Week 8
Federally funded healthcare might sound like a handout, but if financiers, defunct automakers got their handouts, people should as well.
"58% favor replacing the ACA with federally funded healthcare system [..] Presented with three separate scenarios for the future of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), 58% of U.S. adults favor the idea of replacing the law with a federally funded healthcare system that provides insurance for all Americans. At the same time, Americans are split on the idea of maintaining the ACA as it is, with 48% in favor and 49% opposed. The slight majority, 51%, favor repealing the act"
[Scottish] independence case is 'more credible' after Brexit
True
Foxconn CEO
[From his open letter to Donald Trump] When Apple told me to start making iPhones in Brazil to get around import tariffs, I made it happen [..] I just exported pre-fabricated iPhones for the locals to slot together -- kind of like Lego -- but it got the job done. And by job, I mean kept Apple's and Brazil's leaders happy.
Ha Ha
News
Japan is putting together a package it says could generate 700,000 U.S. jobs and help create a $450-billion market, to present to U.S. President Donald Trump next week, government sources familiar with the plans said.
Sounds too good to be true
They could be shit jobs like ones described by Foxconn CEO above (FC is the Apple iPhone manufacturer in China).
News
House Republican leaders on Thursday presented their rank-and-file members with the outlines of their plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, leaning heavily on tax credits to finance individual insurance purchases
Tax Credit - No Good
There are restrictions on who can qualify for tax credits, having a job or a business (therefore paying taxes) is one. Health insurance help must be direct, with no strings attached. See Canada, Australia - they have single-payer healthcare.
IMO providing healthcare for all is like infrastructure spending. Why is infrastructure spending good? It is good (if spent on right infrastructure) because it is given to ALL citizens. Here, I built a road and I AM GIVING IT TO YOU. You can't build a road that only a few can travel on. There are no roads for black people, for Asian people, for the poor, for the whites, or for the elderly. Once you build a road, everyone benefits. It is this aspect of infrastructure that helps the economy.
In a post-industrial, fast-moving, third-wave economy, free healthcare is that direct help. In the new age taking care of people's basic needs is of paramount importance, because the economy is too dynamic, uncertainties too high, the stresses caused by immense transitions need to be taken care of. Someone could be between jobs -- during that time, no healthcare, no tax credit.
A lot of citizens need help on these basic issues. Millions still have no insurance. 50 million people are on food stamps in America. People need to be out on the streets demanding this shit, but instead you see protests on "women issues" -- which only trigger anti-abortion reaction from the other side, there is bunch of useless rhetoric, and all of a sudden the discussion is back in the "familiar" territory. This might please some of the darker and shadier corners of the US government, but it is not what people need. Not by a long shot.
News
What is happening in Germany is the kind of Trump bump perhaps never foreseen by his supporters - a boost not for the German nationalists viewed as Trump’s natural allies but for his fiercest critics in the centre left. The Social Democrats (SPD) have bounced back under the charismatic Martin Schulz, the former head of the European Parliament who took over as party chairman last month and is now staging a surprisingly strong bid to unseat Chancellor Angela Merkel.
In a country that stands as a painful example of the disastrous effects of radical nationalism, Schulz is building a campaign in part around bold attacks on Trump.
Now I know this guy is a player
Apparently he stopped short of using the "N-word". But what he is doing is tactically sound. He is attacking hard, but since Merkel is the sitting chancellor she can't "go there" - at least not in the intensity that an opposition candidate can. So he discovered an advantage and is pressing for it. Tactics aside - both candidates are strong - the outcome is a win-win for Germany.
Prof. Kender
(Computer Vision lecturer, Columbia U, Lecture 8).
Today we will look at optical illusions. Let's look at the pictures below.
It looks normal, but when we rotate both pictures 180 degrees,
It turns out the picture in the right is different from the one in the left, but our eyes could not catch it. The right picture was created by simply rotating the eyes and mouth of Mrs. Thatcher and flipping them [sorry Mrs. Thatcher! Academics love to bang on Reagan and Thatcher].
