Pelosi wants artsy-fartsy types to be able to be comfortably under/unemployed...

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Cowboy, Mar 17, 2010.

  1. Cowboy My Aim Is True Valued Senior Member

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    http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Pelosi-Health-care-reform-will-finally-allow-artists-to-focus-on-being-unemployed-comfortably-87491812.html

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35835370/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/

    "Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance..."

    I'm not surprised she believes it. I'm just surprised she was willing to admit it publicly.

    :shrug:
     
    Last edited: Mar 17, 2010
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  3. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Substitute entrepreneur and it would mean the same thing.
     
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  5. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    The recent immobilization of workers in the US, apparently due to fears of losing health insurance, is well documented now - the effects are expected to be especially severe among the young, as job mobility is the primary means of career advancement and the like among the young.

    Once fallen behind, stats show these demographic cohorts never catch up - even in better economic times later. In long stagnations, such as the US faces, they do even worse.

    Employer based health insurance is ruining the US economy.
     
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  7. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Sadly, this might be the high point of her tenure

    One of the more courageous things she's managed to say as Speaker of the House. We've spent so long playing to uncreative philistines for whom art must necessarily be a profitable venture that the best we can hope for is a new Britney Spears record, or Keanu Reeves as Spike Spiegel.

    In a country where Two and a Half Men is the highest-rated television comedy, it's about time we started giving some consideration to what we expect of our artists.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Bennett, Dashiell. "Two And A Half Men: The Worst Show Everyone Else Is Watching". Gawker. September 29, 2008. Gawker.com. March 17, 2010. http://gawker.com/5056540/two-and-a-half-men-the-worst-show-everyone-else-is-watching
     
  8. desi Valued Senior Member

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    In that case I'm thinking of quitting my day job.
     
  9. Alien Cockroach Banned Banned

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    Please allow me to serve as a translator:

    If I am likely to be denied coverage on an insurance policy, based on pre-existing conditions, then it would be impossible for me to go into business for myself as a photographer. Although photographers do not make a great deal of money, even the lowest ten percent bring in enough to pay for a very basic health insurance premium, and I can vouch for that because I have survived based on significantly less coming in from my student loans. As unbelievable as it may sound to you, a self-employed photographer can actually earn an honest living if he is determined and resourceful. This would be fine and well, but employer-based health insurance would make it a lot more difficult for someone trying to make an honest living to make such a transition.

    In spite of the fact that a self-employed photographer earns basically peanuts, it is nevertheless a much more mobile and flexible line of work than a job at a packaging plant. For example, if I desired to live in Raleigh with a well established friend there while scouting out an opportunity to find a use for an engineering degree, for example, photography would be just the kind of niggerwork that I needed.

    On the other hand, you are better off these days getting a used computer, such as from a retired auntie who bought one and couldn't figure out how to use it, and loading some Adobe software on it. You can make a lot more money in graphic design than you will ever make as a self-employed photographer. Your generation raked yards. My generation makes web pages.

    However, if I needed quick money, I would take a trip to Fire Island and waggle my rear end for a while until a horned-up millionaire tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to entertain him for a while. One week on Fire Island could cover my entire tuition, plus textbooks. Even without whoring yourself out, though, making money is a lot more pleasurable and less stressful than most people seem to believe it is, assuming you are witty and resourceful. What makes it difficult is that our financial institutions royally suck ass.

    I know you don't like Nancy Pelosi or Healthcare reform, Cowboy, but I ask that you have enough respect for yourself and this forum to honestly represent what Nancy Pelosi says about Healthcare reform. You know very well that one of her major talking points is how existing conditions can tie people down to a health insurance policy, and it locks them into a job that they may be unhappy with or inept at if their health insurance comes from their employers.
     
    Last edited: Mar 18, 2010
  10. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Can we please not say "niggerwork"?
     
  11. Gypsi Registered Senior Member

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    I think that the general lack of understanding among Americans regarding how national/universal healthcare systems actually work is leading to a gross misinterpretation here of Pelosi's comment.

