How's this for a crazy idea about how to charge people more for smoking: tax tobacco?Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy
How's this for a crazy idea about how to charge people more for smoking: tax tobacco?
Over here that's what happens (and IIRC there has been talk of a fat tax / unhealthy food tax). Of course the reasoning only works of the government is also paying (part of) the health care costs.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
We already have (or at least have the option for) taxes on unhealthy food and habits. The problem is that most of the time the funds are hijacked instead of being put back into the system properly (like support programs or healthcare).
The suggestion that unhealthy habits should be billed more has a bunch of holes in it considering the already shit safety nets people who are most likely to fall into those categories have. If you want a smoker's rate then you need a free program to help support people who need to quit. If you want a fat tax you need a similar support program AND you need to drastically rework the type and quantities of food poor people have access to.
But shit like that is complicated and requires empathy, science, and caring about people who aren't well to do white men. 3 things the GOP and people like lewk are allergic to.
Last edited by Ominous Gamer; 05-03-2017 at 06:01 PM.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Donald Trump Keeps Praising Authoritarian Goons Because He Doesn't Know What Leaders Do
This actually makes a lot of sense of why he kept blaming Obama for everything. He just thought obama was a poor dictator. This is why his team has attacked the 1st amendment, why he called the constitution bad for the country and archaic. Why he is signing useless and pointless executive orders, and suggested the government needs a shutdown in September. This is the guy who wanted a military show of might at his inauguration. He thought the presidency was authoritarian.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/ampht...ia-we-checked/
Trump supporters not even trying anymore.
Hope is the denial of reality
There is a federal tax, every state has a tax, and various cities also have a tax. At present, on average not quite half the price of a pack of cigarettes in the US is from taxes. Not that this compares to you guys where a quick search tells me something like 80% of the price in the UK is tax. But as Flixy says, exactly who gets the revenue makes a difference.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
I'd question where you are getting 'people who drive cars, work in office jobs have kids and live in multi-story houses' have more health risks. If anything some of this characteristics would be correlated to being more safe than less safe. That being said - if it those choices were correlated to more health care costs (beyond paying more for children, which is already the case) than I don't see a problem with having a surcharge on those activities as well.
As far as the morbidly obese young adult... it was still likely their choice. Possibly they were completely ignorant about what they were doing to their bodies but at 12-13 you can figure out that soda is an unnecessary added caloric intake you could cut back on if you didn't want to balloon like a whale.
If you want to charge people higher rates for driving too fast you need to have a free program to help support people who need to quit speeding! That's the logic we got here folks.
The comparison is inappropriate and based on an flawed understanding of the conditions OG mentioned. Pretty messed up that you'd want the govt to fine or even arrest people for smoking or being overweight.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Except I don't want the government to do it. I'm completely against food taxes and tobacco taxes.
ignoring that you completely missed the point here. We do have such programs, both public and privately funded. High schools offer driving classes, I host one at my work once a month, and people who run afoul of the law can take classes to remove points from their license (thus lower rates and better educating drivers).
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
From what I've seen the classes to remove points are more about revenue generation than they are improving the quality of driving. For instance, my brother in law took an online course in order to remove some points from his record; he's known in our family to have something of a lead foot. Except he didn't take it. My sister did. While there may be some utility to these courses, I am not convinced they result in measurably better drivers, or have lasting impacts on behavior.ignoring that you completely missed the point here. We do have such programs, both public and privately funded
I thought there might be some minor effect. But sure enough, there aren't any. This is based on two separate meta-analyses, one from the 1980s and one more recent.
Hope is the denial of reality
yeah the online offerings can be bogus. We offer actual classroom classes here as well. The comedy club is well known for theirs.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
It may be the American implementation or quality of the classes.
The UK has a similar idea. A minor speeding offence here is usually met with a choice of a Speed Awareness course (if not attended in prior 3 years), or a fine and 3 points on your licence (accrue 12 points will see your licence revoked for minimum 12 months). People naturally jump at the chance to attend the course to avoid the points on the licence.
I was (un)fortunate enough to attend a course for my second ever minor speeding offence 5 or 6 years ago. The content and delivery of the course was excellent. It covered many aspects of general driving; conditions of the car, attitudes to driving (patience behind the wheel, attitudes and correct responses to other impatient drivers), driving conditions (weather, wet roads, even type of road surface), results of speeding and the law (penalties for different violations including death by dangerous driving).
I may have taken much more from the course than most having a fairly keen interest in cars, driving and road psychology, and with most folk there just to avoid the points and the fines who will likely switch off from listening and not care in the slightest, but certainly the content was there to improve attitudes to driving and highlight the dangers of speeding. I came away surprised and impressed, and the better/more considerate driver for it - something that sticks with me to this day when out on the road.