Why did I show this? [There is a book about] perception by Irvin Rock. He is a painter, he put out a book about optical illusions because, u know, painters were worried about it. Actually the main impulse to understand what makes people to screw up was astronomy - [astronomers] could not tell all the time if they were seeing the right things, right? How do u know our eyes or the camera is not fooling you?
So the reason why people study optical illusions is to see what are the failures of the heuristics of the human visual system in trying to deal with two dimensions and get back to three. The concern with illusions is that they should not happen if we were perfect machines. But the ultimate worm in the ultimate apple is that once you lose the 3rd dimension you never get it back. So you are guessing like crazy. You are guessing in the hardware in the eye, you are guessing in the software in the brain - but you are guessing. And sometimes you guess wrong.
Nice
One of my scientific interests is machine vision - recovering 3D info from successive 2D images. I believe a key piece in this area is projecting 3D shapes into 2D, then checking what happens in successive images. Following Kender, since we constantly make shit up in our heads, we can use and mimic that for computation. There is a plane there, a rock here, then we move somewhere else, we get confirmation for this hypothesis. If a rock was far away from me, it should have not have shifted to such degree when I took one step. In a larger sense the brain probably works like that in other areas too, in this hypothesis - check - confirm / reject mode. Crazy people are probably crazy because they make shit up (like everyone else), but lost the ability to confirm their hypothesis'.
Kender also talked about the famous painting-with-eyes-following-you optical illusion. This T-Rex model is built on that principle (the end of vid shows the trick).
I believe there is a lot to learn from our inefficiencies, because our inefficiencies are probably optimal in some sense, optimal because they were enough to keep us alive, hence the ability stayed with us through evolution.
Harvard Health Blog
[T]he impetus for reorganizing the entire healthcare system has to do with the regrettable state of healthcare in the United States. Currently, the healthcare finance structure is made of an impressively complicated network of multiple payers, involving both private and government health insurance options. Despite spending more on healthcare than comparable countries, the U.S. has the lowest life expectancy and performs poorly on a variety of health outcomes. Thus, our complex network of insurance plans is wasteful — in large part due to high administrative costs and lack of price control.[..]
Inequity is another major problem. The United States remains the only developed country without universal healthcare. The Affordable Care Act has made important gains toward improving and expanding health insurance coverage. However, it was never designed to provide universal healthcare and 30 million Americans remain uninsured.
In a single payer healthcare system, rather than multiple competing health insurance companies, a single public or quasi-public agency takes responsibility for financing healthcare for all residents. That is, everyone has health insurance under a one health insurance plan, and has access to necessary services — including doctors, hospitals, long-term care, prescription drugs, dentists and vision care. However, individuals may still choose where they receive care. It’s a lot like Medicare, hence the U.S. single payer nickname “Medicare-for-all.”
Proponents advocate that a single payer system would address several problems in the U.S. system. Universal health coverage would be a major step towards equality, especially for uninsured and underinsured Americans. Overall expenses and wasteful spending could be better controlled through cost control and lower administrative costs, as evidenced in other countries. Furthermore, a single payer system has more incentive to direct healthcare spending toward public health measures. For example, targeting funding towards childhood obesity prevention programs in elementary schools and daycares reduces the rates and complications of obesity more effectively and at lower costs than paying for doctor visits to recommend healthier diets and increased physical activity.[..]
[T]he major obstacles to adopting Medicare-for-all are political, rather than actual practical problems within the single payer structure. Stakeholders who stand to lose — such as health insurers, organized medicine, and pharmaceutical companies — represent a powerful opposition lobby. Public opinion needs to be redirected to focus on how the net benefits of a single payer system outweigh the tradeoffs discussed above. [..]
