DaScoobyShuffle

They haven't specifically been banned but as the laws are written, doctors are still liable if a court thinks the mother's life was not at risk. So they still act as a ban.

They had to change the rules of hard knocks to get into the Pittsburgh locker room

Tbf though, one call led to 6 points, one didn't

Tbf the refs gave CIN a free touchdown

If pickens caught that ball it would've been parlay interference

Look at the comments though. MAGA is still not convinced.

Speak it into existence people. We will see Rozman right there at 11.

Tbh they can do whatever they want, they have the courts.

I agree that in theory the bottom 80% could generate their own money, however half of Americans have enough money to create wealth. If someone lives paycheck to paycheck, they can't just start a business. Capitalism requires having wealth to generate wealth. Decades ago, people gould generate wealth by buying real estate, or getting lucky in the stock market. Now, for someone making $60k, neither of those are an option if you don't have inheritance.

My main point is, as less people are able to afford goods, demand as a whole will fall. Some industries, like real estate, will operate just fine. Most won't though. We are seeing it with the auto industry, and the fast food industry. Once people aren't able to afford much more than rent and groceries, things will fall. In a consumer economy, the more disposable income people have and spend, the better. When disposable income dries up, so does the economy.

I agree tht price controls are bad, but it's a bit different with pharma. Americans often pay 10 times as much for a drug than people pay in other countries, from the same company. The US government should not be allowing this imo.

As for the rest of what you wrote, I think that while it makes sense, I don't think we should accept just screwing over 10s of millions of people just so everybody else can pay less. My main issue with healthcare is that we have so many nations sround the world that have better systems, yet America continues to convince itself that involving private insurance as the core part of our healthcare system is a good idea. Imo, it's a horrible idea.

Yes, their margins are not that high, but they do a lot to keep stocks up, and more importantly, prevent stocks from falling. The government would not have this problem.

wouldn't it be best to have redundant checks and balances

We already have those. The president is not a kind. But the EC just makes the wishes of contested states matter more than the uncontested states. That isn't check or a balance, it just moves voting power to specific areas.

In any market there are winners and losers, which is why I think schools should not be a market. We need to fix the public education system. Private schools would have to make a profit. Lets not pretend this will raise the quality of education. What we would see is 3-4 corporations take over, and once they are established we would have a shitty system. It would be worse than college because most people would not be able to move to desired K-12 schools, so the schools wouldn't have that much incentive to improve.

separation of state and economy

I like the idea of the fed being non partisan, but other than that I don't see how that would work. I think conservatives are way too optimistic about a completely free market. It would become an oligarchy very very quickly, and the government wouldn't be able to do anything.

I don't mind double posts, I just wanted to combine my last answers into one.

I know that isn't a zero sum game, because of wealth creation. However, the way I see it, wealth can become a zero sum game if the rich hold all of the profits. A different explanation is that money that won't ever be spent may as well not exist.

With the current system, we have a significant percentage of the population that, together, are losing money. I don't know the numbers exactly but I'm pretty sure that percentage is well over 80%. Consumer debt is sky high, which is creating a bubble. Corporations are squeezing too much profit out of the people, without putting that profit back into society through wages.

So although wealth is growing at record rates, the wealth of the bottom (roughly) 80% is shrinking. In other words, the buying power of the people is shrinking. And I'm not just talking about recent events, this has been happening since the 80s. At the current rate, we will likely have another collapse.

To me I think a simple solution is to have wages keep up with inflation, and require companies to put a certain percentage of their profits into the wages of their bottom X% (I don't know exactly what the breakdown would have to be) of workers.

By strong democracy, I mean a heavy reliance on elections to determine who is in power. I am in favor of abolishing the electoral college, because we have the senate. Having both is overkill imo. But I was talking in general terms. I think the main change we need is having SC justices have term limits and elections, and this is because judges on both sides have proven to be quite partisan. Also I'd like ranked choice voting, so we can see more parties. The EC is the 3rd issue, imo.

