Combat Ranting (formerly known as Famicom Mini)

[A Black Falcon]

A liberal is someone who embraces change, a conservative is someone who desires preservation. That's as it is and as it's always been.

But what is to be changed or preserved has changed a lot.

For instance, do you support giving everyone (over a certain age) the right to vote? 19th century conservatives sure didn't.

Medicade, yes. Food stamps? Regardless of what they are used for (and as often as not, they're not used for food), they're still free money. They are given to people without anything expected in return. It's unreasonable to expect recompense from the elderly, but a majority of food-stamp recipients are not elderly

No, they just don't make enough money to feed their family (and at least pay the minimums on their bills) without the food stamps.

They very well should. But that's not the question, the question is should it be under the control of the government? That's the bone of contention today, and that little bit is very important.

Reforming the malpractice system and stopping some of the horrendous abuses of the existing medical system need to happen first. Did you know that most people will recieve emergency health care even without insurance? It's the law in Virginia, I don't know about other places. People who take advantage of that are not required to pay for their care, though they are strongly encouraged to, few do. To make up for this, insured people have to pick up the slack and pay for them, which is a big reason hospitals in Virginia have such tremendous operational costs and budget problems. There are awful abuses of this free system, people use the emergency room for very trivial things, and these things carry a big price tag that the rest of us have to take. Abuses like that cause huge financial problems, and one of the big things that scares me about standardized health care is that these abuses will multiply. Who would be able to pay for it all?

If someone goes to the emergency room no doctor could refuse to treat them and call themselves ethical. And yes, the hospital has to pay for their care... it is definitely a big problem and one for which the best solution is expanding health care so that fewer people are uninsured. I'm not sure which plan is best, but all the Democratic candidates have plans for this and any of them would be a huge, huge help on this and all the other issues related to problems because of the uninsured.

Oh yeah, and it'd have the side benefit of reducing the strain on emergency rooms because when you have health insurance you don't have to wait until you're falling down ill to see a doctor, and thus wouldn't have to wait until you need an emergency room to go to the hospital...

CEOs do not make up any significant portion of the population.

I don't understand what relative wealth has to do with anything. If the 'poor' are healthy, well-fed and with luxuries and amenities, they are not destitute. It doesn't matter if the richest people had ten bazillion dollars, it wouldn't change the 'poor' much. It's not like things cost less if you're rich or something. You don't get a free discount in the grocery store just because you make over a hundred thou a year. You're gonna be charged the same amount for a gallon of milk that everyone else is.

Hell, if upper limits are put in place in the grading scale, there are probably about a hundred people in the world who aren't poor.

I think this is just your communist wealth hate speaking again.

Massively unbalanced wealth distribution is a huge problem. CEOs should not be getting massive raises while they cut jobs and services for their employees, that is absurdly unethical and probably should be illegal. And those people in that top 5% that do have 47% of this nation's wealth should be paying a huge percentage of the taxes, and not be getting ridiculously large tax cuts like they are getting. And as I said being 'poor' IS relative to your society. Poor people are poor because in modern American society they do not make enough money to be considered middle class. And because they don't have enough to live comfterbly in this society -- pay their bills, afford food all the time, etc... again, relativism matters a lot here, but it's hardly the only reason to say that your act that American poor people are doing fine is pure lies.

Oh, one comment about that stupid thing about poor people... I could make more but for now just this. Poor people work less than full time hours? Oh what a shock, I am absolutely amazed... I mean, companies NEVER hire lots of part-time workers so that they can get around paying benefits, nope! Nuh-uh!

Oh yeah, and "Welfare-to-work" (Clinton's program to empty welfare rolls) is a failure as a social program. All it does is gets people off welfare rolls and into low-paying dead end jobs... just what they didn't need to have a chance. Yes, it's reduced welfare rolls a lot, but at the cost of hurting a lot of people... what we need to do is actually try to improve things for them, not just force them into low paying, often part-time jobs.