General > General Technical Chat
What is a good about Covid 19 related?
james_s:
--- Quote from: IDEngineer on March 30, 2020, 05:01:14 am ---Emotionally I want to agree, and I'm not going to argue, but do consider this. Such medical expenses are paid for with tax dollars, which politicians and the media constantly scrutinize to find fault with how they're spent (though they often couch such actions as "oversight" or "being responsible", they really do it to find ammunition against their political opponents). If the government is financially responsible for your medical expenses, then legally they can prove standing to control those behaviors which cause or increase those expenses.
Let's take an easy one: Smoking. The medical expenses associated with smoking are 100% preventable. Therefore, it seems reasonable to compel taxpayer-funded patients to not smoke, correct?
OK, then what about fast food? How about liver disease caused by liquor consumption? Drug abuse? Every one of those is 100% preventable - wouldn't it be appropriate to ban them to save tax dollars? (Ask yourself how those would be enforced, and what penalties we would impose for violation?)
Now let's get to the tougher ones. What about activities deemed "risky" to one's health? I'm a scuba diver, an activity deemed risky enough that it disqualifies you from many life insurance policies. Same for private pilots. But what about rock climbing? Kayaking? Children's sports like soccer, baseball, and (especially) gymnastics? There are well known stats for the dangers of these activities, and your CHOICE to participate risks government spending obligations.
Finally, the heavy lifting. Should women deemed "high risk" be allowed to get pregnant? The costs for a baby requiring NICU can hit six figures at light speed, and the actuarial tables that statistically predict such outcomes are well known to both the medical and insurance industries. And that's not even considering the risks to the mother. How about adults with inheritable mental or physical ailments - should they be allowed to create children who will be virtually certain to create enormous expense for the government?
There is substantial legal precedent for a benefactor having standing over the decisions of a beneficiary. Politicians and the media already weaponize the spending decisions of their adversaries. Do you really want your medical decisions to be wrapped around that axle?
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This is borderline to what I would call a strawman, at least I think that's the right term.
I mean those are valid points but the glaring reality is that we already spend the money, and those factors already cost us the USA spends something like twice as much per capita on medical care and yet we have tens of millions of people without any coverage or without adequate coverage. The money we pay for healthcare isn't called "tax" but fundamentally it is no different. In my case my health insurance is part of the compensation I get from my employer, officially it's not a tax on my earnings but it's money my employer spends on me which is taken out before it is ever called wages so it differs from tax in name only. If the company spent exactly the same amount acquiring my services but either gave it all to me and let the federal government extract a cut in taxes, or paid some kind of corporate tax on my behalf would not have to impact the amount of money I take home. Uninsured people can go to the emergency room and not be denied treatment, if they're unable to pay then those costs are spread across everyone else, we pay either way, currently we just have a pile of middlemen siphoning off billions of dollars to sustain themselves while contributing absolutely nothing to the actual healthcare. I saw an article where someone put it well, saying if we were concerned about the jobs lost by shutting down the private medical insurance industry we could pay those people to play video games all day, occasionally strolling through hospital waiting rooms killing random people and accomplish the same goal.
Smoking, poor diet, poor habits, those are all very real issues but again we already pay for the poor habits of our fellow citizens, it is already in our best interest to keep people healthier. The way to do this is not through compulsion but a steady campaign to encourage people to improve their habits and incentivize being healthier, we've done it before and it works. I remember the big campaigns to increase seatbelt usage in cars, that was highly effective. Smoking too has been dramatically reduced, I would love to see it go away entirely, smoking tobacco has enormous costs, it puts Covid to shame though it is at least a conscious choice people make. Poor diet and sedentary lifestyle, these are things we can encourage people to change because it is in our own best interest, both for the individual and for society as a whole. Yes some people will do their own thing no matter what, some people smoke, some people eat poorly, some people are lazy, some people don't wear their seatbelt when the drive a car or a helmet when they ride a motorcycle or bicycle and these cost society money, whether through universal healthcare or through the additional costs they incur which are spread to the rest of us anyway.
