Steven Harms

Life, Linux and Technology

Posts Tagged obama

Healthcare in the US

Sep 8

Posted by sharms in General | 34 Comments

I am pretty sure nobody who reads my blog is against Obama’s healthcare plan, but if you are, we need to talk. (I know people outside the US might not understand to the extent at which this is a dividing issue here). Who would have though so much controversy would come from someone trying to provide everyone with healthcare? Not to mention someone who campaigned on the idea, and got elected in part because of it.

Lets get this real straight: This plan will save money. If you are against it, turn off Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck, take down your confederate flag, and use your brain.

Today, anyone, healthcare or not, citizen or not, can walk into any hospital in the country and get treatment. Many people do. And the ones that don’t have healthcare? You and I pay for them, through our insurance, who receives inflated charges from the hospital because of the additional burden of these uninsured. Do you really think that having the government run healthcare is going to make us pay for everyone else more than we currently do? (For a point of reference every month I pay over $700 to insurance just for my daughter and I)

Having country-wide heathcare would allow us to formalize this process, and make sure that those who were previously going to the hospital and getting free care (ie defaulting on their payments) are now taxed for it. You can get out of hospital bills, but getting out of taxes is a million times harder. For people here illegally, that is a issue that is mutually exclusive from this, as their coverage wouldn’t change with this plan.

As for the idea of death panels? They exist already. Insurance companies drop people, and their personal savings run out. Sending a loved one to a nursing home or hospice is already deciding their fate. Before “ObamaCare” your fate was decided by money. After it, you will still be able to have to decided by money. That doesn’t change.

You can call it socialist, and I can call you a fool, because as I said already, we already care for everyone, they just default on their bills.

Go ahead and use the Post Office as a case study of why government shouldn’t run things. Show me one small business that can deliver mail to any address in the US for < 50 cents. It isn’t possible. What they do is phenomenal given their budget and scope. If I lived in rural Idaho, no commercial interest would ever drive a letter out to me for that price. And the benefits? Increased communication, resulting in increased national commerce. Driven anywhere? Yeah the government runs the roads so well I can do that.

Bring on your ignorance in the comments.

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Stimulus package

Feb 27

Posted by Steven Harms in Economics | 9 Comments

I have been, in my short political life, generally a proponent of fiscal conservatism. I also listen to Rush / Hannity every day, so I hear anti stimulus package remarks for the majority of the day.

Why I think it will work
The recent tag line they are using is that if we took all the money from the rich, it still wouldn’t pay for our debt. That point is 100% true. However, creating money and spending it, if you are the government, actually can.

Imagine the scenario of the government handing out money for public transit. In this transaction, every single piece is taxed. Government gives money to company A. Company A pays corporate taxes on it, and all of their employees required pay taxes on it. The supplier for the construction materials and vehicles also pays taxes. Their employees, who also pay taxes, probably buy things for their families. They also pay taxes when they receive their paycheck, and again when they pay sales tax.

In addition, people who could not previously afford transit may now be able to get to work. This creates more productive citizens, and a larger supply of workers, allowing companies to product goods at a lower cost. The houses knocked down for right of way decrease the supply of homes on the market. The decreased supply of homes, combined with the increased value of living within reach of public transit, revives that housing market. There are so many advantages in this idea.

If you can create projects which the majority of money will be spent in a manner in which the people involved will spend the majority of it domestically, the economy will grow without actually losing money.

Inflation to the rescue
The other aspect of this, is that inflation is not inherently evil. When our dollar is strong, or even gaining against foreign currency, it is a better idea to hang onto it. If our currency starts losing value, this would be a great boost to the ailing real estate market. In order to fight inflation, you have to invest in assets rather than holding cash so that you grow with the inflation. Inflation also decreases imports as foreign goods are not as affordable as domestic goods. This will create a boost of manufacturing as people will need to invest to keep their value, and the demand for domestic goods would increase.

In short, not everything is black and white, so just question what these guys say. These ideas have not traditionally worked before, because the world has never seen this level of worker productivity. We can now produce more food than can be consumed, more cars than can be driven, more houses than can be lived in, and more computers than can be operated. The world has changed since the previous economic models where derived.

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