Interesting Links for 05-04-2014

[andrewducker]

• What are jobs for?
  (tags: economics employment politics work )
• How spending on day-to-day public services will have been cut by 37% by 2018-19
  (tags: government uk economy )
• Towards a sensible welfare system
  (tags: welfare uk politics )
• $1,000-a-day miracle drug shocks U.S. health care system
  (tags: drugs healthcare usa )
• I found something I agree

Comments

[channelpenguin]

You know always been anti-job. We just go to play our little primate social games, and it keeps us off the streets and from having any time or energy to question the system.

[nancylebov]

I read two versions of the light/BMI article. Neither mentioned the size of the effect.

More about bad medical "care" for the old and dying: https://thesunmagazine.org/issues/460/the_long_goodbye

"My advice to anyone facing major surgery after the age of eighty is to consider all the risks. People at that age are often like Humpty Dumpty: it doesn’t take much to knock them off the wall, and then no one can put them back together again. My rules of thumb are: No general anesthesia after the age of eighty, unless there’s an incredibly good reason, because of the threat of cognitive damage. And no open-heart surgery after eighty either."

[channelpenguin]

Light/BMI - "accounting for an impressive 20 percent of our BMI score." that seems clear to me or what have I missed?

[drdoug]

The actual study is here

[nancylebov]

Sorry, it was there, I simply didn't see it.

[del_c]

The welfare article got a comment from one David Rolle, who seems to be one of the "scarce resources" and "affordable welfare" advocates. He wants means testing for everything. He writes: "the state should assist only those who need help". But that requires the state to know exactly who needs help, and extra guard labour to keep out those who don't need help but wish to claim they do. All intrusive, anti-liberty (not that I'm a liberal but he presumably is) and already known to be a failed approach, for over a century now

[apostle_of_eris]

One of the frequent characteristics of the ideological right is unawareness of alternating between rational and moralistic.
"The undeserving poor" is a moral judgement, much more political than economic. Calculating cost-benefit ratios and the like go on and off the table like an above average magic act.
I have said for years that if I could pick a select half of the "working" population to just stay home and be mailed the checks they're already getting, the economy would be better off. Starting with most of the people who ask you for "ID".

[andrewducker]

I agree in some respects - I'm a massive fan of the idea of a Basic Income.

But that seems politically non-viable at the moment - and we are (unless they completely cock it up) about to have a system that affects about 30% of the population that does keep track of how much they have coming in, allowing them to assign money to people reasonably easily.

Small, incremental, improvements, like brining Council Tax Support into this, and improving housing benefit payments, seem like much more sensible suggestions than "Stop checking how much money people earn." - at least in the immediate term.

If you think that we can get a majority to go for Basic Income then I'm all for it though...

[bashou]

"Fantastic Four (reboot starring Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore, Rob Schneider, and Kevin James)"

Might be the only way to get me to watch an F4 movie.

Lite-Brite!

[snarlish]

Those Gremlins sure got thinner on exposure to bright light.