Rush Limbaugh (employment, Congress, ethical, healthcare)

[deeptrance]

Originally Posted by FistFightingHairdresser

This has gotten way too B-itchy.

I didn't know we had a nanny monitoring our posts!

Originally Posted by FistFightingHairdresser

Folks, let's regroup. There's an interesting topic to be had here. Do we want to discuss the merits & pitfalls of tax cuts? Dufferz? Deeptrance? Kimber please you are welcome here too.

Who made you the school marm? Aye-yi-yi.... OK, what would you have of us?

Here's my proposal in a nutshell (and I'm a nut, so I know my shell!):

* A U-shaped payroll tax system. Currently, this is a regressive tax, a flat rate that discourages employers from paying decent wages and hiring new employees. Change it so that if you pay "the average wage" then there is NO payroll tax. Place all the highest rates on low and high wages, give an incentive to companies to hire people at an average rate. It's pretty simple, really....

* No public schools --- give everyone a fixed amount per child that can only be spent on education and then let the market dictate which schools win and which go under. White liberals think they have all the answers for kids in the ghetto. Trust me, we don't. Give those ghetto moms the power to create schools in their neighborhoods and watch those kids take off like you've never seen before!

* Externality pricing --- market pricing doesn't take into account the effects on people outside the transaction, so market pricing fails to capture true costs and value. We pay taxes for education because there are positive externalities when we educate people (they're more likely to be civil, law-abiding, and successful), whereas we have special taxes on gas, cigarettes and alcohol (the costs of manufacturing and delivering these commodities obscures the social and environmental costs associated with each of them.) Extend this type of thinking to the entire tax code.

* No income or corporate profit taxes --- Why do we penalize success and reward failure? Every tax is an incentive. We should tax harm to the environment, use of natural resources, social inequity, and other harmful transactions. Income should not be penalized.

The above summary is so over-simplified that anyone can poke holes in it. I leave it to you to fill in the gaps. Think of the problems with each of the above proposals and then think about the possible solutions to those problems. That's what I believe we need to do. This is neither conservative nor liberal nor libertarian nor socialist. It combines the goals of socialism with the ideals of libertarianism. The problem with each of those systems is that they ignore reality. There are ways to combine the two.

For a more radical approach, anarchistic communism appeals to me, but I think that would alienate about 99.99% of you.

[FistFightingHairdresser]

Originally Posted by deeptrance

I didn't know we had a nanny monitoring our posts! Who made you the school marm? Aye-yi-yi.... OK, what would you have of us?

To Behave. And to do your homework.

Originally Posted by deeptrance

Here's my proposal in a nutshell (and I'm a nut, so I know my shell!):

So you bit. Shame on you.

Originally Posted by deeptrance

* A U-shaped payroll tax system. Currently, this is a regressive tax, a flat rate that discourages employers from paying decent wages and hiring new employees. Change it so that if you pay "the average wage" then there is NO payroll tax. Place all the highest rates on low and high wages, give an incentive to companies to hire people at an average rate. It's pretty simple, really....

Interesting. An alternative would also be to have health insurance required for all employed persons, regardless of income.

Originally Posted by deeptrance

* No public schools --- give everyone a fixed amount per child that can only be spent on education and then let the market dictate which schools win and which go under. White liberals think they have all the answers for kids in the ghetto. Trust me, we don't. Give those ghetto moms the power to create schools in their neighborhoods and watch those kids take off like you've never seen before!

Unfortunately Ghetto Moms haven't got the most stellar record of making the best decisions for their kids. What's to say making them final arbiter of their kids' educational choices is a fix? And if they have that power, what's to stop them from enrolling their kids in Prof. Smoove G's Akademy of Ebonics? Something tells me our culturally-relevant society would allow that to pass. We theorise that public institutions with no standards are the problem. So what happens when a public institution with no standards is the final arbiter of which private schools are eligible for that fixed amount per child.

Public education, if properly delivered, is the one best channel for educating kids in social mores. Why throw the whole lot in the dumper? Let's make those public institutions accountable rather than giving the goods to an unaccountable private institution.

Originally Posted by deeptrance

* Externality pricing --- market pricing doesn't take into account the effects on people outside the transaction, so market pricing fails to capture true costs and value. We pay taxes for education because there are positive externalities when we educate people (they're more likely to be civil, law-abiding, and successful), whereas we have special taxes on gas, cigarettes and alcohol (the costs of manufacturing and delivering these commodities obscures the social and environmental costs associated with each of them.) Extend this type of thinking to the entire tax code.

