Economist Walter Williams answers the question in the Daily Signal.
He writes:
Let’s look at the power of the rich. With all the money that Gates, Bezos, and other super-rich people have, what can they force you or me to do?
Can they condemn our houses to create space so that another individual can build an auto dealership or a casino parking lot? Can they force us to pay money into the government-run—and doomed—Obamacare program? Can they force us to bus our children to schools out of our neighborhood in the name of diversity? Can they force us to buy our sugar from a high-cost domestic producer rather than from a low-cost Caribbean producer?
The answer to all of these questions is a big fat no.
You say, “Williams, I don’t understand.” Let me be more explicit.
Bill Gates cannot order you to enroll your child in another school in order to promote racial diversity. He has no power to condemn your house to make way for a casino parking lot.
Unless our elected public officials grant them the power to rip us off, rich people have little power to force us to do anything. A lowly municipal clerk earning $50,000 a year has far more life-and-death power over us. It is that type of person to whom we must turn for permission to build a house, ply a trade, open a restaurant, and do myriad other activities.
It’s government people, not rich people, who have the power to coerce us and rip us off. They have the power to make our lives miserable if we disobey. This coercive power goes a long way toward explaining legalized political corruption.
We have much more to fear from big government than we do from big corporations, and this is granting that big corporations are bad. There’s no question that big corporations are generally very liberal, and opposed to social conservatives, and even fiscal conservatives. But what can they really do to you? Not much.
There is a lot of anger among young people in particular against “big corporations” these days, and many of these young people vote for bigger government because of it. But big corporations can only ever try to sell you things, and if you don’t like it, turn off the TV and block their ads on Twitter. But you can’t as easily stop the IRS from attacking your conservative group, or get rid of a SWAT team conducting a pre-dawn raid to punish you for being a conservative.
Half of Obamacare enrollees are skipping doctor visits to save money, according to a report from GfK, a market research group.
Only 33 percent of the general insured population is doing the same, according to the report.
“Even before the news broke that the cost of mid-range health insurance from the Affordable Care Act exchanges will rise about 25%, millions of Obamacare customers were already skipping doctor visits to save money,” the study said. “With mid-level exchange premiums set to rise about 25%, more cutbacks in care seem likely.”
Obamacare enrollees were asked what steps they had taken in the past year to lower their health care costs.
Thirty-six percent of Obamacare enrollees cut back on doctor visits even when they were sick, 22 percent skipped preventive care, 12 percent reduced lab testing, and 12 percent delayed surgery.
“Exchange users with lower incomes (below $25,000 a year) are turning to urgent care facilities and ‘minute clinics’ in huge numbers; 27% have done so in the past year, compared to just 12% of the overall [Affordable Care Act] customer population,” the study says.
“Visiting one of these outlets is often appealing to people who may have not formed lasting relationships with providers, especially as costs can be substantially lower,” the study said.
[…]“As we approach another enrollment period for the ACA, it’s important to understand why the exchanges are failing,” said Brian Blase, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center. “The law made insurance way too unattractive for relatively young and healthy people who are largely choosing to pay the individual mandate tax penalty instead of purchasing coverage.”
“Only those who receive giant subsidies are signing up for coverage in significant numbers, and many are gaming the new rules to enroll only when they need expensive medical services,” he said. “This year’s huge premium increases combined with much less choice of plans for Americans across the country demonstrate the law is wrecking the individual market for insurance and needs large scale revision.”
Yes, this is the so-called Obamacare death spiral, which has older sicker people signing up for health care, but young healthy people not signing up because there is no value for them. When only sick people sign up, the costs go up, because the payouts are higher. It’s like having an auto insurance plan that is only used by those with bad driving records. Naturally, the costs will be higher, and the only way to balance it out is to force people who drive safely and don’t make any claims to join anyway, and pay for something they won’t use.
Obama’s solution to this problem of young people not signing up is to punish them with fines.
Premiums will go up sharply next year under President Barack Obama’s health care law, and many consumers will be down to just one insurer, the administration confirmed Monday.
To make matters worse, the penalty for individuals and families who did not have health insurance in 2016 will also nearly double as compared to fees for 2015 tax returns when revisions to the Affordable Care Act go into effect.
According to the IRS, shared responsibility payments will jump to $695 per adult and $347.50 per child, with the family maximum not to exceed $2,085 or 2.5 percent income above the filing threshold. That’s up from $325 per adult and $162.50 per child, with a maximum of $975 per family for the 2015 tax year.
What were the young people thinking when they voted for a deal like this? Well, they weren’t thinking at all – that’s the problem. Their brains don’t work, so they just do whatever is popular. They don’t have enough real life experience to separate the celebrity worship from the economics. And they don’t respect the judgment of those who are older and wiser.
Two bears fight it out, and may the best bear win!
Details:
On October 10th, 2016, David Wood (Christian) debated Michael Shermer (Atheist) on the topic “Does God Exist?” The debate was sponsored by Ratio Christi. In the course of the debate, Wood and Shermer discussed the Scientific Revolution, design arguments, cosmological arguments, moral arguments, the problem of evil, skepticism, and methodology.
The video:
The debate starts at 6:30, following introductory remarks. I was ordered to summarize this debate by my good friend Eric, who said this: “I’m a little less than halfway through the David Wood vs Michael Shermer debate, but it’s amazing. If you summarize it you will sound super snarky but you will actually be doing honest reporting.”
I’m only going to summarize the opening speeches which went until 47:40.I linked to the rebuttals and cross-examination below. I did love the debate, and thought that both sides had great speakers who kept to their times, and were on topic and effective. As always with my snarky paraphrase of the atheist, you should listen to the recording to see what was actually said. I try to present their argument with the spin removed.