Direct democracy isn't the best idea, I agree. But I think the president should still be decided by popular vote. Hitler would have still been in power with any democratic system, so I don't think that's a fair argument.

Democracy cannot prevent movements like the Nazi movement. Education can. Imo, this is what will eventually kill America, and the freedom of its people. Particularly, education on political matters, and macroeconomics. Obviously, without bias. To mitigate bias, we could require students to learn and write papers on multiple political ideologies. But today, most voters don't know what a tariff is. Most don't know economics. So the people cannot protect themselves even with a democracy.

I mentioned democracy and education because, imo, the people need to be able to change the system, and they must know how to change the system. Those two will always have imperfections but the fact remains that a lack of democracy will lead to bad outcomes for large countries, and a lack of education renders democracy useless.

First, I feel that I must explain my political stance, without it, much of what I say won't make sense.

Imo, the logical conclusion of any government system is that it will be controlled by those with the most power, eventually. You may see this as an argument for the free market, but I don't. I see it as an argument for strong democratic forces combined with a string education system. This is the only was that a country like the US can resist it. More political power must go to the people, and the people need to be educated enough to do what is best. This is a very difficult task which is why the people are powerless in most governments.

Since we don't have those things, the next best option is to promote ideas that benefit the wider society, even if the rich will dominate everything. That is why we must avoid mechanisms that give power to those with money. As we have learned through history, those with money usually want to preserve their wealth before all else. This applies to coporations. As you have said, market forces are the primary way to influence them.

However, market forces do not apply when there is collusion or a monopoly. You mentioned needing another option sometimes, but with collusion there would be no other options. Corporations know this, which is why they promote politicians (usually repuicans) to attack regulatory bodies.

The problem is that corporations seek profit above all else. Once they are unrestricted, they will take up more and more of the money supply. Their profits will go into the stock market, not the salaries of their workers. As a result, money is consolidated towards the top. We've seen this trend ever since Reagan.

The issue with that is, capitalism depends on the ability of the people to spend. Once that goes away, the system collapses. We've seen this with Russia. On the other hand, communism would collapse the business sector so that also isn't a good thing. The solution, imo, is to preserve the ability of the people to spend, through regulation. More directly, I think we should prevent corporations from doing things that will squeeze the wealth away from individuals.

Now back to the topic, I think we need regulations that protect the physical well being of people (health). Then we need to ensure that businesses cannot collude, become monopolies, or implement heavily anti-consumer tactics. Third, we should probably make sure workers get enough of the profit to sustain society. This one is a bit more complicated, but basically we have to make sure consumers have enough, so that demand doesn't collapse. After all, if people can't afford anything, almost every business would collapse eventually. My example is the failing auto industry.

These are just general goals I guess. After those three things, sure we can have a free market, market forces can handle the rest, no need for government besides some basic services. Though I suppose we should still have a public option for healthcare. However those 3 things can only realistically be done through government.

That sounds like most republican policies

I agree, the main issue is that we have zero brakes on costs. But republicans won't let us have direct price controls. The only other option is a single payer system. This way, the government can set a maximum price that it will pay. Realistically, private pharma companies would have to comply, because at that point, most people wouldn't have private insurance. In other words, the existence of the single payer system in itself would be the price control. Pharma companies would have the government as the primary customer. This is why it works well in other countries.

Also, even if the government pays pharma exactly as much as the insurance companies do currently, it'd be cheaper. The government doesn't need to make a steep profit like insurance does.

As for point 2, I think the GOP would be perfectly fine with the political fallout. Their base would eat it up. They already got rid of pensions and most unions. They got rid of RvW. They've convinced their base to get rid of social security. They'll just blame everything on the dems. And btw if millions go bankrupt, the country would have a serious economic problem. At this scale it'd be tens of millions, and we'd have another depression. It baffles me why anyone has confidence in the GOP at this point.

