Originally posted by Cow Poke
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Obamacare very successful, but still a long way to go
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"I wonder about the trees. / Why do we wish to bear / Forever the noise of these / More than another noise / So close to our dwelling place?" — Robert Frost, "The Sound of Trees"
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Originally posted by Sam View PostWe Michiganders don't cotton to them Ohioans being all cosmopolitan with those interstates. Gettin' awful east coast over there by Youngstown, too.
*IIRC, that had to do with Union / non-union battlesThe first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.
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Originally posted by Cow Poke View PostAh, yes.... my short time in Ohio... them Ohio folk hated the "black license plates" that would come from the West and clog up the roadways trying to take advantage of the rides at Cedar Point. And, I remember some of my Ohio friends talking about those "Youngstown Tuneups*" in the old days, involving sticks of dynamite in gas tanks.
*IIRC, that had to do with Union / non-union battles"I wonder about the trees. / Why do we wish to bear / Forever the noise of these / More than another noise / So close to our dwelling place?" — Robert Frost, "The Sound of Trees"
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Originally posted by Sam View PostBut what has Ohio offered us, except for Cedar Point?! It should be proud of that, at least. Our amusement park in SW Michigan has not had a storied career.The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.
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Originally posted by Cow Poke View PostI wish to terminate this part of the discussion, as I'm still mad at all of you guys for The War of Northern Aggression."I wonder about the trees. / Why do we wish to bear / Forever the noise of these / More than another noise / So close to our dwelling place?" — Robert Frost, "The Sound of Trees"
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Originally posted by Starlight View PostI don't know how to convey to you just how deeply deeply shocked and horrified I am that some people here who call themselves Christians actually appear to truly believe that letting the poor die is preferable to the government helping the poor.
The idea that whether or not charity is 'forced' is being more important than the charity itself, I find to be so utterly bizarre that I just don't have the words.
I've considered starting a thread on the topic of Christianity and Poverty and the ~2000 biblical verses about the need to care for the poor and oppressed.
Except I haven't quite figured out how to write it in a way that doesn't basically come down to "have you guys, like, never read the bible? Do you not have the slightest first clue about what Jesus talked about?"That's what
- She
Without a clear-cut definition of sin, morality becomes a mere argument over the best way to train animals
- Manya the Holy Szin (The Quintara Marathon)
I may not be as old as dirt, but me and dirt are starting to have an awful lot in common
- Stephen R. Donaldson
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Originally posted by Bill the Cat View PostThis is the biggest pile of straw I've seen in a while.
The malnutrition death rate chart here shows that despite the US not being as "progressive" in our socialized enforced charity as the European nations, we still have a lower rate than Denmark, France, or Brazil, and comparable to Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, and Portugal. No Christian is ok with poor people dying of starvation. But Medicaid expansion is not malnutrition, so I'm not sure why you brought starvation up.
But a lot of Christians in the US seem to disapprove of even those programs. There are constant cutbacks to food-stamp programs being proposed. It really seems like quite a lot of Christians in the US would be okay with a few people starving to death if that turned out to be the social cost of getting rid of those government programs. They really hate the government helping the poor, and they would prefer the government stopped doing it. To me that just doesn't compute. The Christianity I grew up with was all about helping the poor and oppressed, and if the secular government is doing it then the opinion would be "that's great, the government's doing the Lord's work!"
From a Christian perspective, it certainly is more important to WANT to give than to give out of forced obligation.
So for a given government social program that is helping the poor: I will look at it and say "That's wonderful! The poor are being helped! This is great! Let's celebrate!", whereas a lot of US Christians will look at the same program and say something along the lines of "This is terrible! The government is forcing us to help the poor! This program needs to be abolished!". Their reaction simply blows my mind.
So I'm thinking... "um, do these people hate the poor that badly?" And the answer seems to be that no, they don't hate the poor, per se. They're just completely and utterly obsessed with the idea that it not be the government which helps the poor. They like the idea of the poor getting help through private charities. But they hate the idea of the government "forcing" the poor to be helped, and they hate it so badly that they are apparently often prepared to shutdown all such government programs even if it means that some poor people die as a result. Again, that simply blows my mind.
I also don't see any kind of mandate for that in the bible. There's no 11th commandment of "thou shalt not let the government help the poor". There's no huge corpus of biblical teaching about how taxes are terrible and should not exist and should absolutely not be spent by the government to help the poor. But there's a lot of biblical teaching telling people to help the poor and doing everything up to and including threatening them with hell if they don't help the poor (eg Matt 25).
As long as you understand that giving is 1) voluntary,
and 2) not supposed to make you unable to meet your own obligations.
