An Interesting Look at Universal Health Care
 

I've never thought about health-care from the employer's perspective before, and this article really made me think about this issue in a different way. I'm not sure what the solution to this will be, but I'm definitely more inclined towards a single-payer system.

A national health service, from the cradle to the grave, is one of the basic standards of a civilised nation.

Fair enough, point to me a single nation that has an efficient and working national health service. England is the prime example, their health services are horrible and have been overbudget every single year since they were implemented.

Russia has a suburb health service in the 80's

HA!

Russian doctors couldn't pour piss out of a boot in the 80's and were lucky if they even knew it was piss.

I've seen the 'results' of the communist health care in my own office, you are really really reaching if you want to pretend they had anything close to western standards.

Horrible joke of the day: In Soviet Russia, suburbs move to you.

I always figured big business would want to get out of the business of providing health care for their workers. It's something that the people demand, yet no one wants to provide. Don't we usually pass the job off to the government when that happens?

Well, they know if it's not them to pay it directly it's almost guaranteed that the'll be paying it through taxes.


I know you REALLY like socialism, but come on... that's like us saying that with capitalism not one person will be unemployed.

actually, it was quite respectable in it's hay-day, and still does a good job, it's just the government thats been screwing it up.
but still, i'd much rather be hit by a car here and be treated by an underpaid stressed doctor than go over to the states and worry if my insurance was up to date while some dude worked on me before sending me back home with a huge bill so he could get another big wad of cash, i mean patient, through the door.

I think that we'll see universal health care as soon as the corporations that have sway in washington figure out that it is in their best financial interest to lobby congress for said healthcare.
Which is to say, pretty soon, at this rate.
I think if it isn't careful, the hmos and will overcharge themselves out of business. Hospitals too. I'm almost afraid to go into biotech because i think the healthcare industry is about to go through a "correction". Just what they deserve, though.

Sure, the businesses in Canada don't pay for health care, the people do through their extraordinary levels of taxes. I was just in Canada. 20% taxex for purchases? Jesus Christ thats a lot. But If we had that, then we would not have our businesses putting money into a health plan. So it all works out the same.

what gets lost in this whole debate is the understanding that no matter who is responsible for healthcare (government or the private sector), it will have to be paid for by the people using the resources. you aren't getting a great deal in a socialized healthcare system, just because you don't pay the bills as you incur them doesn't mean you aren't paying for them.

personally, i would rather have my health care provided by a system that encourages competition and choice rather than a monolithic government program that has less incentive to improve itself or eleminate fraud.

the politicians love to scare you with all manner of statistics about how people don't have health insurance. but how many people do you know that haven't been treated when they really need it in the US? For gosh sakes, we treat illegal aliens all the time because it is unlawful to turn someone away from the emergency room.

the system ain't broke, you must question those who still want to fix it... especially when the changes make them the gatekeepers of public health.

Oh, so they're footing the bill so they won't have to pay for it with taxes? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that corporations were in the process of scaling back health benefits. Just look at the union settlement in California. The only people who have solid health care under that system are the old unionized employees. Health care cuts too deeply into the bottom line, and makes domestic companies less competitive.

Second, it's not the corporations that would pay for public health care, it's the citizens.

Note that I'm not advocating any specific scheme of government facilitated health care, just the principle of increasing government involvement, be it through state-run insurance or whatever.

In a sense, it seems like the costs would stay the same, and that the costs would just be moved around. In the end somebody would pay for it. The companies pass the costs along to somebody.

However, that's not quite true. If the government became the provider of the majority of health insurance in the country, it would have the chance to exercise monopsony power over the drug companies and drive down costs. Wal-mart does it all the time, and in a sense it has made large swaths of our economy more effecient. Only in this case, the result will be not only a rearrangement of health care costs, but also a reduction in the aggregate cost of health care. The savings could either be returned to the tax payers, or reinvested in research and development.

No, i don’t know anyone who has been turned away. However, I do know people who have incurred medical bills so high that their personal credit was ruined for 20 years. I know people who have put off going to the doctor when they were really ill because they couldn’t afford it. These are just two signs that the system is broke -- people shouldn’t have to incur life changing debt or risk their health because they do not have the advantage of health care.

Ummm, try 15%.

8% provincial sales tax.

7% Federal GST (Goods and Service Tax)

The GST replaced the former manufacturer's tax which was built into the price of everything you purchased.

When I lived in Wisconsin, my employer (large corporation) had an employee health benefits plan, which still cost me about $300.00 a month on top of their contribution (which was substantial if i recall.)

If you lost your job, you were in serious trouble, and there was a lifetime limit of $1,000,000 I could claim if i recall correctly. After that, you were out the door. So, if you had a sickly kid or something like that you were fucked.

I can see benefits to both ideas, but if given the choice, I will take universal health coverage as would pretty much everyone i know.

Healthcare in this country needs fixing. Way too many people can't afford health insurance and end up filling for bankruptcy when someone in the family is faced with medical bills they can't afford. Sure, if your condition is serious you can get care from a hospital emergency room, but the cost is prohibitive for those without insurance and when the patient can't pay, taxpayers foot the bill. Some kind of Universal Healthcare Insurance plan may be the only way to go. After all, the principle upon which insurance works is to spread risk among as many as you can in order to reduce the risk to any single premium payer. If the risk is spread among everyone, well...

Additionally, Universal Healthcare ought to provide savings to businesses in reduced costs to provide health insurance; reduce overall healthcare expenditures by allowing people to receive preventive care before their health problems become serious (and , thus, more costly); making premiums more uniform and, thus, more efficiently computed and collected, reducing administration costs; eliminating the need for PPOs and HMOs which should reduce litigation against them for denying coverage and which should eliminate the ridiculous pay being given to the CEOs of these companies; and, verdicts in tort cases (personal injury suits) would fall dramatically since medical costs are the single most expensive damages in those cases driving verdicts.

