A successful socialist economy

[TomC]

You said "Being unhealthy is a choice." Do you realize how stupid that makes you look to me?
Tom

It is a choice, Tom. Most health issues are caused by diet and lifestyle. If you eat three meals a day, with snacks in between, you're going to be sick. This ain't hard. Think of all the folks who reversed Type 2 diabetes with diet and exercise.

Nonsense.
My mom ate very sensibly for her entire adult life.

She got cancer.
Twice!

Eating well is a good start. But it's no guarantee.
Tom

Eating what well? Carbs, processed foods, and seed oils are going to get you. And if you don't exercise, welcome sarcopenia. Of course, cancer can be in the genetic cards. But the notion that aging means you have no choice but to be frail and sick is ridiculous.

What you said is that being unhealthy is a choice.
I'm saying it isn't necessarily a personal choice.
She grew up in Gary, Indiana.
Big Steel ran that city.

She'd probably ingested a ton of carcinogens by the time she was 10y/o. Because "What's good for GM is good for America!". Cheap steel was good for GM.

She wad a poor Irish kid. The wealthy elites of the day didn't care about human health. They don't today either.

Because Capitalism! Money for the rich!
It'll trickle down.

The reason modern Americans are doing so great is because the super rich are doing great.
Right?
Tom

 

[Derec]

Trausti,
this digression is quite silly. Sure, nutrition and exercise helps, but it does not guarantee that you won't have a health problem, even at a relatively young age.

 

[steve_bank]

Millions of people started a business. We have tons of billionaires. A conservative rationale.

That in itself means nothing. The only meaningful metric is how many hours an average worker needs to work to pay rent, food, and medical insurance. That is steadily getting worse even without current inflation.

The obvious absurdity is if everybody started a business who will do the work?

 

[steve_bank]

Trausti,
this digression is quite silly. Sure, nutrition and exercise helps, but it does not guarantee that you won't have a health problem, even at a relatively young age.

My Super Duper Beta Gamma supplement I take is guaranteed to make me live to 175 years in good health.

The statistics have been clear since early 80s. A good diet avoiding alcohol, tobacco, and drugs and you will be better off.

The consequences of poor health due to diet, alcohol, tobaccos, and drugs is a major cost driver in health care. I saw it when I was in the hospital, a nursing home, assisted living, and now in a senior apartment building.

Drivig DUI does guarantee you will have an accide or get a ticket.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If a 30ish parent would like to start a business, would the Capitalist Health Care System be an impediment?

Yeah, it would. And you know it.

Why? Unless you each shit and don't exercise, there's really no reason to be anxious about access to healthcare. Being unhealthy is a choice.

Or unlucky.

 

[ZiprHead]

Over here socialism is often conflated with communism by the right. Or socialism leads to communism and loss of freedoms. The usual political fear mongering.

If socialism means less regulation and the encouragement of business formation, let’s have it.

Less regulation and the encouragement of entrepreneurship are quite different things.

One of the best ways the USA could encourage small business and entrepreneurship would be Universal Health Care. If people with an idea and some drive could leave their corporate jobs without risking disaster from health care costs they'd be more inclined to do it. The current health care system is nearly designed to keep wage slaves in their place.
Tom

I dunno. Young people don’t think much about healthcare. I imagine if we wanted to encourage entrepreneurship, we’d teach financial literacy, business, and practical skills in secondary schools. But, no time for that. Pronouns, gender flags, and how evil America is are far more important subjects.

I don’t agree that young people don’t think much about healthcare. But too often, young people are only able to get jobs with poor or zero healthcare benefits.

Nah. Unless a young person has a congenital condition, healthcare isn’t on the radar. That’s a benefit of being young. The consequences of the unhealthy Western diet and lifestyle are years away.

Sorry but you're wrong. My kids are all young adults and trust me, they were very conscious of when they were no longer covered under our insurance and what kind of insurance (if any) they were able to get through their employer. One purchased his own because it was cheaper and better than what his employer offered. He was....23 or so.

I was damn glad I had health insurance at age 20 when I came upon a condition that required a surgery. It was a minor issue but would have cost me many thousands of dollars without the insurance.

 

[laughing dog]

Young healthy men should also establish a relationship with a health care provider for the same reasons (aside from not needing a pap smear).

Well, of course. Healthcare is a business. Gotta make up reasons for them to come back.

If a 30ish parent would like to start a business, would the Capitalist Health Care System be an impediment?

