For-profit universal healthcare: would it work in the US?

[tolbiny]

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Which you somehow think is cheaper than the "free" TV was 50 years ago.

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"free" TV still exits today- and it exits in color, more languages with more variety of programming, and covering a larger area. It is a far superior product than it was 50 years ago.

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30 free to listen local radio stations.


Unchanged from 50 years ago.


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Not unchanged, again higher quality, more coverage, more variety, more stations.

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130 channles on my satellite radio for 12 bucks,


This is cheaper than "free"?

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New technology, high startup costs and yet 12 bucks a month giver you better entertainment options than all the options facing an average person 100 years ago combined.

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Communication =/= entertainment.

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Just because all communication doesn't = entertainment, doesn't dispute the fact that I can get enormous amounts of entertainment from communication mediums.

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2000 / year base price (20k base, ammortized over 10 years)

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Someday when you're bored, calculate the cost of owning a car (forget SUV's and light trucks, they don't bear contemplation) for the average American. Factor the cost of the car itself, insurance, gasoline and oil, and maintenance........
Thus, his cost of travel is (including earning the money to keep and maintain his car of course) about 605 hours per year. During that time he travels 10,000 miles as noted above. Thus, his automotive rate of travel, on average, is about 16.5 miles per hour, a pace I can match on a bicycle without any great difficulty.

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So this whole section is bullcrap. since
1. You cannot average 16.5 miles per hour on a 1907 bicycle (the fact that you might be able to on a 2007 bike supports my side of the argument even further)
2. Cars provide far better traveling ability than bikes- you can drive in much worse weather, and in much better comfort than on a bicycle.
3. Cars provide many more additional benefits- being able to live further from work allows for better living conditions, being able to travel quickly allows people to get to places on short notice (seeing ill relatives, getting a doctor to ill relatives)

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How much did air travel cost 200 years ago? Once again, you aren't arguing for "cheap". You're arguing, at best, for "better".

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Air travel is comparable to other types of travel. The goal is to get from place X to place Y. To travel from Europe to the states by ship took months (which by the way couldn't be worked during at normal hours, and is a huge cost), cost a fair amount and entailed far worse conditions.

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What's your story

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27 and over the last 11 years logged between 4,500-5,000 hours mostly in elementary schools and state parks.

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By my count, exactly 1 of your arguments above, when construed generously, could be taken as an argument for decreased cost of entertainment. (The "I can buy one song at a time" thing.) So yeah, you can definitely dismiss my answers, but apparently you can't support your dismissal.


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I await your apology.

[jogger08152]

I'm going to explain this as simply as possible. Remember that your contention was that "X" is "cheaper" now than it was 100 years ago.

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Which you somehow think is cheaper than the "free" TV was 50 years ago.

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"free" TV still exits today- and it exits in color, more languages with more variety of programming, and covering a larger area. It is a far superior product than it was 50 years ago.

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Color =/= cheaper.
Speaking in Spanish =/= cheaper.
Wider coverage =/= cheaper.

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30 free to listen local radio stations.


Unchanged from 50 years ago.


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Not unchanged, again higher quality, more coverage, more variety, more stations.

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Higher quality =/= cheaper.
More coverage =/= cheaper.
More variety =/= cheaper.
More stations =/= cheaper.

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130 channles on my satellite radio for 12 bucks,

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This is cheaper than "free"?

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New technology, high startup costs and yet 12 bucks a month giver you better entertainment options than all the options facing an average person 100 years ago combined.

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$12.00 =/= cheaper than $0.00

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Communication =/= entertainment.

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Just because all communication doesn't = entertainment, doesn't dispute the fact that I can get enormous amounts of entertainment from communication mediums.

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You may also get lots of entertainment from buffing your toenails while standing on your head in traffic. Yet somehow, that doesn't make the entertainment industry cheaper either. Go figure. In case you don't get the point:
[random thing tolbiny enjoys that isn't part of the entertainment industry] =/= the entertainment industry

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Someday when you're bored, calculate the cost of owning a car (forget SUV's and light trucks, they don't bear contemplation) for the average American. Factor the cost of the car itself, insurance, gasoline and oil, and maintenance........
Thus, his cost of travel is (including earning the money to keep and maintain his car of course) about 605 hours per year. During that time he travels 10,000 miles as noted above. Thus, his automotive rate of travel, on average, is about 16.5 miles per hour, a pace I can match on a bicycle without any great difficulty.