Taxes that were so harsh that people couldn't afford to feed their families were however a problem in Jesus' day. Yet he doesn't seem to have advocated a policy of tax avoidance (as some other revolutionary groups did in his day). What little he is recorded as mentioning it is along the lines of "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" which would seem to imply people should pay taxes.
It would definitely be interesting to see just how you will equate the command for Christians to help the poor with a government that is supposed to be agnostic to religion forcing everyone to give regardless of their religion or lack thereof.
It's those few Christians who are opposed to the government's helping of the poor that I find so difficult to explain. This seems to be predominantly an American phenomena, and I presume its historical origins must lie in the Moral Majority movement, in which various less-than-scrupulous political operators successfully fused anti-abortion and pro-segregationist sentiment with economic policies that favored the rich, giving the modern religious-right Republican party that supports the rich on economic policy and supports conservative religious stances on social issues. That hypothesis would suggest the connection between conservative Christianity and being anti-poor originated in the US around the period 1940-1970. (Sam, do you have any comment on what you think the historical origins of this kind of sentiment within conservative Christianity in the US were?)"I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
"Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
"[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein
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Do the 16.5 million people insured under Obamacare include the millions of people who lost their plans because of Obamacare and had no other choice?
Secondly, health insurance does not equal healthcare, so what kind of care have those 16.5 million people been able to get?Last edited by Mountain Man; 04-20-2015, 08:38 AM.Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
Than a fool in the eyes of God
From "Fools Gold" by Petra
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Originally posted by Mountain Man View PostDo the 16.5 million people insured under Obamacare include the millions of people who lost their plans because of Obamacare and had no other choice?
Secondly, health insurance does not equal healthcare, so what kind of care have those 16.5 million people been able to get?
lzi_gpd6puu6buc0blijhq.jpg
Shows the net effect of insurance coverage: someone losing insurance because of the ACA and then picking it up again under the ACA would not show up on this graph. Contrary to the claims of many (including yourself at the time), the ACA did not result in more people losing their coverage than gaining coverage. Far, far from it, by the graph.
Surveys of health care satisfaction of people using the exchanges have shown a high level of satisfaction, even among Republicans:
Slide14-624x468.jpg Slide2-624x468.jpg"I wonder about the trees. / Why do we wish to bear / Forever the noise of these / More than another noise / So close to our dwelling place?" — Robert Frost, "The Sound of Trees"
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Originally posted by Sam View PostThe OP's graph:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]5841[/ATTACH]
Shows the net effect of insurance coverage: someone losing insurance because of the ACA and then picking it up again under the ACA would not show up on this graph. Contrary to the claims of many (including yourself at the time), the ACA did not result in more people losing their coverage than gaining coverage. Far, far from it, by the graph.
Surveys of health care satisfaction of people using the exchanges have shown a high level of satisfaction, even among Republicans:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]5842[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]5843[/ATTACH]That's what
- She
Without a clear-cut definition of sin, morality becomes a mere argument over the best way to train animals
- Manya the Holy Szin (The Quintara Marathon)
I may not be as old as dirt, but me and dirt are starting to have an awful lot in common
- Stephen R. Donaldson
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Originally posted by Bill the Cat View PostI wonder how much the "satisfied" with cost are receiving subsidies versus how many are paying for the full premium themselves..."I wonder about the trees. / Why do we wish to bear / Forever the noise of these / More than another noise / So close to our dwelling place?" — Robert Frost, "The Sound of Trees"
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Originally posted by Starlight View PostThis is never a helpful comment to make, because it doesn't enlighten me at all as to what you think is the problem with what I said.
Um, yeah, I'm not entirely sure why you brought up starvation or malnutrition up given I was talking about medical care.
Obviously people don't generally starve to death in Western countries, as there currently exist sufficient government social policies and private charities to deal with the basic need to eat.
But a lot of Christians in the US seem to disapprove of even those programs. There are constant cutbacks to food-stamp programs being proposed.
It really seems like quite a lot of Christians in the US would be okay with a few people starving to death if that turned out to be the social cost of getting rid of those government programs.
They really hate the government helping the poor, and they would prefer the government stopped doing it.
To me that just doesn't compute. The Christianity I grew up with was all about helping the poor and oppressed, and if the secular government is doing it then the opinion would be "that's great, the government's doing the Lord's work!"
Okay, sure. But the question is over whether the government helping the poor is better or worse than the government not helping the poor.
The attitude of some US Christians appears to be that it's worse for the government to be helping, because that's "forcing" people (via taxes) to give their money to the poor, and it's more important in the minds of these Christians that people aren't "forced" to help the poor than it is important that the poor will be helped.
