why would they divide the US up by race but not all the other countries that have mixed populations of their own? And why did they include Muslim as a category while everything else is done by some notion of race?

2/14/2011 5:04:19 AM

2/14/2011 8:15:00 AM

^ so true.

2/14/2011 8:32:20 AM

^^This applies to University level education as well. I wouldn't be surprised if this is why we have stupid ass attendance policies.

2/14/2011 8:45:30 AM

Quote :

"But the image and commentary you've provided don't really make sense. Why would they divide the US up by race but not all the other countries that have mixed populations of their own? And why did they include Muslim as a category while everything else is done by some notion of race?"

Most countries are pretty homogeneous.

Finland, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Australia, etc. are all more than 90% white. China, Korea, and other Asian nations don't have any significant racial minorities. African nations are entirely homogeneous, with one or two exceptions. Latin America is the same.

Many of these places have great diversity of tribes, heritage and language within their races, but the races are the same. The graph is pretty fair in that respect.

Even the UK is well over 80% white.

Racial diversity is rare. And so I think it is pretty fair to compare this way.

As for why Islam has its own category, who knows, that's definitely stupid. But, again, in Arab or Middle Eastern nations you find the same thing as these other places.

[Edited on February 14, 2011 at 1:59 PM. Reason : s]

2/14/2011 1:51:15 PM

^ but in those other countries, their achievement gaps are based around those cultural/heritage differences. It's the same way sunnis/shiites hate each other, because the minority group feels discriminated against (and they may be).

Obviously the goal of VDARE is to confuse the issue with their poor analysis, but all that chart shows is that we have lots of room for improvement.

Just because the immigrants that have to come here on airplanes and the entrenched majority group is doing well doesn't mean there aren't fundamental flaws in our system.

2/14/2011 2:29:27 PM

Quote :

"GrumpyGOP, I thought you would relate to disaffected people who don't buy in to the system."

What are you talking about? I'm seriously confused here.

2/14/2011 6:15:04 PM

Quote :

"I'd probably start by nixing the tax write off businesses get for providing health care. The problem, as I see it, is the interconnectedness of employment and health care. "

Damn right.

^^^

Latin America is not exactly homogeneous. There is a spectrum between Spanish descent and Andean descent. Also, some middle eastern countries have significant minorities. In Qatar, for example, qataris are the minority!

Iraq has the Kurds. Afghanistan has several different ethnic groups.



Of course, for the purposes of that graph, none of those countries are even remotely comparable to the U.S.

2/14/2011 7:07:21 PM

Quote :

"I'd probably start by nixing the tax write off businesses get for providing health care. The problem, as I see it, is the interconnectedness of employment and health care."

I know that there are now tax benefits for small business to provide health care, but I'm not so sure that many of the larger companies provide health care due to a tax benefit, I've always been under the impression that it was simply a benefit they had to offer to stay competitive in the labor market. I could be wrong about this though, and a quick google search didn't turn up anything.

2/14/2011 7:20:05 PM

That's what I always thought. Once you break down the numbers though, you can see that any large employer (50-100+, I'd say) has an incentive to purchase a group plan. Would you rather pay someone 10,000 in wages over a year which is still taxed, or pay 10,000 dollars worth of health care that you don't have to pay taxes on? Large businesses stand to save a very substantial amount under the current tax code.

2/14/2011 10:41:04 PM

Quote :

"I've always been under the impression that it was simply a benefit they had to offer to stay competitive in the labor market."

And if the IRS treated a company car and company housing the same way it treats health-care, then these too would be "simply a benefit they had to offer to stay competitive in the labor market."

2/14/2011 11:06:53 PM

Back in HS, it was way easier to cheat in honors or AP classes and if caught, nothing happened, because you were going to go to college.....now for the standard classes, not so much......I mean in some cases it was obvious cheating and the teacher did nothing because it might hurt his/her chances in getting into a good college.

2/14/2011 11:18:30 PM

You're right, health care comes out of pretax income. I guess I was thrown off by it being described as a "write off".

2/14/2011 11:21:49 PM

Yep, for the life of me, I can't figure out why divorcing healthcare from employment (or rather, getting rid of the tax structure that causes this) wasn't really brought to the table during all the healthcare debate.

2/14/2011 11:26:30 PM

I imagine one of the main drawbacks would be the large number of people who would no longer have healthcare would probably be a bit upset.

2/14/2011 11:28:37 PM

^^ It was. There were two options proposed: the democrats opposed putting individuals on equal footing with employers (they both get the tax cut) because it was a tax cut for the rich while the republicans opposed taxing employer provided healthcare because it was a tax increase on employers during a recession.

2/15/2011 1:28:52 AM

Quote :

"GrumpyGOP: What are you talking about? I'm seriously confused here."

The people you described, the ones with bad attitudes who actively oppose pursuing legitimate success, who don't work hard or study...

They're disaffected individuals who do not perceive any benefits for studying hard. They don't buy in.

I thought you would be able to relate to them.

2/15/2011 2:29:20 AM

I'm having a hard time coming to terms with why conservatives/libertarians itt are opposing

#1) Taxing employers less
#2) Caring one iota how they choose to conduct business


I don't see how divorcing insurance from the employer helps much. If I lose my job, having the ability to continue paying my insurance doesn't look like such a grand benefit when the income stream dries up.

