georgerussia

They have mostly Hinduism and Buddhism in Nepal, so it pretty much explains why your friend said that. Ask him how they reacted once they learned that some Jesus loves them. Christianity confuses me. I have met some who were very friendly and shared easily without animosity. Others - they had sex with children, and murder doctors, and I don't even want to repeat what they said. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Ok, so you claimed that TK missed the point. But what is YOUR point? * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

A typical example of selective thinking. Why couldn't he have two or three passports? It's a very typical situation for someone who was born in US and had one or both parents who are foreign citizens. For example, my son right now has three citizenships, and could have three passports - and it is completely legal. I can't imagine someone who actually lives on this planet would actually believe in this - if it's against the law (and I'm not even sure about it), it obviously didn't happen, right? And people don't travel to Cuba either... * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

You missed the "country" here. Like that, each country has prisons which are pretty ultimately socialistic - but it doesn't make the country socialistic. You just cannot run prisons or military in a different way. PS. Add Internet. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Your employer pays PRSI, so it is your direct cost as employee to him. Those money are going to tax authorities instead of you, and therefore should be considered tax on you as it is. You ARE paying 21% VAT on basically everything except food and few articles/services, so it's pretty reasonable to consider it as well. If you compare your fairly good track with India or China numbers, you'd see it yourself that Ireland is not a real concern in terms of attracting business. C'mon, are you joking? You didn't "attract" Intel, it didn't move HQ there. It just opened an office in Ireland, and your corporate tax rate has nothing to do with it as it still pays most of its corporate taxes in US. Actually Intel has offices in India and China as well, and even in Russia (and probably in twenty more countries around the world), this is just a single drop in a rain. No, not the same. Just look on numbers. "IRELAND has been included in a list of tax havens compiled by two key allies of US President Barack Obama" - so what is your point? You said about some government actions, and that's it??? Most of them already have citizenship, so they aren't leaving anywhere and going to fully use the welfare system. And there is a lot of them - I even happen to know some of those people. What is "socialist society"? I define it as the more services the government provides for "free" and the more it taxes you, the more socialistic the country is. Therefore full socialism would mean 100% tax, and the government provides everything, from underwear to plane tickets. Of course it never happened, so we only could talk about relative, and comparing to USA you're definitely much closer. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