Pregnancy to cost 425% more under Donald Trump's health plan compared to Obamacare
"US citizens with the most serious forms of cancer could have to pay up to $140,000 (£109,000) more for health insurance under a proposed amendment to Donald Trump’s new healthcare bill, analysts have claimed."
Twitter Link
This is the best attempt the GOP has of replacing obamacare. Like I said, murdering assholes, the whole lot of them.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Obamacare to stop domestic violence as pre-existing condition, Gwen Moore says
VS
Sexual Assault & Domestic Violence Are "Pre-Existing Conditions" The GOP Health Care Bill Wouldn't Cover
The difference between the Dems and the GOP
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
What's next tho - becuase you have a concern about how life insurance premiums are priced you think we need classes on how to quit sky diving and other 'dangerous sports' ?ignoring that you completely missed the point here. We do have such programs, both public and privately funded
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
I have a similar story. I was working in a job where for business insurance reasons you would not be covered by the business insurance policy if you had more than 6 points. I had 3 when I got a ticket and was given the choice of taking the course or getting another 3 points. I took the course as the alternative was being one mistake from losing my business insurance.
I have a lot of respect for the course I attended. It was very professionally done. Since then I've never had another ticket and have had a completely clean licence for many years now.
skydiving isn't exactly an activity that disproportionately effects the poor and vulnerable, so aside from moving the goal posts again on a topic you're showing a wide area of ignorance in... the term adrenaline junkie exists for a reason, and yes they have support groups.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Hope is the denial of reality
Verified by buzzfeed, CBS and the WSJ before the FDA backtracked.
Twitter Link
another ridiculous move by the tiny fingered control freak
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
The 'poor and vulnerable' are largely poor because of poor life decisions. Obviously any sort of increased premium for stupid decisions is going to impact the poor. And you know what? I'm OK with this. It isn't the government's job to balance people's stupid decisions. You care enough about it - provide money to charities you think will help. Don't use the entity with the legal monopoly on force to dictate to others what should be done.
Thats the idiotic one liner I was waiting for. Your baseless "gut feeling" response for when you have nothing to stand on.
Lets finally put that to rest.
Escaping Poverty Requires Almost 20 Years With Nearly Nothing Going Wrong
A lot of factors have contributed to American inequality: slavery, economic policy, technological change, the power of lobbying, globalization, and so on. In their wake, what’s left?
That’s the question at the heart of a new book, The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy, by Peter Temin, an economist from MIT. Temin argues that, following decades of growing inequality, America is now left with what is more or less a two-class system: One small, predominantly white upper class that wields a disproportionate share of money, power, and political influence and a much larger, minority-heavy (but still mostly white) lower class that is all too frequently subject to the first group’s whims.
Temin identifies two types of workers in what he calls “the dual economy.” The first are skilled, tech-savvy workers and managers with college degrees and high salaries who are concentrated heavily in fields such as finance, technology, and electronics—hence his labeling it the “FTE sector.” They make up about 20 percent of the roughly 320 million people who live in America. The other group is the low-skilled workers, which he simply calls the “low-wage sector.”
Temin then divides workers into groups that can trace their family line in the U.S. back to before 1970 (when productivity growth began to outpace wage growth) and groups that immigrated later, and notes that race plays a pretty big role in how both groups fare in the American economy. “In the group that has been here longer, white Americans dominate both the FTE sector and the low-wage sector, while African Americans are located almost entirely in the low-wage sector,” he writes. “In the group of recent immigrants, Asians predominantly entered the FTE sector, while Latino immigrants joined African Americans in the low-wage sector.”
After divvying up workers like this (and perhaps he does so with too broad of strokes), Temin explains why there are such stark divisions between them. He focuses on how the construction of class and race, and racial prejudice, have created a system that keeps members of the lower classes precisely where they are. He writes that the upper class of FTE workers, who make up just one-fifth of the population, has strategically pushed for policies—such as relatively low minimum wages and business-friendly deregulation—to bolster the economic success of some groups and not others, largely along racial lines. “The choices made in the United States include keeping the low-wage sector quiet by mass incarceration, housing segregation and disenfranchisement,” Temin writes.
And how is one to move up from the lower group to the higher one? Education is key, Temin writes, but notes that this means plotting, starting in early childhood, a successful path to, and through, college. That’s a 16-year (or longer) plan that, as Temin compellingly observes, can be easily upended. For minorities especially, this means contending with the racially fraught trends Temin identifies earlier in his book, such as mass incarceration and institutional disinvestment in students, for example. Many cities, which house a disproportionate portion of the black (and increasingly, Latino) population, lack adequate funding for schools. And decrepit infrastructure and lackluster public transit can make it difficult for residents to get out of their communities to places with better educational or work opportunities. Temin argues that these impediments exist by design.
