A thread about healthcare and debt and stuff

Ah, but I did. I created a thread for exactly this sort of thing. And when will brought up the auto bailouts in here (which was barely on topic to begin with), I pointed him back to that thread three different times; each time he refused to move it over there.

That said, it's pretty clear this all belongs there, whether will admits it or not, so if he replies again I'll move the posts over. Sorry if they got in the way of the real topic; I'm certainly no less annoyed with it than you.

It was brought up because it was a direct response to a comment made in this thread and. check it out, it was very, very brief. Yoda's reply was much longer. I didn't hijack the thread all by myself, and that is arguable, as the discussion was directly connected to what was being discussed, government should not invest in alternative energy sources because government is not competent to do any investing at all, no exceptions, and the private sector can do a better job of solving those kind of problems.

And check out his replies. Except when I posted an article his are much longer than mine. The last one I posted on the previous page was a general reply because if I tried to answer every point I would have been writing a book.

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Here's what I said:

"Yeah, fusion was just some random example. Take your pick on that front; it can be tricky to find an alternative energy source the government hasn't flung some money at at some point. Which is kind of horrifying because it means, if any of them end up being "the" alternative, we'll have definitely spent tons of money crowding out its growth by funding all the others. The whole process is pretty sloppy and more than a little frantic, and I think savvy businesses are taking advantage of it. Just look at ethanol for a textbook example of how screwed up government can make energy issues."

The absolutes you think you heard ("government is not competent to do any investing at all, no exceptions") are conspicuously absent. I don't know what the length of the replies has to do with it, either. But let's not play dumb: repeating a previously (and heavily) disputed claim is inviting another dispute.

Regardless of the question of whether or not the initial foray was on topic, it was clearly off topic from that point forward, after which I repeatedly referred you back to the more appropriate thread, to no avail.

And why is this on me, if I reply? I reply to where the post is. If you want to move this discussion then do so, but my reply won't be any more off topic than it is now. I will wait to see if you move it, if not I will post here because it doesn't make much sense to repond in another thread if the previous posts are in this thread.

There. Moved.

It's on you because you brought it up. I said absolutely nothing about the auto bailout, and I also didn't say anything that was contradicted by the alleged success of the auto bailout. I listed examples of government mistakes in energy policy; I didn't make an absolute statement about their inability to ever do anything right, thus your counterexample of the auto bailout, even if I accept it as a success, does nothing to reply to that.

There's also basic common sense; as I said before, it's not believable that you assumed you could list a highly disputed counterexample and not spark the same discussion. Which is exactly what happened, as I ended up asking you duplicate questions over and over, while you continued to maintain the idea that we were having some sort of new discussion, rather than the same one over again.

Replying to "where the post is" is fine. But it serves no purpose if your reply is just going to hit a big "reset" button on a conversation we've already had elsewhere.

You didn't quote what I was responding to. It was this:

Yeah, the whole "green jobs" thing is kind of absurd on its face. If the market could bear these jobs, we wouldn't need government intervention in the first place. And if the market can't bear them out and some sort of incentive (or compulsion) is involved, then those jobs will probably only be around as long as the incentive or compulsion is in place.

My comment which was very brief, was a logical reaction to your usual government shouldn't interfere with the market. You were the one that turned the discussion into a marathon with your super long responses.

And like I said before, your comments in other threads had nothing to do with if the bailout succeeded in saving the domestic auto industry, it was about unions got a sweetheart deal, government shouldn't interfere with the marketplace, and the rest, non of which was relevant to if the bailout was successful for the reason it was done in the first place. It has become clear to me you are completely incapable of objectively analyzing the results of anything you dislike ideologically. If you are ideologically disposed to something, you will give the results a positive spin even if the spin is arguable and will do just the opposite as was the case with the bailout, making comments like it was temporarily successful, but will eventually fail when you have zero evidence toi support that argument.

That seventy dollars you keep citing is very misleading. Apparently you only read the Heritage Foundation. I coulld cite a link that explains why, but what would be the point? You are just going to ignore it and spin it the way you like because you hate unions. And you can call it favoritism all you want, it is still your ideology talking. And in this discussion you have been not arguing facts, as I said before, it is only ideology. And those labor costs it turns out are only ten percent of the cost of the car.

And are you really ignorant that even prior to the bailout, the year before, the unions that you hate so much had already made major concessions to get pension costs down?

That was from 2009, and I don't see how your response is any more relevant to this than it was to the other thing. And anecdotally at least, this paragraph has been completely vindicated in the years since, as well; we've seen numerous "green" government-backed projects and companies go belly up. Solyndra is a downright scandal, another (whose name escapes me) went under a month or two later, and the Chevy Volt has had to cease production because of horrendous sales.

The logic, while perhaps not absolute, is quite sound: if these things were viable business strategies, government wouldn't have to compel them.

