If Mort Divine ruled the world

[Dak]

Come on guys, Mort would never work there. Don't you know the difference between collectively run businesses and asking the asparagus for consent?

Now that was funny.

 

[rms]

https://twitter.com/jemelehill/status/1003731459650318337?ref_src=twsrc^tfw


"the average IQ of a black person is 20 points lower than that of a white person"

"well...I went to havard"

LOL guess she didnt learn basic statistics at harvard

(oops)

 

[Dak]

I think it's 15, not 20. But of course a lot of those persons she interviewed are draggin' down the "white man's" average!

 

[Einherjar86]

Pretty sure this forum drags down the white man's average way more than any individual person she interviewed.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

I'd bet that even the 10th percentile on this forum is at least average by national standards.

 

[Dak]

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/TRSUM/index.html

Table 4. KEY DATES FOR THE TRUST FUNDS
OASI DI OASDI HI
Year trust funds are depleted 2034 2032 2034 2026

Medicare part A/B projected bankruptcy in only eight years, Social Security in sixteen years, at current funding levels.

 

[viewerfromnihil]

What a surprise. It's only been an obvious problem that's been kicked down the road for the last 15 years, with only expansions without tax increases being heaped upon it. Here's to the dumb ass paper-white decrepit who will pass a few years sooner thanks in no small part to the way they vote.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

More like 30 years (or since their inception, really). SS and medicare saw frequent tax hikes up until the 80s when Reagan took the tax out of tax & spend, but any welfare model dependent on unending population growth has problems. I don't think that access to either has been shown to significantly prolong life in any case. iirc something like a quarter of medicare spending occurs in the last few days of life for the elderly.

EDIT: Apparently it's a quarter in the last year of life, though Google is telling me there's some debate over the figures.

 

[Dak]

What a surprise. It's only been an obvious problem that's been kicked down the road for the last 15 years, with only expansions without tax increases being heaped upon it. Here's to the dumb ass paper-white decrepit who will pass a few years sooner thanks in no small part to the way they vote.

The problem, ignoring issues with the programs themselves, is inflation. The money put in 20 years ago, at the *official* inflation numbers (underestimated), is devalued 50%. At 40 years? 99.99%. The money the retirees put in the first few working years literally didn't even matter (for their retirement). These programs were sold as contributory accounts and became transfer payments. An aging population with lifespans extended via expensive procedures rather than better health was doomed to doom the programs. Good riddance. But no, we will get saddled with radically increased taxes (via payroll taxes, which further disincentives working or hiring). Rob Peter to pay Paul in the name of *progress*.

 

[viewerfromnihil]

More like 30 years (or since their inception, really). SS and medicare saw frequent tax hikes up until the 80s when Reagan took the tax out of tax & spend, but any welfare model dependent on unending population growth has problems. I don't think that access to either has been shown to significantly prolong life in any case. iirc something like a quarter of medicare spending occurs in the last few days of life for the elderly.

EDIT: Apparently it's a quarter in the last year of life, though Google is telling me there's some debate over the figures.

Everything is doomed to fail from its inception, but fatalism doesn't translate well into policy. But yeah, no question that a lot of money spent on Medicare is essentially wasted, in no small part due to the cost of procedures. I'm not sure why PCPs and gerontologists aren't sufficiently trained in end of life counseling. I get the fact that their job is typically to keep people alive and healthy, but death is also a natural and, in the context of humanity, healthy thing. Most elderly I've discussed this with always say they don't want to die in a hospital bed, but then most do.

The problem, ignoring issues with the programs themselves, is inflation. The money put in 20 years ago, at the *official* inflation numbers (underestimated), is devalued 50%. At 40 years? 99.99%. The money the retirees put in the first few working years literally didn't even matter (for their retirement). These programs were sold as contributory accounts and became transfer payments. An aging population with lifespans extended via expensive procedures rather than better health was doomed to doom the programs. Good riddance. But no, we will get saddled with radically increased taxes (via payroll taxes, which further disincentives working or hiring). Rob Peter to pay Paul in the name of *progress*.

Yes, we all know the programs were falsely advertised. They're really more like pension programs. The problems with these programs aren't irremediable though. The problem is, is that to properly fix them, we need broad-based policy reform and not just higher taxes, and the only thing Congress can do nowadays is cut taxes, and then brag about it like it was a great policy achievement that totally won't explode the deficit.

 

[Dak]

Yes, we all know the programs were falsely advertised. They're really more like pension programs. The problems with these programs aren't irremediable though. The problem is, is that to properly fix them, we need broad-based policy reform and not just higher taxes, and the only thing Congress can do nowadays is cut taxes, and then brag about it like it was a great policy achievement that totally won't explode the deficit.

Well I would qualify your statement about irremediability with the point that they aren't realistically remediable. I don't know what "broad-based policy reform" means. A monetary policy change? A tax policy change? Price Controls? Program changes? Healthcare tech/drug approval changes? Etc.? All of the above? Any one of these points have democratic headwinds, special interest headwinds, and economic reality headwinds to move against. Buzzwords aren't magic, and neither are policies.

In other news:

https://www.vox.com/2018/6/7/17426968/white-racism-welfare-cuts-snap-food-stamps

tl;dr: White people regardless of party affiliation show decreased support for welfare when non-whites are significant recipients. No mention of what studies/analyses are missing.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Another possible approach is to just reduce the salience of racial issues in national campaigns, perhaps by nominating nonwhite candidates who can afford to spend less time professing their commitment to anti-racist causes (thereby enabling the courting of both nonwhite voters and white voters harboring racial resentments).

