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Political Views and Such
MindGate
United States Veteran
So, today a kid said to me, "So, Jarred, you're quite the liberal, right? Far left?" I said yes. He then asked if we could have a little debate because he was far right, and I naturally complied. Where do you stand on these issues?
Health Care
First he asked me about health care and the new bill that was passed. I personally don't know much about economy or anything related to that, but from what I read, there are both pros and cons to the bill, but I don't know enough about that to make a decision.
Abortion
Next he asked about abortion. I said that I am pro-abortion, up to 2 months. At around 2 months, the fetus starts to feel pain and is beginning to have develop brain functions and consciousness. To me, the fetus is not "alive" before then (nor a sentient being). Of course, this could be argued. Though, if we did not have abortions, we'd be overrun even more with humans. Its only right for the planet that we keep out population fairly low. So, I believe abortions should be allowed up to about 2 months, give or take a few weeks.
He personally said he thinks any kind of abortion is wrong. He considers the zygote, a mass of cells after conception, to be a new human life. So, he was against that
Death Penalty
Next, he asked about the death penalty. I said I was against this.
1) Statistically (I can cite this), it is cheaper to keep someone alive than to sentence them to the death penalty.
2) Rehabilitation is possible for some.
3) There's a chance that one could be innocent. In fact, about 150+ people have been found not-guilty who were previously sentenced to the death penalty.
4) We are a civilized nation. An eye for an eye makes the world blind. We don't kill people because "we think they deserve it."
5) In the American Declaration of Independence, it says Americans have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
He said that he feels that only God can judge people, so hes somewhat against the death penalty.
Marijuana Legalization
Then he asked about marijuana legalization. We both agree that it should be legalized. This is common sense to me. I could go in depth, but I won't.
So, what do you think about these issues?
Health Care
First he asked me about health care and the new bill that was passed. I personally don't know much about economy or anything related to that, but from what I read, there are both pros and cons to the bill, but I don't know enough about that to make a decision.
Abortion
Next he asked about abortion. I said that I am pro-abortion, up to 2 months. At around 2 months, the fetus starts to feel pain and is beginning to have develop brain functions and consciousness. To me, the fetus is not "alive" before then (nor a sentient being). Of course, this could be argued. Though, if we did not have abortions, we'd be overrun even more with humans. Its only right for the planet that we keep out population fairly low. So, I believe abortions should be allowed up to about 2 months, give or take a few weeks.
He personally said he thinks any kind of abortion is wrong. He considers the zygote, a mass of cells after conception, to be a new human life. So, he was against that
Death Penalty
Next, he asked about the death penalty. I said I was against this.
1) Statistically (I can cite this), it is cheaper to keep someone alive than to sentence them to the death penalty.
2) Rehabilitation is possible for some.
3) There's a chance that one could be innocent. In fact, about 150+ people have been found not-guilty who were previously sentenced to the death penalty.
4) We are a civilized nation. An eye for an eye makes the world blind. We don't kill people because "we think they deserve it."
5) In the American Declaration of Independence, it says Americans have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
He said that he feels that only God can judge people, so hes somewhat against the death penalty.
Marijuana Legalization
Then he asked about marijuana legalization. We both agree that it should be legalized. This is common sense to me. I could go in depth, but I won't.
So, what do you think about these issues?
0
Comments
No death penalty.
I'm on the fence about abortion- I have to have a really good feel for absolutely sure about when the fetus becomes sentient. I tend towards no, but I've never been faced with the decision. It also depends on the circumstances of the pregnancy.
Marijuana should be legalized and taxed. All that hell that's going on in Mexico is mostly about the trade routes to the US. The Mexican cartels are even growing it in national forests in California.
because this website is full of darned foreigners, ya know.....?
I believe in a woman's right to choose for the simple fact that the fertilized egg/embryo is, for all intents and purposes, a part of her body, and no one should have the right to tell another person what to do with their own body.
I'm 100% against the death penalty.
I think marijuana should be decriminalized.
Abortion: I think the answer is responsibility. Because we have such things as abortion, people aren't as careful as they should be, which also leads to an increase in promiscuous sex, de-valuing sex tremendously. All that life needlessly created and destroyed just for fun.
Death Penalty: If it costs less to keep them alive, then by all means do so (I agree with the reasons too, i.e. rehabilitation and the like).
Marijuana Legalization: I've always felt bars publicly serving alcohol from which people choose to leave and drive, killing people in wrecks, was far worse. I don't really care about marijuana being legalized or not, but in any case it seems alcohol is much more destructive to human life. If marijuana isn't legal, neither should alcohol be IMHO.
USA has got it completely wrong on this one. You waste so much of your tax money, you might as well get something for it... this has nothing to do with right wing or left wing, it's just common sense.