    What she means is that people who wish to be self-employed (be it as an artist or small shopkeeper, whatever) will be able to contribute to/benefit from a level of healthcare that is currently beyond their means. In other words, be freed from the current dependence on "an employer" footing much of the healthcare insurance bill - a dependence which prevents many people from pursuing their entrepreneurial inclinations.

    For example, in the UK, most self-employed people pay a national insurance contribution of about £2.40 a week (less than $4) which gives them full entitlement to National Health Services, pensions and so on.

    For this amount of money, all* their healthcare needs are taken care of.

    *Those of you who have been soaking up criticisms related to dental care, please note that dental care is not part of the National Health Service (NHS), unless dentists choose to opt in. Thus any criticisms related to dental services (or lack thereof) are in fact a criticism of private practice.

    Mind you, if you have your face and teeth smashed in by an accident or whatever, you'll get all the surgery, reconstruction etc. you need under the NHS, it being a medical/healthcare need.
     
    Last edited: Mar 19, 2010
  12. Alien Cockroach Banned Banned

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    I hate to answer a question with a question, but is there any part of that that could not have been expressed to me using a private message? By stating your concern publicly, you seem to be insinuating that my choice of language is somehow significant to the validity of what I have to say, since the concern is otherwise thoroughly atopical.

    So far, I am the only person here who has bothered to point out Cowboy's underhanded mendacity for what it is, so I am tempted to say that I should use whatever words I feel are necessary in order to illustrate my point. When someone else other than me cares whether or not people are spreading falsehoods like flies spreading pieces of shit, I will give your concerns more consideration.

    I think it's time someone other than me felt a little bit alarmed that a person can go on a forum and tell outright, brazen lies, and not have the whole community dump on him and his family name over it. Do you remember who shut down madanthonywayne for the brazen, complete and absolute hogwash that he was spouting here when I first showed up? I didn't win any friends by putting him down and being rotten to him, but it shut the guy up for a while. I wouldn't have had to if someone besides me would bother to feel a little bit alarmed when someone is supporting his or her political views using blatant misrepresentations of fact, and people are treating it like it's okay. If it were me running the cosmos, that would be where I pushed the magic button that caused the whole planet to blow to smithereens. If you have some less extreme solution that you think would work so much better, then fucking implement it.
     
    Last edited: Mar 19, 2010
  13. Gypsi Registered Senior Member

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    To follow on from Cockroach, I not sure whether I'm more amazed by the "misinformation" churned out by the anti-healthcare reform politicos or the speed and ease of its absorption - clearly symptomatic of ignorance and quite ironic considering that the regurgitators so often indulge in high-flown rhetoric re "freedom from govt" when clearly their minds are so easily enslaved thanks to a failure to educate themselves.
     
  14. CheskiChips Banned Banned

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    I'll keep this short...

    I agree that America's artistic expression has been reduced to packaged pseudo-talent at best, however, is that necessarily a political issue? Chick Corea* and a slew of other Jazz-Fusion artists in the 60's, 70's and early 80's were producing revolutionary music, the majority of which were American born. I could list all of the musical genres that were branded in America, and I could list all of the musical genres that became overly-commercialized in America.

    Musicians have persevered through the tough times in America's past without health insurance or financial stability. That's not the issue driving our artistic-brain-drain... On the contrary; our over-stimulation is what I find most responsible.

    Sweden to this day consistently produces thought provoking music because its artists are given stipends by the state and their health care (along with many other amenities are managed by the state). It also produces some of the worst music in the world. Their total output per capita is extremely high, their percentage of talent to commercial-product is about the same.

    In this post I'm not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with health care- I'm saying our artists would make it if they had an audience. American's don't want to go to concerts anymore, they don't enjoy a night out of entertainment because they have dozens of mediums sitting in their living rooms.

    * I mentioned Chick Core subconsciously as I listen to his album, 'The Leprechaun'.
     
  15. draqon Banned Banned

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    artsy fartsy....man you made my day. I totally agree. Cause in this world money isn't free and I am sure not giving it away to artsy fartsy peeps.
     