This is not true if people who join the system are high-income earners, because they bring more into the system than they take from it. However when you have more and more poor people joining the system, this is exactly what happens. According to this website the income tax in Ireland for low income is 20% and is 41% over 36KE. So I'm averaging 30% income for a high-earner. There is also 2% levy on the income below 75KE. Then there is PRSI, which is average 8%, so we're at 40% now. And of course there is 21.5% VAT giving us total 61.5%. Did I make anything wrong? Of course not all of them are, and not all of them can. The issue is that some do, and it should make you wonder why you see the migration that way, and not the opposite way considering "free" healthcare in Ireland. I guess some would probably love to :) Which failed so far, as I see. At least the news doesn't look good. I don't understand your point. If the company doesn't need employees and just want to have low corporate taxes, there is a lot of Caribbean countries with low corporate tax - much lower than Ireland's 12.5%, which is not significantly lower than U.S. 15%. If the company needs quality workforce, the country with only 5M people provides relatively small pool of potential employees, making it more difficult and expensive to find and keep proper employees. Again, I think you overestimate the Ireland value to Obama. As I said before, we're talking about maximum 2.5mil jobs there, which is not even worth pursuing when you have countries like India or China. And I don't think there is a lot of Ireland-only companies who do not do business in USA (if they do, they have to pay tax here anyway), which are worth "returning". Could you please provide a relevant link to prove your point? That's pretty strange reading. I didn't say poorly educated social welfare leeches are leaving america to live in ireland, as they are not. However Ireland does have a lot of poor uneducated immigration - mostly from Eastern Europe and Middle East. Because if you're comparing percents, then the economy which grew up from 10M to 30M would show up extreme 300% growth, while a larger country might grow up from 10B to 11B with 10% growth. However if you look on absolute numbers, the first economy grew 20M and the second one grew 1B, which is 50 times more. See? * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Because if the system is expensive, and gets more and more participants, basically you will need to raise taxes each couple of years to cover the expansion. Of course I include VAT. You're paying it for everything except food. Even for services. I didn't talk about highest educated citizens either. From my experience, "highest education" has no visible correlation with one's ability to make money. I talk about the people who work hard, make a lot of money, and pay back a lot in taxes. We're talking about immigration, not visitors. The argument was that a lot of smart and hard working Irish people prefer US paid healthcare to Ireland free healthcare. And there is little to no migration into the opposite direction. This should prove something, right? In past, yes - mostly during the boom peak. But according to my sources it's going down since 2005. We'll talk again in couple of years. Sorry to disappoint you, but not from Ireland. Look on the numbers. Ireland population is 4.5M people, which is roughly 1.75% of USA population, and even 2M less than just Bay Area alone. So even if ALL private industry jobs came from Ireland to USA (estimating 50%), it would only boost unemployment by less than 1%. So are they leaving, or they are not leaving? I can't understand you. Largest economic growth, probably if you look on percentage. Or you compare to the countries of similar size? * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Because every benefit comes with drawbacks. It was said here long time ago - healthcare could be high-quality, cheap and available - choose two. In your case it seems to be available and high-quality (is it?) but not quite cheap. Because it discourages productivity. People do not have stimulus to work harder and make more money if they eventually have to give 60% of their earnings to the government. This means hard working smart people, who would like to work hard and make a lot of money will try to move out of Ireland (that's what is happening), but the people who would like to use free healthcare and pay little to no tax will move into Ireland (and this is happening as well - didn't you guys just voted for change in citizenship laws?) Well, why I'm even saying all that? You are seeing it yourself every day. Exactly. You have people who are leaving the country, who are working hard and making money. And you're having people who are coming into the country, to use its healthcare and government welfare. Not every of them, of course, but the numbers are large enough to be subject of public discussion everywhere in Ireland. Tell me I'm wrong! * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Well, your healthcare system IS socialist. This is true, but you need to evaluate everything together. What you said is basically that everyone who is working is paying for free healthcare for everyone through taxes. And that's the reason you're paying 41% income tax over 36KE income, and have 21% sales tax (VAT). You could even look on it in a different way: I personally know a few people who immigrated from Ireland to the USA, and I guess there is more people than I know. How many people do you know who have immigrated into Ireland from the USA? * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

But you had a choice to select a different plan from your company, or opt out and use your own coverage purchased separately. You would also lose it when you left the company. In a real socialist system, however, everyone gets the same health care for free - including those who do not work - but you generally have no choices and cannot opt out. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Not in USA :P * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

That's assuming the list of categories is full - which is definitely not the case. For example, I do not see any suggested cuts for transportation projects (I bet a lot of those who voted for high speed rail back in Nov now regret it; BART extension and seismic retrofitting could definitely wait too). I do not see any possible attempts to renegotiate union contracts with various state workers for lower pay. No suggestions to cut the number of boards below those 33 even the governor labeled redundant. No suggestions cutting the enforcement of victimless crimes. Denial of services to illegal immigrants. Of course, pet projects are not even considered for being cut. Seems like this measure worth voting for. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

This one was taken this May in Bucharest main square, right in the city center. Europe is definitely doing much better there. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

I wonder how it would work in US. It would be hard to claim "lost wages" because slave labor was legal at that time (and even it they could, it's probably out of statute of limitation). They still might be able to claim "unrealized gain" (wrong word probably, no idea how it's called in US law system), but only if those are transferable to estate - is it in US? Definitely not a case in Russia - like pain and suffering, your heir cannot sue for your unrealized gain. Is it different in US? Another issue, of course, is to who is to be liable. I didn't study the subject, but as far as I remember, most of those African slaves were sold by other Africans to Spanish, British and Dutch, so it's hard for me to understand why the USA should be exclusively responsible for such. Especially after the Civil War, when a lot of white people lost their lives to free blacks from slavery. Note that they still have slavery in some countries in Africa, so one could speculate the descendants of those who were sold are doing much better comparing to descendants of those who weren't. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

JFYI, a few years ago in Russia the Supreme Court had to dismiss the law some states had, which allowed taking passport photographs while wearing things like burkas (this was for internal passport only, like state ID in USA. Passports for traveling aboard always required full-face photographs). * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