Abortion:
I would do my best not to have this be an issue in my life. It has almost become a form of contraceptive to some people, which I think isn't right. It shouldn't be illegal, but it also shouldn't be such a casual thing.
I suppose I am on the fence about this. I am not going to judge anyone for it and I can understand why some people see it as murder. I just don't know.
Death penalty and prison in general:
I'll make this point from the Australian point of view. Any male who goes to prison and is under 30 will be raped and hardly a few of those will ever talk about it. Imagine putting an innocent person (or a guilty person, but that's another issue) through that. They'd have to live with it for the rest of their lives. In Australia, it's virtually impossible for an innocent person to go to prison, because we have so many different checks and strict rules as to what can be used as evidence.
There is a trade-off however. The system is very inefficient. It's quite common for an innocent person to go to jail and await trial. The process can take a year. Statistically speaking, your wife would've left you by then, you would've lost your job and your reputation would be ruined... even if you're found innocent. A lot of guilty people are allowed to go free as well, because it's difficult to prove guilt.
I am not sure how American common law differs from our common law, but it seems to be worse.
So what's better? The tedious common law that we have or the efficient European civil law? To paraphrase a quote by someone (probably a US founding father), it's better to let 100 guilty men walk free than to take the life of one innocent man.
So yeah, I am against the death penalty.
Marijuana:
I think we're all on the same page here.
And you damfurriners spell funny. "Behaviour"??? "Councillor"? It drives my spell-check crazy...
One branch of Congress recently passed a bill repealing that, but I'm not familiar with the details; it probably contains an alternative proposal. That bill? Who is this kid, Mr. Public Policy Buff?
Digression: I read an interesting history of how the US came to have the system of employer-based health insurance. To make a long story really short, it was all a big accident. It's interesting history, if maddening as hell. Worth a look if you're interested in this subject.
While I agree that in theory health care should be free for everyone, in the real world there is no free anything. Somewhere down the line, somebody has to make a profit, otherwise we're Communists. In order for that to happen, there have to be costs borne by someone somewhere. If I were king of the US (for a couple of days), I'd make the entire health insurance industry unemployed. I'd fire every single one, from the CEO down to the lowliest clerk. Then I'd make it illegal to run a hospital or other end-user medical facility on a for-profit basis. Non-profits are fine, since I'm not a fan of government owned health care (I don't ever want to work for Uncle Sam as a nurse). Then I'd wave my magic wand and create the kind of quasi-governmental/quasi-private single payer insurance company we should have had in 1948. I'd re-hire about 10% of the people I'd fired (I'd have to interview every single one though) to run it for us. It would be VERY tightly regulated by the government (a truly non-partisan committee composed of a broad spectrum of people from across the nation, in many different socio-economic groups, professions, etc).
How would I pay for this wonderful system? The same way the rest of the world does - INCLUDING the US currently - I'd tax. I'd tax the living CRAP out of tobacco and alcohol. I'd legalize marijuana and tax the living CRAP out of it too. Since employers would no longer have to pay private insurance companies on behalf of employees (those lucky enough to still have such a "luxury" in America) there would be an across the board corporate tax on a percentage of gross. I'd implement a tiered co-pay structure for health care consumers so as to give them some kind of stake in the game as well, but they would be more symbolic than painful for most people. Those who can afford bigger co-pays (like those making over, say, $100,000/year) would pay higher amounts. Anyone making 2x the (greatly revised upward, in my world) poverty level income would pay nothing.
Digression: Those in the US who complain about how expensive health care is don't have a clue. If we would implement something like the above and make sure that EVERYONE gets access to preventative health care (for free or close to it), the vast majority of the poor and un-/underinsured wouldn't end up getting sick as crap and then using the emergency department as their doctor's office. The system I work for (a non-profit) gives away almost 30% of all the services we provide to the indigent. Guess who ends up paying for that? Yes boys & girls, that's right, it's the taxpayer. And if not directly from taxes, then from drastically higher health insurance premiums for all of us. So we all pay 50 times as much to treat these really sick poor people as we would if we simply provided them free preventative and basic health care in the first place. But you can't argue that to a conservative. That smacks of the "s-word" (psst... "socialism"!).
Anyway, I could go on and on and on. Suffice it to say, as long as the driving force in health care in America remains profit, I can give you a 100% iron-clad guarantee that *NOTHING* is going to change. Anyone see that happening anytime soon? Raise your hands up really high. Didn't think so...
