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Posts Made By: Paul Kammueller

January 22, 2010 11:31 AM Forum: Politics

somebody tell me why?

Posted By Paul Kammueller
Because these days anything that smacks of equality is branded Communism or worse. As voters we've been trained to see Stalin's ghost in every corner of the house and so we jump and startle every time we dust the furniture.

January 22, 2010 11:58 AM Forum: Politics

somebody tell me why?

Posted By Paul Kammueller
Many responses simply equate the healthcare bene's with payscale. This argument would make sense if healthcare were a moderate and predictable expense, like food or water or something.

Problem is, healthcare is not a predictable expense, it's sporadic like car damage, except much much more expensive. All the more so as most people are migrated to catastrophic plans with very high deductibles.

Your question is really geared at the fundamental debate of whether healthcare is a right and necessity equal to all, or simply a privelege and a luxury.

March 28, 2010 05:23 AM Forum: Politics

Insurance Requirement: Borrowed From GOP

Posted By Paul Kammueller
They were for it before they were against it. wink

As noted elsewhere in this thread, there was a difference with regard to a particular cost-control measure, but you haven't heard that being the objection to it. Now they're just against it, lock stock and barrel. The individual mandate was just fine when it was their expressed alternative to the Clinton health care plan. The chief objection now is that Obama's for it so they pretty much have to 'flip' and be against it. I mean, what choice do they have, it's a two-party system! grin

Meanwhile Tea Partiers will continue to gather to listen to Palin, who used to get healthcare from Canada's evil communist-socialist single-payer system (yet miraculously, somehow kept her freedom through it all) 8)

April 10, 2010 11:15 AM Forum: Investment Discussions

So what do you think

Posted By Paul Kammueller
One would expect that tax receipts from improving incomes and profits will have more or less replaced the stimulus aid to states by that time: this would be 8 months further along in the recovery, after all. If they haven't, then a much deeper structural problem is afoot.

As for the stock market, it's hard to know what it will do at the end of the year, not even knowing what it will do for the intervening 8 months before then wink

April 13, 2010 10:26 AM Forum: Politics

$31,406 Per Household

Posted By Paul Kammueller
Of course, the GDP is $125,000 per household. That leaves us $95,000 each to spend still, right?

Of course, it doesn't make sense. Converting everything into flat household-share averages, treating the economy as if all the nation's resources and income were equally distributed, is about the oldest and most misleading form of statistical trickery there is.

April 14, 2010 10:34 PM Forum: Politics

Taxes: Fair and Balanced

Posted By Paul Kammueller
Mike Strieber said:
"I want my Obama-money!"

Then join the bottom 40%. Becoming poor is easy enough, you needn't envy them from afar. Envying the poor for their tax credits has been fairly trendy for years, but it's easy enough to get a minimum-wage job so you can score on this, why isn't everybody doing it?

Oh yeah -- because it sucks to be poor. Despite all the juicy tax credits, nobody gets rich by being poor, the envy of other taxpayers notwithstanding. It just makes life slightly more survivable while you're cleaning the toilet in the executive washroom.

It's not like these folks aren't contributing something -- they're working low-paying jobs that keep everything cheap for the rest of us. And they pay plenty of other taxes -- the really regressive ones, like sales tax, property, etc. And the Social Security tax, which since it's been masking the government's operating deficit for years is really just a regressive income tax.

April 16, 2010 11:11 PM Forum: Religion

Is God Logical?

Posted By Paul Kammueller
What if God is a subconscious logical construct: a personification of infinite power, energy, perfect symmetry, indescribable, ineffable, without variation or defect, all at once everything, and nothing, everywhere, and nowhere -- the cosmic singularity. T=zero.

Maybe 'God' is a subconcious imprint of the origin of the Cosmos on the mental patterns of its own 'mind': that is, intelligent components such as humans.

May 1, 2010 03:25 AM Forum: Politics

Re: Is UK's health system really a good model for

Posted By Paul Kammueller
It took a year to find 5 negative things?

May 4, 2010 04:48 AM Forum: Politics

Gulf oil mess

Posted By Paul Kammueller
It sounds like it practically defies solution.

May 12, 2010 04:30 PM Forum: Politics

Are you ready?

Posted By Paul Kammueller
They can 'move ahead' all they want, but at the end of the day the WHO has no authority to tax anybody for anything. Democracies would have to impose the taxes through their governments, which in turn depend on public support for it. Such a proposal would be DOA in the U.S.

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