US Supreme Court Upholds Affordable Health Care Act

[Roland]

I'll be waiting to see what effect "Obamacare" has on this. If it becomes more viable to purchase medical insurance as an individual due to the exchanges that will be set up, will employer health care plans start to disappear? Individuals would have more freedom and wouldn't be tied to whatever plan their employer decides to choose, which you're currently stuck with.

Time will tell.

It'll suck just as much as Romneycare does. You'll get to enroll twice a year, within a limited window, and if you miss it - oh well! Guess you'll have to pay a penalty since you weren't covered by insurance for the majority of the year. (There are exemptions, and it's not *that* hard to qualify for one, but basically that's how it works.) Also, you'll have no recourse when your insurance rate jumps 11% from one month to the next (like mine just did, after issuing me a rebate check for some reason - I'll quote the letter: "Both federal and state laws require health insurers to spend a minimum percentage of the premium dollar on medical expenses, referred to as medical loss ratio or MLR. If an insurer's MLR falls below set levels, the insurer must issue a rebate. While Harvard Pilgrim the exceeded federal minimum requirement of 80% for 2011, they fell slightly below the state threshold of 88% for the Massachusetts market. As a result, Commonwealth Choise has issued a rebate check, on behalf of Harvard Pilgrim, to the employer who provided your health insurance in 2011 (which was solely myself, not my employer, since employer-sponsored insurance wasn't available! Another great Romneycare bullshit add-on!)." So, basically they didn't spend enough of MY money on MY health, therefore they issue me a rebate check - for an amount VERY similar to the rate increase I just incurred).

Health insurance exchanges SOUND nice on paper. You get all the insurance companies (or, at least the ones who bent to the state and agreed to insure us here - the rest packed up and left for greener pastures) together, get to pick your health insurance "package" via a fucked-up Tier system (Bronze, Silver, and Gold - but there are some Gold packages that are worse than some Silver yet cost more, and the same goes for some Silver packages over Bronze, so you have to pay VERY close attention to what you're getting). Your price is determined by status (single, married, family), as well as age - and you can guess how quickly it goes up on those factors. Myself, I WAS paying ~$295 per month. Now, I'm paying ~$327 per month. One of my old co-workers (single, no kids, no spouse, nothing) - for the same package - would have been paying well over $800, all because he's ~61. A 49-year old co-worker with a wife and 2 kids would have been paying well over $1200 per month. The other old co-worker, same size family but about 6 or 7 years older, was over $1800 a month - and these were all mid-level Silver packages.

Yeah, health exchanges are great. Before, businesses could do nothing against 28% health insurance rate increases year after year (no, I'm not exaggerating). Now, we get to pay as individuals, and we STILL can't do anything about rate increases - except, MAYBE, switch to a lower-quality plan. Which doesn't even cover what this whole exercise is costing the state (the government loves to say it's fine, but I've heard too many rumblings that it's costs are WAY over budget, and rising yearly).

I don't know what the right answer is, but what I do know is that I've been forced to have insurance for the last few years. Back when I got it through my employer we used to have double-digit percentage increases year after year (our Attorney General even tried to stand up to the collective insurance agencies {yes, they banded together}, and lost - that should tell you something). When they stopped providing insurance to our business (without telling us, mind you, until we had already lapsed) because they simply "couldn't" provide us with the same insurance we had the previous year (or month) - something to do with the location of our employees being in too many different towns (and we only had 5 employees), or too far away from one another - then we all had to go on our own individual plans. Unfortunately, we missed the cutoff date because no one notified the business that we couldn't renew our insurance. Thankfully, because we HAD been insured the prior month, we got in under an exemption, and were only without insurance 1 month. Now that I've been enrolled for a little over a year, and the new enrollment period starts at the end of this month, my provider has decided to jack up the rate - since they did SO good a job last year spending my money on health care that they had to give me a rebate.

Sorry, just had to rant. Really, really had to rant. I just get off unemployment after being out of work for 2 months, finally collect my first paycheck (while losing a paycheck in the interim because pay is delayed 1 week, and I can't file unemployment when I'm earning more than I collect), and now I get slapped with an unannounced rate increase on my mandatory insurance. I can always change companies / plans though, if I so desire! Which does me NO good because all the companies within a certain package within each tier are priced essentially the same for the same service (isn't price collusion illegal? ) So, yeah, little pissed off at the moment about healthcare. Excuse my venting.