But it makes too much sense, so it won't happen.

I like what irateplatypus said.

I'll ditto that.

The United States government pays more per capita for health care than any nation in the world.

Read it twice if you need to.

We spend nearly twice what Canada does, while 11% of children and 20% of working adults have no health insurance. I do not blame the government for these failures, but as long as pharmaceutical companies can afford to buy multiple Super Bowl ads at $2.4m per 30 seconds, reform is needed. I believe universal health care can work- it does in Canada, contrary to popular belief (And has its critics without a doubt.).. and our military hospitals served me for many years without negative incident. Why we couldn't tailor public hospitals to the populace is beyond me.

I have often heard the arguement that a government run system discourages inovation.

I am not so sure about that one.

I think there was more inovation back in the 40's and 50's then there is now. Back then the gov'ts of the world used to finance research through universities and they found a vaccine for polio, TB, and host of others. They pioneered heart transplant surgery, and pace makers.

Now, everything is private sector (the large drug companies) and maybe public private partnerships. What was the last big medical break through that you can recall in the last 10 years???

What universal health care coverage does is eliminate the profit angle. Hospitals and doctors don't operate on that principle any longer.

Doctors in Canada often migrate to the US in search of more buckage, but often they come back too. They grow tired of being accountants and having to deal with money issues and would prefer to practice medicine. There is no doubt that a doctor in the USA makes more than a doctor in Canada. But they don't do too badly here either, don't kid yourself.

And I will bet you that every med student at Univ. of Toronto when he or she had his entrance interviews gave the "I want to help humanity speech" in order to get accepted. Well, if that's the case, and you know that Canada has a universal health care system, you shouldn't be leaving Canada upon graduation to the USA. I would think that they should pay back the government for the cost of their heavily subsidized education. (That's the lefty in me talking!)

The other thing is that Americans often think it's going to be some exotic disease that's going to get them and that they need state of the art everything. The truth of the matter is that it probably something pretty basic (heart attack, etc.) that gets them. 95% of the population needs sound basic health care than they will ever need exotic health care.

I was going to reply but james t kirk's post on government financed research is indeed interesting to ponder upon...

Thinking back at the 1930's to 1960's during their heydey I do see how (largely in part of World War II and the Cold War) many breakthroughs (from nuclear weapons, power, jets, medical procedures, etc.) did accelerate by many years... interesting to ponder upon...

thats partly the reason why there havn't been very many breakthroughs recently, most of the major diseases (heart disease, cancer, arthritis) are so complicated to sort out, as most have several vectors of infection (for lack of the appropriate word).
but, i think that the pharmacutical companies need a kick up the rear. yes a cure for cancer would make trillions, but in there here and now, it's easier and cheaper to concentrate on finding new drugs for existing and curable diseases.

unfortunatly, it all comes down to economics, not whats good for the populance.

do you really think that a doctor wants to become like a teacher or an employee of the govt in there local governments look what they do to them right now here in st louis they are saying we don't have enough money so we just aren’t going to pay you how do you think that a doctor is going to feel after he just worked a 90-95 hour week and gave up most of his life and his "boss" says we can't pay you right now because we giving the money to the poor people that you just helped (or insert federal/local program here)
socialized medicine doesn't work because when you dictate the quota that a doctor makes he might work really hard for two weeks out of the month but not work after that because he can't make any more and no matter how much you want to help other people you don't want to give up your life for nothing

right now there are specialties like neurology that the wait to actually see the doctor is 4.5 months how long do you think that is going to get if socialized medicine were introduced because if everyone were to be suddenly covered for a specialty like that more people would go making an already heavily strained system collapse under far to much weight (there are only 7 neurologist for more than a million people in the St Louis area) not to mention the problems with neuro-surgery (I mean only graduating 125 surgeons is absurd)

Just my beliefs

I see it as the banner of a bloated oversized government myself.

i also agree with Phaenx i don't think the demecrats even want to go back to the days of LBJ's great society so no one wants to go too far from supply side and health care may end up being one of the first steps

The great society destroyed the black family, I can't see why we don't give socialized medincine a shot, I mean what could go wrong?

There was a scary six month gap between me graduating from college and when my health coverage kicked in at my new job.

My coverage stopped at the end of the month when I graduated. I had to search for a job for a bit, then when I got it, there was a 90 day probationary period where I wouldn't have any coverage.

My alternative was to extend my fathers insurance to me outside of college. That would have come to me at a cost of 470 dollars per month. I couldn't afford that. My options were to borrow money to cover such an expensive extension of benefits or tough it out for that period and hope I didn't get sick or break anything in the mean-time.

I chose the latter, and thank God that nothing happened to me to have made it a disastrous choice. I don't think americans should have to fear for their health like I had to at that time.
Under a national health plan, we wouldn't. Noone would have had to make the choice I made.

Health care in this country is insane. 4% of the nations GDP is Health Care Administration costs alone. That is a lot of wasted money.
Your hospital bills are as expensive as they are, 86 dollars for a single aspirin, because the prices have to be inflated to cover the uninsured and those unable to pay their bills. That makes your premiums rise, and you really are paying for a national health care service as it is anyway because of that. Only as we are now, the national health care goes through a filter of companies working that system for a profit.

National Health Care is in this countrys best interest.

Old article about Tom Green & Canadian Health Care

<a target=new href="http://www.townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/mm000602.shtml">TOM GREEN'S HIDDEN HEALTH-CARE LESSON - LINK</a>

Two Questions:
Where would you rather have a heart operation: Cuba and its free health care system for all, or the USA?

