American Politics Discussion Thread

[ipecac]

Healthcare is a human right.

No.  Nothing that requires the consumption of the labor and services of another can be a human right.  No entity has a right to compel someone to be a physician and serve you.  That would be involuntary servitude.  People can choose to become doctors and you can choose to use their services.  That's it.  Compelling another to serve you can never be a human right.

That all said: health care CAN be socialized.  I'm not even opposed to that in principle.  It could be a collective function of government, like roads and electricity and transit and other such infrastructure.  These aren't and can't be rights, but we can choose to implement such things collectively, and could with health care as many other countries have more-or-less managed.

I'm against collectivized health care in the US on a practical rather than ideological level.  I don't think we'll be able to sensibly implement it.  It requires price controls, that's the bottom line.  If prices are not controlled, they just rise to capture and consume all the money injected by government - that's what happened with Obamacare, as well as other industries like college grants and housing subsidies.  And who actually just took a first step towards health care price controls?  Trump, with that recent executive order limiting markup on pharmaceutical drug prices.

Weirdly, Medicare for All is the proposal that may actually work, despite it seeming to be the farther-left proposal.  Medicare more-or-less works as it is because it has the power to set prices.  It doesn't fully work - it requires taxing all citizens to pay for just the old people - but it's actually the right starting point, in that it's got the necessary underlying principle and making it work is a matter of setting the numbers, compared to Obamacare that doesn't work because it just lets the prices escalate.

Classic liberalism, 'no slavery!' but 'we'll force healthy young people to pay for old people'. The core principles bend to reality, always.

[ipecac]

'So why are you dumping on liberalism this time?'

Because it makes useful discussion impossible time and again, when people get worked up about freedom or tyranny. Because under liberalism, freedom becomes a relativistic and usually emotivist concept, something is only tyrannical and restrictive when you see or feel that it restricts your freedom.

Forcing people to wear masks is tyranny unless you feel it's necessary, same for lockdowns and restriction on movement, same for 'taxes for X', same for conscription y, same for freedom of speech, restrictions on abortions, guns, the other culture war stuff, there are hundreds of examples. 'I don't want to be forced to pay for parasites but healthy young people should be forced to pay for other people's healthcare'.

Once people get emotional about their freedom or tyranny against them, constructive exchange of views becomes impossible.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

https://www.9news.com/article/news/local...3cb08640a3

[superdeath]

https://www.9news.com/article/news/local...3cb08640a3

Wow.

[ipecac]

'So why are you dumping on liberalism this time?'

What is a 'right to healthcare'? It simply means that other people should pay for it. Others don't just have the responsibility, but they should be coerced with the force of the state if necessary. Again and again under liberalism, euphemisms and unconscious duplicity.

[ipecac]

https://www.9news.com/article/news/local...3cb08640a3

Is that state actually relevant?

“It was mainly hurtful, you know? How could someone say something like that or basically threaten us according to something that we can’t control?”

It's ugly, but like the celebrities who threaten to move to Canada it most likely won't happen.

[Charriu]

Yes, I don't actively seek deduction. I put everything that needs to be in and let it run.

If a millionaire is only paying 750$ in taxes, I can absolutely understand if people are angry about it. Especially because we know that some of Trump's past businesses were definitely shady like Trump University

This shows a complete and utter lack of knowledge about how taxes work.

Tax is based on income, not wealth.  Possessing a million dollars worth of wealth has nothing to do with it.  What matters is how much you net-earned in a given year, after figuring in losses and deductions.  If you think a millionaire should pay more taxes even with little net income, you are arguing for a wealth tax not an income tax - except you don't even understand your own position enough to state it in those terms.  And wealth taxes don't work, because owners simply move assets to other ownership structures or jurisdictions without a wealth tax.

If you think the problem is that such a business loss should not be deductible from other income, that at least is a coherent position -- but a position that imperils millions of small business owners who stand to suffer that much more if their business fails.  If you think the problem is that business-loss deductions should be forbidden only to millionaires, that is a wealth tax in disguise since first you have to define millionaire.

Also, where is the "shady" box on the 1040 form so the IRS knows to charge Trump more for previously running Trump University?

None of this shows any understanding of anything that actual tax policy can be based on.

I'm sorry T-Hawk but you are not seeing the bigger picture, why people are angry about him and you misunderstood me with the shady business stuff.

• Trump did not only pay 750$ dollars in one year. He paid only that much in multiple years and even worse in some years before his presidency he did pay no taxes.
  
• Deductions for losses are fine and I due indeed understand the difference between income and wealth tax, thank you. But deductions and other stuff in multiple years in a row should at least raise an eyebrow.
  
