At 9/24/12 12:39 AM, LemonCrush wrote:
But that ins't what the nation was founded on. The nation was founded on the concept of personal choice When the government legislates morality, and consumption, and finances, you are living by their will. The whole point of the revolution was to escape government interference in finance.
Read the Federalism Papers and the correspondance of Madison and Jefferson. You'll see that the nations was built in such a manner as to insulate it from the popular will of the masses. The Founding Fathers were smart enough to see that while the populace is the reason for and the target of the government, the populace is in now way a good governor. The populace is far too prone to fads, mob mentality, ignorances, and knee-jerking to be a good competant governor. While Republican government isn't free from corruption, it still is 100 times more likely to make better decisions for the sake of the ENTIRE country and decisions that are better for the long term than the people are.
When you find waste in every aspect of government, it adds up
Government waste, and abuse of the system are teo VERY different things. One is an actively poor use of money by the government directly, and the other is a segment of the population taking advantage of the system. Their root causes and end solutions are so different that they should not be lumped together as the same or even similar. Think apples and oranges.
I didn't say there weren't regulations, I said (implied) it isn't enforced
It is enforced. Businesses lose their ability to accept foodstamps (EBT) all the time because of violations and trafficking. The bigger chain stores are also very strict about what can be purchased with EBT because the loss of EBT for just one mini-region (Example: the Central & North Seattle region) could represent losses in the millions of dollars. On top of that, the US attorney, as well as State Attorneys, will often criminally prosecute. Could the system be enforced harder? Definitely. Does that mean the current enforcement isn't working? Not at all. As the enforcement is at the seller level, the EBT consumers rarely see it, but the effects are definitely there.
Exactly
What are you arguing here? First you say that medicine isn't safe and a doctor would never tell you that medicine is safe, and the government is bad for doing that. You then say a doctor would never tell you heroin is safe, but then I say that doctors routinely say that oxycodone is safe (which it is) and you agree? Are you flipping coins before you make points?
Stop pretending they can save the world. They can't. As you say, the number 1 cause of death, is life. So, why pay billions for a government agency to try to guarantee everything is safe...
There's a MAJOR difference between arsenic and the carcinogens you speak of. Fist off, arsenic at the levels that used to be in food clearly causes death and does so prematurely. The carcinogens you speaks have not even been proven to cause cancer in humans. They show correlations between consumption and cancer in mice. On top of that lack of connection to humans, there has been nothing indicating that these chemicals will shorten a human's life span outside of the statistical standard of deviation.
The choice Americans make when eating food represents a 1000 times bigger harm to the health and lifespan of the people than the "evil chemicals" the government allows in food. I bet you eat fancy sausage whilst decrying pink slime too. (If you can't see the hypocrisy there, then I pity you).
That isn't really my point. As stated above, everything is dangerous, so isn't it stupid to waste billions on something that can never be so (safety).
So would you walk down the highway the wrong direction in the middle of the night wearing a black jumpsuit? Why not? You can never make anything truly 100% safe, right? So why even try?
Just because you can't make things 100% safe doesn't mean that spending resources to drop the illness and death rate from "very probable" to "so small it may just be a statistical anomaly" is a waste.
No, they were very cooperative with the govt. AND they were infringing on consumers. Not free society.
Nope. The government didn't even enter the field until 1908 and regulations didn't have much teeth or even resemble today until the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938.
Prove it.
If you don't believe that the UN knows what it's talking about when it comes to its member nations, I couldn't find any proof to convice you. You might as well tell the Pentagon that they know nothing of US military history, or MIT that they know nothing about the history of mathmatical theories.
But the government is supposed to be keeping me safe, remember? Why are they letting my retirement money be screwed over by corporations? If the government is truly sticking up for the little guy, wouldn't they prevent such behaviors?
Not allowing your older brother to retire at 16 is hardly being screwed by anything. Companies are free to choose when their employees should be able to leave and recieve certain retirement benefits. The government has placed ceilings on the maximum age. 29 USC 1002 (24)(B) places the max age for restricting retirement to the age of 65 or the 5th anniversary of beginning participation in the retirement program. You can read the entirety of ERISA if you'd like, but seeing as many attorneys spend their entire working life on just this Act, I highly doubt a cold reading will make much sense.
So what do you call it when the companies charge more to make up for losses, but the consumers DON'T have more money?
Depending on the outcome and numerous other circumstances, I could call it many things. But generally, the tenet of capitalism is: the consumer will pay what the good is worth. If the business charges more and the consumer still chooses to pay, even if they don't have money, then nothing is wrong here. If the companies charge more to make up for losses and the consumers don't pay, then the company is committing suicide. Now, if the company is claiming that the increased minimum wage is the source of their losses, but the consumers still don't have money then a couple things: 1- Maybe the business was charging too much to begin with, 2 - I call bullshit as increasing the consumer's dispoable income by the same exact percent the wages are increased should not directly lead to this problem.