* No income or corporate profit taxes --- Why do we penalize success and reward failure? Every tax is an incentive. We should tax harm to the environment, use of natural resources, social inequity, and other harmful transactions. Income should not be penalized.

You tax corporate profits for precisely the reason you state above. You can't segment those profits that were gained at the expense of the environment, natural resource, or the public at large. Corporations externalise their costs. Taxes are a way of recuperating the cost.

Originally Posted by deeptrance

The above summary is so over-simplified that anyone can poke holes in it. I leave it to you to fill in the gaps. Think of the problems with each of the above proposals and then think about the possible solutions to those problems. That's what I believe we need to do. This is neither conservative nor liberal nor libertarian nor socialist. It combines the goals of socialism with the ideals of libertarianism. The problem with each of those systems is that they ignore reality. There are ways to combine the two.

For a more radical approach, anarchistic communism appeals to me, but I think that would alienate about 99.99% of you.

What about small business capitalism? Of all the imperfect choices available, why wouldn't promoting free trade among local, small enterprises be a valid economic model?

[the dufferz]

Originally Posted by FistFightingHairdresser

Hi,

This has gotten way too B-itchy.

Folks, let's regroup. There's an interesting topic to be had here. Do we want to discuss the merits & pitfalls of tax cuts? Dufferz? Deeptrance? Kimber please you are welcome here too.

FFHD,

I am not really seeing b-itchy, but I am tired after a long weekend, so maybe I am a little numb.

I agree there is WAS an interesting topic to be had here, but it has not been talked about since post #16, so I am willing to get it back on track.

Rush Limbaugh drives the liberals crazy. Most people who don't listen to him do not understand the value that he brings to national discussion regarding both politics and social issues. Prior to Rush and the flood of conservative talk, the three network news programs and the local papers where the only means by which we found out what was happening. You could change between CBS, NBC or ABC evening news and see the exact same stories in the same order.

Rush Limbaugh and the removal of the fairness doctrine opened the door to a new conversation, a new side to the coin that many like me believed but did not hear. There is a reason that talk radio, especially conservative talk radio is so popular. It give a voice to.... me.

You can agree or disagree, and if you disagree you get put to the head of the line on his and most others show if you call, but there is no denying that talk radio is the new media, joining the blogs and other outlets that cannot be filtered by the old media. It's making a difference. Just ask any Liberal.

FFHD - is that any version of talk radio on the other side of the pond?

Now for the topic of tax cuts and that value, anyone out there wanting to start a new post regarding this now that this is back on Rush Limbaugh? It's an exhaustive topic, but indeed interesting, yet has nothing to do with Rush Limbaugh. If nobody does, I will tomorrow, but for now I need to go Christmas shopping in the driving rain of Seattle. Sigh.

[AngelikaV]

Originally Posted by deeptrance

* No public schools --- give everyone a fixed amount per child that can only be spent on education and then let the market dictate which schools win and which go under. White liberals think they have all the answers for kids in the ghetto. Trust me, we don't. Give those ghetto moms the power to create schools in their neighborhoods and watch those kids take off like you've never seen before!

You must not know about the ghetto mom's replacement for welfare known as SSI (Supplemental Security Income). It's part of the Social Security system. If you're mentally handicapped you can receive SSI regardless of age. If you're a minor, the money goes to your custodial parent. Here's how it works: Mom has used up all her welfare benefits so she stops sending the kids to school, or maybe she never sent them to begin with 'cause she knows there's a limit on welfare checks. She makes sure she teaches them nothing and ridicules them if they attempt to learn anything on their own. She knows to qualify for SSI they'll be tested to determine their mental abilities, so she coaches them on how to appear to be stupid and do poorly on the test. The kids know what's expected of them from being around other SSI kids -- you wouldn't believe how many there are. They also know that once they're on SSI they'll probably stay on SSI when they reach 18 if they play their cards right, i.e., produce an IQ score of less than 80 when tested. That means a lifetime of SSI benefits and no need to work.

There's absolutely no motivation for ghetto kids to go to a good school or become educated if they can "fool" (censor won't let me use the word I really want, spelled s-c-a-m) their way onto SSI. What do you think that whole "acting white" jeer is all about? If education were valued, the ghetto would be shrinking. Is it shrinking? I don't think so. If you replace the public education system with a private one, you don't improve the situation, you make it worse. At least under our public system SSI kids are forced to sit in a classroom even if it's a remedial one. With a purely private system there's no reason for those kids to step foot in a classroom. You know what that would look like? You ever been to Brazil?