If the major barrier to implementing single payer healthcare in the U.S. is a matter of politics, the pathway forward will require mobilizing public support. A recent poll suggests 58% of Americans support Medicare-for-all. Interestingly, whereas a majority of physicians support transitioning to single payer, they are less likely to believe their colleagues share this opinion. This raises an interesting question of whether the “conventional wisdom” that it is too difficult to reorganize the healthcare insurance system overshadows actual public opinion.
Right
Single-payer system is the way to go.
Question
But then we are taking health insurance outside of market mechanism!
Yes
Not everything is suited for markets. Policing for example, is a service that is completely outside of market forces. Services that need to be out should be out, and -this is important- with clear delineation between what's in and what's out. Half-assed, half-in half-out systems are worse than opening the wrong services to market competition.
Comment
Republicans use the term "Obamacare" in a denigrating way, to hit Obama
Bam himself was fine with the word
See video.
https://youtu.be/Rif8UgfCl1w?t=120
The gun issue is about deciding between a) whether people have the right to protect themselves or b) the availability of guns (too many).
Not exactly
The gun debate is about deciding which kinds of deaths are more acceptable than others.
For the sake of argument, let's say in one scenario gun sales are restricted, so X number of people die "because they had no protection while they were the target of a crime". Then let's say, in another scenario, there are little restrictions (as today) so there are Y number of deaths because more regular ppl, without any criminal background, have the means to kill others in a blitz of rampage, or themselves, like a little child at home with a parent's gun.
Let's say these two numbers are equal. X = Y.
Which scenario is more acceptable?
What I argue is that, X deaths, meaning deaths that are caused by gun restrictions are, must be more acceptable. Because in that scenario, there is accountability. There is crime, someone dies at the hands of a criminal, then police, city mayor, the governor, etc are all responsible. You press these people for change. In the other case, who? We can't go to the insane / lone-wolf person who shot up bunch of ppl and ask him to be "more responsible next time". The deed is done. He killed tens, dozens already. Actually this accountability imbalance is the main reason why right-wing Reps keep asking for more guns, because their way has gone so far off the path accountability that they need to argue more and more citizens protect themselves (even little kids at school), they cannot point anyone who can take any meaningful action. But their way is a dead end. They can't hold anyone accountable, but someone needs to be.
Now about to the numbers: I said "let's assume X=Y". But we all know that Y > X. Actually Y >> X (Y is much greater than X). The legal availability of guns almost ensures that it seeps through the population and creates a situation where anyone can get hold of a gun. I went to Florida once, and I saw tourist attractions where you could go to a gun-range and shoot a f--ing Uzi. Most likely licensed to be sure, and the gun range was most likely operated by a licensed person, but now this weapon is in the society, a nosy child, a thief, disgruntled employee, can get it. An AR-15 can be purchased legally in many states. Still. See post, post.
On X: is there a direct correlation between having a gun and protecting oneself effectively? See here.
Comment
But Republicans don't want government to do anything.
Well, that is a larger issue isn't it?
Gov needs to do something. Provide for basic safety, basic regulation. I am all for small government, but some say "gov should not touch my food". No - regulate the goddamn food. I don't want frog, dog, or donkey meat in my burger.
Question
I really like the tea cup u talk about here. What is the brand?
Keo
Link. They also sell the tea itself. Mmmmmm.. Earl-gray tea with bergamotte arooomaaaa..
I Like It Ahh-Lawt
"A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that a Maryland ban on assault-style rifles and large-capacity magazines isn’t subject to the Constitution’s right to keep and bear arms.
The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond, Virginia, reconsidered a divided ruling issued last year that found citizens have a “fundamental right” to own these weapons, and that laws restricting the right deserve the toughest level of constitutional scrutiny.
Writing for a nine-judge majority, U.S. Circuit Judge Robert King said that weapons such as M-16s and the kind that “are most useful in military service” aren’t protected by the Second Amendment as interpreted by the Supreme Court in the landmark District of Columbia v. Heller decision [..] “Put simply,” King wrote, “we have no power to extend Second Amendment protection to the weapons of war that the Heller decision explicitly excluded from such coverage.”"