[Lissa]

I'll be waiting to see what effect "Obamacare" has on this. If it becomes more viable to purchase medical insurance as an individual due to the exchanges that will be set up, will employer health care plans start to disappear? Individuals would have more freedom and wouldn't be tied to whatever plan their employer decides to choose, which you're currently stuck with.

Time will tell.

It'll suck just as much as Romneycare does. You'll get to enroll twice a year, within a limited window, and if you miss it - oh well! Guess you'll have to pay a penalty since you weren't covered by insurance for the majority of the year. (There are exemptions, and it's not *that* hard to qualify for one, but basically that's how it works.) Also, you'll have no recourse when your insurance rate jumps 11% from one month to the next (like mine just did, after issuing me a rebate check for some reason - I'll quote the letter: "Both federal and state laws require health insurers to spend a minimum percentage of the premium dollar on medical expenses, referred to as medical loss ratio or MLR. If an insurer's MLR falls below set levels, the insurer must issue a rebate. While Harvard Pilgrim the exceeded federal minimum requirement of 80% for 2011, they fell slightly below the state threshold of 88% for the Massachusetts market. As a result, Commonwealth Choise has issued a rebate check, on behalf of Harvard Pilgrim, to the employer who provided your health insurance in 2011 (which was solely myself, not my employer, since employer-sponsored insurance wasn't available! Another great Romneycare bullshit add-on!)." So, basically they didn't spend enough of MY money on MY health, therefore they issue me a rebate check - for an amount VERY similar to the rate increase I just incurred).

Health insurance exchanges SOUND nice on paper. You get all the insurance companies (or, at least the ones who bent to the state and agreed to insure us here - the rest packed up and left for greener pastures) together, get to pick your health insurance "package" via a fucked-up Tier system (Bronze, Silver, and Gold - but there are some Gold packages that are worse than some Silver yet cost more, and the same goes for some Silver packages over Bronze, so you have to pay VERY close attention to what you're getting). Your price is determined by status (single, married, family), as well as age - and you can guess how quickly it goes up on those factors. Myself, I WAS paying ~$295 per month. Now, I'm paying ~$327 per month. One of my old co-workers (single, no kids, no spouse, nothing) - for the same package - would have been paying well over $800, all because he's ~61. A 49-year old co-worker with a wife and 2 kids would have been paying well over $1200 per month. The other old co-worker, same size family but about 6 or 7 years older, was over $1800 a month - and these were all mid-level Silver packages.

Yeah, health exchanges are great. Before, businesses could do nothing against 28% health insurance rate increases year after year (no, I'm not exaggerating). Now, we get to pay as individuals, and we STILL can't do anything about rate increases - except, MAYBE, switch to a lower-quality plan. Which doesn't even cover what this whole exercise is costing the state (the government loves to say it's fine, but I've heard too many rumblings that it's costs are WAY over budget, and rising yearly).

I don't know what the right answer is, but what I do know is that I've been forced to have insurance for the last few years. Back when I got it through my employer we used to have double-digit percentage increases year after year (our Attorney General even tried to stand up to the collective insurance agencies {yes, they banded together}, and lost - that should tell you something). When they stopped providing insurance to our business (without telling us, mind you, until we had already lapsed) because they simply "couldn't" provide us with the same insurance we had the previous year (or month) - something to do with the location of our employees being in too many different towns (and we only had 5 employees), or too far away from one another - then we all had to go on our own individual plans. Unfortunately, we missed the cutoff date because no one notified the business that we couldn't renew our insurance. Thankfully, because we HAD been insured the prior month, we got in under an exemption, and were only without insurance 1 month. Now that I've been enrolled for a little over a year, and the new enrollment period starts at the end of this month, my provider has decided to jack up the rate - since they did SO good a job last year spending my money on health care that they had to give me a rebate.

Sorry, just had to rant. Really, really had to rant. I just get off unemployment after being out of work for 2 months, finally collect my first paycheck (while losing a paycheck in the interim because pay is delayed 1 week, and I can't file unemployment when I'm earning more than I collect), and now I get slapped with an unannounced rate increase on my mandatory insurance. I can always change companies / plans though, if I so desire! Which does me NO good because all the companies within a certain package within each tier are priced essentially the same for the same service (isn't price collusion illegal? ) So, yeah, little pissed off at the moment about healthcare. Excuse my venting.

