McCain's 3.6 Trillion dollar tax increase.

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Darth Wong
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Post by Darth Wong »

Starglider wrote:I find it vaguely amusing that no one here has even mentioned the theoretical justification for this; that employers dropping healthcare benefits will enable significant pay rises, which will then cover the cost of private insurance. No one has mentioned it because it's blatantly implausible; virtually all US employers will just treat it as a way to (significantly) cut effective salaries. But on die-hard conservative forums, the rhetoric about 'enabling choice' and 'the efficiency of market forces' will continue in complete denial of this fact.
Do they believe that corporations are benevolent entities? I'm having trouble imagining the kind of stupidity required to be so naive.
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Starglider
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Post by Starglider »

Darth Wong wrote:Do they believe that corporations are benevolent entities? I'm having trouble imagining the kind of stupidity required to be so naive.
No no, you don't understand. The unfathomable power of the market is a kind of moral philosophers stone; it transmutes selfishness into social good, apportioned with complete fairness to those who deserve it. Corporations are perfectly selfish, thus when transmuted through The Market, the results of their actions must be perfectly good. Any perceived problems are either the result of evil government regulation, or because you're not looking at the big picture.

Of course if you don't accept that you're a dirty unamerican godless communist liberal terrorist.

I confess I have far too much fun dropping quotes from the more strident posters I see on neocon forums into conversations with people here in Sheffield. They generally elict shock, horror and then finally relieved laughter as they realise that even though I'm relatively conservative (for the north of the UK), I must be joking.
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Post by Rye »

It's weird, for the main group to be opposed to darwinism, they're so gung ho about social darwinism in the guise of "eceonomy uber alles". If you fail to work enough, you don't deserve to get past natural selection. If you're weeded out, no great loss to the economic system, and lord knows they despise the poor who "live like kings" off benefits.
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Patrick Degan
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Post by Patrick Degan »

Starglider wrote:The people trying to make a case for preventative treatment being in the interests of the healthcare industry are being hopelessly optimistic. The ideal condition for profit maximisation is a nasty chronic condition that can be staved off only with expensive treatments, such that the patient has to plow all their income into healthcare over a period of a couple of decades or so. Ideally they will eventually die with a negative net worth, including sucking as much cash as possible from relatives as well. Thus die-hard Randians will invest in both tobacco companies and cancer treatments.
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