Not sure how this reconciles with other claims that poor white people didn't vote for Obama because he's black, but this is why I think Tulsi Gabbard is probably the best shot the Dems have in 2020.

 

[viewerfromnihil]

Well I would qualify your statement about irremediability with the point that they aren't realistically remediable. I don't know what "broad-based policy reform" means. A monetary policy change? A tax policy change? Price Controls? Program changes? Healthcare tech/drug approval changes? Etc.? All of the above? Any one of these points have democratic headwinds, special interest headwinds, and economic reality headwinds to move against. Buzzwords aren't magic, and neither are policies.

They're realistically remediable when you're not coming from a perspective that says, "It will just fail anyways, and, if not, it will be a waste of money that ultimately disincentivizes implementing the real solution of personal responsibility, which then will just cause it to fail at a later date." In the end, all of these recipients will die, yes.

I said "broad-based policy reform" because I was on my way to work and didn't have time to get into the weeds, and probably wouldn't have felt like it if I did have the time. Regarding both, yes, a tax policy change, namely one which eliminates the maximum taxable income. Regarding SS, dropping the facade of it being some sort of personal benefits account by eliminating the differentiation of out-payments based upon life-long contribution to something more standard relating to geographical cost of living. I see what you're getting at by monetary policy change, but I don't see that as a realistic option, considering the fact that our economic system is and always has been one driven by debt, not capital. Regarding Medicare, I'm not really interested in spelling out all of the possible options for potential new health care systems, and although I do support something along the lines of Medicare-for-all, I'm also not against the idea of a federal option, similar to the health care system in Germany. Yes, yes, I know, waiting lists. Make it easier for immigrants to come to the US to study medicine, make it easier for them to stay and gain citizenship when they complete their studies, and lower tuition costs at our universities (yes, more taxes) while offering stipends to students on the path to studying medicine. And price controls? Yes, but with something that actually takes into account costs, profits, and reinvestment. There's plenty of big pharma firms in the EU who survive comparable regulations and taxation.

I said broad-based policy reform in part because the factors contributing to these programs extend far beyond policies specifically related to the programs, our education system at the secondary and particularly the primary level being a glaring one.

Pie in the sky, I know it.

 

[The Ozzman]

Not sure how this reconciles with other claims that poor white people didn't vote for Obama because he's black, but this is why I think Tulsi Gabbard is probably the best shot the Dems have in 2020.

Heard Kamala Harris' name getting thrown around too tbh

 

[Dak]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/13/nyregion/new-york-citys-worst-landlord-it-might-be-the-city.html

Government provides terrible service, especially to the poor:

The New York City Housing Authority, the largest public housing system in the country, contains more than 400,000 tenants in 325 developments which are variously and dangerously falling apart. The city can rightly blame decades of disinvestment by the federal government for the general state of disrepair. But it is, itself, solely responsible for the culture of deception that evolved to conceal the many ways that the system has failed to protect residents from the hazards of living in old and badly maintained buildings.
.........
Beyond the tragic circumstances around lead, the investigation found that the housing authority had for years deployed all sorts of trickery to keep inspectors sent by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development from seeing how damaged its buildings really were and issuing violations. Water might get turned off before inspections to conceal the presence of leaks; holes might be plugged with newspaper and painted over to create the illusion that they had actually been fixed. Signs might be hung reading, “Danger: Do Not Enter,” to prevent inspectors from going into basement rooms where conditions were truly terrible.

Whose fault is this?

This might all seem quite shocking but really it is where neoliberalism takes us — when governments behave like free markets, when Darwinian economics prevail over the public good, those overseeing that good will inevitably be coaxed into adopting the worst habits of the private sector.

Damn it, the free market strikes again.

 

[Dak]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...carry-shooting-victim-20180523-story,amp.html

 

[rms]

lot of that landlord stuff going on here in buffalo.

http://buffalonews.com/2018/04/08/the-high-cost-of-low-income-housing-in-buffalo/

 

[HamburgerBoy]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/13/nyregion/new-york-citys-worst-landlord-it-might-be-the-city.html

Government provides terrible service, especially to the poor:

Whose fault is this?

Damn it, the free market strikes again.

lmao

If it's a thing that involves the transfer of money or a thing that exists within a society in which transfers of money occur, it's capitalism. Just look at Venezuela. State capitalism.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...carry-shooting-victim-20180523-story,amp.html

Have to wonder if it wasn't a good ole boy that shot the piece of shit, whether the shooter would have still gotten off charge-free. I didn't think Chicago protected lethal self-defense of property.

 

[Dak]

Have to wonder if it wasn't a good ole boy that shot the piece of shit, whether the shooter would have still gotten off charge-free. I didn't think Chicago protected lethal self-defense of property.

My favorite part was calling the 17yo who was committing GTA a "little boy". If his last words were indeed "sorry, bro", that just shows the deep cultural rot of a complete disregard for the concept of private property. "Oopsie".

 

[HamburgerBoy]

From what I can find, what the cop did was completely illegal by Chicago law, however. I'd rather see the cop shot than the carjacker tbh. Every police officer and government representative of that city should be lynched until they begin to respect their serfs. The sorry-brah carjackers can be hung from streetlamps after that.