And why do the leaders of the world come to the US for operations?

I think it's a little bit of faulty analysis to say that "We have the best specialized care in the world, and it's due to the fact that we don't have a nationalized health care service." I mean, it might have played a small role at the start, but there's so much more to it, like our premier medical schools, America's innovative spirit, the country's reputation for attracting the best and the brightest.

I don't think any of those other reasons would suddenly become invalid if we made the switch to a national system.

Well, given that Canada has a lower infant mortality rate, and a longer life expectancy rate than that of the USA, we must be doing something right. Irrespective of Tom Green's nuts.

Here's the link to the CIA website for the USA.....

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/...k/geos/us.html

USA Infant mortality rate:
total: 6.75 deaths/1,000 live births
male: 7.46 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 6.02 deaths/1,000 live births (2003 est.)
USA Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 77.14 years
female: 80.05 years (2003 est.)
male: 74.37 years

Here's the link to the CIA website for Canada.....

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/...k/geos/ca.html

Canadian Infant mortality rate:
total: 4.88 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 4.39 deaths/1,000 live births (2003 est.)
male: 5.36 deaths/1,000 live births
Canadian Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 79.83 years
male: 76.44 years
female: 83.38 years (2003 est.)

I maintain, you would be hard pressed to find too many Canadians who would give up their universal health care. No-one trusts companies to do right by their employees (myself included). It's not the way. I do actually trust the government as strange as that might sound.

And James, did you maybe think there might be other reasons as to WHY the numbers are different that have nothing to do with health care?

Think about it.

Canada has semi-privatized health care, not a great big socialist system. It is ultimately goverment funded but there is some competetion, and in my belief there is a higher level of public trust and professional competancy throughout the field.

No health system is perfect, but I believe that Canada is still about the best in the world. Most critical services are covered although we aren't coddled. My basic Alberta Health Care costs $132 quartly. My brother's fiance's sister was hit with a $1712 ambulance ride that had to come out of pocket- but only because she could afford it.

The PST portion of our consuption taxes doesn't go towards health care, except on a provicial basis, which is relativly insignifcant in health care contributions. As an Albertan, I pay no PST and incidently lower provincial income tax too.

Well, when i have worked in the states i have observed that americans tend to be much fatter than Canadians on average. You see a lot of 350 pound women walking around in Michigan!

Even NYC, when i was there in the spring, I remember thinking the streets were going to be packed with babes. In reality, it was packed with fat chicks. Toronto has far hotter women, and I am not saying that cause I live here cause someone from Montreal would say that Montreal has far more beautiful women than Toronto (I disagree, though they do dress well in Montreal.)

national health service is the only reason why I don't mind paying 40% in taxes (Denmark) since my ass is covered 24-7 no matter where I am in the world

Sorry, I might support nationalized healthcare if I knew the government wouldnt fuck it up. Call me cynical but I dont think the government will have a chance in hell at providing healthcare in the US in a way wich is an improvement over the current system. They just dont have the track record to be trusted with that kind of responsibility.

Covering your ass, are you James? Let's agree that the Canadian metropolises (esp. Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver) all have hot women.

There.

Now, as for nationalized healthcare in Canada. The main services are covered by the government. If I go to the doctor with a broken arm, he/she will swipe my medicare card through the little machine, fix me up, and send me on my way. Simple as that. However, some services, such as blood tests, are offered by private clinics. You could just go to a hospital or public clinic to get checked out, but results would take longer to come through this method than by popping into a pay clinic. I got blood tests results within 4 days that way, instead of having to dick around for 2-3 weeks.

Basically, as was said before, it's semi-privatized, although us Canadians can always depend on basic service at all times.

Thought I'd dredge this up since I am again looking for a new job.

So here's the deal. I need to do a 240 hour internship for grad school. I also want to leave my current job. It's not taking me anywhere and the pay is wholly insufficient. I won't be able to do this internship plus maintain a required minimum of 40 hours a week there anyway (hours would conflict and I need to do my internship now)
My internship that I will most likely get needs me at least 30 hours, so I am going to have to go look for another job that I can work 30 hours a week that offers me access to a health care plan.
The alternative is to pay about 900 bucks a month for health insurance for my wife and myself.... or try and make it without health insurance.

The gap I am likely to see can range anywhere from 2 months, which will mean insurance kicks in at my new job right away (if my internship offers me an immediate position) or 5 months if a full time job from my internship requires me to wait 3 months first (like many jobs do).

So I am looking at 60-70 hours of work a week plus graduate classes in my life for a period of 2 to 5 months.
This will be really fun, but should be unnecessary fun if we had Universal Care.

Why do you so strongly feel that I and other citizens should have to pay for your health insurance?

You shouldn't have to pay for MY health insurance. My contributions to the system would cover me. The need is for the overlap.

But like I said earlier, the costs of emergency care and sunset care for the uninsured is being passed onto those of us who have insurance. (ie. through our employer who pays us less because of it)
Universal Care cuts out the waste and gets it all upfront. In the long run it should be cheaper for us all. And better for society as a whole.

1. No offense, but you're a grad student with an internship. Having been down that road before, I know what interns get paid. I'm also aware of how little (if any) taxes they pay. Are your contributions up to this point suffiecent with the health coverage you're wanting?

2. Universal HC cuts the waste???? Name me one govt program that's run smooth and effiecently.

Look, I hear what you're saying about the gaps. It would suck if, God forbid, something catastrophic should happen to you during that period. However, your solution doesn't match the problem. It's like trying to kill an ant with a flamethrower. It's overkill. Perhaps more affordable gap plans should be encouraged?

I am a grad student with a full time job right now who wants an internship instead. So I am paying sufficient taxes right now. The internship will be short term so it will really not affect my tax line come december.