2/15/2011 6:24:23 AM

Quote :

"I don't see how divorcing insurance from the employer helps much. If I lose my job, having the ability to continue paying my insurance doesn't look like such a grand benefit when the income stream dries up. "

Well it helps that the cost doesn't suddenly increase. I changed jobs a few years back, under my old employer I was paying ~$100 / month for the best coverage offered for me and my wife. When they sent my COBRA information during the transition, my costs would have been ~$900 / month for the both of us, or $600 for just me. Had this been something I'd been paying all along, it would have been considerably different than just getting a sudden $800 price hike. I imagine for people who lose their job, not having their expenses spike would be a good thing.

2/15/2011 8:05:10 AM

^Couldn't your end result be just as well achieved by someone simply burning $800 when they are employed?

2/15/2011 9:56:07 AM

Quote :

"conservatives/libertarians itt are opposing #1) Taxing employers less #2) Caring one iota how they choose to conduct business"

We don't care how employers choose to conduct business. We care how the IRS conducts our business.

2/15/2011 10:37:34 AM

^^^ True that. Most people don't understand the fragility of their employer sponsored health insurance. It really isn't insurance, and it's amazing what they can get away with. There are government mandates that they may, for instance, have to continue to offer the same plan to the individual after leaving but then they can just charge whatever they want at that point, so FML, what good did that do.

You could make the argument (and I'm sure the companies see it this way) that loosing employment correlates with having health issues. But insurance companies acting in their own self-interest shouldn't be surprising. I mean, if they can drop you when a life event happens, then why bother paying when someone gets severely sick in the first place, right? This is all simply absurdity.

^^ That seems... pretty irrelevant

2/15/2011 12:11:39 PM

Quote :

"I'm having a hard time coming to terms with why conservatives/libertarians itt are opposing #1) Taxing employers less #2) Caring one iota how they choose to conduct business"

I don't buy it, I think you're just trolling for the sake of it. If this is about "taxing employers less," let's change the tax code so employers can purchase housing for their employees on a pre-tax basis. How much sense would that make?

The point is that the tax code establishes an incentive for the employer to provide a "benefit" that it would not normally provide. If they didn't provide that benefit, they'd just give the employee after-tax wages. Just read what I wrote halfway up the page. Do you disagree that the third party payer system is driving up costs?

Quote :

"Yep, for the life of me, I can't figure out why divorcing healthcare from employment (or rather, getting rid of the tax structure that causes this) wasn't really brought to the table during all the healthcare debate."

It's always been puzzling to me. I think the bulk of big business is opposed to a change in tax code, as it would require a human resources/payroll restructuring, and that in itself would be costly, and a good number of jobs would be lost. For that reason, there probably isn't much political will to change things. I do think it's the single most important issue, in relation to health care, that we need to deal with, though.

2/15/2011 12:12:44 PM

Quote :

"That seems... pretty irrelevant"

No, it's a point on how he was addressing the problem, the problem he stated was the spike in healthcare costs when going from employed to unemployed, the way he suggested doing this was to raise the cost when employed, I pointed out that people could do that themselves by throwing away money. I think a much better solution would be to focus on reducing the unemployed costs rather than to increase the employed costs.

Quote :

"I do think it's the single most important issue, in relation to health care, that we need to deal with, though."

I disagree, I think that one is solved, and it would be fairly easy to implement, the real problem we need to resolve is "what do we replace it with"? The difficulty there will be picking a solution that the american public is happy with.

2/15/2011 1:00:29 PM

Quote :

"The people you described, the ones with bad attitudes who actively oppose pursuing legitimate success, who don't work hard or study... They're disaffected individuals who do not perceive any benefits for studying hard. They don't buy in. I thought you would be able to relate to them."

I don't. At all.

First, I'm not even necessarily talking about people who don't "study hard." I'm talking about people who actively oppose putting in any effort and mock and deride the people who do try. It could be one black kid giving another shit for "acting white" in the sense of trying to speak correctly and do well in school. It could be a little rich girl Paris Hilton wannabe who sees someone studying and giggles because that's, like, soooo lame. And then there are the victims of this idiocy, the ones that I simultaneously pity and want to strangle, who behave like shitheads and pretend to be stupid so they can appease their bastard peers.

2/15/2011 3:22:07 PM

Quote :

"The point is that the tax code establishes an incentive for the employer to provide a "benefit" that it would not normally provide."

Do you listen to yourself when you post this shit? The employer competes for labor. Sans a tax break, if the employer believed providing insurance landed him better workers, he would do so. If we eliminate the tax benefit then you are effectively double taxing the business and harming the labor, which is the point I was making. If the business gives an equal amount in salary as they were providing towards insurance, then they are now having to pay more towards every other tax that is tied to wages. On top of that, unless some other system rises up in its place, consumers just lost bargaining power in getting more favorable rates for their insurance that businesses had. So as a result of doing away with this tax break, employees will get less because the business won't give them the same amount as wage and then they will be paying more for their own insurance. Fantastic suggestion.

And stop complaining that every post I make is trolling. Only people that can't handle objections to their argument say this shit.

2/15/2011 5:11:51 PM