Re: It has a gut-level appeal, but...

Post #360,713 by jay 7/12/12 2:13:31 PM Reply	Re: It has a gut-level appeal, but... That is why one reason why I suggested medical should not be among the things you can opt out of. The other big reason is that what do you with people who opt out of medical and then break a bone or get cancer or such and need medical care they can't afford. And yes, there needs to be a backdoor option for people who change their minds later. Luckily two years of government service (or massive penalty payments) is easy to implement at any age. The penalty payments have to be really ugly though, so that the wealthy can't trivially buy their way out of service. Jay
Post #360,717 by boxley 7/12/12 2:36:20 PM Reply	how about limiting the medical during the two years service then a penalty time afterwards? Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 55 years. meep
Post #360,728 by Another Scott 7/12/12 8:20:54 PM Reply	Indeed you did. Yes, you said exclude medical benefits from the penalty. I think Peter is right that if one were to live in a "civilized" country then single payer would make "renouncing" such benefits a moot point. Someone pays for necessary care, so renouncing the benefits merely moves the costs around. (Someone dying early through stubbornness is also a cost to the economy and the country, though quantifying that is likely tricky.) I still don't know if having an opt-out would make sense even for things like mortgage guarantees. Sure, everyone doesn't need to go to boot camp, or be a teacher's aid, or work on rebuilding trails in a park or whatever. But there's a powerful part of the American story that says we're all in this together - http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Join,_or_Die , so ways should be found for almost everyone to contribute. Having a second system for the (relative) handful of people who want nothing to do with the federal government seems to me to invite confusion, errors, lawsuits ("I'm not getting benefits, why should I have to pay taxes?!? I am a sovereign man!!!1), etc. Details are left to the reader. ;-) Cheers, Scott.
Post #360,729 by boxley 7/12/12 8:26:49 PM Reply	it would address two important issues 1. Regional and racial mixing allowing youts to be exposed to other americans outside of whichever homogeneous background they have. 2. Pull a large percentage of unemployed youts out of the workforce, give them a few work habits and some minor skills in exchange for eats and some sort of paycheck. Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 55 years. meep
Post #360,730 by Another Scott 7/12/12 8:38:23 PM Reply	I think #1 is overstated. Conventional wisdom is that a draft mixes up people and makes the country more homogeneous. I don't have any data, but my gut tells me that that benefit is vastly over-stated. Look at Vietnam. Al Gore was basically a reporter. W played flyboy stateside. Even with a draft, people aren't all mixed together. It would probably be even less egalitarian these days because the country is so much bigger and the military so much smaller. We're never again going to have a 10M man army, so only a small percentage of people will be needed (or have the opportunity) to serve there. Now, mixing and seeing people from outside your group is also an advantage of going to college. But there, too, the actual mixing can be much more limited than the story. On needs to be careful, I think, not to over-sell this stuff. No doubt that having a 2 year government paycheck can do wonders for someone staring out (learning job skills, figuring out how a job works, learning to work with others, gaining work experience, etc.), <snark> but as we all know, the government can't create jobs so that's right out.</snark> Cheers, Scott.
Post #360,731 by boxley 7/12/12 8:44:08 PM Reply	1. overstated watch Forrest Gump again :-) Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 55 years. meep
Post #360,733 by Another Scott 7/12/12 9:20:10 PM Reply	Once was enough, TYVM. ;-)

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