Who idolizes pre-ghost visit Ebeneezer Scrooge?

[Travis]

Did you write that?

Yes, here's how it happened.

My dad watched Bill Maher. He said that Bill said Republican's are acting as if they would idolize Scrooge with their debate behavior.

I thought of this thread.

Then I thought.....what if you reviewed the whole thing (here implied to be a play production) from that perspective?

 

[GreyArea]

I think it would be more accurate to say "wanting to have something to belong to." This is why trying to reason a person out of a belief system is so hard, and often ineffective: because the skeptic is only arguing the beliefs, and offering better ones, but not addressing the groups and relationships of which the believer is part, and from which they draw value, regardless of the beliefs that got them there in the first place.

Well put.

Who idolizes pre-ghost visit Ebeneezer Scrooge?

While I don't idolize him, I can admire his commitment to personal frugality. Also, I can agree with him in his lack of interest in an all-but-forgotten holiday. Too bad he was pawn to one of the DWAMQ's who invented the new version of it.

 

[Tony]

Yes, here's how it happened.

My dad watched Bill Maher. He said that Bill said Republican's are acting as if they would idolize Scrooge with their debate behavior.

I thought of this thread.

Then I thought.....what if you reviewed the whole thing (here implied to be a play production) from that perspective?

Sweet man. Mind if I borrow it for my facebook page?

 

[Travis]

Go right ahead.

Are you going to credit me?

 

[Mahatma Kane Jeeves]

Libertarians idolize Scrooge. Parody can't come close to the reality of Lew Rockwell.

The Case for Ebeneezer

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]It is this interplay of marketplace forces – which Dickens neither understands nor favors – coupled with Cratchett’s passive, sluggish disposition when it comes to improving his marketable skills or opportunities, that accounts for Cratchett’s condition in life. My client should no more be expected to pay Cratchett more than his marketable skills merit than would Dickens have paid his stationer a higher than market price for his pen, ink, and paper, simply because the retailer "needed" more money![/FONT]

 

[WildCat]

Half the people calling for the uninsured to die lack insurance themselves.

Actually I've never heard anyone say that. It is certainly implied in their arguments, but when you ask them directly they scamper off and never answer.

 

[Muldur]

Very good point. The "Obamacare" health insurance reform isn't really at all the progressive thing the Clintons were pushing for in the '90s. It really is a compromise package that addresses the problem from a relatively fiscally conservative point of view.

No, it's a direct giveaway to Big Medicine's various hydra heads (Big Insurance, Big Doctors, Big Pharma, etc). It requires the purchase of private party coverage (subsidized for the poor) w/o limiting and restraining the exorbitant prices charged by the providers.

Every other advanced economy with a Universal Mandate (Germany, et al) strictly regulates doctors' fees, drug prices, etc.

Good documentary on how 6 leading nations in health policy do it:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/view/main.html

 

[Muldur]

"If they would rather die,'' said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

I love that line

You have to admit, he had a point.

You two would.

Any more, I see people with that attitude as "surplus."

This. If people like them continue to destroy the hope of the country, people could also easily start seeing them a guillotine fodder.

 

[seayakin]

I got into a very heated argument with my parents over this (who are extremely conservative). My father had read an editorial in the Wall Street Journal (this occured like 20 years ago) about how Ebenezer had the right idea that investment helps people and the article (and my parents opinion) seemed to completely ignore the inhuman working conditions people had. Unfortunately, I don't think you can understate how cruel 19th century American and England was to the working poor. Dickens wrote:

"And the Union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"

"They are. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish I could say they were not."

"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?" said Scrooge.

"Both very busy, sir."

Poor houses, work houses, and treadmills were not euphamisms. People were literally put on treadmills to grind grain into flower. There was no OSHA or safety standards, time off, etc. I remember reading a journal article in college where the scholar identified that more people died in industrial accidents in the US than died in the Boer War.

I find nothing redeeming in in Ebeneezer Scrooge until he discovers some empathy for "his fellow man."

 

[ponderingturtle]

I got into a very heated argument with my parents over this (who are extremely conservative). My father had read an editorial in the Wall Street Journal (this occured like 20 years ago) about how Ebenezer had the right idea that investment helps people and the article (and my parents opinion) seemed to completely ignore the inhuman working conditions people had. Unfortunately, I don't think you can understate how cruel 19th century American and England was to the working poor. Dickens wrote:



Poor houses, work houses, and treadmills were not euphamisms. People were literally put on treadmills to grind grain into flower. There was no OSHA or safety standards, time off, etc. I remember reading a journal article in college where the scholar identified that more people died in industrial accidents in the US than died in the Boer War.

I find nothing redeeming in in Ebeneezer Scrooge until he discovers some empathy for "his fellow man."

But if they objected to their conditions they could always get a different job.

 

[AlBell]

The problem is, most of the people whom specific segements of Republican dogma should scare off will stick with the Republicans due to other segments, or in the case of people with a stake in Obamacare because they have been deluded (or deluded themselves) into believing that the current abominable train wreck you have is the better health care system imaginable.

re bolded: Nope, just that for many people who do vote and damn well continue to pay taxes after decades of paying (medicare tax too), Obamacare is the abominable trainwreck.

I'd have preferred a funded Medicare-Medicaid solution. Obamacare is un-funding both.