^ Not completely useless, but working on projects (expensive ones likely) that are at best, a luxury for a government struggling to live within its means. Stuff like the advancement of human knowledge is awesome, but should the US be borrowing huge sums of money for it when they can't meet other more fundamental obligations?
I don't mean to pick unduly on NASA, but I think it is fair to say that since the shuttles are grounded, I don't think it generates a lot of net revenue for the government.
These are tight fiscal times and things that could be funded in a boom period might have to be let go for the moment.
I'm no expert here, but it sure seems like when it comes to space exploration and the like the US pretty much pays for things that wind up benefiting everyone. Maybe the rest of the world should chip in a bit more.
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Dental, prescription medication, and most 'alternative' types of medicine like physio, chiro, etc is covered by private insurance in Canada. That does differ between provinces though. For example, in Alberta, we used to have a yearly amount of chiro that we could use, but that changed a few years back.
I pay about $100 a month for my family through my employer for this insurance, which is about average, I would guess.
It's likely higher than $100. That's just your portion
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Ironically enough this may precisely be because of the private system.
Patients are scared to go to the doctor because of what they fear the cost will be. Then only do so when it has evolved from treatable to chronic and causing them severe discomfort.
They have higher rates of obesity, diabetes, etc. That's not really because of their healthcare system.
Lots of reasons to postulate on, but their healthcare system is likely a minor contributor
Interesting point re obestiy and diabetes (or diabesity as it is now coming to be called).
There is a great HBO documentary called Weight of the Nation on obesity in the US. It's streaming free on youtube at the moment, at least in Canada: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pEkCbqN4uo
Almost no one is spared in this doc. For the lefties, there is a huge rant against the corporations that mass market crappy calories to people, particularly kids and a call for more government action here. For the righties, they also take on the National Lunch Program as well as unnecessary big government subsidies to the corn and soybean mass producers (which end products generally end up being the worst additive to crappy calorie foods) and call for less government interference in the free agricultural market.
One industry that was totally spared (indeed not even mentioned) was healthcare. Interesting given that some of the focus on the doc was in demonstrating that the obestiy epidemic first hit the poorest demographic of the US, and that could be one reason why. Sadly, it is now affecting all demographics.
Lest we in Canada get on our high horses, we should remember that in the last 15 years the average Canadian male has closed the weight gap on the average American male, from 10 lbs to 5 lbs. We are being affected too.
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Interesting point re obestiy and diabetes (or diabesity as it is now coming to be called).
There is a great HBO documentary called Weight of the Nation on obesity in the US. It's streaming free on youtube at the moment, at least in Canada: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pEkCbqN4uo
Almost no one is spared in this doc. For the lefties, there is a huge rant against the corporations that mass market crappy calories to people, particularly kids and a call for more government action here. For the righties, they also take on the National Lunch Program as well as unnecessary big government subsidies to the corn and soybean mass producers (which end products generally end up being the worst additive to crappy calorie foods) and call for less government interference in the free agricultural market.
One industry that was totally spared (indeed not even mentioned) was healthcare. Interesting given that some of the focus on the doc was in demonstrating that the obestiy epidemic first hit the poorest demographic of the US, and that could be one reason why. Sadly, it is now affecting all demographics.
Lest we in Canada get on our high horses, we should remember that in the last 15 years the average Canadian male has closed the weight gap on the average American male, from 10 lbs to 5 lbs. We are being affected too.
Poverty is a huge problem in the US.
I think it's the single largest problem facing their society.
The other interesting dynamic at play here is the dichomatic lens through which the political debate is viewed. There are parallels to Albertan politics, but obviously not to the same degree.
The two-party systems fosters this kind of either-or-standing.
In a multi-party system, an event like this, so clearly orchestrated for political gain by a small group of politicians and their puppet masters, would be enough to ensure a generation wide boycott of their party, similar to how the NEP killed multiple generations of any desire to vote Liberal (and if they did, not to tell anyone) for people in Alberta.
While effectively a 2 party political state in Alberta, alternatives at the local and national level make the decision to boycott a particular party less decisive in nature. If there is 'us' and 'them' but also some 'others', we can entertain the idea of goign along with those 'others' if we like what they're saying. When it's "us" vs. "them" and you are either "us" or "them", it becomes increasingly difficult to view "them" as anything BUT "Them".
Race baiting is an underlying facet of this, having moved on from blacks to hispanics now, and you can see some glimpses of it in this thread, but also in the rhetoric at the national political level.
Not to be picky, but Sweden doesn't pay for illegal aliens healthcare either...
I've seen the illegal alien thing used to confuse the issue on several conservative sites, and I think even our dear Sarah Palin referenced it. It's a confusion based on spin.
The real reason government funded healthcare won't work in the US the same way is because of military spending. Healthcare Spending if universally provided is just too expensive. You can't have both without much, much higher taxes IMO.