The money already gets spent, providing universal care doesn't have to cost more, it consolidates and eliminates layers of overhead and waste. The fact that every other developed nation on earth has it and not one of them is trying to get rid of it suggests that it works pretty well. I have quite a few Canadian friends and whenever this comes up they just cannot comprehend why we still have a system as backwards as what we have, they are absolutely appalled that we seem to find it acceptable to have ~35 million uninsured, that we force people to choose between death and bankruptcy, that we allow health insurance to be tied to employment such that losing one's job means losing access to health care often when one needs it most. It's a bad deal for employees and employers, with people sticking around in jobs they hate and half-assing it for years to get by rather than lose their medical coverage switching jobs. The Canadian system I mention is not without problems of course, they complain of excessive wait times for some procedures but they spend less than half as much per person as we do, if Canada doubled the money they spend on healthcare to catch up with the USA or even increased it by 50% I'd bet those wait times would drop dramatically.
petert:
--- Quote from: NiHaoMike on March 30, 2020, 11:06:52 pm ---To prevent freeloading, what about only give the basic income to working age people working for 20 hours per week or more? (Less than that can also be accepted in special cases.)
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The main point of UBI is the "freeloading", i.e., unconditionally providing it, like you don't tax air either, or require people to work or pay for it.
A major reason for the UBI -- though different proponents have different goals (amongst which are rich people and big companies, but probably not for good reasons) -- is that we will reach/have reached a state were part of the wealth creation is not tied to human labor.
The only "merit" then becomes to own certain machines or infrastructure, which is "freeloading" by being born earlier, or having had the wealth to buy said machines.
One goal of UBI is to balance this out. Another would be taxation.
james_s:
--- Quote from: petert on March 31, 2020, 06:16:12 am ---It's a common thing for people to say, but I wonder how many people really fall into this group. I do believe it is one of the ways to make people accept that "it's all their fault". I doubt that many people are truly happy with a "useless" life. Increased automation will further reduce the amount of people needed as employees, and I predict the "lazy people" argument will get stronger as this progresses, to hide this issue.
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You'd be surprised. I mean even I would be tempted to semi-retire a few years from now when my house is paid off if I had a UBI. I mean why go to work for somebody if I can dink around with my hobbies and personal projects? Knowing that I'd be tempted to do this despite the fact that I'm not particularly lazy, and knowing that there are loads of people out there who *are* lazy, I do not doubt in the least that we'd end up with millions of people content to get by doing the bare minimum. There *has* to be a great incentive to work if one is able to do so. We're a long, long way off from sufficient automation that most people do not need to work, and I think we need to be very careful not to become too dependent on automation. You end up in the situation we have now with this Covid fiasco where the factories are all these finely tuned highly automated 24 hour operations and we cannot simply throw more manpower at it to boost production, everything is running wide open just to meet normal steady state demand.
petert:
--- Quote from: james_s on March 31, 2020, 06:31:46 am ---I mean even I would be tempted to semi-retire a few years from now when my house is paid off if I had a UBI. I mean why go to work for somebody if I can dink around with my hobbies and personal projects?
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I think we have different ideas of being lazy. Working for somebody else is only one possibility, but not a necessity. An entrepreneur is not an employee, yet he creates value.
There is also something rewarding about creating products that people will find useful. I don't think you would enjoy to just have personal projects as goal in itself, without sharing in some way.
And it doesn't mean that having a job you get payed for is advancing the world or creating values, either.
It is not as clear cut anymore, as when people were farmers and grew food. In other words, just because you are forced to work, does not necessarily mean you really contribute to society, even if you pay taxes. The net result for society may be negative, depending on your employer and motivations.
james_s:
--- Quote from: petert on March 31, 2020, 06:38:26 am ---
--- Quote from: james_s on March 31, 2020, 06:31:46 am ---I mean even I would be tempted to semi-retire a few years from now when my house is paid off if I had a UBI. I mean why go to work for somebody if I can dink around with my hobbies and personal projects?
--- End quote ---
I think we have different ideas of being lazy. Working for somebody else is only one possibility, but not a necessity. An entrepreneur is not an employee, yet he creates value.
There is also something rewarding about creating products that people will find useful.
And it doesn't mean that having a job you get payed for is advancing the world or creating values, either.
It is not as clear cut anymore, as when people were farmers and grew food. In other words, just because you are forced to work, does not necessarily mean you really contribute to society, even if you pay taxes. The net result for society may be negative.
--- End quote ---
Why would I create products for other people if I can get paid to do whatever I want? I could build more RC airplanes and spend my summer days at the field flying them. I could work on my house, work on my yard, devote a lot more time to the hobby projects I build for my own enjoyment. I release many of my hobby projects as open source but they are mostly amusements and not anything that fills any need of society and hardly justify earning a living. I may be selfish but I don't think I'm atypical.
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