  16. Alien Cockroach Banned Banned

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    Cheski, I would contend that an artistic talent who is willing to work with the technology and means of the time period can still make it in our economy without the help of the state. It is just that gift is such a multifarious trait in human consciousness that you are just as likely now to represent a talent in computer programming, for example, as in music. My great uncle was in fact a somewhat high-ranking employee of IBM when they designed some of the first viable computers, and he spoke to me at some length on the fact that they had better luck teaching musicians how to code than mathematicians. Mathematicians could to it, but they took too long and lacked art in their execution.

    And it is actually just as easy to pick up some basic programming skills as it is to learn a musical instrument or teach yourself how to write. There will always be a place for someone who has the ability create beautiful things. However, people of artistic genius are no more immune to falling into the cursed wake of progress than any other group of people. Those unable to adapt will inevitably be left behind. In time, the computer programmers who did well in my generation will be swept away also. Such is the torture of an artist.

    Please allow me to try rephrasing Nancy Pelosi's words for you, regarding healthcare: the present state of affairs is that a day job usually puts you on an insurance policy that is tied to your employer. However, if you leave your job for any reason, then you also lose your policy and everything that your employer paid into your policy. If you were to become injured on the job or come down with an illness while working at that job, then any new insurance policy would regard it as a "preexisting condition" that it is not obliged to give you coverage for. This is one of a few problems that leave you job-locked.

    Okay, so maybe you still disagree with trying to use the arm of the government to try to help alleviate this problem. It is not untenable that you might disagree with the idea. However, this thread in particular is a candidate for the rubbish pile because it is deliberately based on misinformation. It is taking advantage of numerous false beliefs about healthcare reform for the sake of pushing an agenda.
     
    Last edited: Mar 19, 2010
  17. Cowboy My Aim Is True Valued Senior Member

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    Allow me to translate:

    "I might have the job of my dreams if only the government would subsidize certain parts of my life."

    At what point did it become the duty of government to make our career fantasies come true? :shrug:
     
  18. Cowboy My Aim Is True Valued Senior Member

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    You claim that what I said was a lie, but your previous post was basically just a long-winded way of defending what I accused Pelosi of advocating.

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  19. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    You would still pay for health care, so a subsidy has nothing to do with it. It would just be affordable. I call it freedom.
     
  20. Cowboy My Aim Is True Valued Senior Member

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    So people would be footing the entire bill for their own healthcare? If so, why do I read on Yahoo! news about the hundreds of billions of dollars this "reform" will cost?
     
  21. Alien Cockroach Banned Banned

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    Dude, you are making shit up out of your ass. This is the bill Pelosi was talking about. Click on this text right now, and find something in here that even remotely supports the shit that is coming in through your typeface. Before you start typing again, be prepared to defend yourself. God damn it, can you even find anything in there that you actually disagree with?

    Honestly, besides showing off your contempt for the arts, did you have any reason to open up this thread? Do you have any use to the human race at all?
     
  22. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    At the point when sensible people realized that immobilizing people in their jobs was a dumb way to set up an economy.

    People who can change jobs are more likely to end up in one well suited to them, than people who are stuck in whatever they landed in years ago. They are more likely to seek and acquire new skills, search out better employments of their abilities, even move to different places.

    The extra difficulty Americans have changing jobs, starting businesses, leaving the security of underemployment for the potential gain of higher level achievement, take employment risks in general, is a growing drag on the economy. It's one reason several European countries have caught up to us in productivity, wages, and the like - people in Europe can quit their jobs, try something new, without risking their family's medical care.
     
  23. Alien Cockroach Banned Banned

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    Oh, my GOD, I would love to go head-to-head with Frelinghuysen. Have you seen this guy talk? You know, he is a Republican and on the other side of this from me, but his intellect is so sexy. He talks on my wavelength. Just give me one chance for me and this guy to butt heads. It would be great. It is just so rare to see that anymore.

    In any event, I am going to need some help on how exactly a bill presently being considered in Congress is going to make people more mobile in their employment. That is, I agree with Nancy Pelosi's views as expressed in the statements to which this thread pertains, but I am still trying to grasp what section of what bill she is referencing.

    What I mean is that, if she was only reflecting upon her own ideals, than that is something a little bit different from any bill that is presently being considered in Congress.
     

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