You can argue it but Canada has run very successfully. A good Nat Health plan runs even or a small loss, not at a profit.

The bottom line to me is we all pay the markup for sunset health care to the uninsured that could have been done much cheaper with preventative medicine.
And, health care should be a basic part of every american's life.

What is overkill is wasting 4% of this nations productivity in Health Care Administration.

The need for basics is very well covered in Canada, but if you need any specialty work, color yourself screwed!! My good friend who is 43 needs a hip replacement due to disease, she either has to pay for it or wait till she is 58, the government sanctioned age... She has plans to have it done in the States...go figure...

Yeah, I'm sure there are problems.

But I wonder if we counted up all the people in the states who were dissatisfied with their quality, or lack of health care.
And counted up all the Canucks who were dissatsified with theirs, who would have the greater percentage of the disgruntled?
How many Canadians would rather take their chances with American HMO's?

If I were you, I wouldn't worry about it. The break in coverage is pretty small. Just be sure to use birth control.

$900? What kind of health care do you have? If both of you are under 30 and healthy your coverage should be about $100/mo and your wife's coverage should be about $450/mo if you want maternity care covered.

Like I said, before I got my current job I toughed it out and was lucky to not get sick or injured in my 3 months before insurance kicked in.
I could have extended my old insurance for 470 per month. I wasn't going to do that. When my wife was released from her parents insurance two months before we got married, she opted to pay for her own coverage in that period. She isn't willing to take risks like that like I was. It cost her around 400. We get bc from Planned Parenthood because the govt subsidies bring it down to $13 per month rather than the normal $40

I'd be happy to find a source for health insurance that costs me 100. Wanna direct me to it? Any kind of decent care I can find costs substantially more than that.

No need for maternity. We double protect with pills and condoms. We really don't want to have to bother with kids until we had at least a year out of school to enjoy life before that kind of responsibility.

I was thinking of leaving my employer's plan last year and I went to www.healthnet.com They have all sorts of individual plans. For a male between 25-29, the rates went from about 70-150 depending on HMO, PPO, and decudibles but that is in AZ. Your location says Pa and I don't think they have individual plans there. They might be able to refer you to a company that does, however.

Shop around, you'll be surprised what you can find.

I don't live in Arizona but just for the heck of it I went to the website to see what my wife and I would have to pay (age 55). The prices ranged from about $450 to $2100. We are currently paying about $330 in Ohio for $10,000 deductible. Looks like things get expensive fast as you age. We are currently opening up a HSA account which will cut costs a little.

The argument seems to stem around cost, and whether we should bear it as a private expense or in the form of taxes. If it's simply a matter of cost socialized health care is cheaper per capita than private health care for 2 very good reasons.

1) No profit motive. By eliminating the profit margin you're looking at a direct reduction in cost. The profit motive is a good one for an actual business but insurance companies produce no goods and have little to do with innovation.

2) A national plan could exert monopoly influence, negotiating lower prices for services and drugs. The scale of a national health care plan could exert pressure on the health industry like no HMO ever could.

My idea is a federal program, separate from the general fund. It would receive a large amount of money for startup and give it a math model designed to generate a profit margin only as large as the inflation rate. Pay the management competitive wages and let it stand on its own feet after that. Let private companies try to compete with another with effectively a zero margin of profit. You'd still have to pay in (or your employer would) but the payment would be much lower.

Yes, it gets quite expensive as you get older, but all individual insurance plans do. Men aged 25-30 are the lowest risk group, where on the other hand people start having big time health problems in their 50's.

Insurance through your employer is usually different. Maybe it's just Arizona, but everyone in my office pays the same rate for the same plan.

Be carefull with the HSA. There are some HSA's where you lose your contributions at the end of the year. Overall, I do not trust them. My employer almost went to a high deductible plan with a HSA. The employees practically revolted. Basically, the deductible and co-insurance would have gone from 500/1000 to 1500/3000. This would have given me a 25% drop in my premium. Sounds great until you do the math. In order for me to get back to a max out of pocket of 1500, I would have had to put all the savings plus a little extra into my HSA for the next three years. Once I put a total of 3k into my HSA, I could then enjoy my reduced premium. Of course, that money gets wiped out in the event of a medical emergency.

Before you actually go with the HSA, figure out the difference in max out of pocket per year. Then divide it by the premium savings. That will give you the number of months that you have to transfer all of the savings into the HSA. If it takes more than a year (maybe two) then stick with the higher premium and lower deductible plan.

The reason is the until you build up enough money in your HSA to cover the higher out of pocket costs you are saving no money. At that same time, you are taking the risk of having to pay out more money if you go to the hospital. Once you pass 55, it's not completely unreasonable to have a hospital visit every three years or so and the risks get worse as your age increases.

HSA's are a scam.

Not true. You don't need to build up money over time with them. For example, if you want to alot 4000 dollars into a flexcare acct, you recieve the total amount on Jan 1. True, if you don't use the entire amount by the end of the year, you lose it. But if you know what you're gonna use it for and know the amount of the services to be used, HSA are great plans.

I thought the HSAs build up money just like IRAs. Plus the money you put in every year (up to about $5250 for couples) is tax deductible. Also the money you take out every year for medical/dental is tax free.

How does a national health care service that is funded by confiscating the property of citizens match up against the basic standards of a free nation?

I won't be glib and simply mention that, of course, you have a Milton Friedman (free markets! free markets! free markets!) quote as your signiture.

Taxes are a reality. It is not "class warfare" or anything like that. It is a realistic payment by citizens for the operation of a working government. In addition, progressive taxes are not the devil; in fact, they are inherently more fair and less burdensome on those who can afford taxes least. To be fair, you didn't mention any of these above things, I'm just anticipating.

