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No One Goes There Anymore

noonegoesthereanymore.blogspot.com

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Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#211

Post by endtime »

tghw wrote: post #208
lettergram wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had cancer in the US a $65k bill really isn’t bad. Consider in the US taxes are typically In Germany (if I recall) it’s closer to 50% taxes so $50k a year. Presumably you can expect cancer once or less, but effectively you only need ~4 years of income to make up for that $65k bill in the US. Not bad at all. Obviously that differs based on income, but you can a see how (for many people in the US) the system works…

And what if you make the US median individual income of $31k?

About 15.75% according to https://neuvoo.com/tax-calculator/?iam=&uet_calculate=calcul...

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#212

Post by knorker »

JohnBooty wrote: post #197
knorker wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, yeah that adds information (not in the article) to this case. But note that I have downvotes on my comment. I'm not surprised. I think I'm being respectful here, but people take as a personal attack when the choice to have biological children is in any way questioned. So this woman did not have that information available to her at the time. Like I said I know people that did.

Yeah, questioning peoples' biological choices is pretty bad stuff and you should avoid it. I understand the concern over somebody with a hereditable condition "maliciously" reproducing. That would certainly be pretty bad. What's also pretty bad is assuming that the author did such a thing, or feeling that the author owed you an explanation. I'm childfree; pretty much the opposite of some kind of rabid "everybody shou…

> "maliciously" reproducing.

That's not what I said. Not even in the slightest.

> What's also pretty bad is assuming that the author did such a thing, or feeling that the author owed you an explanation.

Jeezus, talk about reading something looking to do the worst interpretation possible. You might as well have called me a eugenicist nazi. How about when you read a comment have an open mind that maybe, just maybe, it wasn't written by a nazi?

My comment was pretty general, and mostly talked about people I know, who did do such a thing.

> Where is the logic or humanity in questioning the value of having a child once the child already exists?

That's not what I did. I'm asking why someone with perhaps multiple heritable psychological and physical problems, both in their own body and in their family, would take this huge risk. Do they presume to love an adopted child less than a biological one?

I'm CLEARLY asking about the logic decision BEFORE. Because it's not actually a decision afterwards. Obviously.

And it's not about the "value of having a child". That completely misses the point.

> don't need to justify themselves to me

Wow, you sure are a better person than this straw man you're building. Good for you.

Should I apologize for wanting to understand the world, and people, better? Would you say the same thing about the entire fields of sociology, anthropology, and psychology?

No, nobody owes anybody an explanation. Of course not. But what kind of answer is that? If to you entire fields of knowledge have a taboo on the word "why", with the default answer "I DON'T HAVE TO EXPLAIN MYSELF TO YOU!!" (and neither must anyone else) then you sure are not anybody I'd like to talk to. Good day.

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#213

Post by SECProto »

tghw wrote: post #208
lettergram wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had cancer in the US a $65k bill really isn’t bad. Consider in the US taxes are typically In Germany (if I recall) it’s closer to 50% taxes so $50k a year. Presumably you can expect cancer once or less, but effectively you only need ~4 years of income to make up for that $65k bill in the US. Not bad at all. Obviously that differs based on income, but you can a see how (for many people in the US) the system works…

And what if you make the US median individual income of $31k?

If you make 31k, you likely don't have the good health insurance of the OP, and your final bill would be hundreds of thousands (i.e. it couldn't be afforded)

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#214

Post by newacct583 »

rayiner wrote: post #201
newacct583 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tim Cook’s tax rate on his $135 million bonus a few years ago was 52% This is the kind of selective data that makes this subject so infurating to argue about. I'm sure this fact is true. But what you're trying to imply is that Tim Cook's overall tax payments were very high, and that's not remotely true at all! A bonus is one of the few bits of income he has, in fact, that is taxed as routine "income" that the rest…

There’s nothing selective about my data. I gave the top line numbers—Biden’s proposal to eliminate the preferential capital gains rate on people with more than $1 million a year in income would raise only $50 billion annually. Cook’s bonus is just an illustration of why that number is so low—even very wealthy people make most of their money through ordinary income. Capital gains amounts to just 5% of all income. Most…

> And again, why do you care about the taxation of the super wealthy so much?