Er, sorry, but I didn't blame you for the length of the discussions, I said they were off topic. If I write long posts, it's because most of your posts consist of giant laundry lists of claims. If you stop cramming your posts with assertions (most of which I find dubious), you won't get such long replies. Asking and answering direct questions would help keep them shorter. Otherwise I have to respond to every new claim you make while reminding you to answer all the questions you skipped over. They get longer because that second list grows throughout the discussion.

I've replied to all this already. It's bizarre to complain that my arguments--which are all about why the bailout is not a success--have nothing to do with how it's a success. Of course they aren't; because I don't think it was. Sorry if this is inconvenient, but complaining about it is basically just complaining about the fact that someone disagrees with you.

Let's try this: true or false? Political favoritism is a perfectly valid reason to dislike a government policy. True or false? It's reasonable to not like it when your government gambles with your money. True or false? Government interventions into markets can set precedent that effect future behavior. True or false? None of the previous three statements are restricted to people who have a free market ideology.

Except for all the, you know, evidence I keep presenting, your response to which is to tell me that I have no evidence, I guess.

You're spending way too much time trying to summarize the argument, and way too little actually having it. You say you want to "analyze the results," but you don't seem too keen on it when it actually happens.

Er, no, I didn't get it from the Heritage Foundation (though, let me guess: you don't have to listen to anything they say because...because...ideology!), actually. I saw it in several places while I was learning about the issue. One of them being the New York Times, whose only defense seems to be that it isn't all wages, and that some of it goes to retirees. Which doesn't refute anything, since the entire point is about the total costs paid to unions as a whole. Trying to say retiree benefits shouldn't count, for example, is ridiculous, because by that logic the compensation never gets counted because current workers are always paying for the retired ones.

Trying to make a sharp distinction between benefits and wages--even though both are compensation--is a very common rhetorical sleight of hand that often crops up in most discussions about union costs.

Uh, you know who else calls it favoritism? The Economist source you keep treating as the fifth Gospel of the Bailout. Would picking and choosing which parts of their op-ed you find reliable qualify as "spin" or "ideology"?

It's kind of perplexing why you think this is either a) true or b) relevant. It's not true because things like political favoritism have nothing to do with ideology; all major political ideologies hate it. And not relevant because I could be an absolute crazy person and it wouldn't prevent you from explaining why the specific things I was saying were true or false.

I don't know what you think ideology is, but it isn't just raw, untethered belief floating around our minds. It is, almost invariably, a set of beliefs based on observation and deduction. If you ask me why I generally tout free markets, I can give you reasons and evidence to explain my position. Underneath ideology (ideally, at least), you just find facts and interpretations which can be disputed and analyzed like anything else.

So even if you want to assume I'm some rampant idealogue, nothing about that should stop you from engaging the issue. Unless, of course, trying to handwave the entire thing away by calling it "ideology" is just a convenient way to avoid having to do that.

Which is about $800, which is more than enough to explain GM's problems: they sold over 9 million cars the year before the bailout. Some quick math shows that's well over $7 billion a year. Their losses that year were $4.4 billion. See?

Nope, I'm well aware. But even that was only the "job banks" program. And by then, the companies were already doomed. Remember, the discussion started off being about the bailout, and it branched off into why the bailout was necessary, and the massive pension costs leading up to it are a huge part of it. Perhaps if the union had made this sort of concession much, much earlier, it would have saved the companies, but we'll never know, because they didn't.

Quote:
Originally Posted by will.15
And like I said before, your comments in other threads had nothing to do with if the bailout succeeded in saving the domestic auto industry, it was about unions got a sweetheart deal, government shouldn't interfere with the marketplace, and the rest, non of which was relevant to if the bailout was successful for the reason it was done in the first place.

I've replied to all this already. It's bizarre to complain that my arguments--which are all about why the bailout is not a success--have nothing to do with how it's a success. Of course they aren't; because I don't think it was. Sorry if this is inconvenient, but complaining about it is basically just complaining about the fact that someone disagrees with you.

Let's try this: true or false? Political favoritism is a perfectly valid reason to dislike a government policy. True or false? It's reasonable to not like it when your government gambles with your money. True or false? Government interventions into markets can set precedent that effect future behavior. True or false? None of the previous three statements are restricted to people who have a free market ideology.

Your arguments are not why the bailout wasn't a success. It is why you don't like it was done in the first place. Like I said before you are arguing ideology entirely, not facts. Let us rephrase your arguments so it is clearer: 1) Government shouldn't be making deals that benefit unions; 2) Government shouldn't be using our money to benefit one industry over another; 3) Government shouldn't interfere with the marketplace. There is nothing wrong in you believing that, but none of that is facts, they are ideological arguments divorced from showing why it is bad. They are bad to you for those reasons alone, just as rape is bad or running against a red light is.