Many European countries and Canada have exceedingly comparable standards of health care to the U.S., yet pay signficantly less than we do for it. A societal good. I apologize for being unable to find it now, but the Washington Monthly had an amazingly well-written, detailed article on why the government achieves greater results with better efficiency in VA Hospitals. I believe it was in their January edition.

I chose that quote because it's frequenly true.

I like your quotes, by the way. I'm a big sports fan.

Technically it would be "warfare" declared on individual rights, though a progressive income tax will almost certainly bring the issue of class into the discussion.

Not everyone needs or wants the government to be "working" in this manner.

A flat tax would be more fair. The wealthy would still pay a higher dollar amount than the poor (though it would be the same percentage of their income, which is the important thing), but we could avoid all of the unpleasantness of treating the successful as plow-horses working for the sake of everyone else.

This doesn't really address my concerns regarding the inevitable violation of individual rights that goes hand-in-hand with socialism.

As for individual rights?

This doesn't really address my concerns regarding the inevitable violation of individual rights that goes hand-in-hand with socialism.

I'd sure like to hear more about how universal care "cuts waste." To paraphrase from another subject, universal care is a system by which everyone tries to get health care at the expense of everyone else.

James T. Kirk also didn't mention the people who were getting taxed out of their houses (according to my guide in Victoria the last time I was there, admittedly quite a few years ago).

Besides, you're getting amazingly high insurance quotes. My FAMILY insurance is around $500/month. You ought to consider increasing your deductible, as well as doing the other options to "configure" it toward catastrophic coverage during your internship.

Spare me from the poor exploited rich people arguement. They only have that much money because they chose to pay the masses slave wages. For that reason alone they DESERVE higher tax rates.

This is an example of extreme over-generalizing and gross exaggeration.

I read this and think the person is beyond rationale and incapable of accepting any position, regardless of how the position is presented. In other words, this comment is a debate ender, because it would be futile to try and discuss this with you. Rather than further discussion, you have killed it.

I'm not the one bringing up that flat tax bs saying we need to make things fair for the exploited upper class. Hummers and 4000 ft2 houses, sure those people are really being treated like plow horses.

Anyone who wants to pimp some flat tax needs to realize that there is no f-in way that we'd be able to tax everyone at the same rate without substantially raising taxes on the poor (people who are making 1/1,000th of what the plow horse exec bringing in $10M).

The people who earn the higher incomes deserve what they earn. And yes, they work far harder and have sacrificed more that the poor. Why punish achievemnt and reward laziness?

How can you possibly hold this opinion? It's so obviously false. There is absolutely no 1 to 1 ratio of money to energy output.

One celebrity or one mutual fund manager does not work NEARLY as hard as one book store clerk moonlighting as a janitor while cleaning homes on the weekend.

Seriously - why do you hold onto an opinion that is so clearly based on nothing at all? Particularly when that opinion is such a cornerstone of your philosophy.

That right there is the problem in your logic. You assume that people are rich because they work hard and poor because they are lazy. That's total bullshit and if you really think it then take a day off and observe the jobs performed by the people that keep the country running.

Poor people know more about sacrifice that the upper class. They sacrifice their dignity to work embarrasing jobs so that they can put crappy food on the table for the family. They sacrifice time with their families to get a second low paying job so that they can afford to pay for the health insurance (if they are even privilidged enough to have been bestowed a descent HC plan by their cheap ass employer).

Hard work and sacrifice gets you shit until you bring in luck, connections, and opportunity. Most people in the upper class would not be there if they came from the backgrounds that the average poor person came from.

That is such a croc... A guy who works five days a week on a factory line, or hauling garbage, etc... is *not* any more lazy than some executive who sits on his ass in an office all day...

Many people who earn higher wages only do so because they have an education that others couldn't *ever* afford to get. Not because they worked harder.












What ALL of this thread comes down to is the ongoing balancing act of EQUALITY vs. FREEDOMS.

Some nations have chosen a path where they believe their citizens should be treated equally (to the best of their ability) and others beileve, like the US, in freedom for individuals.

In the case of health care, it is all well and good to have a free market when you can afford it...

Like many Canadians, I am proud that in our balancing act between equality and freedom we have chosen to lean closer to the equality side. A little socialism is ultimatly good for everyone.

Well according to the current administration it's fine to exchange freedom for security but we can't exchange it for equality. I guess it's better to have a system that forces families into bankruptcy because of a medical emergency.

What freedoms have you lost because of the PA?

That's atleast the 3rd time you've asked that question, and each time someone answers you and you ignore it and wait a bit and then ask the question again. If memory serves me, Host answered you last time by describing the PA aspect that forces the owners/operators of TFP to divulge information about users at any request by the gov't.

Why do you keep asking the question when you're obviously not looking for the answer? Do you think if you just keep asking it, we're suddenly going to think we haven't had gov't intrusion into our lives?

And are you going to answer my question from a couple of posts above, or was that another post you made which was supposed to mean something but actually didn't?

That's not true.

The employee works a set schedule and risks nothing. Hhe recieves her set amount and knows what she'll get every week. He didn't go get extra training to be a clerk or a janitor.

The mutual fund manager works constantly. But before he got his job, he went to college and earned at least his BA and probably his MBA (though he may have earned his MBA at night while working during the day). As you know, people do not get paid when they go to college, thus he sacrificed his wages for 4-6 years while at the same time accruing debt via a college loan.

He then puts in 50-70 hours at his investment firm job that he recieved right out of college. Aside from putting in his time at the office, he takes clients out to dinner during the week and such in which he of course does not get paid. He countinues to work tirelessly, even at home, until he finally gets the job he's wanted.

