OT: End of forced Child Support

Then you've come to the wrong conclusion.

The diversion is by the people who want to cut things that are fractions of a percent of the budget, fighting cultural wars and wasting time, while leaving over 50% of the budget alone.

I'd say it's some kind of affliction; possibly an acute avoidance of some kind.

You've lost sight of the forest for the sake of a few saplings, Dan.

Meantime, I haven't heard a peep out of you about health care or defense -- the two enormous components of our budget. Do you just think they can be put off while we diddle around with PBS and Planned Parenthood?

Reply to
Ed Huntress
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Until we can do something about the Defense budget this is all rather academic.

And THAT will be a tough nut to crack. (Militarized nut?)

Reply to
CaveLamb

Simply look up the reason these organizations are tax exempt. They are providing a service, at least for their congregation, and in many cases they should be saving the government much more than the value of the taxes.

In my own circumstance I sought to find out if God is real and at the same time I was figuring out a way to kill the man my ex cheated on me with. I was going to take a six pack of beer, drain all the cans, fill up 4 of the cans with explosives, one can for the controls(microswitches and wiring), one can for batteries. I would set the six pack on the hood of his vehicle and arm it. When he got up the next morning he would see some of his buddies left a six pack on his hood, lift it up, activating a microswitch, and boom!

When I was serious enough to find God or risk life in prison, I found God. I experienced supernatural answers to prayer like I never imagined, almost every week I was seeing or experiencing miracles. My religion possibly saved a mans (a taxpayer!) life and kept his kids from being fatherless, how much $ did that save the government?

RogerN

Reply to
RogerN

They're tax-exempt because they're non-profit/charitable institutions, and because of court rulings concerning the government keeping its hands off of churches under the First Amendment. They don't even have to file tax returns However, since the mid-'50s (I think), many churches file for tax-exempt status under a revised tax code.

It's a complicated piece of tax law. Don't try it at home. d8-)

And that, Roger, is the primary basis for my acceptance of organized religion. You're not the only one I know who is not in prison, and who is living a useful life, because he got religion.

Keep it up. Just don't lay it on the rest of us too thick, Ok?

Reply to
Ed Huntress

RogerN wrote: My religion possibly

So the people going to church are maniacal sociopathic killers and the church keeps them from harming society. That is why the churches deserve tax-exempt status Your explanation makes perfect sense.

Reply to
jim

Do you know many born-again types? Some of them were a real danger before they got religion -- angst-ridden, angry, etc.

(I'm excempting G.W. Bush, of course, who became a bigger danger to society

*after* he got born again. )

Eh, they're in a special tax category, but it doesn't work out much differently from other non-profits and charitable organizations.

Reply to
Ed Huntress
503.c sounds like non-profit and sometimes tax free. Some are taxed by local tax generators. Property tax...

Some are tax free in all ways except for a specialized tax unit - a college or other special case.

Mart>>> rangerssuck wrote:

Reply to
Martin Eastburn

$660 Million at a time. And counting.

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Now *that* is Catholic Bookkeeping. Whoa. I am speechless.

00 Winston
Reply to
Winston

I still think you are against cutting the budget.

I cut and pasted a previous message about cutting defense. I can not help it if you do not read my posts.

Dan

The way around this is to do it similar to the military base closures. Present a bill to Congress for a up or down vote on the amount. Not on specific programs. A 1% cut in defense spending. The Pentagon gets to choose how to accomplish it.

Dan

Reply to
dcaster

I think you're thinking what you want to think, and it has little to do with reality.

Right. I remember that now. 1%. Thank you for that contribution, Dan.

One percent here, one percent there...pretty soon, you've got six or seven percent, while health care is expected to rise by 8.5% in 2012 alone, and you haven't touched the deficit for many years ahead.

You've got a real winner of an idea there.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Well it is obvious to me. You have not been in favor of any ideas of budget cutting, you have denigrated every idea for budget cutting, while not offering any ideas of your own.

So if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, etc. Well by golly I think Ed is against cutting the budget.

Hey it beats every idea you have presented here. Like I said, no ideas from you on budget cutting and belittle every idea anyone else has. By god, I think we have someone against cutting the budget.

Dan

Reply to
dcaster

Yep, that's why our legal system is only a mockery of justice, they are taking this nation down the toilet. Unfortunately it's taught in schools, I have heard the Arab nations fund our schools so that people like Obama are taught to be anti-Israel.

RogerN

Reply to
RogerN

=A0Unfortunately it's taught in schools, I

You might try thinking before posting something like that. Do you pay real estate taxes? Are your real estate taxes itemized as to where the funds go? How much of your taxes go to funding schools? How much does your schools receive from foreign countries?

Dan

Reply to
dcaster

Who is this "they," Roger?

What's "taught" in schools? And did you go to school? Is that what they taught you?

Where can we get some of this Arab school money? They're taxing the hell out of me for our schools.

As for being pro-Israel, are you expecting all of the Jews who don't convert to Christianity on Judgment Day to go up in smoke, too?

That seems to be a popular opinion among fundamentalists.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Well, why didn't you ask? I didn't know you cared.

I'm against wasting time with trivial expenses that have no economic significance, but which serve as foils for what really is a social conservative agenda -- like Roger's infatuation with cutting PBS and Planned Parenthood. Deal with them after you get serious about big expenses.

Now, about the budget: Knock about 1/3 off of Defense. That will save $250 billion. We'll still have by far the largest military in the world, with lots of advanced technologies. Stop fighting the Cold War; that will help.

Next, push up Social Security retirement age by two years, and means-test. I forget how much that saves but the estimates are around somewhere. It's a real bundle.