Part of the problem with the craziness is a need for Tort reform. It isn't just individual health care costs that are out of hand, malpractice insurance is crazy too in some states. I heard a report on a surgeon in Pennsylvania a few years back that was paying $300k a year for malpractice insuraance and was getting paid about $450k a year, that's right, 2/3 of his yearly salary was going to malpractice insurance. Needless to say, he's no longer a surgeon but some form of care doctor (like pediatrician or general practice) . I also saw some of the horror stories with doctors and malpractice insurance first hand involving an Ob/GYN that worked at the clinic I worked at in Tucson some years ago. Through no fault of his own, a woman delivered a child with the umbilical cord wrapped around its throat, needless to say the baby was dead, but because he was the one delivering it, the family sued for $100k for malpractice on his part even though he did nothing wrong (got to remember, this was right around 2000 when ultrasound wasn't as precise as it is today so he couldn't identify that the baby had the umbilical cord wrapped around it's throat).

The insurance companies and the lawyers have both the public and the doctors/nurses by the balls when it comes to medicine/health.

[Taem]

In the US, your health insurance is provided by your employer, who takes advantage of group policy rates along with fronting part of the monthly cost to keep your individual costs down.

PERSONAL EFFECTS ON A SMALL BUSINESS
As a manager of a business that itself is part of a small corporation with many stores whose total sum far exceeds 50-employees, we will be hit hard by these new health care reforms. Our vice president has become well versed in how the laws will affect our business, as well as having our lawyers advise us. The sum of the effect on us will be any employees working full-time must be offered health care through us - which would utterly bankrupt us! So... we have to cut everyone down to part-time at 30-hours or less, however the US Government is calculating total hours at 31-days, or so I've been told. This is an issue because some months don't have that many days, meaning the actual amount we need to reduce our employees hours down to is 24-hours per week. This will drastically change the landscape of our business and damage family paychecks and well-being. It's a real tragedy for everyone involved. We are keeping our fingers crossed for an amendment of some kind.

STATE DISABILITY
If everyone has personal insurance, then paying into state disability seems rather pointless. I guess it's going to come down to "where" someone was injured, because no insurance company really wants to pay a claim if they can pass the buck. HOWEVER, if small businesses could, instead of paying into Disability, offer Health Care, this could offset the fees - a win-win for everyone! In theory, if everyone has their OWN insurance, there is no need for state disability because even if a customer injures themselves on your property, they still have their own insurance; somehow I doubt the insurance companies will agree with this though.

[NuurAbSaal]

snip

Thanks for the clarification . I was pretty sure I had figured it out correctly, the bit about the shared insurance cost between employer and employee was news to me though. Live and learn (and forget ).

take care
Tarabulus

[kandrathe]

There seems to be a longstanding trope that British teeth are terrible and by comparison American teeth are better. Having done a little looking I cannot find the origin of it.

Why must you turn this forum into a house of lies?

[RiotInferno]

Courtesy of the latest internet black-hole I've found:
British Teeth - TvTropes.org

The health care reform seems to be more of a short-term band-aid then anything. The bill assumes that if everyone has insurance, then the price of care and insurance will go down. In reality, the privately-owned companies will go "Look at all this money! We can make more!"

Recently on NPR, they were talking about the cost of College in the US, and how we got to the current place of high tuition and fees that we are now. The logic went something like this:
Govt: "Everyone should go to college, let's make more money available."
Uni: "More money's available, let's raise rates!"
Govt: "Fees went up, let's make more money available."
Uni: "More money's available, let's raise rates!"
Repeat ad naseum.

Until a) Congress is held accountable for the corruption inherent in the system ( aka lobbyists ), b) "Socialism" quits being equated to Fascism and Communism, and c) The gov't realizes that they need to grow a pair and start cracking down on some of industries that are running rampant and ruining the quality of life for the citizens, nothing is going to change.

