Much like the extreme on the other end.

J.

J.

Great, Jay Tea! Now just tell me what you’re talking about.

It’s MY fucking money, and if it’s going to be pissed away, I’LL be the one to decide where it’s pissed.

Oh, and I checked my 401K after my last comment. Turns out I’ve only lost about about 12% from peak. Turns out putting a quarter into Money Markets and half into a long-term growth fund was a relatively safe move.

Now, who was that Democrat who proposed ending the 401K tax deductions and folding them into Social Security?

J.

sigh.

J.

Countries that have some form of government health care also have lower infant mortality rates and longer life expectancies, both things that those that believe in “life” should be supportive of but curiously, as soon as it might cost them money, they disappear or change the subject.

But here’s where fun with statistics comes in. The US has a stricter definition of a “live birth” compared to other nations, some of which are ahead of it on the infant mortality list.

http://www.ocregister.com/ocr/sections/commentary/orange_grove/article_443950.php

BLUF: The live birth of premature, low weight babies in the US would be considered a stillbirth in other nations, which lowers their infant mortality rate.

Some of this difference between the US and other nations is due to stats, not due to a difference in how health care is paid for.

And, as far as life expectancy goes, the difference between the US at 50 and France at 9 is three years. And the US also have a significantly larger and more diverse population than the other nations above it. In fact, on the WFB list, the only entity larger than the US w/ a higher life expectancy is the EU. And the EU’s life expectancy is 78.6 years. So, all of that nationalized health care results in a life expectancy increase of a stunning… six months. Wow… I’d happily sign away my freedom of choice over my own health in exchange of living from 78 to 78 and a half.

Oh, and hey News Reference, do me a favor a Google the phrase “population of England 2002″.

Please stop with that nonsense.

Going to need to agree with SDM on that. Cutting references to “ACORN” and “birth certificates” will do wonders for the clarity and credibility of an argument.

Please stop with that nonsense. I know it’s your version of Southern Strategy, but still. You just end up watering down the credibility of other points you may make.

“Newsy” blathered:

As for you losing 25% from your 401k, I think you did considerably better than the average. As I understand it, most 401ks lost between 40% to 60%. In any case, if you had been planning on retiring on your 401k this year, you would be doing so with 25% less than you had just last year.

If you had had a job with fixed benefits, say a good union job, you would have a better chance of still receiving 100% of your benefits instead of having them arbitrarily cut by down to 75%.

Instead, you’ve had to increase your contribution to your 401k because 25% of it’s value was arbitrarily wiped out of it (by the magic of the free market).

You have to replace what was lost. It’s impossible to even calculate how long that will take because unless you liquidate to a cash only position your portfolios might take other losses in the coming years.

No, “Newsy,” I did not raise my 401K contribution because I had to replace my losses. I raised it because my second job doesn’t withhold taxes. I wanted to reduce my taxable income.

And if I lose it, so be it. I’d rather lose my money in my 401K than give it to the government to waste. With the 401K, I can control how it is invested, generally. With tax money to the government, I can sit and fume while Obama uses it to buy up auto companies and give them away to his political supporters, send Joe Biden around the world to keep him from saying more stupid stuff, build another airport for Jack Murtha, or subsidize ACORN rigging elections.

That’s my CHOICE. And that really bothers you, doesn’t it, “Newsy?” That I want to have a CHOICE that doesn’t revolve around sex, and I might CHOOSE something that doesn’t meet with your approval.

Tough shit.

J.

Which has what exactly to do with your saying you want to limit my freedom?

and yet Broderite Concern Trolls like yourself expect me to continue to take him for his word?

No. I would hope (but not expect given the way disussions here often go), when he’s explained what caused the difference you noted (England vs England/Scotland/N. Ireland, he was making “back of envelope” quick calculations) and provided more numbers and support, that you’d respond to those. What we got (and unfortunately I’m not suprised by) was you harping on the original difference and dismissing anyone (him then, me now) who hoped for a more reasoned response.

More happily at least you are now at least acknowledging that “his argument is interesting and he makes a strong case for it.” and “as you yourself noted, Sean, their are still conflating factors that might be muddying up the arguments (both his and mine).”

Just wish we could get to that point without the other crap first.

And yet you manage to miss the half dozen plus “conservatives” here who would limit personal freedoms in this thread alone.

Clearly, Sean, you don’t know what the words “conservative” OR “conservatism” mean*. But thank you for revealing your profound ignorance in combination with your high handed willingness to assert things you clearly know nothing about.

Sean, “SFC B’s” first numbers I checked were FALSE numbers. I dug into them, they were false, they came from faulty sources, and yet Broderite Concern Trolls like yourself expect me to continue to take him for his word?

“SFC B’s” first numbers were Republican Math: The Error Magically Fell in His Favor.

Even if “SFC B’s” errors were accidental, he still asserted falsehoods in excess of my patience to correct them in just a few posts.

Still, “SFC B’s” effort is a more interesting analysis than anything any of the other right wingers have ever offered here and it’s genuinely commendable that they are trying to correct their errors, it’s the reason I spent the time looking through his numbers and sources.

His argument is interesting and he makes a strong case for it.

Yet even after his false numbers were corrected, his supplemental data provided evidence against his assertions.

Of the list of countries that have some form of government health care, more than half have fewer abortions than the US.

The data that “SFC B” himself provides supported my assertion.

