361–370 of 673 posts
I do have to wonder if it wouldn't be simpler to just move state functions, as many as are practical, to the county level. Counties are perfectly capable of being 100% in charge of their own schools, roads, police. They largely are, but subject to a great deal of probably unnecessary state control.
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Rule of law, not majority. It may look that way should “one side” or the other control an official political body, but at least for now, we still abide election laws insuring the “rule of law” bit.
I don't think anybody is saying thid should happen without following the law so I am not sure what your point is?
If there’s nuance and context intended it should be communicated.
There is no “rule of majority”. Questioning what should be if they’re simply a majority is just not allowed given our system.
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>No one has any incentive to care about the price of healthcare, currently That's a problem that can be fixed without making the government the sole customer: Make people pay for their own healthcare. >Not the suppliers, not the providers, not the insurers That's simply not true. They all have profit motive. >And the consumers simply have no choice. That's only true in emergency medicine, which is the minority of car…
> That’s only true in emergency medicine What would you do about emergency medicine in your ideal world though?
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I live in a predominantly right-leaning area and know a lot of people who are against universal healthcare. I've talked with a lot of them about it, and every single person would be in favor of it if there was a magical guarantee the money would actually be spent properly and not corruptly misallocated. But the track record is so poor, and there is such little transparency, that they have no trust whatsoever. I can h…
This is exactly right. Pretty much anytime the government takes anything over or has a new program...it's a shit show from the beginning. See "Cover Oregon" for a waste of a few hundred million dollars...see "Pandemic Unemployment Fraud" for what is probably a hundred billion...see "PPP program" for what is continuously being found as having tons of fraud...see "Oregon Unemployment still programmed in COBOL and can't…
Are you saying you believe that there are no programs in existence, which are government-run, that are not "shit shows" ?
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I also don't see a push from republicans to repeal social security. That doesn't mean it isn't a socialist policy.
Are you saying EMTALA (people not left to die on the street) is socialism? I don’t think that meets the definition of socialism.
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Time for a constitutional amendment to curb non-consensual government. State and federal government should have a generational opt in.
We have have that every two years: it’s called elections.
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I would love to see the data, but from the data I have seen, the data conflict with the popular (populist) narrative. A lot of people in America seem to believe that the hardworking "real Americans" in the middle of the country are subsidizing the poorly-run coastal liberal enclaves. In reality, the money almost always flows in the other direction; taxpayers in cities are subsidizing the rural-dwellers. This has noth…
Those people in the middle of the country believe that if they all quit their jobs and demanded a government-given wage, that the country would starve to death. If all of the people at facebook, google, and twitter quit their jobs, however, all that would really happen would be that the country would get a bit more peaceful. You're talking about how much is taken in taxes. These people are talking about how much is g…
And the families who own farms capture the lion's share of the fruits of labor!
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>American Values ... normal rural Americans are outnumbered in Oregon What sort of logic supports that American values are those held by a minority of Americans. What possible values suggest they are the normal ones? > 3. Low Tax The counties involved have median household incomes of 30-35K, making their tax burden $600-1100 total, a far cry from the average quoted, which is skewed right strongly by outliers (1%), wh…
> What sort of logic supports that American values are those held by a minority of Americans. What possible values suggest they are the normal ones? America has been here for a long time. It's fair to say that values which are of long standing, still held by a significant fraction of the population, and them disproportionately descended from ancestors who have been American for many generations, are more American val…