[kandrathe]

Recently on NPR, they were talking about the cost of College in the US, and how we got to the current place of high tuition and fees that we are now. The logic went something like this:
Govt: "Everyone should go to college, let's make more money available."
Uni: "More money's available, let's raise rates!"
Govt: "Fees went up, let's make more money available."
Uni: "More money's available, let's raise rates!"
Repeat ad naseum.

Until a) Congress is held accountable for the corruption inherent in the system ( aka lobbyists ), b) "Socialism" quits being equated to Fascism and Communism, and c) The gov't realizes that they need to grow a pair and start cracking down on some of industries that are running rampant and ruining the quality of life for the citizens, nothing is going to change.

I happen to know much about this actually.

When it comes to college costs; This ain't your grandpa's college anymore.

1) Like most organizations -- the biggest costs are the salaries of staff and faculty. So, just like the general inflation in all other organizations, colleges face the same pressures from increases in wages, and more importantly benefits. Whereas other parts of the economy can benefit from productivity -- students expect to be taught by a professor, and they don't like their class sizes to get too large either. A metric within academia used to judge institutional effectiveness is the faculty to student ratio. Most aspire for about 1:13.

Here is our actual change in advertised tuition price;

[attachment=150]

Compare it to this handy chart from the University of Virginia on the change in faculty salaries over the past decade. Our faculty aren't paid as well as those in Virginia, but they are within the same employee market pool of talent. When I break out our compensation between increases in salary and benefits, you'd see dramatic increases in benefits costs.

2) Non-academic activities -- beyond the classroom, most colleges have developed many programs for co-curricular, to extra-curricular activities, such as orchestra's, choir, marching band, intramural athletics, etc. They all need space, equipment, and personnel -- all things that are paid for with tuition money. These things are expected to be a part of the college experience.

3) Technology -- Universities and increasingly colleges are becoming quint-essential places of research, competing for grants and other funding, but they are expected and required to be as plugged into technological trends as any high tech office park in Menlo Park.

4) Security -- parents are fairly loathe to send their emerging butterfly into a den of hungry ravens. Not only do you need security, you need the appearance of security with visible security personnel, camera's, elaborate door codes, etc. etc. Throw in government regulations too, like the Cleary act. High profile media attention to violent crimes also adds pressure. Lock down drills are as standard as tornado drills now. Also, we have an emergency response system that phones, texts and e-mails everyone associated with the campus within 5 minutes.

5) More academia -- a huge cost not often discussed is the plethora of tiny little programs with few students (i.e. the proverbial joke of underwater basket weaving) -- No one ever wants to kill these anachronisms in the dusty corners of Obscura Hall. The counterpoint is that if no one taught Latin anymore it would become a dead language. It is fun though, working at a University. I once learned enough Aramaic to give one of my student workers ( a linguistics student) someone with whom they could converse.

6) Everyone needs to go -- culturally in the US we've set expectations such that everyone must go to college, or at least try and fail. Our society doesn't value education in trades. More demand puts more pressure on the supply, so the price is predisposed to inflate. It's not like our CFO, Mr. Scrooge, sits down to figure out how much he can milk the parents out of this year. The simple description is that they take the budget and increase it 3% to account for increases in salaries and benefits. So, there is an automatic 3% inflation built in -- but, populations fluctuate, so, the tuition is calculated in relation to the expected number of paying students. Pricing is not simple either (e.g. college discount rates -- most of our students get about a 30 - 35% discount). The governments infusion of money just enables more people to attempt college than ever before, which props up all the bad choices that colleges and universities have made over the decades.

As a member of the administration of academia, these are only the top few things that come to my mind as we wrestle with containing costs at our (non-profit) institution of higher learning. I imagine the problem as a bunch of metal BB's zinging around inside a box. As the box expands (more programs, more dorm space, more professors, more administration, etc) more BB"s can fill the box and exert more pressure on growth. Like the chaos in the box, there is little effort spent on the efficiency or meaningful purpose of that growth. Most ideas get tried whether they make any sense or not (often under the illusionary guise and spirit of academic freedom).

[LavCat]

Courtesy of the latest internet black-hole I've found:
British Teeth - TvTropes.org

Well, yes I had read that site but I was not entirely satisfied with the information.

[ShadowHM]

This is a tangent, but I have to comment on this.