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So this whole section is bullcrap. since

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Yeah, I've kinda got that "wasting my breath" feeling...

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1. You cannot average 16.5 miles per hour on a 1907 bicycle (the fact that you might be able to on a 2007 bike supports my side of the argument even further)

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No, but you could triple it on a 1907 train though, and for a f*ck of a lot less money than it costs to drive a car today. Transportation isn't cheaper, it's more expensive. Grossly. The average person spends far more money on transportation today than his great great grandfather did 100 years ago, both in real dollars and in time costs. You may argue that this is somehow "better", but it isn't cheaper. You are simply wrong.

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2. Cars provide far better traveling ability than bikes- you can drive in much worse weather, and in much better comfort than on a bicycle.

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traveling in worse weather =/= cheaper

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3. Cars provide many more additional benefits- being able to live further from work allows for better living conditions, being able to travel quickly allows people to get to places on short notice (seeing ill relatives, getting a doctor to ill relatives)

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[all of the above] =/= cheaper

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How much did air travel cost 200 years ago? Once again, you aren't arguing for "cheap". You're arguing, at best, for "better".

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Air travel is comparable to other types of travel. The goal is to get from place X to place Y. To travel from Europe to the states by ship took months (which by the way couldn't be worked during at normal hours, and is a huge cost), cost a fair amount and entailed far worse conditions.

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If air travel today is cheaper than ocean travel 100 years ago, you found a total of one example in the transportation industry and none in entertainment. That would mean you're only 94% wrong. Well told!

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By my count, exactly 1 of your arguments above, when construed generously, could be taken as an argument for decreased cost of entertainment. (The "I can buy one song at a time" thing.) So yeah, you can definitely dismiss my answers, but apparently you can't support your dismissal.


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I await your apology.

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You'll be waiting a while, unles you can do (to use your words) far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far better than that.

Give or take a far, you know.

[tolbiny]

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I'm going to explain this as simply as possible

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If you want to play semantic games go right ahead and play with yourself. You ought to be embarrassed by trying to pretend what your passing off here is an argument. Higher quality and quantity at the same price = cheaper. No one gives a [censored] if you can concoct an [pseudo equation where the denominator is zero, or find an obscure definition of a word or a incorrectly used term where the intent was clear. Its quite pathetic.

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[random thing tolbiny enjoys that isn't part of the entertainment industry] =/= the entertainment industry

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So the internet doesn't count as entertainment? Yeah, youtube, poker, blogs, uhh huh, people don't turn to those for entertainment.

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No, but you could triple it on a 1907 train though, and for a f*ck of a lot less money than it costs to drive a car today. Transportation isn't cheaper, it's more expensive. Grossly.

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No, its really not, and its not even close. Your (again pathetic) attempts to find some way to justify it are hilarious. A $20,000 car is a luxury item. There are a dozen ways I can reduce the cost of traveling, for example i can buy a scooter for 1-2k which will get me 60-80 mpg at a lower insurance rate and get me more than enough miles on it to totally shatter your estimates (and would still be more comfortable than the average transportation of 100 years ago). The fact that people don't regularly choose this option is simply a testament to how much people value comfort over strict $/hr calculations.

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If air travel today is cheaper than ocean travel 100 years ago, you found a total of one example in the transportation industry and none in entertainment. That would mean you're only 94% wrong. Well told!

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To be fair you also gave me the example of the bicycle for free. I was going to use a television as an example, but i'm sure you would counter by saying that buying a 1950s era 12 in B&W TV would cost a pretty penny now, and that somehow buying a 37" lcd for the same dollar amount (much lower actual cost after inflation) doesn't count because your giong to spend more itme watching that TV sine it is far better.

