Obamacare, if implemented–which it will be if Obama wins–will devastate the small businesses that create 90% of American jobs. What we have now will get MUCH MUCH worse.
Public sector unions consist in one part of the government–the union members, and the leaders paid for by the dues they pay that come out of their checks which are paid by the taxpayers–negotiating with another part of the government, usually politicians who benefit from contributions from these unions. Both sides have every interest in inflating the wages of the union members, and virtually no accountability other than public outrage at constantly increasing benefits and wages at far greater than the rate of inflation, which has been the consistent outcome over the last several decades.
Public sector unions suck money out of the private sector, with NO compensating increase in performance or benefit to the people at large. This is a necessary conclusion, given both that the money is taken in taxes, and that NO part of the negotiations involves any promise to perform. On the contrary: quite often unions work to protect the lazy, incompetent, and the dishonest.
Other than that it is convenient as an issue for Democrat politicians who benefit from this process, there is NO BENEFIT to public sector unions for the people at large. It helps 10% of the population, and hurts 90%, which is about par for most Democrat policies.
To be clear, PRIVATE sector unions at least negotiate with people who are not on the same side as them, and who are spending THEIR OWN money. I will reiterate my views on private sector unions, which follow Barry Goldwater’s ideas in “Conscience of a Conservative”:
1) They must exist in relation to one company only, and as a general rule should only be formed when there are actual grievances. Given the extent of government regulation, such as OSHA, very few reasons exist to form unions any more other than to facilitate extortion, which backfires over time, as Detroit–and the northeast generally–will readily attest in a mute way if you drive though it.
2) Membership must be voluntary. Most people would rather work for less than be paid nothing, which is the result of layoffs that attend overly aggressive union representatives emboldened by the fact that THEY can’t be fired. Most uninsured people live in Closed Shop/No Choice States, where unions are allowed BY LAW to require union membership. Even if members hate their unions, and would gladly work for 25% less, they are not ALLOWED to. Such States bow to the Unions by requiring a linkage between EITHER an employer or a Union and the ability to buy health insurance. Everyone in every State should be able to buy health insurance directly from the insurer. The Unions can be relied on to oppose this, since it reduces the advantages they offer their members.
3) Unions should not be able to make political contributions. As things stand, as I understand it, both public and private sector unions are tax exempt, yet they can make political contributions. The way things were, corporations–which make ALL the money that unions and government rely on–were not allowed to form PAC’S, and yet had to surrender 25% or more of their profits to the government, AFTER they paid the unions, where applicable. It is small wonder that the left screamed bloody murder about that decision, since corporations are now more or less on an open playing field with the unions.
I would change the law, though. I think anyone who pays taxes should be unlimited in their ability to make contributions, but I think that it is unfair both that unions and corporations spend money on candidates their employees/members may not agree with. It dilutes the power of democracy. Therefore, I think BOTH unions and corporations should be banned from making political contributions, but that corporations should be TAX EXEMPT too. All taxes should be income, excise, and sales taxes. Obviously, income taxes will go up, but so will incomes, since all that money now being paid to the government can be either reinvested, or used to increase incomes.
When a dollar of profit hits a corporation, it is double taxes. It is taxed when it is accrued as a profit, then it is taxed again when it is paid out in a salary or wage. Most people don’t know the basics of how things work, and fail to even want to try and learn.
And to pretend that social programs do much to alleviate such suffering is ridiculous, and to pretend that we have the money to expand such programs is also ridiculous. What the poor need are well paying jobs. Anything that moves the national economy away from well paying jobs hurts them.
Obama’s policies plainly benefit a few at the expense of the many. They help Democrats running for office in States where his pork barrel policies helped them temporarily appear to be able pay their bills.
They help highway contractors who are paid to fix non-existent problems.
They help government bureaucrats, such as the 16,000 agents they plan to hire to suck every last penny they can out of the American private sector.
They help Wall Street, not least because he has no intention of ever allowing the Fed to be audited, and the root cause of our economic problems–theft through inflation–to be addressed. He also has no intention of ever abolishing Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, both of whom were big campaign contributors, and the former director of one of which is now part of his anti-rationalist team.
We are suffering through the worst economic recovery since WW2, and you know who is likely hurting most of all? Single mothers.
Single mothers are hurt worst by Obama’s policies, which are systematically undermining the private sector, the middle class in particular, and WOMEN.
All you need to do to understand leftist objectives is figure out what they are accusing their ideological enemies of and apply it to them.