Despite the bleak portrait that he paints, he doesn’t believe that the U.S. necessarily has to be like this. He offers five proposals that he says might help the country return to more equal footing. Some are fairly clear levers that many before him have recommending pulling: expanding access to and improving public education (particularly early education), repairing infrastructure, investing less in programs like prisons that oppress poor minorities, and increasing funding for those that can help build social capital and increase economic mobility. But other suggestions of his are more ambitious and involve fundamentally changing the cultural beliefs that have been reinforced over generations. Temin advocates doing away with the belief that private agencies can act in the interest of all citizens in the way that public entities can, and should. His final recommendation is to address systemic racism by reviving the spirit of the Second Reconstruction of the 1960s and 1970s, when civil-rights legislation helped to desegregate schools and give black Americans more political and economic power.
Temin notes that not all of these things need to be accomplished in order for America to reverse the increasingly divided path it’s on. But at the moment, implementing even one of these recommendations would prove a tall order.
Last edited by Ominous Gamer; 05-06-2017 at 02:18 AM.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Lewk, the single best predictor of your income is your parent's income. The best predictor of education is your family's education.
Hope is the denial of reality
Lets.
Why do people go to jail?
They broke the law. That was their choice. Typically a rather stupid one.
Why do people continue habits such as tobacco? Poor choices.
Why do poor people drink more soda? Poor choices. Why do poor people buy more lottery tickets? Bad decisions.
People don't make bad decisions because they are poor, they are poor because they make bad decisions. They *stay* poor because they continue to make those bad decisions.
Now you can argue "no economic movement people born to poor families stay poor waaaah" You know why? Because the poor tend to be shitty parents too. They pass out horrible value systems. They find no shame in handouts, they pass on the idea that the 'system is stacked against us.' These types of predictions are often self fulfilling but it is the person's choice to embrace it or grow out of it.
Those who value hard work and bettering themselves, those who stay out of trouble with the law will find success. Why do immigrants from Korea and India do better? They come from cultures that have a stronger work ethic. The ugly, ugly truth is that there are cultures in America that are antithetical to success.
What kind of bull shit is this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acting_white
"In the United States, acting white is a pejorative term, usually applied to African Americans, which refers to a person's perceived betrayal of their culture by assuming the social expectations of white society.[1][2] Success in education in particular (depending on one's cultural background) can be seen as a form of "selling out" by being disloyal to one's culture.[2]
The term is controversial, and its precise meaning is hard to define.[1] Some minority students are discouraged from achieving in school by the negative prejudices of ethnic peers; such a view has been expressed in articles in The New York Times, Time magazine, and The Wall Street Journal—and by public figures and academics across the political spectrum.[2]"
Your article even shows that is the case when it compares recent immigrants from different cultures (Hispanic vs. Asian). There exists two general type of people. Those who believe their circumstances define them and those who believe they define their circumstances. If you believe you can do well and be better you will likely go do it. People who believe their fate is preordained by the system *WILL NOT MOVE.* They will not do the hard analysis of their self and realize that they themselves are to blame for their condition.
This goes far beyond just race and poverty mind you. Look at any person who has lost substantial weight - how did they do that? They did it by making a change. They realized their own behaviors contributed to their obesity and did something about it. But modern society is all about giving people excuses 'urban food islands' 'people can't help themselves' 'CICO is wrong' 'muhh conditions.' Its all a load of bull shit that people gobble up because it allows them to feel good about themselves.
Personal relationships work the same way. If they are on a destructive path you can fix it by changing what you do. Ultimately if it is both parties fault and only one party changes it is doomed to fail but people can't seem to look in the mirror and see themselves at fault.
The most empowering thing a person can realize is that they themselves are fully responsible for their failure. YOU FUCKED UP. YOU SCREWED UP. That is the most validating and empowering message anyone can ever get. Do you know why? Because if your current shitty situation is your fault... that means YOU can fix it. you don't need an outside person to do it. You can make the changes necessary! However society views this as harsh and continues to dis-empower people by spewing excuse after excuse for them to hide behind.
This works for education, sports, diet, finances and relationships. Yes, hard realities obviously exist. Not everyone gets to be an astronaut however self improvement is possible. Part of my disdain for liberals is there never ending blame game that does the absolute opposite of helping people, it creates dependent people with no power to take control of their own fate. Of course, that's how liberals want people. Helpless sheeple. Dependent on big brother to provide everything from food, housing, healthcare and everything else under the sun.
Like I say, poor people often make shitty parents. It isn't that much of a stretch to think that those shitty parents didn't teach valuable life lessons to their kids. Keep in mind that once they become an adult it is on them to understand the world. Sadly liberals often reinforce shitty world views in order to keep people dependent on government.
*shrug* Perhaps the least informed rant I've seen on this forum in the past few years.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
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