[almostbusto]

jogger just give it up. at this point your posts are just silly.

virtually no one would take your side of the argument. i wrote up a long reply, but i just deleted it because it is just common sense and most of it has already been said in this thread.

[jogger08152]

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I'm going to explain this as simply as possible

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If you want to play semantic games go right ahead and play with yourself. You ought to be embarrassed by trying to pretend what your passing off here is an argument. Higher quality and quantity at the same price = cheaper.

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Yes. Strikingly, you haven't made an argument for this either. 12 is still > 0.

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[random thing tolbiny enjoys that isn't part of the entertainment industry] =/= the entertainment industry

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So the internet doesn't count as entertainment? Yeah, youtube, poker, blogs, uhh huh, people don't turn to those for entertainment.

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There are things on the internet that you may find entertaining, but of course, that doesn't make the internet a part of the entertainment industry. Moreover, poker isn't cheap for the 90% or so who lose at it, whether they play on the 'net or not. (It's also questionable whether it's more "entertainment" or "job" for most of the 10% or so who win.)

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No, but you could triple it on a 1907 train though, and for a f*ck of a lot less money than it costs to drive a car today. Transportation isn't cheaper, it's more expensive. Grossly.

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No, its really not, and its not even close. Your (again pathetic) attempts to find some way to justify it are hilarious. A $20,000 car is a luxury item. There are a dozen ways I can reduce the cost of traveling, for example i can buy a scooter for 1-2k which will get me 60-80 mpg at a lower insurance rate and get me more than enough miles on it to totally shatter your estimates (and would still be more comfortable than the average transportation of 100 years ago). The fact that people don't regularly choose this option is simply a testament to how much people value comfort over strict $/hr calculations.

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comfort =/= cheap
also, scooters =/= more comfortable than trains, last time I checked. Particularly not during hailstorms.

If you'd like to prove my example wrong, the method is fairly straightforward: figure out the average American's yearly expenditure on transportation in 1907 and compare it to the average American's yearly expenditure on transportation today. As I've already indicated, it's more expensive today, and it isn't close.

Slightly off topic: You mentioned in a previous response that an advantage of cars is that they enable people to live farther away from their workplaces. I can't say "for sure", but I'd speculate that for the average American, traffic jams and hour+ commutes (one way, naturally), suck. Personally I prefer to, and choose to, live close to my work precisely to avoid that mess. I think more people would do the same if they could do it without paying outlandish prices for real estate and/or having to live in bad neighborhoods - IE, if urban sprawl, largely a consequence of "cheap" transportation, was less of an issue.

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If air travel today is cheaper than ocean travel 100 years ago, you found a total of one example in the transportation industry and none in entertainment. That would mean you're only 94% wrong. Well told!

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To be fair you also gave me the example of the bicycle for free.

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Not even that. The actual ("estimated") average cost of transportation is higher today than it was in 1907, when viewed as a percentage of the average worker's salary. The fact that you "can" buy a scooter or I "can" pedal a bike at 16 mph doesn't change the facts. You're simply trying to cover your error by changing the subject to a hypothetical cost that "could" be acheived, but actually hasn't been.

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I was going to use a television as an example, but i'm sure you would counter by saying that buying a 1950s era 12 in B&W TV would cost a pretty penny now, and that somehow buying a 37" lcd for the same dollar amount (much lower actual cost after inflation) doesn't count because your giong to spend more itme watching that TV sine it is far better.

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No, but I would point out that the 12" b&w TV might cost something like $10, plus the extremely inexpensive cost of transporting it here from f*cking China, which you will no doubt argue is far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far cheaper than the transportation cost in 1957, when it would have been shipped from a factory maybe a few states away.

Of course, you would probably respond by saying "yeah, but, well, my um TV has 9 gazillion channels now, and I can adjust the volume with the clapper, so obviously mine's "really" cheaper!!!11", and then I'd have to point out that being able to use the clapper =/= cheaper, and we'd go right back around again.

So yeah, I agree that it's probably a good idea that you didn't use that example to "prove" your point.