And oh, the new job he got?? He's now working harder, not less.

1. I doubt that is true

2. How is that a loss of freedom (if true, of course) and how has the TFP suffered because of it?

Yes it is. Even when you start making up lots of numbers for one side of the equation while not making up numbers for the other side.

Why? Because there is no such thing as a 1 to 1 ratio of money to energy output. It simply doesn't exist. No matter the artificial numbers you come up with.
So you're saying that you don't understand how a lack of privacy is a loss of freedom?

What was artifical about what I posted? What part is inaccurate? Just disagreeing with it doesn't make it false.

1. Show me where in the PA it states this

2. Show me how (if true) it's harming you or anyone else here. This is an internet forum, thus there is not much privacy here anyways

It's not that your example is necessarily false, it simply doesn't mean anything. I could also make up information about some hypothetical book clerk/janitor/house cleaner.

You're claiming there is a direct correlation, without any outside influence, between money and energy.

Giving me a hypothetical example of a mutual fund manager's life story doesn't support your claim at all.
I'm not your research lackey.
What? OK then - what's my IP address? Who's my internet service provider? You don't know, do you? But the gov't can now easily obtain that information simply by forcing TFP to divulge it., which could then easily be used to find out my name and address, etc etc etc. In another thread, you were very adamanant about liberty and freedom - and now you don't care if the gov't is watching you?

Manx, the govt could already have recieved your IP address, service provider, ect.. pre PA via a suponea. Are you saying that they do not need a suponea now?

I'm not the one that pull that example out of my ass. I just assumed you knew the hard facts about it.

Maybe you should research something before you imply (for the who-knows-how-many-times) that it hasn't affected people. (And by "people" I mean a single, random, forum user.)

If you "punish" the unproductive, they starve.
If you "punish" the rich, they don't.

People who make lots of money are benefitting hugely from a stable society and strong economy.

People who make little money are benefitting less from a stable society and strong economy.

Who should pay the upkeep and rent on a stable society and strong economy, those who benefit alot, or those who benefit a little?

I'd be in favour of a flat tax + national dividend.

You get X,000$ a year (monthly payments) as the national dividend. Any income is taxed at a flat rate of Y%.

No welfare, no changes in marginal tax rates, no starvation. The marginal incentive to produce for people on welfare stops being punative, encouragine people to crawl out of welfare.

Possibly you'd have to be a citizen for 18 years in order to get access to the national dividend (the age of majority for born citizens).

It's a progressive flat tax.

I don't like laziness in myself or others, but I don't think that people should be paid based on how hard they work.

I don't think that it is availability of education that's driving wage differences. I think it's stable individual differences like talent. There is a stronger relationship between IQ and high wages than there is between availability of education and high wages (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994).

I don't have any study to point to, but I'd bet $1 that there is a much stronger relationship between family wealth and future wages than there is between IQ and future wages.

??????

please, don't do that. *cries*



EDIT: Manx, he just cited the Bell Curve.

Have you ever read it? Or are you basing your judgment on it's PR?

EDIT (Addition): If you have a particular criticism of the studies demonstrating the results I cite, I'm interested, but a kneejerk *cries* reaction to effects demonstrated in peer reviewed journals doesn't forward the discussion (in my mind anyway). Also, if you require more specific references, I can dig 'em up, but not today. (Herrnstein and Murray's book is a summary of many studies done by many different people).

In any comparison, I would look at the effect of SES controlled for IQ and compare it to the effect of IQ controlled for SES.

IQ predicts likelihood of permanently dropping out of high school and likelihood of obtaining a GED instead of a high school diploma. IQ predicted both effects better than socioeconomic status. IQ correlates with military grade achieved and job performance in studies of civilians. IQ scores more strongly predict job performance than other variable typically associated with job performance (biographical information, education, etc.). High IQ lowers the probability of having a month or more period of unemployment. Thirty-five percent of adult income can be accounted for by IQ level in junior high. High IQ occupations are well-paid occupations. IQ also moderately predicts the probability of being in poverty. I could go on.

SES does have an effect on educational outcome independent of IQ. SES affects a variety of social outcomes. I might even agree that "Many people who earn higher wages only do so because they have an education that others couldn't *ever* afford to get. Not because they worked harder." (because "many people" is not very specific), but I would not draw the conclusion that SES predicts income or educational attainment better than IQ. Regardless of study outcomes, I'm most concerned about studies demonstrating the power of SES that do not account for stable individual differences between people.

EDIT (Addition): I'm realizing that this line of discussion might become a bit of a threadjack. Whether or not IQ and income are related doesn't have a bearing on questions about universal health care (in my mind anyway).

I don't know enough about universal healthcare, but if the US goverment currently spends more on healthcare than Canada does for their universal system (per capita, I guess?) what would be wrong with a similar universal health care system in the US (perhaps supplemented by private health care plans)?

lol, Herrnstein and Murray didn't publish their work for peer-review.

Re-tests of their work have been published for peer-review, however, and illustrate the flaws in their original work nicely enough for anyone so inclined to read up on.



But how important do you view this "debate" anyway? Your claims presuppose that IQ is an objective measure of intelligence. You claim respect for peer-reviewed articles...what say they on the value of IQ as a valid and reliable objective measure of intelligence?

I contest that rather than H+M's sloppy analyses.

You are correct. The Bell Curve was published without peer-review and the analysis of the NLSY published therein were not peer reviewed. I don't have the book in front of me, but the majority of the findings I cited regarding IQ are not drawn from the national longitudinal study of youth described in the Bell Curve, but are mentioned in The Bell Curve. The Bell Curve draws its evidence from more than 1,000 sources. Of course, the Bell Curve was not peer-reviewed. It is a book. The conclusions drawn from the NLSY by Herrnstein and Murray still stand despite this.