But here's a fact. If the tax burden in places like Canada (where they have universal health coverage), the UK (where they have fully nationalized {psst... "SOCIALIZED"} medicine, etc, etc... if their tax burden were really that high, how come the entire country isn't living in cardboard boxes and pushing shopping carts? The answer is, because it's all relative. Taxes are higher, but so are wages. It all evens out. America's ridiculously low tax rates (especially for corporations, the majority of whom pay next to nothing vs. what they really owe because they use shell games to move income around and offshore) mean we have no money with which to do anything - anything except buy fancy tanks, submarines, and fighter jets that we can use to invade other countries.
I told you guys not to get me started
Is health care in this country, "great?" Not really. My MD is "rationing" care to me, he's part of a major hospital. I don't feel like I'm getting top drawer first class service. I think health care in the USA is only as good as many other first world countries, not better. WHY then does it cost many many times as much? I want to go out of my mind when a 30-day prescription costs three or even five dollars a pill! THAT'S disgusting.
Abortion? It bothers me that Infinite Mind jumps aboard a fertilized egg for a 80+ year romp in human form: terminating that is kind of a shame. OTOH? There are infinite universes to get reborn into. We are over-populating Earth, we have to limit the number of people on this planet. We're up against a wall. Some religions are FINE with everything falling part and civilizations collapsing: aren't they the ones who are anti-abortion?
Death penalty? Too costly.
Prisons? I betcha if Buddhism was introduced formally in prisons things would get better. Too bad this is a Christian dominated nation and Buddhism will never be allowed formally in prison.
Drugs? Do what it takes to lessen the violence. Considerately legalize selected aspects to reduce the suffering. Won't happen because politicians are cowards.
Wheeeew! I haven't talked about this stuff in MONTHS! Yikes! What an instant can of worms! I feel dirty. What a mess. Please don't anybody get angry with me based on what I said above. I'm no expert. I'm just telling it like I see it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_around_the_world
But that doesn't necessarily mean that working class taxes need to go up, or not by much. When Reagan came into office the top tax bracket in the US paid 90% of income to taxes! (That's for the Bill Gates and Rockefeller types.) This is what helped create prosperity and relative economic equality in the US (compared to now, economic polarization with the collapse of the middle class). Reagan trashed that, Bush I continued the policies, and Bush II pretty much dealt the economy its death blow. We don't need to return fully to pre-Reagan tax levels, but we can get closer than we are now, still have a reasonable tax structure (maybe have the max rate be around 75%), and get some goodies, like universal health insurance.
And FYI, when Congress was voting on the bill that eventually passed and was approved, I wrote my Congressbods to tell them I was in favor of a publicly-funded single-payer plan, and I volunteered to have my taxes raised to help pay for it. I heard from one of the congressional assistants later, that my letter made waves.
A good book to read is Lee Iacocca's "Where Have All The Leaders Gone?" He's a lifelong Republican who, unlike most Republicans, is appalled that his taxes were cut ("Thanks, but I don't need the extra money", he says--ya gotta love the guy!), because he doesn't want to see this country go down the drain, and he understands that services, education, infrastructure, scholarships, social security, welfare, etc. need to be paid for, or the country will go down the drain. He gets irate (he's hilarious!), and makes a lot of sense. Too bad he's too old to run for President. Anyway, the book is a fun and informative read.
MindGate sure picked a topic to get us going, didn't he!
(Are we having fun yet?
Abortion is completely fine with me, it's the mothers choice not a strangers.
The death penalty is fine also. They do the crime, they pay the price.
Lastly drugs, I don't give a shit if you do them. You ruin your life that's your problem not mine.
http://www.google.com/search?q=buddhism+prison&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
Depending on insurance companies to process everything for you is stupid, really.
God knows the USA has steadfastly gung-ho-ed into every aspect of world life, it's time for a little payback.
Sorry, a little bit of British HumoUr there.....:D
(Counsellor - one who counsels and works in some therapeutic vocation.
Councillor - one who works for a local Government office in some authoritative capacity. )
Just in case it ever comes up......
:buck:
While most people understand that point, the majority of people don't think there is justice in rehabilitation. They would rather make the person suffer than help.
I was somewhat unsure about the fact about rape, but I've confirmed it. No matter where you are, if you're male and under 30, you'll be raped. I used to think prison rape was mostly an American problem, but no.
http://crimeinamerica.net/2010/11/08/return-to-prison-recidivism-rates-for-the-uk-america-california/
The linked article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8110458/Three-in-four-offenders-stick-to-a-life-of-crime.html
We're so clever.....
I'm Canadian and LOVE socialized healthcare. There are certainly problems with wait lists here, but still you would find Canadians would overwhelmingly oppose losing it. Just because there is a problem does not mean the whole concept is bad.
Abortion -
The trouble with this one is abortion is not the problem. Unwanted pregnancy is the problem. the Pro-choice and Pro-life people should get together to work on preventing unwanted pregnancies. nothing is perfect though and if abortions are to be done...and they will....it is best if it is done in a safe environment with a qualified Doctor doing the proceedure.