First, it seems to me that this method will put far more money into active circulation that the previous two rounds of Quantitative Easing, and is thus FAR more likely to lead to short and medium term price inflation. I did not predict it before, but I predict it now. We will see price increases starting in 3 to 6 months, if this continues. Not hyperinflation, hopefully, but steady decreases in our buying power, which are the result of give-aways to trillion dollar banks.
Previously, Bernanke took government bonds off the hands of major investment banks. Whether they invested it or not was up to them, and given our lack of inflation, they either put that money somewhere else, or are sitting on it.
Now, they will be effectively doing what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did, which is buy up mortgage backed securities, many of which are likely unvalue-able–whose true value is impossible to determine–and which for that reason are not otherwise moving. Basically, the Fed is likely just using its power to create money to fluff up the balance sheets of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and others. This will however create an immediate incentive to create MORE mortgage backed securities, and in effect amounts to a guarantee that all such securities created in the next few months will be purchased, particularly if the bank in question is plugged in politically to the core elite making the buying decisions.
Secondly, and perhaps more interestingly–less obviously–I think this amounts to a decision by the Fed to do what it can over the next two months to improve the economy, and thus is a tacit endorsement of Obama. The action is being taken now because any capable mind can readily see how easily it will be to blame the murder of Christopher Stevens and the three others on Obama’s foreign policy. After all, we helped topple Gaddafi’s regime, in an undeclared war, without the support of Congress, and more or less under the command of the UN. At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, that attack would have not have happened under Gaddafi’s regime. He decided to stay home and play dress-up after Reagan made him crap his pants back in the 1980’s, in a paradigmatically effective use of power projection.
It is a reliable article of Democrat propaganda that they stand up to the power elite, in the name of the “common man”. If it was ever true, it no longer is. Obama took a LOT of money from Wall Street, which more or less wrote his Wall Street “Reform” act. That act will HELP Wall Street; it will not hinder its excesses in the slightest, and in fact guarantees government bailouts, as I understand it.
Romney is a politician, which means he goes whichever way the wind blows. Right now, the wind is blowing in the direction of auditing the Fed. The main opponent right now is Harry Reid, and the Democrat majority. Behind them stands Obama, who can be counted on also to veto the bill since he depends on Fed member banks for his campaign cash.
Romney is not as reliable an ally as Obama. He is a Republican, and as such has to respond to the Republican base, which is drifting steadily rightward (might I coin the term “reasonward”).
Bernanke had been sitting on his hands. One to two days after the attacks, he announced a policy very much to the liking of those who stand to benefit from the largesse of the power elite.
I will remind people that the Federal Reserve Act was sponsored by a Democrat, and signed into law by a Democrat, after having failed as a Republican sponsored law. When the Republicans called for it, they were seen, accurately, as standing for the interests of the big banks alone, and against the interests of ordinary Americans. So these people just bought a Democrat, passed virtually an identical law, and achieved propagandistic superiority. For this reason, it is easily argued that the more favorable party for the very people that rank and file Democrats think they are opposing have their interests served BEST by Democrats.
These are the sorts of outcomes that happen when you don’t read the fine print, when you don’t retain the habit of critical examination and rational house-cleaning (sweeping up the errors, mopping up the fallacies), and instead rely on assumptions and propaganda designed to lull you to sleep.
The difference is CONSEQUENCE. In a comedy, things turn out more or less alright, despite the vanity, stupidity, cupidity, and shortsightedness of the protagonists. In a tragedy, it all goes to shit.
We live in a comedic age, which in having forgotten history, has forgotten how quickly comfortable lives can become miserable.
In philosophy, broadly understood (which here could easily also mean both psychology and sociology), introspection can yield useful information, since the subject of action–the human affective domain–is coterminous with the subject doing the introspecting, with the salient question being the extent of congruence between that person’s affective environment, and that of others.
This is a reasonable discussion, although I do not share the
materialistic bias of both, as in my view since the proof of
non-locality it has been impossible to justify a view in which things
simply are where they are, and not somewhere else. It is a source of
on-going interest to me how many leading academics continue to hawk 19th
century physical models. I will give you the end of the story:
Einstein failed. His version of mechanistic physics was disproven.
In
my own moral system I question both the possibility and desirability of
final answers to moral questions, such as “is homosexuality wrong?” I
posit that proper answers to moral questions are local (contextualized) ,
necessary (no need to render a decision on homosexuality absent a need
to render a specific decision) , and imperfect. The quest for the
exact, mathematically correct answer is inappropriate in a non-linear
system, which is what human behavior is.