Regarding attacks on the book and Herrnstein and Murray: I had a professor who suggested that Hernnstein had the good fortune to die before the book was released

I have not read any re-tests of their work that illustrate the "flaws" in their original work nicely.

This is an interesting question! Many disparate sources of evidence support the construct validity of a domain general intelligence (what is normally referred to as g, or big g). Studies of the internal structure of IQ tests, studies of the predictive validity of IQ tests, studies of the stability of IQ test over time and despite experimental intervention, the heritability of intelligence, etc. all support the construct validity of intelligence and IQ as it's measured (by something like the WISC or the WAIS). That said, the construct validity of IQ has been demonstrated in western cultures. I'm not familiar with tests of validity in non-western countries.

All that said, I don't like the conclusions drawn by authors like Herrnstein and Murray (and I'm not just talking about the one chapter everyone gets upset about). It's depressing and I don't know what the answer is, but I cannot deny the mounds of evidence supporting the construct validity of a domain general intelligence. Whatever is measured by an IQ test is stable (especially after age 10), heritable, and predicts a heck of a lot.

I don't have the resources or time to discern the effect of SES controlled for IQ and vice versa. For now, I'll stick with common sense.

I'll bet another dollar that if you take a sample of people with identical IQs, one group coming from wealth, the other from poverty - you'll find the one that comes from wealth receives far more.

There is a simple reason for this: poor people don't typically socialize with rich people and it's much easier to receive money if you are surrounded by money.

Not to say there aren't plenty of other factors involved, but I would not draw the conclusion that IQ predicts income better than SES.

Translation:
I don't have the time to research facts on this subject, and therefore, I'll stick with my pre-conceived notions.

Receives....? Or earns? This would also be highly dependant on what you consider "poverty" and what you consider "rich". Unless you can prove this assertion, pay me my dollar.

So THAT'S the soution. If only poor people and rich people socialized more, poor people would receive more money? And there it is folks, it's all about receiving, not earning.

I don't necessarily see it as the only conclusion, but it does appear to be a factor.

Well, I wouldn't draw that conclusion either. SES certainly predicts income better than IQ. Looking back at my posts, I should have been more specific: IQ (controlled for SES OF PARENTS) predicts income better than SES of PARENTS (controlled for IQ).

Within family studies of IQ and SES support the primacy of IQ over parental SES in determining SES. Waller (I don't remeber the year) found that biological children above the average IQ of their family tend to go up in SES while those below the family average tend to go down in SES.

Also, IQ is heritable (broad sense heritability estimates range from 0.67 to 0.78). This means that ~40-60% in the variation in IQ can be attributed to variation in genes. It also means that 40-60% of the variation in IQ can be explained by environmental variation (if we neglect the fact that people may choose their own environments based on their intelligence). So, IQ is not immutable. There is something about low IQ/Low SES environments that lowers IQ of children, perhaps contributing to negative social outcomes. No one has been able to come up with good ways of altering environments to play with the variance due to environment . Other than adoption: Adoption studies have found that the IQs of children adopted away from their biological parents and into higher IQ environments were nearly a standard deviation higher than what would be expected from their mother's IQ. (Though still lower IQ than biological children of parents of high IQ).

Show me the facts that demonstrate everything I have seen and experienced to be wrong.
Receives. I was specific with that term. Someone may receive a lot of money, that doesn't mean they earned it. See my comments above about money not correlating to energy output.
Yes, in fact. It's called class separation.

I understood that to be what you meant. And my bet still stands.
You just changed the result. We're not talking about improvement over ones parents' SES - we're talking some degree of parity with upper class. IQ is very rarely going to take someone from the poorest family to significant wealth - though it likely would result in an some degree of increase in SES.

Which is, again, why SES (of the parents) is the primary factor in future wealth.

The result changed because the the Waller study is an additional source of evidence. Its results are different, but complimentary to the other sources of evidence I mention earlier.

I still say that if you control for IQ, SES doesn't predict as much variance as IQ controlled for SES... but it doesn't look like we will resolve this.

I don't think that getting poor people and rich people together for block parties regularly is going to equalize economic differences (that's a caricature, of course). It would have to be a massive, fundamental environmental intervention (like adoption). Even in such a case, I think class differences would eventually emerge again.

What I mean is that your proof changed - we are discussing factors involved in acquiring large wages - and as you've described the study, it demonstrates that IQ is a strong factor in acquiring more wages, but not large wages.

In other words, the evidence you brought does not relate to the discussion.
There is no solution to getting rich and poor to socialize - but assuredly, that is one of the fundamental reasons the classes remain apart.

Telling the wealthy that they owe a larger chunk of their lives to the government than their less successful peers is abusive and immoral, regardless of how much property they are left with after the looting.

Instead of raising the tax rate of the poor, we should lower the tax rate of the wealthy.

This isn't necessarily true. Generally speaking, the differences in wages for occupations is not based on how hard one has to work, but on how many people are capable of doing a particular job properly and efficiently.

For example; doctors aren't paid more than landscapers because their job is more difficult. They are paid more because it takes years of difficult schooling to become a doctor, but pretty much any able-bodied person can be a landscaper.

Explain to me why they unproductive have a right to food paid for by someone else.

That depends on how severely the rich are punished. But generally speaking, they don't starve.

I'd say that society is benefits far more from the wealthy than from the poor. It would be far more crippling for society if the wealthy disappeared than if the poor were to vanish from the face of the earth. Not only would their be far less tax revenue, but the poor would be easier to replace from an employment standpoint. Anybody can clean a toilet or rake leaves. How many people can perform heart surgery, program a computer, run a corporation or practice law?

