AnonymousActuary
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User ID: 2163
AnonymousActuary
16d ago
Thinking that someone using natural family planning within a Catholic marriage is going to be what ruins their lives is uh, an interesting conclusion
AnonymousActuary
6d ago
just wanted to say, extremely here for the anti-dog content. I love dogs, but like 5-10% of people max who own them should own them, and you should have to have a kid or be a single male (saying this somewhat sarcastically, but not completely).
This is one of my favorite blog articles on the subject: https://mattlakeman.org/2020/03/21/against-dog-ownership/
AnonymousActuary
6d ago
I think the USA's current healthcare system actually looks pretty good when you adjust for our terrible demographic/cultural headwinds (we are fat, love shooting each other, going fast in cars, drinking, and combining all 4 activities). People come to the US for top tier care (Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic). We drive huge amounts of pharmacy innovation.
We absolutely spend a ton of money on it, but some of that is just we have a bunch of money to spend.
AnonymousActuary
16d ago
I'd be worried about my daughter sleeping around outside of marriage in general
AnonymousActuary
21d ago
I would be shocked if this results in boots in the ground. Like with Soleimani, seems like gamble that stops with the air strikes (plus whatever Israel is up to).
People exclaiming loudly about how dangerous this is while also campaigning for increasing escalation in Ukraine against an actual nuclear adversary are not serious people.
I'm highly against more foreign intervention but this seems fine to me. A nuclear Iran seems to be very bad in very obvious ways.
AnonymousActuary
5d ago
Disclaimer: I am not a Medicaid expert Medicaid reimbursement is generally a lot lower than commercial - though maybe there is enough direct and supplemental payment shenanigans that it is worth it? I just know every time I have touched it it seems like a mess of different categories and paperwork
AnonymousActuary
21d ago
Tbh the distinction between forces attacking and just supplying other forces that attack is somewhat lost on me, but a cursory reading of cold war era conflicts (Vietnam, Afghanistan etc) clearly indicates states consider it to be very different.
AnonymousActuary
6d ago
I do occasionally wonder if you could get to a decent place via:
- Get rid of Medicaid. It maybe made sense at one point, but it's current incarnation is, as far as I can tell, such a disgusting mess for all involved parties that it's better to just kill it with fire.
- People who would be on Medicaid can now get insurance via the ACA exchanges - they'll get a 94% CSR plan for 2% of their income. There's some annoyance around how they will enter their income, but much less paperwork than it takes to interface with Medicaid. There would need to be a small legislative tweak to allow this to happen (let <138% FPL income people get subsidies), but in practice they should trade a bunch of annoying documentation and everything is free for a functional network (ie a blues plan) and everything is very cheap + 2% of their income.
- Expand Medicare to more disease categories other than just ESRD. In practice I think you want to try to capture an additional several million of the sickest people. Hemophiliacs, organ transplant, some cancers, some rare genetic disease perhaps, that sort of thing. This will dramatically lower premiums in the ACA. However power-law distributed you think healthcare costs are, the reality is they are likely more power law distributed than you think.
That's going to create some winners and losers, providers will be upset that people are on Medicare, but shifting people from Medicaid to commercial reimbursement rates should help out with that. The amount of bureaucratic nonsense saved by getting rid of Medicaid should be huge.
AnonymousActuary
1mo ago
Then if we're clearly going to make it to the stop sign well before anyone else, it's best just to blow through. Otherwise, the driver is going to be waiting far longer if we come to a complete stop.
This is just a general rule for no one obeying traffic laws if they think it will inconvenience themselves or others a bit?
AnonymousActuary
1mo ago
My wife and I are expecting our third within a matter of weeks. For us part of it was just the joy of larger families and the new sibling relationships you get with each one. I sorta think of it like the formula for an undirected complete graph - with 2 people you have one relationship. With 3, you now have 3 (parents with each other, each parent with child). You have 3 kids right now, so you have 10 edges, adding one more kid will increase that by 50% to 15!
Maybe this is a weird way to think about it, but I feel like families I knew that had 4 kids always had the most fun family dynamics. You don't have the natural rivalries of two, the self-centeredness of one, or the ganging up that can occur with 3.