[jogger08152]

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jogger just give it up. at this point your posts are just silly.

virtually no one would take your side of the argument.

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While I appreciate a good argument "ad populum" as much as the next fellow, hopefully you'll understand when I say you'd have had a better chance convincing me with the long response you said you deleted.

[BCPVP]

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1) People live longer

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This may explain some of the expense, but only for the drugs that are used by the elderly and even then such drugs should get cheaper as time passes.

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2) Very active and expensive R&D

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Ah, but why is R&D so expensive?

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3) FDA, and other regulations for our safety

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I agree the FDA and other regulations have a lot of responsibility for the increased price of medicine, but not that it's done only for our safety or that such functions are the appropriate realm of government.

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4) Very limited number of potential customers for many treatments

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Again, this may explain why a very narrow segment of medicine is expensive, but it doesn't help us with why prices are higher in general.

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5) For very serious conditions, few returning customers

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Maybe you meant terminal conditions, in which case I was under the impression that they try to make you comfortable, not try and cure you. I think that "serious" conditions probably generate a lot of return unless they cure you with the first treatment.

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6) Medicine does not scale well (face-to-face with MD, etc)

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Could you elaborate? I'm not sure I understand this part.

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I don't think that the comparison with WalMart holds...

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Maybe, maybe not. Could you explain why you think it doesn't?

[blackize]

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There are things on the internet that you may find entertaining, but of course, that doesn't make the internet a part of the entertainment industry.

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The internet is undoubtably an entertainment medium. Sure it is used for communication, research, and finance as well but it is also host to countless videos, songs, games, porn, articles, stories, and other such things that are part of the entertainment industry. All of these can be had at the low low price of 9.95 a month.

As for internet poker it is a very cheap source of entertainment even for the 90% that lose. They could play on the play money tables or god forbid the .01/.02 tables and easily be entertained for pennies or less. Again poor choices are responsible for people losing hundreds at 100nl instead of losing 6 bucks playing penny games.





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If you'd like to prove my example wrong, the method is fairly straightforward: figure out the average American's yearly expenditure on transportation in 1907 and compare it to the average American's yearly expenditure on transportation today. As I've already indicated, it's more expensive today, and it isn't close.

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And you're a moron if you think this is a fair comparison. In 1907 your entire family would live in the same house or at the very least the same city. Only the wealthy could afford to take vacations. When your entire transportation budget consists of never leaving your neighborhood it's a good bet that you won't be spending much on it.



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Of course, you would probably respond by saying "yeah, but, well, my um TV has 9 gazillion channels now, and I can adjust the volume with the clapper, so obviously mine's "really" cheaper!!!11", and then I'd have to point out that being able to use the clapper =/= cheaper, and we'd go right back around again.

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Main Entry: 2cheap
Function: adjective

1 a : purchasable below the going price or the real value b : charging or obtainable at a low price <a good cheap hotel> <cheap tickets>

Note that the definition of cheap has to do with the value of goods/services.

http://www.tvhistory.tv/1940%20QF.htm

In 1940 a 12 inch black and white TV cost $400. A quick look at Amazon shows that a 13 inch color TV can be had for $150. Average salary in 1940 was $1900/yr. In 2005 the average salary according to the census bureau was $25036/yr.

400/1900=21% of annual income to purchase a tv. 150/25036=.5% of annual income to purcahse a tv.

Hmm entertainment prices haven't drastically decreased huh? Now consider the VALUE of a 2005 TV compared to a 1940 TV. Better picture, color, more channels, cable/satellite offerings, programs on all night(broadcasts used to stop in the evening), and conveniences like the remote control and your 2005 TV is much much much much much cheaper than its 1940 equivalent.

[jogger08152]

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There are things on the internet that you may find entertaining, but of course, that doesn't make the internet a part of the entertainment industry.

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The internet is undoubtably an entertainment medium. Sure it is used for communication, research, and finance as well but it is also host to countless videos, songs, games, porn, articles, stories, and other such things that are part of the entertainment industry. All of these can be had at the low low price of 9.95 a month.