The killer is Medicare, which has to be considered in the same breath as universal health care and Medicaid, however that shakes out. Telling seniors "here's some money to help with your insurance bill, see if you can do any better than we did at controlling costs," ain't gonna fly. First, it's absurd -- seniors have no pricing power. Second, it isn't going to work because insurance companies have no incentive to replace the extensive care now provided by Medicare. Their incentive is to, first, narrow down their communities (cohorts), and, second, to limit types of coverage as much as they can get away with. We know that from experience. That's why we started Medicare in the first place. Third, medical care is inflating at two or three times the rate of overall inflation, because the incentives are perverse. That's why it's a potential economic killer. This is a long story that I'll skip for now. Just realize that my thoughts on this are intended to replace the perversities with constructive incentives.

I think of universal health care as something close to Medicare writ large, so these things apply to changing both. First, give Medicare the same authority that the VA has to negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical companies. VA pays something like 30% - 40% less for drugs than Medicare does.

Second, Medicare pays for many, many procedures that research has shown to be useless or second-rate. I heard this a lot when I was in the business, and a former Medicare director wrote an op-ed about this in the NYT just within the past few days. It's well-known in the medical field.

That's partly because they don't have the authority to control payments based on evidence-based medical science (the dread "death panels.") The private insurance companies do, but they don't exercise it based on patient outcomes. They exercise it based on avoiding expensive procedures, regardless of outcomes. Give Medicare the same authority that private insurers have now. That doesn't mean that they will control what you can get and what you can't, only what the taxpayers will pay for.

I read all 72 pages of Ryan's proposal and I think the conflict has been poorly articulated. Interestingly, though, seniors seem to get it better than anyone. IMO, there's no intrinsic problem with having private insurance take over. The problem is, the way they operate in the US now, insurance companies are pursuing a normal business objective of maximizing profit, but the market doesn't really exist as a competitive market. It can't with the present insurance structure. So fulfilling normal business objectives short-changes the customers, rather than providing them with competitive alternatives and the efficiencies normally brought on by competition.

The short answer is to re-structure the insurance industry on a non-profit model, like the Swiss did very successfully not many years ago. Growth and compensation for the Swiss insurance companies is based on outcome success and financial efficiency. It isn't quite as cheap as the fully socialized models, but it avoids a great deal of government decision-making and it re-orients market incentives toward producing the best results for patients, both in medical terms and in financial terms. The Swiss model is very effective in terms of outcomes at a cost that falls between what we have in the US now, and what most other developed countries have, with their more-socialized models. Those countries typically pay half of what we pay and have similar patient outcomes.

As it is, Ryan's model basically throws seniors to the wolves. The answer, if we want to maintain medical insurance as a private affair while assuring that the incentives push in the right direction, is to turn the insurance companies into sheep dogs.

The rest of the health care industry also is full of perverse incentives. Hospitals are competitive, and the competition is for reputation for excellent treatment of patients -- or the perception thereof. That often means extreme levels of redundant plant (in economic terms) within a community. How many MRI machines does a town or a county need?

There are successful models for hospitals that serve the real needs of patients first, at a lower cost than many hospitals, and they're known in the business as the best. Emulate the models provided by the Mayo Clinic and Geisinger.Health System. They're winners.

Legislate new terms for "malpractice" and create a special class of torts for malpractice suits. This really doesn't save as much as many people seem to think it would, but the culture of defensive medicine must be broken. These things would help a great deal in that regard.

None of these things are simple. Given the business and political culture of the US, I don't think we could accomplish them until we're really in a deep crisis. So I'm skeptical about whether we'll wind up saving our own bacon or waiting too long and becoming the bacon. That doesn't mean we should throw up our hands. It does mean that we'd better not be disappointed if we don't see any results until most of the members of this NG are dead and gone.

No, it doesn't, or it didn't. It's worse than nothing, because it wastes time and energy on feel-good measures that leave us right where we are now, minus a couple of percent. That's not enough to keep up even with the growth rate of the crisis.

Save your feel-goods for later, when the crisis has been dealt with. All you're suggesting is to delay confronting the real issues.

As I said, all you had to do was ask. I'll go on for thousands of words more, if you want. d8-)

Reply to
Ed Huntress

If one doesn't ask the right questions or identify the right problems, it is expected to get wrong answers or arrive at the wrong conclusions

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Reply to
jim

That's amazing.

"[You] have heard the Arab nations fund our schools"???

Perhaps you should be a bit more selective in who you choose to listen to, and a bit less gullible in what you choose to believe.

Reply to
Doug Miller

Unfortunately it's taught in schools, I

You might try thinking before posting something like that. Do you pay real estate taxes? Are your real estate taxes itemized as to where the funds go? How much of your taxes go to funding schools? How much does your schools receive from foreign countries?

Dan College level schools.

RogerN

Reply to
RogerN

When I asked for a cite, I got, "I heard it on the radio" followed by a bunch of cut & paste from an anti-abortion web site. I clicked on one of the links and got a 404 error. That's about all the time I'm willing to put in to chasing Rogers "facts."

Now, you need to remember that the discussion was about federal funding for women's health services which Roger claimed would become redundant under publicly funded health insurance. You also need to remember that I said that I had no quarrel with that, and that Roger then responded by going off into his all-too-familiar tirade about baby killing.

Menwhile, Gunner fantasizes about being a tennis umpire...

Roger: Are you also against contraception? Do you believe that intercourse is only for procreation?

Reply to
rangerssuck

It is the only time he's been allowed to actually put it in there.

Reply to
Stuart Wheaton

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