I don't think your other concerns are trivial though.
AnonymousActuary
21d ago
Citation needed
AnonymousActuary
1mo ago
Roe v Wade is repealed and it is left up to the states, Obergefell passes, and federal dictate is declared.
This is an easy distinction to notice, not sure why it is being missed.
AnonymousActuary
1mo ago
social security honestly has never seemed to be as big of an issue. Certainly the demographic slowdown is a bit concerning for anything like this, but you can tweak the ages of eligibility and uncap the payroll tax and you have pretty much fixed it.
Medicare/Medicaid/health spending in general....much thornier problem.
AnonymousActuary
1mo ago
the problem is a status quo where what the conservative wing of the forum sees as an imposition on constitutional rights continues, and the forum one would go for redress of those wrongs continually punts on fixing this despite multiple electoral victories having led to it being comprised of justices whom one would've thought would think it important to rule on this.
AnonymousActuary
1mo ago
because the cost of social security benefits and the cost of medical spending are growing at two very different rates.
AnonymousActuary
2mo ago
he won only insofar as he was immediately targeted for other lawsuits on similar grounds. Yay.
AnonymousActuary
14d ago
There's a great FCCfromSCC post...maybe on reddit about confederate monuments...
Ope not FCCfromSCC, but here you go: https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/71ydqb/comment/dnfdfl3/?context=3
AnonymousActuary
1mo ago
Not sure your views on Genesis, but the pain of labor is literally taken in Christianity to be a consequence of evil entering the world.
AnonymousActuary
13d ago
Nope just remembered I had saved it one reddit
AnonymousActuary
1mo ago
I think the argument would be that the deficit will eventually trigger some sort of economic death spiral that would be very unpleasant. So if your party can be reasonable, it might postpone said death spiral a few more years.
AnonymousActuary
4mo ago
We had a moment where we suspended literal constitutional rights and a large chunk of the populace was pleading for the Government to take whatever action it could to save them including by confining people at home (great for coups!) while Trump was already president and he mostly tweeted.
AnonymousActuary
1mo ago
Yeah I think it's hard to look at society writ large right now in the US (or Korea...) and think that increased parental attention is doing a lot of good for the median family (or even the 85th or 95th percentile family). I'm sure there's some Bryan Caplan's out there who are giving their kids a lot of good experiences but in general I think self sufficiency and learning how to entertain yourself without parental impact is generally quite good. I think you have good reasons to be wary, but I also think worrying about impact on your kids from a 4th is not it (kids like having little siblings too!)
AnonymousActuary
1mo ago
I think "why is this bad thing happening to me" sorta a diet-problem of evil is an extremely common thing for people to think about? But yes, I doubt the median Christian has read the Bible through even once. I remember when I was ~10 talking to a Sunday school leader and mentioning I was starting my 3rd time through reading a chapter a day and he was shocked. I was like "wait doesn't everyone do this?" haha.
And the Bible as a whole definitely addresses it frequently - think the Tower of Siloam story, the story of the cripple ("who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?") or like, the entire book of Job. I don't think the answers that come out are ones that are going to intuitively solve the problem for someone who doesn't already believe, but it is certainly considered.
AnonymousActuary
1mo ago
One more comment - not sure if you can read the Atlantic, but always thought this story by Ezra Klein's wife (Annie Lowrey) to be a fascinating one (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/pregnancy-birth-complication-abortion-life-of-mother/671006/).
It's basically about her harrowing experience with pregnancy through truly truly terrible itching (among other things). She relates this horror story she went through...then get about halfway through the story and relates how she still decided (and followed through on) having another kid.
Posted this in the comments last week, but was curious to get some more thoughts on a potential path forward on the healthcare front that isn't just single-payer across the board:
I do occasionally wonder if you could get to a decent place via:
That's going to create some winners and losers, hospitals will be upset that more high cost people are on Medicare, but shifting people from Medicaid to commercial reimbursement rates should help out with that. The amount of bureaucratic nonsense saved by getting rid of Medicaid should be huge.
All a bit of pie in the sky dreaming anyways...
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