Originally Posted by will.15
And are you really ignorant that even prior to the bailout, the year before, the unions that you hate so much had already made major concessions to get pension costs down?
Nope, I'm well aware. But even that was only the "job banks" program.

No, it wasn't. They also agreed to a two tiered wage system.

You're trying to make a distinction that does not exist. We seemed to agree earlier that, for something to be a success, it has to achieve its goals, it has to have meaningful goals to begin with, and it has to be a good option in light of the other options available. So when I argue that we had better options and it wasn't necessary, that's an argument about its success. And when I argue that it should have been done without showing overt political favoritism, that too is an argument about its success.

The idea that whether or not it should have been done at all is somehow outside of the topic of whether or not it was a success is bizarre. That'd be like me telling you the Iraq War was a "success" just because we did, in fact, topple Saddam Hussein. And every time you tried to talk about all the difficulties afterwards or why it wasn't necessary to start with, I brushed it off because those were not arguments about whether or not it was a success. But that'd be ridiculous, wouldn't it?

I'm arguing both, and you're making distinctions between the two that don't necessarily exist.

Great idea. Here we go! Just make sure not to rephrase them in a way that changes the meaning...

...and already we're off to a bad start. Government shouldn't be making deals that show blatant political favoritism; that's not the same thing as saying they shouldn't ever do anything which happens to benefit unions.

Pretty much. There might be some small exceptions but generally speaking, I believe this.

This might be too broad, depending on how you define "interfere." But I mostly agree with it.

Uh, the three you listed are ideological arguments (though, again, that doesn't mean they aren't arguments about facts, or that they're not valid arguments), but then, you simply chose not to list the other arguments. For example, you left out 4) political favoritism is bad and 5) government should not be gambling with billions of dollars.. And, depending on how tortured the idea of "ideology" is, perhaps 6) it sets bad precedents to circumvent the bankruptcy process and bail out a failed business who lobbied hard for it. EDIT: And 7) it screws over legitimate creditors who had a claim on the company, including those who purchased the so-called secured debt.

So, your summary of my views seems to demonstrate that when you leave out the fact-based arguments, there aren't any fact-based arguments left. Fascinating.

Absolutely not. Rape is self-evidently bad. If someone does not have the sense to see that, then they are a moral idiot and not someone I have enough common ground to even discuss the issue with. If I thought supporting the auto bailout were a mistake of a similarly fundamental nature, I wouldn't bother arguing with you about it.

I do not think bailouts are self-evidently bad. I think people who share many of my beliefs can easily and honestly come to support them. That's why I think it's worth arguing about: because I don't think you actually like political favoritism, and I don't think you actually believe it's invalid to dislike the government gambling with taxpayer money. That's why I tried to cut through all this by asking direct questions (absolutely none of which were answered):

"true or false? Political favoritism is a perfectly valid reason to dislike a government policy. True or false? It's reasonable to not like it when your government gambles with your money. True or false? Government interventions into markets can set precedent that effect future behavior. True or false? None of the previous three statements are restricted to people who have a free market ideology."

You're right, I forgot about that. Lucky for me all the rest of the post still applies.

I an not going to apply to all that all at once anymore. Too time consuming. I'll take it a little at a time and pick my shots. There is so much there that is so wrong. And much of it is repetitive. I will respond to some of the rest of it when I am in the mood.

As always, the degree to which it's repetitive is a direct reflection of how often you repeat things I've already addressed and which were never answered or incorporated.

If you must continue to pick and choose what to respond to, I'd urge you to prioritize them this way:

1) The True-or-False questions at the end of post #152.
2) The first two paragraphs in post #152.
3) The rest.

..........don't even get me started.

The problem with the medical industry is just that, it's an industry. Rendering the means to sustain life to a privilege based on economic status is counter to any civilized society's ethical fabric. Reducing human life itself to cost-effective, profit based system only serves to resolve the value of life to dollars and cents.

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...uh the post is up there...

No, that's the problem with reality. Cost is a way of representing resources, which we have a limited amount of in all conceptions of reality, capitalist, socialist, communist, whatever. We have a limited amount of medical technology, manpower, time, expertise, etc. Cost has to be grappled with no matter what; you just call it something different without money. Like rationing. That's cost-effectiveness under a different name, but it's the exact same principle.

To say this is "counter to any civilized society's ethical fabric" is to say that there's never been any such thing as a civilized society, and never will be. And perhaps that's what you think. But that's the famous argument for capitalism, after all: that it's the worst system except all the others. It only fails to measure up if you compare it to some utopian notion, rather than the actual alternatives.

Hey, remember all that flack Romney got for saying (except he didn't really say it) "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt"? Well, it just went bankrupt anyway.

Also, inb4 "but Detroit the city is different than the auto industry!" Yeah, I know, but it clearly puts the lie to the idea that the town could be "saved" and avoid the kinds of tough choices Romney and others said were inevitable.

This is yet another example of the sober political opinion based on economic reality being proven right in the end.