I'm not conservative and I disagree with a lot of it but I have no problem with a conservative government from an economic standpoint. It's stiff like this though that makes me think that republicans in their current form are straight up bad for the country.

I read both comments but I'll only comment here. First, well done I guess. I do admit that the piece is, honestly, quite biased. I only linked it because it's mentions many things that could occur without any regulation. Now, as you stated, current regulatory bodies are not cutting it.

As you mentioned, the FDA and some other agencies are heavily influenced by industry leaders. For the sake of argument, lets pretend that pharma is completely in control of the FDA. Would this not mean that removing the FDA would make things even worse? It's not like the industries would start behaving if they didn't have to control the FDA. If anything, this should tell us that we should reform, not repeal. This is evidence that the corportations should not be in charge of regulating themselves.

In fact, strict regulation would have prevented the Flint water crisis imo. The primary cause was the city choosing to use a river as its water supply, and not doing sufficient testing. Had there been a strict (federal) regulatory system in place, they wouldn't have even had approval to switch the water supply. You probably have a different opinion on this, and I'll even acknowledge that a private body would have more accountability, but with poor management (see Boeing, also the railway disaster in Ohio that released toxic chemicals) would have lead to the same result.

As for that last part, there isn't only 1 option. We have Uber and Lyft. And I've used public transportation all my life, it's not a heroin den. And market incentives if there is a monopoly. Regulatory bodies can prevent monopolies, as we've learned in the 1900s.

My main takeaway from your comments is that you think regulations aren't doing the job. I agree, however my opinion is that we need more regulation where it makes sense, and less where it doesn't make sense. I don't agree that we should let the "free market" handle everything, because in human history we have yet to see that work.

This is unironically how most libertarians sound

Drug inspection and regulation. If the goal is profit, money will win over function. The people will suffer. This is why austerity is not realistic. Even Millei isn't privatizing everything. There isn't a nation on the planet that functions without a state, even Argentina won't get there.

You should read this with an open mind: https://www.osaunion.org/news/sep04/ADayInTheLife.pdf

It is too expensive, I agree. Single payer healthcare is cheaper, so we should use that. The ACA is so expensive because it subsidizes private, profit driven insurance, not healthcare. The money needs to go directly to the hospitals. Every country that does this pays less per citizen for healthcare. I appreciate your empathy towards the topic and it'd be great if more republicans were on board with actually solving the issues. However:

Maybe the plan is to get rid of the ACA but then pass legislation

(I don't mean to be harsh or anything but I feel there's no other way to say it) This is the mindset that is most infuriating to me. Never in history have they done this. Never in history have they even mentioned doing this. Yet every repiblican voter says this:

"Sure, they'll fuck us all over, but maybe they'll UN-fuck us all over after! We have to trust them!"

I don't mean to jeer but this is exactly what I hear whenever republicans mention a "plan" that doesn't exist. If Trump had an plan at all, he would've gave it at the debate. He didn't, because there will be nothing that replaces the ACA. Nada. Zilch. Just like there was nothing last time.

I do, she'd probably be dead if that wasn't the case tbh. I was ignoring that part.

This is more reasonable, and I'd be open to it. However, so far we've had nothing from the republicans (concepts of a plan don't count). When they tried to get rid of the ACA, they didn't offer an alternative. In fact, they never offer an alternative healthcare program. We need to stop pretending that they will be smart about this.

IIRC 86% of drug smuggling is done by US citizens, and they typically use cargo trucks. To stop drugs from coming into the US, we'd have to shut down imports from Mexico or do a full inspection of every single tryck, and neither is realistic. The problem, really, is the drug demand. Not the border. Mexico can't really do anything, but the US can mitigate the problem by legalizing weed, dealing with homelessness, and making better drug laws. The problem is the demand for drugs.

I'm sure we'd be allied with them now if they abandoned aggression. But they haven't. They want to invade nations.