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| Writing and reading is an app for change. |
To take some point of possible disagreement (a button someone else pushed for you ) and follow it through the rabbit hole to get at refereed, evidence-based information and knowledge resulting in a shared reality takes effort and bracketing what one already "knows" and believes. Difficult stuff, but sometimes worth trying if the issue is important to the parties.
So for the moment, subsequent to the prior post, the only one I think important for a brief introduction is socialism. (The Green New Deal is akin to this, but must remain separate so that we don't get too confused.) Further to my own experience, which I have related previously here with regard to socialized healthcare, let's take the bailout of US farmers, or most recently big business such as the airlines. Isn't subsidizing banks and airlines socialism? a form of state participation in ownership? The guy who holds the promissory note is the real owner. (You don't own your house, for example, if you have a loan against it.) And if the subsidy is not a loan, well that is the owner putting more capital into the business. (More capital by the way that does not come from the beneficiaries of the business, but that is another story the short version of which is big brother issues to a selected business for our collective benefit. Sounds like a more extreme form of socialism when considered in this way.)
Social Security: socialism in that the government pays me more than I put in for my retirement. I live on that, on the beneficence of the state, and if taken away, I am homeless and in this day/age unemployable. What to do? Keep Social Security. Don't mess with it. I like this socialism as do all those on the benefits side of the program.
Americans if covered by health insurance are subject to the whims of those who hold the purse open or closed for payment in time of needed care. The big brother insurance company holds your very life hostage to their ways of protecting and increasing profits to their owners/shareholders, not to mention their top executives.
The profit motive in the matter of health and medical care is inappropriate, 'cause health is the primary duty of life, and sometimes we all need some help. From where if not from big brothers? The Affordable Health Care Act is socialist measure that still protects the other big brother, insurance companies, as it asks those who can pay must. We have our cake and eat it too, but the taste for some causes some wince because of a label misapplied, socialism.
No, no. It is not the individual's choice to get sick and his or her responsibility to have acquired the resources necessary today to get well. Is there any one person you can think of who is justifiably "disabled" such that acquiring the resources to get well accident/illness strikes is just not in the cards, never was, and not in any way realistic? Deny reality to any degree and it might come back and bite you, and you'll have to go to the hospital for wincing or whatever sometime in your life. This is just a conjecture I admit, but in my experience true more often than not.
I believe America lives on bits and pieces of socialism and its cruel adversary, bad capitalism. Bad capitalism is the current state of our i-culture. Capitalism is bad when no money is left on the table for the next owner, and there is no room any longer for being a good corporate citizen, and, worse, not knowing the health and environmental effects of your new product or service before release to the consumer, or the world.
I invite refutation in whole or in part. Remember to bring refereed, evidence-based information and knowledge so that we can discuss in civil fashion with a view toward shared reality and the responsibilities we together will have to take with any of our future actions or policies. Decisive action and policies stick till consequence trickle down and are felt for good or bad, although money doesn't seem to down. Why is that?
