Black Christians fighting against moral & economic decline

[John Dibble]

I personally don't think the government can make people have family values by funding programs. Family values are something that individual families have to work at on their own.

[John Dibble]

I personally don't think the government can make people have family values by funding programs.

By supporting policies that help families financially (labor rights, affordable health care, job growth, wage growth) it indirectly helps strengthen family values.

Families nowadays work more than ever and have less discretionary income. It's hard to have a strong family when there are so many pressing needs financially and time-wise.

My experience is that handouts don't create values.

[John Dibble]

My experience is that handouts don't create values.

Who said anything about handouts? I certainly didn't. I'm talking about economic policies that encourage job creation and wage growth. I'm not talking about welfare.

Why do you assume everything that's not Social Darwinism is a handout?

I don't assume everything that's not social darwinism is a handout, I'm just making assumptions based on my past experience dealing with you. The types of policies you advocate for those things you mentioned usually involve increased spending or socialization. The government generally does a terrible job when it tries to force the market to do something, so it needs to keep it's nose out of it.

And once again, I don't think you can create family values that way. A family can be the richest in the world and have terrible family values(just look at opebo), and a poor family can have great family values. Something tells me you don't really understand what is meant by family values.

[John Dibble]

I don't assume everything that's not social darwinism is a handout, I'm just making assumptions based on my past experience dealing with you. The types of policies you advocate for those things you mentioned usually involve increased spending or socialization.

No, they don't. I advocate single-payer health care (not Socialism) and that's it. And one of the big reasons I advocate it is that it would be cheaper for the vast majority of Americans than the system we have now.

1. I said increased spending OR socialization. Implementing new policies will require increased spending - PERIOD. Government can't get things done at no cost.

2. The single payer system IS socialization of one area of the market. You can't make things single payer without controlling the system at the same time.

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1. Don't make blanket generalizations about Republicans and Libertarians right after asking someone not to make blanket generalizations.

2. Plenty of you lefties are quite ideologically stubborn yourselves, you know.

[John Dibble]

2. The single payer system IS socialization of one area of the market. You can't make things single payer without controlling the system at the same time.

It would be a public-private partnership, with the government acting as the payor. The doctors would still be private and work for themselves. They would also still have a say in the prices they charged the services they provided. That, by definition, is not socialism. It would also greatly help the economy.

This article explains the single-payer system, why it costs less financially, and it also points out the HUMAN costs of the system.

http://www.pacificresearch.org/pub/sab/health/speech_sally.html

It is a speech from a doctor who used to work in the system you hold so dear.

[John Dibble]

Try refuting her findings instead of posting a deeply flawed analysis of her motives.

^^^^

[John Dibble]

I don't have time to research the findings of a right-wing think tank.  [/i]

This argument, of course, implicitly constitutes an argumentum ad hominem. You categorically asserted that the findings were incorrect, simply on the grounds that they were found by a right-wing group.

I'm not saying they are incorrect.  I just don't have time to research the veracity of their claims.  And yes, you should consider the source of any claim.  If a speech claimed the wonderful health benefits of eating 15 strips of bacon a day, it would make a huge difference to me whether the speaker was from the American Heart Association or from the National Pork Board.  The former stands nothing to gain or lose from his claims.  The latter is directly self-serving.

This doctor's claims are self-serving.  It doesn't make them incorrect, but it sheds doubt on their veracity.

First off, why should we trust the article you linked? The author may not be the leader of a left-wing think tank, but he's obviously got an agenda, and further he really has nothing to lose - he's a professor, not a practitioner. If you'll put absolutely no faith in what I linked why should I put any in what you linked?

There's a problem with your logic here - the things stated weren't scientific studies, they were verifiable facts. An empirical study must be conducted on the bacon, but for MRIs available all you have to do is count - if the person stated something blatantly false it should be easy enough to discount, since all you'd have to do is get a count.

Here's a more up to date source on the number of MRIs Canada has, and you can't discount it based on bias this time: http://secure.cihi.ca/cihiweb/dispPage.jsp?cw_page=media_13jan2005_e

While improvements have been made, they still lag behind.

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[John Dibble]

The medical schools also keep an artificially short supply of doctors by making med school unreasonably difficult.

Wait a minute, wait a minute. What? Let's ignore all that other stuff you said for a moment - you think they should make medical school easier? You think they should make the requirements for being a doctor lower? Are you nuts?