• And this is where the shady stuff comes in. We know that he had some shady businesses like Trump University. We also know that he paid his daughter as a consultant even though she is an employee of the Trump organization. It's not that Trump has to check a non-existent "shady" box on the form. Because of his shady practices we have to be suspicious about his deductions and other stuff in his tax returns, because there could be illegal practices in there. Or are you suggesting that Trump never did something wrong as a businessman and with wrong I mean illegal or immoral?
  
• There's also the fact the Trump never released his tax returns by himself and even tried to actively block others from releasing them. That does not put him in a good spotlight.
  

Another small thing that plays into the whole Trump tax debate is, how good of a businessman he really is. He and his followers are always claiming that, but his losses are true losses, then how good of a businessman is he really?

I also want to point out that when I say "his followers" I don't mean every single GOP voter from 2016, but rather his fanatic fans, who blindly follow him and think he never did something wrong.

[Ichabod]

'So why are you dumping on liberalism this time?'

Because it makes useful discussion impossible time and again, when people get worked up about freedom or tyranny. Because under liberalism, freedom becomes a relativistic and usually emotivist concept, something is only tyrannical and restrictive when you see or feel that it restricts your freedom.

Forcing people to wear masks is tyranny unless you feel it's necessary, same for lockdowns and restriction on movement, same for 'taxes for X', same for conscription y, same for freedom of speech, restrictions on abortions, guns, the other culture war stuff, there are hundreds of examples. 'I don't want to be forced to pay for parasites but healthy young people should be forced to pay for other people's healthcare'.

Once people get emotional about their freedom or tyranny against them, constructive exchange of views becomes impossible.

If I understood you correctly, that is a point I tend to agree. When talking about the size of the government, I can't understand the qualitative difference between funding the military/police or funding education.

T-Hawk said:

"No.  Nothing that requires the consumption of the labor and services of another can be a human right.  No entity has a right to compel someone to be a physician and serve you.  That would be involuntary servitude.  People can choose to become doctors and you can choose to use their services.  That's it.  Compelling another to serve you can never be a human right."

But what is the difference between a doctor and a police officer in this situation? In this logic, your life and safety cannot be a human right as well. Perhaps you can argue that life and safety don't require the labor and services of others, just their "negative" action (i.e. you don't have the right to punch me in the face), and I think that's the difference usually made. But, first, that's also a coercion on someone else and, second, the only way to make that right effective is through the use of other people labor and service (from police officers, military people, etc.). So you kinda reach the same problem, is it not? 

In my mind, human rights, as any other type of law, are only created by humans, not by nature itself. Human rights are the rights we choose to call that way and the only difference between human right and "normal rights" is a different legal treatment that we choose to give them. There's usually a lot of common ground regarding what is a human right, but after a certain point, as ipecac pointed out, consensus ends and, unfortunately, we tend to not get into a constructive exchange of views about it.

[Serdoa]

Healthcare is a human right.

No.  Nothing that requires the consumption of the labor and services of another can be a human right.  No entity has a right to compel someone to be a physician and serve you.  That would be involuntary servitude.  People can choose to become doctors and you can choose to use their services.  That's it.  Compelling another to serve you can never be a human right.

One has nothing to do with the other. You build false equivalencies to sound smart and sell your point, but they are still false. You go from a basic right - that of course we can all agree is a right everyone has - to slavery. But nobody is compelling anyone to become a doctor. And when you become one, you work in a hospital and get money for helping others. No servitude there. But none of that has to do with the principle that "healthcare is a human right", which just means that we agree that everyone has to be provided healthcare - and order our state to implement the necessary rules and laws to make it happen. That's literally what happened in most of the civilized western world - except America because apparently having to help others is slavery (first aid anyone?) but letting them die is your human right...

If prices are not controlled, they just rise to capture and consume all the money injected by government - that's what happened with Obamacare, as well as other industries like college grants and housing subsidies.

Funny, Germany and Austria (those are the two I know personally though obviously there are more in Europe) managed it well enough. Sure, some things could be better, but I'm working right now in exactly that sector, being responsible for buying those healthcare services. Prices are going down - not up - as long as no politicians get lobbied to make laws that are detrimental. Public procurement is a pretty great tool if used correctly and as long as there are no monopolies or pseudo-monopolies in the market. If America is not able to get that done, I can tell you one thing from experience T-hawk: It is because of your politicians getting lobbied to make shitty laws that allows companies to funnel governmental money to them for services that could be bought cheaper, and not because it somehow is not possible to do it.

(And no, prices are not controlled [as in dictated by the state] in Germany.)

[Gustaran]

Healthcare is a human right.

No.  Nothing that requires the consumption of the labor and services of another can be a human right. 

A lot could be said about such a statement, but I feel this particular discussion approaches the level of the average Facebook comment section, so I am just going to leave it at that:


Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.