As for internet poker it is a very cheap source of entertainment even for the 90% that lose. They could play on the play money tables or god forbid the .01/.02 tables and easily be entertained for pennies or less. Again poor choices are responsible for people losing hundreds at 100nl instead of losing 6 bucks playing penny games.





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If you'd like to prove my example wrong, the method is fairly straightforward: figure out the average American's yearly expenditure on transportation in 1907 and compare it to the average American's yearly expenditure on transportation today. As I've already indicated, it's more expensive today, and it isn't close.

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And you're a moron if you think this is a fair comparison. In 1907 your entire family would live in the same house or at the very least the same city. Only the wealthy could afford to take vacations. When your entire transportation budget consists of never leaving your neighborhood it's a good bet that you won't be spending much on it.



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Of course, you would probably respond by saying "yeah, but, well, my um TV has 9 gazillion channels now, and I can adjust the volume with the clapper, so obviously mine's "really" cheaper!!!11", and then I'd have to point out that being able to use the clapper =/= cheaper, and we'd go right back around again.

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Main Entry: 2cheap
Function: adjective

1 a : purchasable below the going price or the real value b : charging or obtainable at a low price <a good cheap hotel> <cheap tickets>

Note that the definition of cheap has to do with the value of goods/services.

http://www.tvhistory.tv/1940%20QF.htm

In 1940 a 12 inch black and white TV cost $400. A quick look at Amazon shows that a 13 inch color TV can be had for $150. Average salary in 1940 was $1900/yr. In 2005 the average salary according to the census bureau was $25036/yr.

400/1900=21% of annual income to purchase a tv. 150/25036=.5% of annual income to purcahse a tv.

Hmm entertainment prices haven't drastically decreased huh? Now consider the VALUE of a 2005 TV compared to a 1940 TV. Better picture, color, more channels, cable/satellite offerings, programs on all night(broadcasts used to stop in the evening), and conveniences like the remote control and your 2005 TV is much much much much much cheaper than its 1940 equivalent.

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Interesting.

So five years after the invention of television, it was more expensive to buy top-of-the-line than it is 30 years after color television to buy bottom? Great point! Of course modern TV's don't tend to last as long as their forbears, a fact you (accidentally?) omitted by not ammortizing the cost over the lifetime of the TV but just to come full circle...

...let's compare true "apples to apples", as I did in my original post on this subject. Lest we forget, this is what OP said, and my response:

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entertainment prices have decreased,
-tolbiny

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Go to movies and/or concerts much?
-jogger

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For movies, I'll use the same years you did: average salary in 1940 was $1900/yr. In 2005 the average salary according to the census bureau was $25036/yr

Cost of movie tickets in 1940 was $0.24. That was 1/7917 of average annual income.
In 2005, movie tickets were 6.40, which was 1/3912 of average annual income, or about twice as many real dollars in 2005 as in 1940.
Source.

Concerts?
Beatles tickets, Shea Stadium, NY, in 1965 (good seats) were $5.65. Average income (for men, don't know the combined average) was 6479, so tickets were 1/1147 of income.
Ticket price 1965.
Paul McCartney tickets, Madison Square Garden, NY, in 2005 (dunno the seat) was $154.50. Average income for males in 2005 was 39403, so tickets were 1/255 of income or about 4 times more expensive in real dollars as in 1965 Ticket price 2005.

[Copernicus]

top of the line vs bottom of the line is irrelevant. the expansion of choices does not negate the fact that this particular product you get today is higher quality at a far cheaper relative price.

As far as movies and concerts go, that is cherry picking two aspects of the industry that have increased, when entertainment as a whole is clearly down. The movie comparison is weak anyway, since there are many more venues to watch movies that are in fact cheaper than they were, and at far greater convenience. Concerts are also not the greatest comparison, first because it is very low supply, second, prices cannot be decreased by technology, and third the disposable income of concert goers has increased far more than average wages have increased. The $300 its costing me to see Roger Waters Friday means a lot less than the scalped $55 it cost to the Wall, and the disposable income of teen concert goers today vs teen concert goers in 1980 has grown even more than my income has.