So for a given government social program that is helping the poor: I will look at it and say "That's wonderful! The poor are being helped! This is great! Let's celebrate!", whereas a lot of US Christians will look at the same program and say something along the lines of "This is terrible! The government is forcing us to help the poor! This program needs to be abolished!". Their reaction simply blows my mind.
So I'm thinking... "um, do these people hate the poor that badly?" And the answer seems to be that no, they don't hate the poor, per se. They're just completely and utterly obsessed with the idea that it not be the government which helps the poor.
They like the idea of the poor getting help through private charities.
But they hate the idea of the government "forcing" the poor to be helped, and they hate it so badly that they are apparently often prepared to shutdown all such government programs even if it means that some poor people die as a result. Again, that simply blows my mind.
I also don't see any kind of mandate for that in the bible. There's no 11th commandment of "thou shalt not let the government help the poor". There's no huge corpus of biblical teaching about how taxes are terrible and should not exist and should absolutely not be spent by the government to help the poor. But there's a lot of biblical teaching telling people to help the poor and doing everything up to and including threatening them with hell if they don't help the poor (eg Matt 25).
There's just not a great deal of discussion in the bible that analyses extensively how to help the poor. The entire distinction between voluntary and involuntary giving projected onto modern governments, just strikes me as entirely made-up.
Not quite sure what you're getting at here.
If you mean "you should still be able to feed your own family", then any modern government welfare system will ensure that people aren't taxed so much that they can't afford to feed their families.
Taxes that were so harsh that people couldn't afford to feed their families were however a problem in Jesus' day. Yet he doesn't seem to have advocated a policy of tax avoidance (as some other revolutionary groups did in his day). What little he is recorded as mentioning it is along the lines of "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" which would seem to imply people should pay taxes.
It's understandable that the government wants policies that make society the best for everyone as much as possible. Insofar as those policies involve things like helping the poor, Christians should be jumping for joy because that's what the bible commands, so with every tax dollar paid they are doing God's will.
It's those few Christians who are opposed to the government's helping of the poor that I find so difficult to explain. This seems to be predominantly an American phenomena, and I presume its historical origins must lie in the Moral Majority movement, in which various less-than-scrupulous political operators successfully fused anti-abortion and pro-segregationist sentiment with economic policies that favored the rich, giving the modern religious-right Republican party that supports the rich on economic policy and supports conservative religious stances on social issues. That hypothesis would suggest the connection between conservative Christianity and being anti-poor originated in the US around the period 1940-1970. (Sam, do you have any comment on what you think the historical origins of this kind of sentiment within conservative Christianity in the US were?)
No one on the right AFAICT was ever anti-poor. It wasn't until the priorities of the left's welfare plans became screwed up that Christians began having a problem with their distribution.That's what
- She
Without a clear-cut definition of sin, morality becomes a mere argument over the best way to train animals
- Manya the Holy Szin (The Quintara Marathon)
I may not be as old as dirt, but me and dirt are starting to have an awful lot in common
- Stephen R. Donaldson
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Originally posted by Sam View PostGiven that the whole point of the ACA is to make health insurance more affordable and given that a very small percentage of the population is buying insurance at full cost in the non-group market, I'm not sure why that would be relevant.That's what
- She
Without a clear-cut definition of sin, morality becomes a mere argument over the best way to train animals
- Manya the Holy Szin (The Quintara Marathon)
I may not be as old as dirt, but me and dirt are starting to have an awful lot in common
- Stephen R. Donaldson
Comment
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Originally posted by Bill the Cat View PostBecause if I am only paying 20-25% of what everyone else is paying, I can assure you I'd be a happy camper. Imagine you and Joe to your right go into a car dealership. You both buy the identical car, having similar driving needs. Because you make more money than Joe, you pay $15K for the car. Joe, who is less fortunate than you financially, only pays 4K for his car and the taxpayers of the country pay the rest. How is that at all making you happy? I can guarantee Joe is happy. Someone else paid for most of the cost, but only HE owns it."I wonder about the trees. / Why do we wish to bear / Forever the noise of these / More than another noise / So close to our dwelling place?" — Robert Frost, "The Sound of Trees"
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Originally posted by Sam View PostSo what's the criticism here? That the Affordable Care Act makes health insurance more affordable?That's what
- She
Without a clear-cut definition of sin, morality becomes a mere argument over the best way to train animals
- Manya the Holy Szin (The Quintara Marathon)
I may not be as old as dirt, but me and dirt are starting to have an awful lot in common
- Stephen R. Donaldson
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