Yeah, it would. And you know it.

Why? Unless you each shit and don't exercise, there's really no reason to be anxious about access to healthcare.

When I was awaiting my cancer surgery at the Mayo Clinic, I shared a room with a young cowboy. He had some stomach pains but put off going to the doctor because he didn't have health insurance. Finally, he could not abide it any more. His doctor sent him to the Mayo Clinic. He was recuperating from his surgery to excise his stomach cancer. The operation was not a success - his cancer extended to his kidneys, lungs and pancreas. His prognosis was very grim.
This father of 3 hadn't smoked or drank - he was a God-fearing Christian.
Some people are unlucky.

Being unhealthy is a choice.

Sorry, that is one of the most fucking stupid comments I have ever seen at IIDB.

 

[ZiprHead]

If a 30ish parent would like to start a business, would the Capitalist Health Care System be an impediment?

Yeah, it would. And you know it.

Why? Unless you each shit and don't exercise, there's really no reason to be anxious about access to healthcare. Being unhealthy is a choice.

You'd take the risk on your whole family not having health insurance for the small chance you might be able to create a stable small business of your own and buy your own health insurance for you and your family? Especially private health insurance that could drop you at a moments notice if, say, one of your kids gets leukemia.

You may say yes but I would bet the vast majority would say no. Do you not see how that would put a chilling effect on innovation and entrepreneurship?

 

[ZiprHead]

What a stupid meme! Norway has ~5 million people and produces ~2 Mbbl/d of oil.
I guess if US had oil production of 0.4 bbl/d/person (i.e. about 130 Mbbl/d, much more than world's total), we'd be able to afford Norway levels of largess too.

USA GDP Per Capita 63,543.58 USD (2020)
Norway GDP Per Capita 67,294.48 USD (2020)

Virtually the same.

 

[ZiprHead]

You are confusing socialism with communism. Here is a good discussion of the differences: https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/glossary/socialism-vs-communism/

I am not confusing anything. That website is grossly confusing socialism and social democracy.

What's the difference?

 

[bilby]

Socialism means public ownership of means of production. Sweden is not socialist.

…therefore everything Dr Z actually said, must be ignored.

Because linguistic prescriptivism is always a better choice than economic literacy, when deciding how to run an economy.

 

[bilby]

If a 30ish parent would like to start a business, would the Capitalist Health Care System be an impediment?

Yeah, it would. And you know it.

Why? Unless you each shit and don't exercise, there's really no reason to be anxious about access to healthcare. Being unhealthy is a choice.

The worst thing about this post (and it has many, many really bad things about it), is that you actually and genuinely believe it.

It’s a massive failure of the American education system, that people can honestly present such utter nonsense, and genuinely imagine it to be wise and true.

 

[bilby]

Young healthy men should also establish a relationship with a health care provider for the same reasons (aside from not needing a pap smear).

Well, of course. Healthcare is a business. Gotta make up reasons for them to come back.

Healthcare is a business in the USA. That, as you correctly observe here, is a very bad thing.

Fortunately, in the rest of the world, healthcare is a service, not a business.

 

[bilby]

What a stupid meme! Norway has ~5 million people and produces ~2 Mbbl/d of oil.
I guess if US had oil production of 0.4 bbl/d/person (i.e. about 130 Mbbl/d, much more than world's total), we'd be able to afford Norway levels of largess too.

Of course.

I was wondering why Saudi Arabia was such a progressive socialist nation. Thanks for explaining it.

oh, wait.



Shit.

 

[Elixir]

If a young person needs to frequent healthcare, that person must be very unhealthy or a hypochondriac.

You keep referring to young people as though they're the only possible entrepreneurs.

My mom opened a business when her "baby" was in high school.
Tom

I was 57 when I started my last one. My partners were both a little (5-8 yrs) younger.
It was a much smoother and more successful startup than anything I had previously done. In fact looking back it’s incredible to me that any young person can do it without a ton of help. I sure fucked up a lot in previous ventures.

 

[ZiprHead]

What percentage of small businesses fail?

According to the Small Business Administration (SBA) Office of Advocacy’s 2018 Frequently Asked Questions, roughly 80% of small businesses survive the first year. That number might be surprisingly high to you, especially considering the commonly-held belief that most businesses fail within the first year.