I posted the other day
that “philosophy is what we do on the way to something else”, and what I
intended was that as I grow in what I will call my understanding it
increasingly seems to me that the point of reason is not intellectual
clarity, but a subjectively pleasant emotional state. Mr. Krause, for
example, feels a sense of satisfaction in the sense of order his very
pleasant but static system creates.
I say static, since if we are
not different in principle than rocks, then life is an illusion. Free
will is an illusion. Nothing CHOOSES anything. There are no random
events in the world. Nothing MOVES but rather is moved.
Quantum
physics, of course, posits constantly randomness, but no orthodox
materialists that I have debated really want to deal with the
implications of the theory, although certainly some very bright men,
like Richard Feynman, both understood the details and refused to examine
the implications.
These rough topics are near and dear to my
heart, since in the end, our ability to succeed as a human race is going
to require dealing EMOTIONALLY with the results of our ontology, which
for the scientistic is clear beyond doubt, and amenable to coherent
analysis as something OUT THERE, which I do not think it is.
I posted this the other day: http://www.moderatesunited.blogspot.com/2012/09/vulgaron.html
I
came up with the word “vulgaron”, which is one unit of vulgarity.
Logically, if scientism is correct that all observable phenomena are
measurable, one ought to be able to measure vulgarity, correct? But
will not one hundred people rate things each a bit differently? And is
this process made precise through statistics? Of course not, it is
formally complex, and the result of mutable subjectivity.
And to
the point, the worth of our lives is the worth of our emotional lives,
and it seems clear to me that the scientistic impulse Acts To, in a
Hayekian sense, reduce our trust in our own emotions, our spontaneity,
and thus many of the most simple joys in life.
Obviously science
builds things, but looking around, at oceans of “Fifty Shades of Grey”
being sold to housewives, the prevalance of torture porn and zombie
parades, the rates of anti-depressant use, can people really say we are
on the way, now, to building a better society:? I don’t see it, and the
core problem is the neglect of philosophy, which in my view links one
emotional state with another. That is its primary purpose.
When Democrats talk of “cost control” what they are talking about is
healthcare rationing. Why does America have the best and most
specialists in the world? Because we PAY for them. With regard to the
insurance industry, what do you think will act more effectively to cost
cutting: free market competition, or really, really sincere bureaucrats
who promise really, really hard that they won’t hire extra people to
build their budgets, offer wage increases unrelated to market realities,
or let their workers unionize. Wait, that last one is already a fait
accompli.
We need more competition, both between health CARE providers and health
INSURANCE providers, which some of you seem not to realize are two
different groups.
83% of doctors have thought about quitting because of Obamcare, at a time when we need MORE doctors.
KFC estimates it franchisees will see their profits cut in HALF by
Obamacare, and it is easy to generalize to SMALL business in general
that this law will be DEVASTATING. It is a cost increase with no
corresponding benefit to the business, which will, yes, hurt business
owners, but when they close their doors, are any of you so stupid as not
to realize that MASS unemployment will be the result?
All you have to do to decipher the truth where leftists like Obama are
concerned is take their statements and invert them: he intends war on
the middle class, a war on women (whose struggles to survive are already
much harder than those of the average man), a war on small business, and generalized decreases in access to healthcare, at inflated costs.
It seems to me that many political views are like this, particularly on the Left. The whole project has been oriented around quality control, which here means homogenization, and the availability of outrage when it is politically useful. Large segments of our population have not had an original, individual, personal perception in their entire lives, and since they spend all their time with ideological others, they don’t realize this. Their beliefs are just background, assumed, and never examined.
I like to fuck with people like that, and they don’t like it, not one bit. It’s not my job to bring peace to the complacently and arrogantly wrong. A sword: yes, a sharp, really fast one, to separate quickly vanity from fact, reason from illusion, assumption from truth.
Of course I’m not changing minds, in general, although I have won a few converts. It is to show the morally and mentally alive how easy it is. Upon such people our world depends.
This got me to thinking about Boddhisattvas, the enlightened ones who keep coming back. What must that be like? You are a general, trying to combat darkness, so you develop a battle plan that might involve 100,000 lives. Ponder that for a moment.
We know so little, yet we think we know so much. The arrogance of this modern age is horrifying. It is death, death, death.