Death penalty -
I used to be completely opposed, but as I get older I feel less that way. I"ve often heard the stat that it costs more to execute than keep a prisoner alive, but I"m skeptical and would be interested in an explanation...because to put it crudely, a bullet doesn't cost all that much.
To me the biggest problem is the risk of executing an innocent person.
Marijuana -
It is silly that this is still a topic of debate.
Making drugs illegal simply provides organized crime with a high profit product.
health care: refer to the above, lol.
abortion: i once had the privileged of marching in washington for women's rights, i am pro-choice and proud of it. gloria steinem was even there.
even if you made it illegal, you would never stop abortions. desperate women will always find a way to do what they feel needs to be done. i feel it is important to allow them to at least have them in a safe and clean setting.
while it is easy to oppose abortions as a "form of birth control", i think it is important to take other situations into consideration. what about rape? what about incest? while it is possible for a woman to take a RU486 ("morning after pill", sometimes referred to as "plan b"), there are a many reasons why a woman might not be able to take this within the 5 day span after intercourse.
no matter what one may think about those that have abortions too liberally, i don't believe that we can take away this right for those who are the victim of severely unfortunate circumstances.
death penalty: i am against the death penalty. your reasons are more than adequate
marijuana: i'm with you on this one as well. i feel like most of our generation is pretty, "meh, who cares?" when it comes to pot. imo, it's only a matter of time before it becomes legal.
Number one is that it's in our best interest for everyone around us to be healthy, educated and not starving, and it's in the best interest of society as a whole as well. More free market-oriented people tend to argue that, while this is true, the free market is what can make this happen; however, markets generally withhold their benefits from people who can't afford to purchase them, which means that less fortunate people must rely on individuals who are not only wealthy but generous as well. In my ideal society, heathcare, education and freedom from hunger would be as 'inalienable' as the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The most common argument against 'socialized medicine' from those in favour of the mythical free-market is that the allocation of resources needed in such a socialized system will inevitably lead to the rationing of medical care, the complete denial of medical care to those who need it, and even worse, dreaded "death panels."
However, the allocation of resources is an inherent part of any system, and insurance company bureaucrats in our private system routinely deny coverage and 'ration' care now! That's how insurance companies make their profit, after all. The real question is, who do we want to be in charge of approving medical care, an insurance company bureaucrat or a government bureaucrat that's answerable to the people? Each has its own pros and cons, but the more 'socialized' healthcare systems that cover everyone have proven to be quite efficient and reliable.
According to the World Health Organization, for example, France has the best overall health care system in the world, excelling in 4 areas: (1) universal coverage, (2) responsive health care providers, (3) freedom of choice and (4) overall health and longevity of the population.
In 2005, France spent $3,926 per capita on healthcare, and of that, approximately 80% was government expenditure. The U.S., in comparison, spent $6,347, and of that, approximately 45% was government expenditure. Yet France has a higher life expectancy and lower infant mortality rate than the U.S. (Although, to be fair, I've heard it mentioned that the U.S. counts premature births whereas France doesn't, and these differences can't be attributed to the differences between the two systems alone as there are undoubtedly other factors involved, e.g., eating habits, stress levels, etc.)
Or how about Spain's healthcare system? Spain's constitution guarantees the right to universal healthcare and requires the state to provide it, it's ranked 7th best by the WHO, and according to one study published last year in the U.S. journal Health Affairs, there are a third fewer deaths caused by delayed access to health care than in the U.S.
And then there is Canada's healthcare system, which was quite similar to ours before they adopted a single-payer system. It's not only ranked higher than the U.S. system by the WHO (30th v. 37th out of 191 nations), but like France, Canada has a higher life expectancy and lower infant mortality rate than the U.S. (Again, these differences can't be attributed to the differences between the two systems alone, but I think it at least goes to show that Canadians seem to be doing OK with the system they've got.)
In addition, a 2006 peer-reviewed study of healthcare access in Canada and the U.S. done by the American Journal of Public Health concluded that "U.S. residents are one third less likely to have a regular medical doctor, one fourth more likely to have unmet health care needs, and are more than twice as likely to forgo needed medicines." Of course, every system has its problems, and Canada's isn't perfect, but I'd still say that Canada's system is pretty damn good considering it covers everyone and costs less per person than ours.
With all of the wealth, resources and technology at our disposal, I don't understand why we can't create a universal healthcare system of our own that's ever better and more efficient than any of those listed above. More fundamentally, healthcare shouldn't be about making a profit, it should be about keeping people healthy. Our lives are worth more than pieces of paper.