Sorry, but your libertarian ideal won't work. Just look at the countries without public education or where education is primarily private with or without funding from the state. They're all in the third world. All the advanced countries in the world prove daily that the best way to educate the masses is through compulsory public education. They succeed where we fail by starting at a younger age and making kids sit their butts in the classroom more hours a day and more days a year. That's what's needed here.

[deeptrance]

FistFightingHairdresser and AngelikaV:

You both demonstrated a serious lack of imagination and a lot of assumptions about how pathetic inner-city Blacks are, along with a lot of assumptions about the details of what I'm proposing.

Not even worth trying to respond, it's too involved. I invite you to both reconsider what I said and the fact that I've thought about all the issues you brought up. I'm not a libertarian. I'm also not a racist who thinks that people in the ghetto can't solve their problems better than white elitist liberals who think they know all the answers, or conservatives who want to impose their view of the world on everyone else.

Let your imaginations run wild and consider the possibilities when human
ingenuity and creativity are turned loose, empowered to solve their own problems instead of sitting back watching TV and getting handouts from failed government programs.

[the dufferz]

Originally Posted by deeptrance

FistFightingHairdresser and AngelikaV:

You both demonstrated a serious lack of imagination and a lot of assumptions about how pathetic inner-city Blacks are, along with a lot of assumptions about the details of what I'm proposing.

Not even worth trying to respond, it's too involved. I invite you to both reconsider what I said and the fact that I've thought about all the issues you brought up. I'm not a libertarian. I'm also not a racist who thinks that people in the ghetto can't solve their problems better than white elitist liberals who think they know all the answers, or conservatives who want to impose their view of the world on everyone else.

Let your imaginations run wild and consider the possibilities when human
ingenuity and creativity are turned loose, empowered to solve their own problems instead of sitting back watching TV and getting handouts from failed government programs.

That is the problem with this issue. Complex to the extreme, and exhaustive to describe. AngelikaV is not far off the mark with her overview of some of the users of the system. DeepT, You are, in my book right on with the idea of privatizing schools. I would modify it a bit and allow public education (funded per student just like the privates) to compete as well. Competition is a good thing.

Obviously there are kids who need special education and programs that are more expensive than a typical student, so these cases would need to be specialized.

So, AngelikaV, the complexity creates a cycle that cannot be be fixed by throwing money at it. If money were the answer, the problem would have been fixed decades ago. Somewhere the cycle needs to be broken.

DeepT is pointing toward competative education to lift the level of competition.

I would recommend that we cut off the life blood of the problem and systematically reduce the funding, making it difficult to use the "system". I would change the funding from the federal level to the local level, passing the money directly past the federal governments deep pockets to the local governments, where it can be watched over by local jurisdictions.

I think that this cycle should be broken in as many places as possible.

I hope that we all can agree that there is a problem and a single fix won't work.

Could say more, but that's it for now.

[fishmonger]

I have to say that is one of the most interesting hodgepodge political philosophies I've heard in a while and I respect you for your nonconformity. I like the idea of the payroll tax reform; not sure how it would play out in the real world, though, or whether some employers would decide to pay low wages anyway and end up punishing workers, but I could see how it could work. As for the "externalities" taxes, my only fear is that, if the taxes were to truly push people to implement an ideal society where nobody polluted and people employed fairly (I'm not sure how you could tax "social inequity"), the government would be left with little or no revenues to fund the services it provides... Some of your ideas seem a little "out there" to me and I'm not sure all of them could really be implemented (for one thing, I support a progressive income tax as long as it's formulated to impact people equally at all levels; to me a guy who makes $30,000 a year paying $3,000 a year is going to "hurt" more than a guy who makes $300,000 a year paying $30,000, for instance, plus I live in Alabama where our regressive taxes balance that out and then some) but I'm slightly undecided on the whole public/private education so I've decided to debate your position from sort of a "devil's advocate" position since I'm a pretty firm supporter of public education right now but could possibly change my mind in the face of overwhelming evidence or logic or something...

First of all, if you gave everybody vouchers, what would keep the "good" private schools from raising their prices to keep out the low-income students? To me it seems like the discrepancies in price could effectively maintain the inequity between schools in high-income and low-income areas, as the schools with higher tuition would still attract the best teachers, administrators, etc. and the parents who relied completely on the vouchers would end up sending their kids to inferior schools who could hire the cheapest, least qualified teachers as a result of their guaranteed students from the lowest income brackets. There's also the issue of accountability... especially in the "cheaper" schools, what could be done to ensure that these schools would effectively teach kids what they needed to know without extensively monitoring and regulating their operation, essentially transforming them into public schools?