This one seems to be true. I've read a couple of analysis based on World War II-era NKVD documents which became recently (2005) available. I did my cross-reference check with some of them when I was last time in Russia. Seems to be pretty consistent with analysis and the other data I have. We live in quite interesting times. Basically each year more and more documents become available, which often significantly change the history comparing to what we were taught in school. More World War II documents became available just a couple of months ago in Ukraine (april 2009), released by Ukrainian SBU (ex-KGB). And I gonna work with them this Tue, as there are several popular historic works on this topic (Ukrainian Rebel Army vs Wehrmacht), which disagree in details. Not all revisions are false. Too bad it took so long. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

I have to say that according to the latest researches vast majority of those were hold for real crimes (for example, voluntarily joining Nazi police to participate in acts against humanity). Most of them actually deserved death penalty, but were forgiven (it was replaced by 5-10-15 years in prison) for political reasons. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Remove safety labels from everything, and let the Natural Selection work. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

This was an example to show logical fallacy in a typical "pro-life" point. How do you know Bin Laden is danger to a thousands of people? From TV? He wasn't even convicted, yet you have no problem to destroy a sacred human life just because a bunch of people from TV news (who have lied before) told you he's guilty. So much for life... So what do you do to protect their precious human lives? In abortion issue you're pretty radical, wanting to remove the right to choose even from those who do not share your agenda. Calling yourself "pro-life", I'd expect more from you regarding other issues that just a lazy "they shouldn't be killed" statement. I would like you to show you that calling yourself 'pro-life' is just putting a fake political label, and that really you're just anti-choice/anti-abortion. No, there is more. Be honest with yourself. You do not just think abortion is ok. You want to deny right to abortion even to those who do not share your opinion. There is a huge difference. For example, I also think abortion is ok, and me and my wife wouldn't do it, but we recognize the right of others to do it. This is pretty similar to "if you call yourself Christian, do not go to doctor when you're sick. Doing so instead of praying Jesus for miracle cure shows that you have no faith, and therefore not a Christian". I wonder if you're against Medicaid for those who god AIDS. After all, at least some of them got it by going out and having unprotected sex. *** It was sarcastic. Jesus would say don't abort the baby. Why do you think so? * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

I don't think we need to change the mindset. If the system is set up the way is set everywhere I know (the "government" doctors are technically government employees - i.e. paid by, and followed rules of the government), the government becomes their malpractice insurance. In this case the law could limit the total awarded amount of any malpractice lawsuit to $500. Of course, the doctor - if found guilty of malpractice - could lose the license temporary or permanently, or even go to jail (should be extreme case), but no money is paid to anyone. This will bring the number of extortion lawsuits to zero, and since the patient healthcare in this scenario supposed to be based on fee which does not depend on your health (but may depend on income), the patient is still covered. In my opinion the whole malpractice insurance system is a huge mistake. It pays the "victims" from the money it collected from the doctors. After the payment the insurance cost increases, and every doctor who pays the insurer, passes the costs on patients - like every other business does. Which in turn means that all of us are paying those million dollar settlements out of our pockets. It's ridiculous. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

So what? Osama Bin Laden is still a human life, and if you think it's ok to "abort" him just because he's not fetus, or because he flies planes into buildings, it's ridiculous because it is still human life. You also did not address starving children in Africa and kids suffering from Iraq war. Do they also fly planes into buildings? What I'm trying to say is that you need to be consistent. If you call yourself pro-human-life, but only support fetus life, this means you're just pro-fetus-life. But since the only way you want to support fetus life is to deny rights to abortion (instead of just offering financial support to the potential mothers to have the baby born with following adoption), you cannot be even pro-fetus, and just become anti-abortion. Because you claim to be a "pro-fetus", so keeping the fetus alive should be a priority for you. If it really was, one of the ways would be to open your wallet and pay to support YOUR BELIEFS. Since you do not want to do so (as I suspected), you're not even pro-fetus. You're just anti-choice. Then don't call yourself pro-life. You are not. Yes, I think so, and my own experience supports it - I've met very few agnostics who were anti-choice. *** Not in the least. I guess we should just kill all babies to prevent a Hitler or Bin Laden How bad of you! What would your Jizzas say? * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