However, from there the number falls sharply. Only about half of small businesses survive passed the five-year mark, ranging from 45.4% to 51% depending on the year the business was started. Beyond that, only about one in three small businesses get to the 10-year mark and live to tell the tale.

That's a pretty small risk/benefit ratio to bet your family's health on.

Council Post: What Percentage Of Small Businesses Fail -- And How Can You Avoid Being One Of Them?

Knowing that about half of all small businesses run out of gas within the first five years, the real question then becomes this: Why do those small businesses fail, and how can you avoid it?

www.forbes.com

 

[Hermit]

Here's the dictionary definition of socialism.

a theory or system of social organization that advocates the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, capital, land, etc., by the community as a whole, usually through a centralized government.

This is why it gets such a bad reputation in the US. It's a confusing and misunderstood term that has been defined in many ways, but the actual meaning is the same or very similar to communism.

Looking up "socialism" in Merriam-Webster's dictionary:

The differences between communism and socialism are still debated, but generally English speakers use communism to talk about the political and economic ideologies that find their origin in Karl Marx’s theory of revolutionary socialism, which advocates a proletariat overthrow of capitalist structures within a society; societal and communal ownership and governance of the means of production; and the eventual establishment of a classless society. The most well-known expression of Marx’s theories is the 20th-century Bolshevism of the U.S.S.R., in which the state, through a single authoritarian party, controlled a society’s economic and social activities with the goal of realizing Marx’s theories. Socialism, meanwhile, is most often used in modern English to refer to a system of social organization in which private property and the distribution of income are subject to social control.

Most people who equate all forms of socialism with communism do so in order to taint the former with the odour the latter has acquired in the real world. The real world has also demonstrated that socialist and capitalist policies do not preclude each other. It can even be argued that socialist policies are not inherently antithetical to conservatism. The United Kingdom's Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and Germany's Chancellor Otto von Bismarck come to mind.

 

[TV and credit cards]

If a young person needs to frequent healthcare, that person must be very unhealthy or a hypochondriac.

You keep referring to young people as though they're the only possible entrepreneurs.

My mom opened a business when her "baby" was in high school.
Tom

I was 57 when I started my last one. My partners were both a little (5-8 yrs) younger.
It was a much smoother and more successful startup than anything I had previously done. In fact looking back it’s incredible to me that any young person can do it without a ton of help. I sure fucked up a lot in previous ventures.

Most young people don’t. The average age of the successful entrepreneur is 45.
45 is when a person is much more likely to have a family with adult children desperately clinging to mom or dad’s health insurance until they are every bit of 26.
These young people Trausti speaks of are not so much trying to start a business as they are trying to replace their lawn chairs and wooden cable spools with actual furniture.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Over here socialism is often conflated with communism by the right. Or socialism leads to communism and loss of freedoms. The usual political fear mongering.

Sure. Stupid people don't understand the meaning of words. I am not sure what your point is?

 

[DrZoidberg]

I dunno. Young people don’t think much about healthcare. I imagine if we wanted to encourage entrepreneurship, we’d teach financial literacy, business, and practical skills in secondary schools. But, no time for that. Pronouns, gender flags, and how evil America is are far more important subjects.

That's so much b.s...

Young people aren't very good entrepreneurs.
To succeed in business you need a bunch of skills that young people generally haven't yet developed.

But even the skills you're talking about aren't going to be taught in a school that can barely manage literacy and algebra.

Remember the "individual mandate" part of ACA? The point to that was to get the young and healthy to subsidize the health care system before they needed it. It was a plank in the Heritage Foundation plan to reform health care, back when the Republicans were opposed to HillaryCare. Mitt Romney touted the value of it, when he used it on the state level as Governor of Massachusetts.

Once it was part of health care system reform proposed by Obama it became Communist and stuff. Trump promised to end ACA, but once in office it turned out that Republicans were fine with ACA and so the only thing that changed was that the individual mandate went away and the government and other payers took up the costs.

Replace ACA with UHC and you'll see a bunch entrepreneurship.
Tom

But how do they get those skills? Of course by starting business that fail. Over and over until they succeed. That's the story of my first professional ten years. I didn’t get a normal job with a stable salary until I was into my 30'ies.

I'd argue that young people are the best for starting companies. Not so much because they are better at it. But if you need to figure stuff out to avoid getting evicted and feeling yourself, you will get a kind of focus most young people lack. They use that effort on utter bullshit.

Sometimes the goal isn't to win, but to grow as a person.