This is always the retreat: "OK, taxation is unfair, but you can't prove there's a problem so it doesn't really matter, does it?"

I say: taxation is unfair, and we should make it fair instead of constantly trying to justify the fact that the very wealthy (who are, relative to US society, wealthier than they have ever been and getting steadily wealthier) are paying less tax than you or I do. Let's start there.

To wit: why are you so invested in the regressiveness of current taxation policies? Shouldn't you at least accept that we should make it fair?

If it was fair, maybe you'd have an easier time convincing the hippies not to try to pay for your health care or whatever.

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#215

Post by ivanvanderbyl »

lettergram wrote: post #205
ido wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy it, due to first-hand & second-hand experiences of friends and relatives I have in the US. Let me give you one example: my friend(and at the time business partner)'s wife got cancer in the US. It was fairly "mundane"/common cancer that got treated and everything was alright at the end. He was working as a software developer (normal employee, not self-employed - our venture was a side project) with the afo…

If I had cancer in the US a $65k bill really isn’t bad. Consider in the US taxes are typically In Germany (if I recall) it’s closer to 50% taxes so $50k a year. Presumably you can expect cancer once or less, but effectively you only need ~4 years of income to make up for that $65k bill in the US. Not bad at all. Obviously that differs based on income, but you can a see how (for many people in the US) the system works…

We get comparable treatment as Germany in Australia and pay comparable tax to America. I don't buy that this is a luxury of high tax paying countries. Something is systemically wrong in the US.

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#216

Post by [deleted] »

magicalhippo wrote: post #30

When I see about half my paycheck going to taxes it feels a bit rough. But then I think of stories like this, and how easily it could have been me with an illness requiring expensive medical treatment and possibly preventing me from working regular jobs. And so I pay my tax with pleasure, knowing that if something were to happen to me or my fellow citizen, at least there wouldn't be millions of dollars in hospital bi…

[deleted]

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#217

Post by knorker »

lonelappde wrote: post #206
knorker wrote: post #137

I don't understand people who have serious hereditary medical conditions and have children. Yes, I know that "I just don't get it". Though I do have friends for whom serious illness in the family is the reason they don't have biological children. I do find it a bit selfish to reject adopting a child (and thus presumably making that child's life better), instead of essentially saying "no, I only care about my own gene…

I don't know, why do people try to propagate their genes? I'm sure you've got a better handle on the situation the the force of billions of years of evolutionary history.

Sure. I'm saying I don't understand how the rational part of their brain isn't overruling that, though.

The best thing you can do for evolutionary things is to donate all the sperm and eggs that you can. Literally do that as often as you can. I understand why people don't, though, because humans and animals only instinctively connect their will with procreation, even if it's connected, and instinct doesn't do abstraction. It only does connections with what's worked before. Wide hips, health, liking sex, etc... that's what we've evolved to. But who knows, the few mutated humans who give to sperm banks nonstop may become the majority in a thousand generations, and wanting sex may be a trait that'll be phased out.

I want to stay home and eat candy all day, but I don't. There are many things humans don't do that the "reptilian brain" would have them do nonstop.

I don't want to pay into my pension, and realistically my survival post-65 in the west isn't going to affect how my genes live on. Yet I do pay into my pension.

On the scale of human civilization so far, especially after the pill came around, procreation is not that connected to nature. Same as our other pleasures. What's tasty to eat is largely bad for you. Evolution hasn't adjusted to that. And it probably never will, since we'll invent just-as-tasty-but-healthy before it'll adjust.