Bolding mine

Until a) Congress is held accountable for the corruption inherent in the system ( aka lobbyists ), b) "Socialism" quits being equated to Fascism and Communism, and c) The gov't realizes that they need to grow a pair and start cracking down on some of industries that are running rampant and ruining the quality of life for the citizens, nothing is going to change.

Please cease conflating the possession of testicles with possession of courage or assertiveness. I resent the implication that I have been short-changed on my ability to be brave or assertive because I was born with a uterus instead of testicles. I am hoping you used the phrase without thinking, but please take more care in future.

/rant mode

[RiotInferno]

This is a tangent, but I have to comment on this.

Bolding mine

Until a) Congress is held accountable for the corruption inherent in the system ( aka lobbyists ), b) "Socialism" quits being equated to Fascism and Communism, and c) The gov't realizes that they need to grow a pair and start cracking down on some of industries that are running rampant and ruining the quality of life for the citizens, nothing is going to change.

Please cease conflating the possession of testicles with possession of courage or assertiveness. I resent the implication that I have been short-changed on my ability to be brave or assertive because I was born with a uterus instead of testicles. I am hoping you used the phrase without thinking, but please take more care in future.

/rant mode

No offense implied, although I am learning quite a bit about intent vs impact. It was meant figuratively, not literally.

[ShadowHM]

This is a tangent, but I have to comment on this.

Bolding mine

Until a) Congress is held accountable for the corruption inherent in the system ( aka lobbyists ), b) "Socialism" quits being equated to Fascism and Communism, and c) The gov't realizes that they need to grow a pair and start cracking down on some of industries that are running rampant and ruining the quality of life for the citizens, nothing is going to change.

Please cease conflating the possession of testicles with possession of courage or assertiveness. I resent the implication that I have been short-changed on my ability to be brave or assertive because I was born with a uterus instead of testicles. I am hoping you used the phrase without thinking, but please take more care in future.

/rant mode

No offense implied, although I am learning quite a bit about intent vs impact. It was meant figuratively, not literally.

I am glad to know that you did not intend to be offensive. However, you did imply that a pair of testicles confers courage and assertiveness.
There was an equally offensive figure of speech that was common when I was a child: "That's mighty white of you" was used to imply that someone had been gracious and kind. It was meant figuratively and not literally, but it was still offensive. Nobody has used that one in my hearing (or written it where I have seen it) for many years. I would like to see this 'figure of speech' go away too, for the reasons I cited above.

[kandrathe]

I would like to see this 'figure of speech' go away too, for the reasons I cited above.

There are many on my list. But, I believe my *real* peeve is our tolerance for vulgarity in general. I didn't want to come across as a prig, so I'll link to an article which better describes my train of thinking. It raves a bit too much against liberalism. I'm actually a proponent of liberalism, in this case, that people should choose to be the masters of their expressions, rather than be muzzled by laws. In art terms, I'm not against the idea of the freedom expressed by Maplethorpe, I believe it was an abuse of our tolerance to push liberalism to the breaking point. It's the same with other expressions in the media, and broadcasting. Yes, we can, but we don't ask ourselves if we should.

And... it comes to the forefront for me weekly, trying to raise two boys (9 & 11) whose culture is rife with vulgarity. For example, in some pvp in a game they are playing it has become "normal" for the winner to squat up and down over the corpse of the victim and proclaim "I'm tea-bagging you". I was shocked. Of course, the casualness of it's recent use in media reverberates throughout the culture and eventually lands into the brains of my sons. As a parent what I did was to clearly explain to them what and why this was a sexual act and inappropriate for them (or their friends) to suggest in the game, or on the playground. I don't like having to teach them about this kind of sexual subject at this age, but better than for it to become an incident at school.

I should note that I'm using the word "vulgarity" in it's old meaning "Lacking sophistication or good taste", not merely swear words. For example, I find Bob Diamond's lack of respect in the hearing today to be vulgar.

[Treesh]

This is a tangent, but I have to comment on this.

Bolding mine

Until a) Congress is held accountable for the corruption inherent in the system ( aka lobbyists ), b) "Socialism" quits being equated to Fascism and Communism, and c) The gov't realizes that they need to grow a pair and start cracking down on some of industries that are running rampant and ruining the quality of life for the citizens, nothing is going to change.