Wood’s opening speech:
The scientific revolution was started by Christian theists:
Science requires three assumptions: 1) that the universe can be understood, 2) that human beings can understand it, 3) that it is good for human beings to understand the universe.
Christians produced an explosion of scientific discoveries during the 16th and 17th century
In their writings, these Christian theists explained that their scientific investigation was grounded in their Christian worldview, and was seen as a form of worship and learning from God
It is easy to do science now that the scientific method is widely accepted, but the challenge was to come up with the method and make the first discoveries – Christians did that
Atheism does not ground the assumption that the universe is understandable – it’s an accident
Atheism does not ground the assumption that humans could understand the universe – we are just random accidents that don’t have free will and our consciousness is an illusion
Atheism does not ground the desire to understand the universe, the earliest scientific discoveries had no practical benefit
Theism grounds all 3 of the requirements of the scientific enterprise: the universe is made by a rational mind, human beings are made in the image of God – inheriting free will and rationality, knowledge of God (the highest God) can be obtained from the natural world (the Bible says so in Psalm 19:1 and Romans 1)
The testing of the scientific hypotheses confirmed theism:
scientific progress confirmed the origin of the universe out of nothing
scientific progress confirmed the fine-tuning of the universe for the existence of complex embodied intelligent life
Atheism doesn’t ground the scientific method:
the three elements of the scientific hypothesis, which was birthed by theism, have been confirmed by repeated use of the scientific method
the three elements of the scientific hypothesis, which are not grounded in atheism, have been confirmed by repeated use of the scientific method
Shermer’s opening speech: (snarky paraphrase with spin removed)
An atheist about one more God than you:
There are lots of different religions, just like there there are many answers to math questions, and so that means that none of them can be true.
Just like you, I deny lots of wrong answers to math questions, but I just go one answer further and deny the right answer
Response to David Wood:
Well, in most of these European countries, you had to be a Christian or they would burn you at the stake, because it was against the law to be an atheist
So, since there were only Christians on the face of the planet in every country since the beginning of time (since that was the law everywhere, at all times, and in all places) then OF COURSE Christians invented science since they were the only ones who ever existed
The fact that the earliest scientists credit their Christian worldview for starting them on the path of making scientific discoveries “is irrelevant” (direct quote). “You might as well point to the fact that they are all dog owners. It’s irrelevant.” (direct quote)
Atheism is just a lack of belief in God:
Atheism, which has the definition a belief in the non-existence of God, actually means a lack of belief in God
I like my made-up definition, because then I don’t have to give any reasons or science to show that atheism is true
I just describe my psychological state, not objective reality, and that allows me to not have to defend my worldview
The burden of proof:
David has to produce evidence for his view of reality
I don’t have to produce evidence for my view of reality
The scientists that David quoted never discovered anything:
Those early scientists never discovered anything
They believed that thunder was God bowling
Newton and Copernicus and Galileo and the other famous scientists just said “I can’t figure it out” and “God did it” (direct quote)
The progress of science shows a natural explanation for everything:
The progress of science in the last 50 years has overturned the origin of the universe from nothing, and upheld the eternal universe favored by naturalists
The progress of science in the last 50 years has reduced the number of constants and quantities that have to be fine-tuned
The progress of science in the last 50 years has reduced the complexity of the origin of life from libraries biological information, molecular machines and miniature factories to simple jello that was formed in a warm pond
Who made God?
You can’t explain the origin of space and time and matter by appealing to a cause that is spaceless, eternal and non-material
Why can’t the universe be the thing that doesn’t need to be created (i.e. – it is eternal, and did not begin to exist 14.5 billion years ago, as every scientist says)
Why is there evil?
On atheism, the universe is an accident, and there is no objective standard of morality
Therefore, no atheist can call anything good or evil objectively
God allows human evil and natural evil
I have looked into the repercussions of evil throughout time and space for every act of apparently gratuitous evil and I can confirm God does not have a morally sufficient reason for allowing human evil and natural evil, and I keep the reasons in my garage at home, but you can’t see them because they are invisible, and they are undetectable by any other means
Christians used to believe in witches
Look at me quoting the Bible in the one place it mentions witches!
I believe the parts that make Christianity look bad, but not the early creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 which is accepted as eyewitness testimony by the most skeptical atheist historians
You can repent at the last minute and get eternal life, that’s not fair
Not sure how an atheist misunderstanding Christian doctrines that can be explained by people who have read C.S. Lewis books is an argument against the existence of God
Christianity celebrates human sacrifice
Christians believe in human sacrifice because Jesus had to die for the sins of everyone
I’m pro-abortion and think that killing 56 million children is a great thing though
The doctrine of atonement makes no sense
How could God the Father accept the death of God the Son as a sacrifice for sin?
The rebuttals
I did not summarize the rebuttals, but I did watch them and link to them at the start of each speech.
First, I was very pleased with David Wood’s performance in this debate. I would have liked more focus on the scientific evidence for the origin of the universe and the fine-tuning, and fewer quotations from scientists in the opening speech. The rebuttals were good. And his performance in the Q&A was worth listening to.
Shermer’s first rebuttal gave me the impression that he was not interested in grasping truth through science, but just pushing away the science of today with speculations about the science fiction of tomorrow – might, maybe, let’s say, etc. He’s not a skeptic, he’s a speculator. Theists go wherever the evidence leads, we decide based on the evidence we have today. His attempt to underwrite objective morality by appealing to feelings wasn’t convincing. In the Q&A, he takes the standard atheist view that the nothing that preceded the universe is really something.