And we've learned to trigger dopamine rewards without good behavior too. It's just illegal to consume such chemicals.

Also evolution doesn't demand wanting to procreate. It just demands wanting something that has the effect of procreating (historically), i.e. sex.

Your question is more on point than the other guy who just wanted to call me a nazi. So thanks for that. :-)

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#218

Post by tobylane »

jfnixon wrote: post #183
QuixoticQuibit wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nation-sized leverage. The same reason why equivalent pharmaceuticals are cheaper elsewhere in the world.

Nation-sized leverage? Piffle. Pass a law that Big Pharma can't price higher in the US than the lowest price negotiated elsewhere. Boom, problem solved.

From 2003 to maybe 2019 Medicare was explicitly forbidden from negotiating drug prices. Second bullet point in this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_Prescription_Drug,_Im...

The first world has successfully encouraged the drug makers to sell their product cheaper in the third world. If you look on wikipedia drug articles you'll see the price for the generic in the developed and developing world.

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#219

Post by rayiner »

newacct583 wrote: post #214
rayiner wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s nothing selective about my data. I gave the top line numbers—Biden’s proposal to eliminate the preferential capital gains rate on people with more than $1 million a year in income would raise only $50 billion annually. Cook’s bonus is just an illustration of why that number is so low—even very wealthy people make most of their money through ordinary income. Capital gains amounts to just 5% of all income. Most…

> And again, why do you care about the taxation of the super wealthy so much? This is always the retreat: "OK, taxation is unfair, but you can't prove there's a problem so it doesn't really matter, does it?" I say: taxation is unfair, and we should make it fair instead of constantly trying to justify the fact that the very wealthy (who are, relative to US society, wealthier than they have ever been and getting steadi…

Most economists agree that taxing capital income lower is more efficient, and our capital gains rates are in line with those of Germany, Sweden, etc., so that all seems fine to me. I don’t want to be to the left of France or Italy on tax policy. That seems insane to me.

Beyond that, taxes are just a means to an end. I accept that taxes are necessary for providing social services. So I find it extremely disingenuous to focus so much on a potential source of tax revenue that won’t cover 90% of what we need to provide universal healthcare, etc. I find it disingenuous when people like Warren talk about Medicare for All (which by her own math will cost $30 trillion over 10 years) and then spend the rest of the speech talking about wealth taxes (which by her own math would raise only $3-4 trillion over that same period), and then also promise not to raise taxes in the middle class. It’s rank manipulation: you’re trying to make voters believe we can pay for these services through higher taxes on the rich, and burying in the fine print the fact that the middle class will have to pay 90% of the bill. (This manipulation also undermines the prospect of us ever getting universal healthcare, because no real plan can achieve that without the massive middle class tax increases you’ve convinced voters are unnecessary.)

The motivation seems to be more focused on taking money away from certain people (because “the billionaires shouldn’t exist” or some such tripe), than raising the money we need to pay for social services people supposedly want, and figuring out how to do that with minimal distortion to the economy. I think that’s a toxic brand of politics. It’s also a departure from what other developed countries are doing. Economists agree that the most efficient sort of tax is consumption taxes, which is why every OECD country relies heavily on VAT. (If our taxation profile was the same as Spain’s, payroll and consumption taxes would go up $2 trillion per year, while income taxes—paid mainly by the rich—would actually go down $1 trillion per year.) So this rhetoric seems both spiteful and empirically unwise.

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#220

Post by war1025 »

SECProto wrote: post #213
tghw wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what if you make the US median individual income of $31k?

If you make 31k, you likely don't have the good health insurance of the OP, and your final bill would be hundreds of thousands (i.e. it couldn't be afforded)

In reality you would end up on Medicaid. There would be limits to what hospitals you could go to for treatment, but you wouldn't be stuck with the bill in the end.

Basically the way the American healthcare system works, they will eventually pick up the tab. They just go out of their way to bleed you dry on the way.

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