But there might not be enough data to make an accurate analysis and as you yourself noted, Sean, their are still conflating factors that might be muddying up the arguments (both his and mine).

For instance, while the majority of countries that provide some form of government health care have lower abortion rates, my argument for government health care doesn’t rest on that alone.

Countries that have some form of government health care also have lower infant mortality rates and longer life expectancies, both things that those that believe in “life” should be supportive of but curiously, as soon as it might cost them money, they disappear or change the subject.

Suddenly then it’s about costs, not “life”.

———
* In many ways, “conservatism” is the essence of limiting personal freedoms. “Conservatism” and “conservative” is about maintaining the existing social order which almost inherently requires the limitation of personal freedoms.

On the other hand, “liberalism”, at it’s heart, is definitively about ‘personal freedoms’ and the ability to exercise those ‘personal freedoms’.

I agree. Which is while, despite all the numbers and references being supplied, I don’t think it’s meaningful at all to compare just a single thing (existence of UHC) to the abortion rate. Too many other cultural factors may be at play. (Availability of birth control, levels of education (do they understand they need to use it?), religion (heavily Catholic country?), government policy (China’s “one child”), average age at which people become sexually active, age at which they start having kids just to rattle a few off the top of my head.)

Not a bad approach, but to truly disprove (or prove) whether adding universal health care (UHC) would have an effect on the number of abortions you’d have to look at how many were performed in those countries before they had UHC and after.

Very true, but I think that it will be very difficult to separate the effects of the health care options from the demographic ones. Also, the nations I checked have had some form of single-payer, gov’t health care for years. These are not recent developments. While looking over the numbers through the years thought two things jumped out. In 1989 France had a huge spike in the number of abortions performed. This was the year RU-486 (The morning after pill) was released. Also, in 1998 the US went from over 1,000,000 abortions being performed to a little over 800,000, which is where it remains to this day.

Translation: Your first numbers didn’t support the conclusion I wanted so even though you’ve managed to explain some of the discrepancy I found with them and provide more supported data I’m not going to believe them either because they still don’t support the conclusion I like.

For example, if Latveria has a 1:135 ratio and the US has 1:150 it suggest implementing a Latverian-style UHC won’t reduce the abortion rate in the US. But if Latveria had a ratio of 1:75 before instituting a UHC system then that would suggest the rate in the US would drop.

Again, I’m conservative that way.

Limiting my personal freedom because you don’t like what I may do to myself. This is must be some new definition of “conservative” with which I’m unfamiliar.

Once again it is a very interesting take thank you for providing it.

The numbers you cite further indicate that more than half countries you list with some form of nationalized health care have lower abortion rates than the US.

If you want to stake your claim about single-payer and abortion rates to the fact that half the nations on that list have a lower abortion rate than the US, more power to you. Personally, if I was going to make a sweeping declaration about nationalized health care and abortion I’d much rather see it being clearly the better option. As is, the US is in the middle of the pack of European nations, with a significantly higher rate of birth. Increase the average age of Americans and reduce to birth rate to Western European levels and you’d likely see America’s abortion rate lower to similar levels as Germany and Belgium.

And I’m still skeptical of your numbers, especially since the first figure I checked of yours was wrong by 15% in a way that falsely bolstered your argument.

Um, no. First off, as I said in a previous comment. I gave the number for England. The CIA World Fact Book, which you cited, gives the population for the UK (which includes Scotland and Northern Ireland). I also freely admitted that I didn’t exactly break my back getting the numbers for my first comment on this. If you see an error with the posts after I stated I’d use the WFB’s number for females < 65, please point it out so I can see where I went wrong. As it is, crowing about finding an error in a post where I openly admitted errors were likely, and finding that error because you used a different value, isn’t exactly a winning point.

Also, the Wm. Robert Johnston of johnstonsarchive.net that you cite isn’t a credible source, Johnston went out of his way to alter a transcript of Obama talking about “the Democratic Party” to the slur “the Democrat Party”.

If you’re going to claim that a few decades worth of complied abortion data isn’t credible because the person whose name is on the website altered a transcript concerning President Obama, you might want to provide a source for it. Fortunatly, the Johnston webpage is simply a clearinghouse for the data I was using. You’re more than welcome to cross check the data Johnston provided by going to the respective national sources for the years given. You’ll find they match (the only exception I found was the French discrepancy I noted earlier).

The CDC.gov report you cited is interesting except that it covers 2005, not the year 2002, for which you did your initial analysis.

Check the tables in the report for previous year’s data.

By the way, what does BR/1000 stand for?

Birth rate oer 1,000 people. The higher the number the more people being born, which means more women are getting pregnant, and thus a greater number of women who could potentially have an abortion. The US has the highest birthrate of any of those countries, by a large amount.

As I had inferred earlier, I’d be willing to bet that the lower abortion rate in nations like Germany and France is far more attributable to their older populations and fewer women getting pregnant than anything to do with their health care systems providing birth control. You’d think it would be common sense to think that things like demographics and culture would pay a far greater role in pregnancy and abortion stats than anything to do with who is paying for the depo shot.

10 year olds aren’t allowed to have sex but God forgot to tell their biology that.

Not to attempt to speak for Mr. Willis, but the point he was making (I think) isn’t specifically about 10 year olds, but about the arbitrary nature of there being certain age limits.