Another thing... what about the "special needs" kids, etc. who couldn't get accepted into the private schools? Right now, at least, there certainly aren't enough to carry everybody from the public school system and I'm concerned about the kids who would be left behind in a public school system increasingly staffed by the lowest-paid teachers (as public education became less important to the parents now sending their kids to private schools who might vote to lower their taxes and cut funding) and filled increasingly with the neediest kids? I think a lot of parents might decide not to send their kids to the private schools for whatever reason, especially in the earlier stages, and their kids would suffer from it.

Maybe it would work better if you fixed the prices and therefore gave every kid an equal opportunity to go to whatever school they wanted to go to; however, this would go completely against the whole libertarian free-market ideal of the system so I'm not sure it would ever be put into effect (I don't know if it would be a good idea or not). My question is, how do you regulate the system enough to guarantee a decent education for everybody (or almost everybody, even), without destroying the whole free-market competition aspect that advocates say would make it superior. I agree with you that it would have a great immediate effect of allowing rural and inner-city families to send their kids to the schools of their choice, and that is very attractive, but it's the mid and long-term effects that I'm worried about.

[Kimbercuddles]

I think that sometimes, Rush Limbaugh gets a little carried away...but he is also extremely witty and I really enjoy his creativity, at times. He is intense and knows exactly what his positions are regarding most subjects. The oxycontin thing was sad, but if you look into his history of back problems, I can understand how a person would slowly fall into that trap. If we are searching for a person who makes no mistakes, shame on us. The important part is the recovery process...and I do believe that Rush has done well.

Now, the Viagra incident is an entirely different story...people were just waiting for him to fall and were willing to go to drastic measures to do so. Just my opinion...

[deeptrance]

Originally Posted by fishmonger

I have to say that is one of the most interesting hodgepodge political philosophies I've heard in a while and I respect you for your nonconformity.

Thank you!

Your response was very intelligent because you pointed out some of the problems that would need to be solved in order to make any of those ideas work in reality.

I like "big picture" theoretical stuff and I would suck at being in charge of the details. But I'm good at sussing out the potential problems with any large systemic change, as you are apparently good at as well.

My list of proposals is a summary that is backed with years of experience and research on each topic. That doesn't mean I'm right and opponents are wrong. But if someone is going to oppose anything I propose, then it would be nice if they did so intelligently, recognizing that I've only given the tip of the iceberg and I'm well aware of the fact that the Law of Unintended Consequences is the only law we can count on. It's quite possible that every one of my proposals is horrible, but in the past decade of debating people (mostly in real life, because it's too much for a forum), I've only had to make minor adjustments to them in order to address the concerns people raise.

My ideas are all theoretical and impossible to implement because politics cannot be overcome. There are too many vested interests and there always will be.

For example, if you say "Let's tax negative externalities and subsidize positive externalities" then you instantly create massive, well-funded lobbies of pseudo-scientists who are paid to say that "this is bad and that is good" on behalf of whoever hired them. Politicians are not able to sort out the huge amounts of information needed to make smart decisions, so they will rely on the doctored summaries they get from lobbyists. And that family vacation they'll get to the French Riviera will seal the deal.

Alas. I live in a world of theory. If anyone wants to critique my ideas as impossible in the real world, I'll listen. But in the abstract world where ideas are pure and unscathed by human behavior, I haven't heard a good challenge to any of what I've proposed.

[the dufferz]

Originally Posted by Kimbercuddles

I think that sometimes, Rush Limbaugh gets a little carried away...but he is also extremely witty and I really enjoy his creativity, at times. He is intense and knows exactly what his positions are regarding most subjects. The oxycontin thing was sad, but if you look into his history of back problems, I can understand how a person would slowly fall into that trap. If we are searching for a person who makes no mistakes, shame on us. The important part is the recovery process...and I do believe that Rush has done well.

Now, the Viagra incident is an entirely different story...people were just waiting for him to fall and were willing to go to drastic measures to do so. Just my opinion...

Limbaugh knows how to tickle the edge, stopping well short of "shock jock", but his habit of demonstrating absurdity by being absurd is where a lot of people find the sound bites that they try to use against him. But he is the teflon talker because he owns the rights to his voice and can easily replay the entire segement to prove his point, on balance (ergo the Michael J Fox incident).