Please cease conflating the possession of testicles with possession of courage or assertiveness. I resent the implication that I have been short-changed on my ability to be brave or assertive because I was born with a uterus instead of testicles. I am hoping you used the phrase without thinking, but please take more care in future.

/rant mode

If it's specifically "grow a pair" as it is here, I automatically change it in my mind to mean "grow a pair of tits".

[Jester]

There are many on my list. But, I believe my *real* peeve is our tolerance for vulgarity in general. I didn't want to come across as a prig, so I'll link to an article which better describes my train of thinking.

Count me among the "chorus from the liberal intelligentsia" who says it's just freedom of speech, and anyone opposed is a prude or a fascist. Freedom of speech means the freedom to say things other people find uncomfortable to hear, or it means nothing at all. The notion that he only recently found Rush Limbaugh to have, just maybe, stepped over the line in calling Sandra Fluke a slut (She was, of course, and needed to be put in her place! But he shouldn't have used the S-word, because that makes baby Jesus cry, and makes white people blacker, and whatever other racist, reactionary nonsense Murray is arguing...) Oh, and blargety blarg Janeane Garofalo.

Does this *really* reflect your train of thinking?

It raves a bit too much against liberalism.

It's a reading from Charles "Bell Curve" Murray...

-Jester

[LavCat]

Count me among the "chorus from the liberal intelligentsia" who says it's just freedom of speech, and anyone opposed is a prude or a fascist. Freedom of speech means the freedom to say things other people find uncomfortable to hear, or it means nothing at all.

niggas triangulate


Edit: Spelling

[kandrathe]

Does this *really* reflect your train of thinking?

Not that part. The part I was agreeing with is that a society is not a cacophony of individuals spewing whatever vitriol they desire just because they can do it. It requires us to practice restraint and tolerance -- not only in what the other person does, but in what we'd want to do as well. I'm not as worried about what happens on the TV or radio ( we keep falling off). People can choose to turn the channel if they are offended. But, what occurs in public we are all subjected to if we want to participate in the society.

Which is why I went on to clarify. Yes, I feel we have the freedom to say most anything we want. What I was clarifying was that we should have the politeness (and wisdom) to not resort to vulgarity, which is often offensive. It's our choice to offend, or not offend. But, I'd argue that society is more harmonious when we choose to be polite and attempt to think about the other people around us, and what would make them comfortable or uncomfortable. In fact, often it's the testosterone that gets in our way.

I should note that I'm using the word "vulgarity" in it's old meaning "Lacking sophistication or good taste", not merely swear words. For example, I find Bob Diamond's lack of respect in the hearing of Parliament’s Treasury Select Committee today to be vulgar.

[Bolty]

niggas triangulate

Wow; having no memory of that thread whatsoever, I found it an interesting read.

This forum sure has a lot of treasures if you dig deep enough.

[DeeBye]

But, I'd argue that society is more harmonious when we choose to be polite and attempt to think about the other people around us, and what would make them comfortable or uncomfortable.

This reminds me of advice my mom gave me when I was just a teenager - "It costs you nothing to be polite." My mom wasn't much for giving advice, but that nugget stuck with me.

[kandrathe]

Count me among the "chorus from the liberal intelligentsia" who says it's just freedom of speech, and anyone opposed is a prude or a fascist.

To me, fascism rears it's ugliness when governments legislate censorship against ignorant people perpetuating stupidity like holocaust denial, or in the rule making in our own FCC on what can be said/shown on the broadcast air waves (cable still gets a bit of a pass it seems). Fascists value security over human rights (e.g. Abu Garib, Guantanamo, TSA), and justify excessive spending on security and military items even in times of peace (or invent phony wars). For fascists, fear is the primary motivational tool to herd the sheeple, and/or co-opting the dominant religious rhetoric (often against its tenets) to manipulate public opinions. The fascists are empowered by an industrial and business aristocracy which creates a commensal relationship with the ruling elite -- and ergo, unions are suppressed. They are also fearful of "free-thinkers", and so repress or are open hostile to higher education, the arts, and academia in general. They are obsessed with stamping out crime and creating more prisons -- often trampling civil liberty in the name of their patriotic duty to make our streets safer. But, on the other hand their regimes are rife with cronyism, scandals, corruption with their "free" elections dominated with smear campaigns, assassinations, and voter fraud.

