The Republican replies to a fairly normal circumstance above are:

A. You shouldnt have been playing basketball if you have a job that requires you to use your arms.

B. Thats on you.

C. Sucks to be you, guess you should have had a better job that offers insurance - not my problem.

D. All of the above

E. You should have a super rich family member just take care of it for you.

F. If you didn't have to pay for insurance, you'd already have more than $2,500 in savings.

Of course, that's assuming you actually work. Is that unfair?

Zmaj why are you wasting your energy on this, oh it is because you grew up in a wasted system under communism. That explains your skewed look on life. You are right the US should have abandoned Europe and never invaded in 1944. We should have left it to rot with the soviets. Then the US would still be living in the isolationism it was accustomed to after helping out europe in 1917.

CAPT Brad, 96% of the world population is made of ingrates who don't want the US to help them out. Go figure.

@brad, have you ever lived in France, England, Germany or some other socialist country that has a decent standard of living?

And why do you think they have been able to maintain that standard? The united states and it's protection

Brad if the entire webdip population came down with a terrible disease and without health insurance all of us died off would you still consider it slavery if some of your taxes went towards saving the lives of the (if my math is close) 329 people yer in games with.

Or would you just solo all those games and watch us all die. Our faces covered in boils. The doctors laughing histerically as we vomit bile and blood all over ourselves and the nurses smile and say "thank god Obamacare is gone now we can get back to watching population control and natural selection take over"

I'd solo.

@brad, just answer the question.

Hauta, your question is all wrong. France, England and Germany are not socialist countries. They're more socialist than the US, but that's not hard to be. Most countries are more socialist than the US.

Zmaj, Brad sets up failed socialist states as a straw man to discredit socialism. He needs to explain why any country that is more socialist than America is somehow worse. To say that they free ride on America is not their problem; it's america's. also, it would be nice if Brad knew first hand about living in wealthier "socialist" countries.

OK, fair enough.

But in that case, he could just say that they're financially worse off. And it's true. America is the richest country in the world, and the reason may well be its aversion to socialism of any kind.

Zmaj, "richest". Is that the best measure? Assuming you mean gdp per capita, you negate the inequality issue. After all, what good is national wealth if it is concentrated in the hands of the few? How bout the measure of life expectancy or "national happiness " index? Many would choose to give up wealth for peace of mind about public healthcare.

Wealth is a not a measure of something else. It is a goal. America is what it is because wealth has been the main goal of its population for a very long time. I don't think this goal has ever been forced on them.

Sure, there are Americans who would like to change that. As you said, peace of mind is a strong goal too.

On the other hand, I'm more interested in where America can arrive with its current mindset. If it turned into a Sweden, it wouldn't be so interesting.

So brainbomb you just wished all of the members to turn into Job?

i just saw this thread

oh and the answer is no

Oh and all of you are going to die, just like everyone else.

Yes. Most important of all, the bill moves the country back towards one centered on providing its citizens with freedom and liberty. The government doesn't belong in the insurance business, this bill didn't go far enough in getting them out of it.

A large part of the reason we're so wealthy is the classic definition of American exceptionalism--that is, geographic isolation coupled with a wealth of resources--and the fact that our manufacturing sector wasn't obliterated after World War II. In fact, we had ramped it up better than anyone. Our intellectual capital was mostly intact, we had men and women who led to our Baby Boom, and we had an esprit de corps rivaled by none.

Things were great for one and a half generations (late 40s to 60s) and then the Reagan Revolution locked in gains only for the top earners and most wealthy. We've had 2 generations of preventable economic decline for the middle class. Trickle-down "voodoo economics" is a sham, but true American Dream believers won't wise up to it.

Jeff, trickle down economics is simply not taking away as much money from the upper class. it was still a progressive tax rate under Reagan... the problem with the 80s is it was an era of decadence. and that's not a moral insult, it's an economic one. People began to believe massive spending is perfectly fine, and debt isn't that much a problem, and that's fueled so many problems, from the housing crisis to record debt rates, NEGATIVE saving rates at times...

our wealth has never just been because of resources, the middle east is a prime example of rich resources and political isolation. they killed the russians, they killed the other factions... they claimed their land and they held on. perhaps... a bit too tightly. the dictatorships spawned problems for the working class.

America is a land of plenty, but it's also a land of the free. it's taken a while to get that way for everyone involved, but i still believe it's a better place for it

Good comments Jeff Kuta. Both the USA and Great Britain under Reagan and Thatcher gave the wealthy and business significant tax cuts, effectively becoming tax havens...using that daffy economist Latter's infamous "J curve" proposition & "trickle down" to spruik their policies...Thirty years later it's clear that these policies have been very good for the super wealthy, wealthy, and big business... And disastrous for the middle class and working class & nation States.
But hey, Let's keep using policies that clearly don't benefit the majority, and embrace the 21st century's "economic fuedalism"

Bloody asinine self correcting script s/w.. It damnably changed Laffer to Latter. F*** it keeps doing it. Changing Laffer to Matter, Latter

Manwe and Yanik believe in social darwinism, that the poor should die if they are not fit enough to survive. It is a pure theory, just not one I can believe in. I believe in a social contract that limits the gains of the winners and the losses of the losers even if it yields a smaller overall pie because there is nothing as dangerous as someone who has nothing left to lose.

Brad is a psychotic moocher. I container it slavery that my taxes pay his salary.

Brad is a classic moocher. I consider it slavery that my taxes pay his salary.

The Middle East has oil and that's it. Subsistence farming doesn't cut it outside the Fertile Crescent. Land of the Free isn't enough or even most of what is going on but it makes a great sound bite for those with other agendas.

The Laffer curve is a classic example of the kind of conservative idiocy divorced from reality. There's a mountain of evidence that tax cuts for the rich do nothing more than make the rich richer and the deficit larger. However, they still run around tooting stupidities about how it'll boost economic growth, even though they never have once ever in the history of earth. How can they expect anyone to do anything other than mock them if they're so fundamentally loony?