Universal health care in the US is entirely feasible if you can manage to cut the costs. US spends substantially more than the next four GDP ranked countries on healthcare and gets substantially less because of their insistence on privatization. This American explains it a lot better than I can
Universal health care in the US is entirely feasible if you can manage to cut the costs. US spends substantially more than the next four GDP ranked countries on healthcare and gets substantially less because of their insistence on privatization. This American explains it a lot better than I can
Again, while that is true, you will have to convince the electorate that they should stop paying premiums to private providers and start paying taxes to the government to provide that care. It ain't happening
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It's not just hard. It's impossible. Pushing the bounds of human knowledge is not quantifiable by any means.
But an insolvent government like the US Federal Government has to make the hard decisions. If only 500 of the 18,000 NASA employees are working on what the government considers "essential", some of them (and indeed a lot of them) probably shouldn't be there collecting salary, benefits and probably pensions.
That is cold and insensitve I agree. It's also reality. Things are never going to get better in the US if these hard decisions aren't made.
Killing funding for science and programs such as NASA is one of the biggest mistakes the US can make. The patent royalties alone from NASA spinoff technologies more than doubled the net input funding provided to NASA by the government.
Quote:
"the $25 billion in 1958 dollars spent on civilian space R & D during the 1958-1969 period has returned $52 billion through 1971"
The spinoffs provided by NASA is one of the reasons the US has remained technologically cutting edge so many years against many competitors. Some of these include:
Public perception of NASA and the view continuously pushed by GOP and other NASA cutting politicians has always been that it's a money waster when in fact it isn't. Cutting into NASA and education is short sighted and is sacrificing long term technological innovations to save a few pennies as a percentage of the gross national budget. If you want to cut costs, cut defense... it costs way more than NASA ever would while providing much less benefit.
Last edited by FlameOn; 10-01-2013 at 07:16 PM.
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Again, while that is true, you will have to convince the electorate that they should stop paying premiums to private providers and start paying taxes to the government to provide that care. It ain't happening
Another byproduct of an uninformed electorate coupled with political intransigence as a result of massive lobbying dollars.
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Killing funding for science and programs such as NASA is one of the biggest mistakes the US can make. The patent royalties alone from NASA spinoff technologies more than doubled the net input funding provided to NASA by the government.
The spinoffs provided by NASA is one of the reasons the US has remained technologically cutting edge so many years against many competitors. Some of these include:
Public perception of NASA and the view continuously pushed by GOP and other NASA cutting politicians has always been that it's a money waster when in fact it isn't. Cutting into NASA and education is short sighted and is sacrificing long term technological innovations to save a few pennies as a percentage of the gross national budget. If you want to cut costs, cut defense... it costs way more than NASA ever would while providing much less benefit.
I'm all about cutting the defense budget, but funding for NASA is just welfare for educated people. My brother is a scientist and argues this with me all the time, but I feel that the money invested in NASA could be better spent growing the economy long term through investment in basic education. Not much point in sending rockets into space when half of your population can barely read or do basic math.
I'm all about cutting the defense budget, but funding for NASA is just welfare for educated people. My brother is a scientist and argues this with me all the time, but I feel that the money invested in NASA could be better spent growing the economy long term through investment in basic education. Not much point in sending rockets into space when half of your population can barely read or do basic math.
You are missing the point. NASA makes more than doubles the money that is invested into it . Since NASA pays for itself and then some, it isn't welfare for educated people at all, it's educated people paying for other aspects of government. If you put the money that NASA makes after the initial investment back into education you'd end up with a net decrease in your education costs. In effect by cutting NASA funding and not sending rockets to the moon, you decrease the net funding to education. This is in part why half the population can barely read or write, bad prioritization of government funding.
I'm all about cutting the defense budget, but funding for NASA is just welfare for educated people. My brother is a scientist and argues this with me all the time, but I feel that the money invested in NASA could be better spent growing the economy long term through investment in basic education. Not much point in sending rockets into space when half of your population can barely read or do basic math.
It's like you either didn't read what you quoted or you didn't understand it.
Try again.
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I'm all about cutting the defense budget, but funding for NASA is just welfare for educated people. My brother is a scientist and argues this with me all the time, but I feel that the money invested in NASA could be better spent growing the economy long term through investment in basic education. Not much point in sending rockets into space when half of your population can barely read or do basic math.
Wow mate, between this and the other thread your 0-4 or something.
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Wow mate, between this and the other thread your 0-4 or something.
It's the "gender neutral anthem", US government shuts down" and this thread. All three threads he just blatantly misses a major point, or in some cases the only point.
There is inaccurate information circulating regarding the status of some NASA missions. All missions operated out of JPL and APL are continuing to operate normally for now. Hopefully the shutdown will be short.
Back on topic, can anyone explain to me why in the US it's okay for parties to add legislation conditions that have nothing to do with the legislation currently being proposed? Are bills supposed to not focus on a single topic and be very narrow in focus or am I just viewing things too much through my Canadian glasses? Not quite clear on the rules behind
Just trying to understand how a budget had a proposal slipped in to try to defund existing programs and how US legislators slip in anti-child pornography provisions into deeply unpopular proposals so congressmen have to vote on it (otherwise it looks like they pro-kiddy porn, i.e. SOPA)