A prude? It used to mean (in Old French), honourable woman. Now its an insult implying a fear and contempt of human sexuality. In our society it is wielded against anyone who expresses standards of modesty or even any moral standards and beliefs.

It's a reading from Charles "Bell Curve" Murray...

I can see your point on questioning the controversy -- in some ways I think his research danced too close to the fire and he got burned. He has stated (over the past 17 years) that he never implied a connection between race and intelligence(or potential) that was widely attributed to the two chapters in that book. I think in retrospect he'd have burned those chapters, rather than suffer being branded a racist. Still, I feel he is getting close to something in examining the deterioration of our society and its impact on children. I tend to view his work as unabashed (hence the attacks), but motivated in uplifting all people from poverty in ways amenable to libertarian values. I'm skeptical of IQ (and testing) as a single variable being capable of measuring potential -- I believe there are many other success factors such as work ethic, "emotional intelligence", and "common sense" that we don't quantify.

It probably wouldn't shock you; but I've read from all spectrum of political beliefs, and discern for myself any valuable bits from the dross. The danger is always when we put our faith behind the thinker, rather than the thought. Even our oft quoted paragons of thought and virtue, such as Abraham Lincoln, need some close scrutiny. We tend to become blinded by idolatry. That, and we tend to believe what we want to believe and ignore evidence to the contrary.

Even acknowledging all the challenges (globalization, the decline of manufacturing, mass low-skilled immigration) that have beset blue collar America over the last thirty years, it is still the case that if you marry the mother or father of your children, take work when you can find it and take pride in what you do, attend church and participate as much as possible in the life of your community, and strive to conduct yourself with honesty and integrity, you are very likely to not only escape material poverty, but more importantly to find happiness in life. This case for the persistent advantages of private virtue does not disprove more purely economic analyses of what’s gone wrong in American life, but it should at the very least complicate them, and suggest a different starting place for discussions of the common good than the ground that most liberals prefer to occupy. -- Ross Douthat, Op-ed, New York Times, What Charles Murray Gets Right

[Jester]

Anyone who decides that their reactionary values should be enforced with state power is, in the sense that I meant it, a fascist. Clearly, the term also means other things, but here, it mostly refers to the obsession with the "moral health" of some reified "people" or "nation".

As far as prudes go, insofar as "expressing" a standard of "modesty" means judgmental attitudes towards other peoples' harmless personal choices? Yes, that's pretty much what it means.

He has stated (over the past 17 years) that he never implied a connection between race and intelligence(or potential) that was widely attributed to the two chapters in that book. I think in retrospect he'd have burned those chapters, rather than suffer being branded a racist.

... this is an extraordinarily, maddeningly generous reading of Charles Murray. It frankly astounds me that, for someone so interested in the between-the-lines connections on other topics, that you'd be willing to excuse or ignore that he has, in apparently unconnected arguments, decided that 1) Black people are stupider than other people, and 2) Black culture is infecting white culture, and it's ruining America.

Now, I don't know about you, but I'd be tempted to think, at first cut, that such a person was a racist. It would require a whole lot more than a few denials to talk me out of such a position.

Still, I feel he is getting close to something in examining the deterioration of our society and its impact on children. I tend to view his work as unabashed (hence the attacks), but motivated in uplifting all people from poverty in ways amenable to libertarian values.

Or, that he wants to stop the transfer of resources from the advantaged to the disadvantaged, and impose his preferred cultural norms on everyone else. The man is an unreconstructed reactionary, and represents the best traditions of liberty about as well as the Washington Generals represented professional Basketball.

Ross Douthat, Op-ed, New York Times, What Charles Murray Gets Right

Vintage Douthat. Add some handwaving to a moralizing narrative, and hope nobody who actually understands these things checks your work. Almost everything he mentions in his list is a non-causal correlate of success. It's not that going to church makes you successful, it's that miserable failures tend not to go to church. It's not that marrying your partner makes you successful, it's that being left by your partner is a serious problem if you were reliant on them, causing crisis. (And so on, and so forth.) Meaningless blather, wishful thinking, and naked prejudice.

-Jester

Afterthought: Charles Murray, ladies and gentlemen!