As far as I understand, at least some of the malpractice suits are filed because the treatment to fix the medical error is expensive, and without such a suit the patient would have to pay for it out of pocket because the system provides no other way to recover the costs. Putting this into 'government tier' responsibility layer - because in the government doctor scenario the government is ultimately their malpractice insurer - might get rid of at least this type of lawsuits. Drug research is also a large scale problem. As far as I know, vast majority of the countries around the world does little to no drug research on their own, and just getting a free ride on research done by U.S. and Germany. This is something to decide on international level as well. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

This will also lead to two-tier doctors. Government doctors, who charge the amounts set by the government (which will likely to be quite low), and private, who could charge whatever they want, but cannot bill the government. It might actually work if you throw in more incentives - for example, in all countries I live which had national healthcare you cannot get any money by suing a doctor, and they do not carry any malpractice insurance at all. If the doctor is found guilty in malpractice, he might lose the license or even go to jail, but the best compensation you can expect is to recover your court costs. Second, they also run state-owned medical schools. The admission is tough, but the school is free (even pays some tuition), so a newly graduated doctor does not have a 100K+ loan to repay. Streamlined billing could also help. The things to look for are, in my opinion, the following: - Preexisting conditions. Usually people with preexisting conditions are also the people who need, or may need pretty expensive medical care. This means the lowest tier should still be good enough to accommodate them, which in turn means this tier will be quite expensive. However it will bear significant part of the costs from the second tier, which may turn it into "health insurance" I had in Russia - you have like 50K reverse deductible, and your insurance pays 100% for everything - no copays - until you reach this amount. After that it doesn't pay for anything. The rationale here is that if you have a small issue, you could get fast and comfortable healthcare, but once you need heart transplant, you probably cannot pay for it anyway so you're on the government now. - Malpractice lawsuits. Having doctors working for the government will seriously limit - or completely eliminate - any monetary damages. I wonder if there is any socialized healthcare system in this world where one could actually recover like 50M in damages, need to check. Optionally it might have a sticker - like, want to be able to sue a doctor for damages? Pay $500 extra per visit. - Drug costs. Even a pretty simple drug which cost $5 in other countries may cost over $100 in USA. If you meet a new immigrant coming to USA, they usually carry enough medicine to supply a local hospital for a couple of weeks (another reason is, of course, that you can buy almost everything without prescription there except Schedule 1 and 2). I've read several opinions about the cost of drugs. Some say it sponsors drug research for the entire world, some say it is just big bucks for politicians. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Anyway, it makes little sense to have free doctor visits but having to pay $150 for antibiotics, so this issue should also be covered (and then there's another issue, like should birth control and Viagra be covered too? And if not, who is going to buy $190/month birth control pills?) There are even more issues, but those I believe are most important to address. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Considering that even the court conviction - which may take years - is not always proof that rape really happened, and considering the short abortion time window (you do not want to do 3rd trimester abortion, do you?), what kind of proof you would consider reasonable? * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Starving children in Africa and kids suffering from Iraq war are also human lives. So is someone on death row. Even Osama Bin Laden is human life. If you're saying you're pro-human-life but at the same time for example you support death penalty, I cannot see how could you ever call yourself pro-life. Well, that's pro-fetus then, not generic 'pro-life'. Although I wouldn't even call it pro-fetus as your support for fetus is pretty narrow-minded. For example, you do not offer potential mothers financial incentives (out of your own pockets, of course) to keep the unwanted baby and then surrender it to adoption. All you want is to revoke her right to choose. That's why you're ultimately anti-choice. That's the main problem of Jesus crowd - they want everyone else act according to their personal beliefs, which are based on fairly tales written in an old myth book. ...and it's still a human life when the baby grows up into Osama Bin Laden. You see my point? No, I only brought dictionary because you kept calling an unborn fetus "baby". Since English is not my native language and I learned it quite recently, I had to check the word meaning in the dictionary, and shared my findings with you. You know, it's difficult to understand the opponent if he or she tries to use a word in a completely different meaning. The real reason I'm ok for someone to abort fetus but not to kill the baby is because in the baby case if the person does not want to be a mother, the society could receive the baby from her, and find someone to adopt it. However at this moment it is not possible to adopt a fetus. Maybe in future, when it becomes possible, an abortion would mean transplanting fetus into the womb of "pro-life" female, and let her carry it to the full term instead. Would be really nice to see how many people would put their money where their mouth is. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *