<p>LaxAttack09: You may believe those things, but that does not make them true. There are any number of circumstances that make it basically impossible to just work hard and obtain a comfortable middle class lifestyle.</p>
<p>Now, handouts are probably a bit overboard in some ways, but that makes your initial assumption no less faulty.</p>
<p>emeraldkity maybe you don’t realize it but the time required for hospital care is hardly going to take up your whole 40 working years. If you can’t afford to pay for hospital care maybe you shouldn’t be bringing a child into this world? Sorry but this BS like people have disadvantages makes me mad. Sure, some people have to work harder then others, but assuming you work hard and don’t make stupid choices (finances, crime, drugs etc) I believe the vast, VAST, majority of people can live a happy middle class lifestyle. </p>
<p>If you’re working two part time jobs i suggest you drop one of them, start going to the local community college and get a degree/skill that will enable you to work a full time job.</p>
<p>It’s a tough question. We’ve had excellent health care over the years provided through health insurance given to us by husband’s employer. The only years I was not happy with the health care we received were the years we lived in England. For those reasons, I was always against UHC.</p>
<p>Now I have grown children who are struggling to afford their own health insurance. Two because they are self employed and one is a grad student no longer covered by ours. But would I like to see UHC for everyone even though I think it is bad for everyone although it would benefit my own children? Probably not.</p>
<p>So…I would vote what I think is good for society. But it would be a difficult choice.</p>
<p>There is hospital care and there is hospital care. I have a niece that needed a number of heart surgeries growing up. Hospital bills have run about $100K over her lifetime and I think that most was paid out of pocket. He’s pretty well off so I don’t think that it’s been a big deal. But it would be if your household income were say, $38,000 a year.</p>
<p>There are a lot of things that come easier with support systems whether they be from the community or your family. I take broadband access for granted as I have it at both residences and my office. I have a reliable vehicle that is meticulously maintained. And a job with very flexible hours. We’ve had some major health problems with our son that were devastating at the time but my management was very understanding and our health-care plan provided us with a resource coordinator to manage the process to recovery and this made what was a very stressful time, manageable.</p>
<p>There are all sorts of things that can happen that provide setbacks and consume lots of your time. Things that you have no control over. It’s not hard to find examples of things that can strongly impede progress if you think a little.</p>
<p>I find this interesting that people don’t realize that their principles are based on their self interest.</p>
<p>I am against tax raises, not b/c I want more money in my pocket, but for my principles I don’t beleve the govt needs to spend more money, that they have mis-used the funds they have already (earmarks). It is my principles to state to govt., do your job and do what is best for everyone in the US not just for your state i.e. how is building a bridge to nowhere going to assist the welfare recipient in TX? </p>
<p>I am against UHC, b/c it is not a good plan as stated right now. Does it effect my pocketbook, yes, am I ticked that I might be forced to buy into the plan even though I have insurance? Of course! Yet, I also have lived through nationalized health in the UK, so I have experienced, thus, it is also based on principle, that I believe it is not a good idea.</p>
<p>Bullet said it lets put 100 people in a room and say 1 person must die for the good of the group, you get to vote who it is…how many people do you think will raise their hand and say I am willing to die…I would bet that the true number might be the amt you can count on both hands. Thus, self interest would rule over principle. It is great to believe we are altruistic, but the reality is if you agree that the majority of people would not raise their hand in my scenario, than we must agree that politics is no different</p>
<p>I apologize in advance for double posting this, but it seems to have particular relevance to both of the threads I attached it to. Here due to the tension between living by your ideals and living a good life as a good person:</p>
<p>My daughter recently sent me this article and it reminded me of this tread. </p>
<p>I thought it apropos of a prominent intellectuals political positions and life-views. It is by Alice Walker’s daughter, Rebecca Walker. In the article she takes great exception to the conflict in her mother’s public ideals and her private life. It is worth, I believe, a read. Here are excerpts from the article:</p>
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</p>
<p>[How</a> my mother’s fanatical feminist views tore us apart, by the daughter of The Color Purple author | Mail Online](<a href=“How my mother's fanatical feminist views tore us apart, by the daughter of The Color Purple author | Daily Mail Online”>How my mother's fanatical feminist views tore us apart, by the daughter of The Color Purple author | Daily Mail Online)</p>
<p>Government is inefficient and costly, Laxattack. But, there are things like police, defense, the initial funding of the internet, the interstate highway system, and traffic lights that are public goods. Everyone has an interest in having these but would prefer that everyone else foot the bill. Thus, without taxes, most if not all would pay nothing or less than their share of the cost and the public goods would go unfunded or underfunded. Economists call this the free rider problem.</p>
<p>Health insurance is an area that will likely move into this direction and to me, the whole debate on universal health insurance is naive and misguided. Health insurers tend to deny coverage or make it very costly for people with particular conditions. Within X years (say 10), we’ll have the ability to test people for genetic predispositions to a variety of diseases. Insurers will thus want to deny coverage to people with these predispositions and, as our abilities to identify more such predispositions, the insurable population will decline. Insurance will no longer make sense when 70% of the population has such predispositions (although since most companies now self-insure, we don’t really have much insurance as a matter of fact at this point). As a society, we will probably come to a point in which we either are willing to bankrupt all of those who have genetic predispositions to diseases or come to the conclusion that we need to guarantee basic health care, not access to insurance. Then, health care will be more like a public good, and to avoid the free rider problem, we’ll have no alternative but to fund it publicly.</p>
<p>Incidentally, this does not mean that we have to have a single payer like Canada or England – we can still structure in competition – but it would mean that health care would become. at least in part, a financial obligation of the government. Fuming that government is inefficient may feel good – it is – and should influence how a health care payment system is designed but as we head down the scientific road, it seems inevitable that health care will become a public good.</p>
<p>“Principle, but I think in the long run most of my principles lead to a collective self-interest.”</p>
<p>I agree, but I’d go even further – most of the issues I support lead to my personal, as well as collective, self-interest.</p>
<p>Part of the reason I support public education is because it’s good for other people’s children, and I want good things for other people’s children. But another part of the reason is that I don’t want other people’s children to grow up and rob me, and educating them reduces the chances that they will. Almost every political issue comes back to this sort of self-interest in the long run.</p>
<p>“I believe that everybody can acheive a middle class lifestyle through hard work.”</p>
<p>I followed the Duke Lacrosse case closely participating at KC Johnson’s Blog and the liestoppers forum. One of the things that came out of the case was the problem with prosecutors gone wild going after innocent people to further their careers. The timing of the case was coincident with The Innocence Project finding many men that were either on death row or in jail for long periods of time, innocent. What do you think the odds of these men, who have records, for assault, murder, sex crimes, in criminal justice databases and on the internet, will make it into the middle class via hard work? For those that don’t or can’t sue for a million of course.</p>