I'd also say that the poor benefit far more from society than do the wealthy. Let's pretend for a moment that "society" suddenly went away; no more public education, no more public transportation, no more "free" medical and dental care for the poor, no more food stamps, etc. Who would be hurt more by this; the wealthy or the poor?

I'm guessing the answer you're looking for would be those who benefit a lot, which would actually be the poor.

No it's not. The wealthy have more than just more money - they have power that wealth affords.

If you can suggest an effective method of balancing power without taking more money from the upper class, by all means - share it. Until there is a better option, progressive taxation is a requirement. It isn't the perfect solution to the power imbalance, but there rarely are perfect solutions to anything. I'm open to alternate suggestions - but until you start thinking of the overall power imbalance and not just the money factor, you're not going to have anything to suggest that is going to be better than progressive taxation.
As soon as the gov't isn't bankrupt and in debt, we can lower taxes, equally, for everyone.
Who's unproductive? Very few people have zero productivity - so let's use the correct description: people who are not deemed worthy of higher wages. Then your question becomes:

Explain to me why people who are not deemed worthy of higher wages have a right to food paid for by someone else.

And the answer is: Simply because society assigns priorities of value to work does not mean those priorities are beneficial to the well being of society. We have government to enable us to make laws by which society must conform based on our perceptions of what society needs to do to function properly. We don't leave every decision up to the natural progression of society, we force society to function as we see fit. If we didn't do this, if we just let society run rampant, we'd have zero need for gov't and society would be nothing more than the survival of the fittest.
This is a silly direction to take Yakk's comments. A direction taken right out of Atlas Shrugged, no less (an interesting work of pulp fiction - far inferior to The Fountainhead). It is impossible to conceive of removing one class from society - you're simply describing an impossibility - we might as well talk about Unicorns and the economic impact they would have on the sale of Pony's to little girls.

Yakk's comment is within the realm of reality, however. The upper class benefits greatly from the progress of society and the lower class benefits less so. And we know this is true because the upper class owns most things so when the economics of society perform well, that ownership increases in value.
Another discussion of an impossibility.
You have not demonstrated how the poor benefit more than the rich, you have simply described impossible realities, so your conclusions are based on nothing at this point.

Okay, something screwy is going on here. I posted a response, and then went in to edit some stuff, but the changes I made aren't always showing up. I've logged out and reset my web browser, but stuff I changed a while ago has changed back to the way it originally was. Then the next time I look, it's different.

I cut and pasted my response to a word processing file on my computer and I will repost it later when I have more time to mess with any possible problems. Sorry to fill up the discussion with this message, but I don't know how to just delete my post (if I can do that at all), or else I would.

Your goal of protection of the rights of others is hindered by the consignment of power into the hands of the few. Ergo, your goal is dependent on my goal. If my goal fails, your goal is impossible.
Could there be a more generic description? Universal health care is a defense of individual rights by virtue of privatized health care removing the opportunity for health care form the majority and placing it more and more into the hands of the select few wealthy.
Earned is not the appropriate word. Acquired is much more fitting as it does not presume that the value was righteous simply because it was obtained. So - if the question is: Why should people be entitled to that which they have not acquired? The answer is: give it to them and they have now acquired it.

Earning requires a judgement that neither you, nor I, as individuals are capable of meting. For every doctor who has worked hard to learn information that is valuable to society, there is a mutual fund manager who does little more than evaluate growth in numbers, or there is an heir, or a celebrity. Having money does not automatically mean you deserve money. Having money does not automatically mean you worked hard. Having money does not automatically mean you are contributing to society.
See above where I discuss the lack of connection between money and value. And then add to that the reality that people are not born equal and then left to prosper or fail. Most people do not have the opportunity to become doctors, lawyers or physicists. Those who do have that opportunity are lucky. Luck is not something that is earned or deserved, it just is.
And back to the generic concept of individual rights. If people are not afforded the same opportunities as a select few others, it is evident that their individual rights are being infringed. Government is indeed supposed to protect individual rights - and by assisting those people who are not as lucky, priviledged at birth, as the select few, government is protecting their individual rights.
Other than my disagreement of your analysis, I say good.
Since I did not claim other people were removing the upper class, my description of the book was accurate. I have read the book. I have read The Fountainhead, it seems evident to me which one is a farce and which one has value to the individual.
Now you're leaning far too much on We The Living. We could have a long discussion about Ayn Rand, but, even though The Fountainhead is a book I find invaluable, her vastly misinterpreted history (or atleast, the misinterpretation of her readers) essentially prevents me from taking any such discussion seriously. In regards to your claim that a class of people has fled due specifically to constraints placed upon them, this is simply not how things went down. The monarchy of pre-Communist Russia was attacked, not because they were successful but because they were a tyranny over the masses. They were not the sole providers of innovation or intelligence - they were simply the lucky few to have been born into the ruling class. They did not attain their positions by virtue of knowledge, skill, experience or capability, and when the monarchy was gone, those things were not missing from society.
You have listed the precise aspects of society that benefit the poor and then suggested that removing them would harm the poor more than the rich. Obviously so. But those are not the only aspects of society that benefit people. Society is of benefit to the rich by allowing them to own things. Society is of benefit to the rich by allowing them to control communication. Society is of benefit to the rich by allowing them to control the potential choices of the poor. Without ownership, the rich become the poor. Without control of communication, the rich cannot control the choices of the poor. Without control, the rich lose power to mold society as they desire.

So who needs society more? Now take away the public schools, make health care even harder for the poor to attain, take away the libraries and welfare - as you are suggesting. Now the poor don't need society at all but the rich continue to require it to protect their ownership and their control. Now you have a tyranny. How long do you think it will last? Hopefully before we get to that stage you'll learn that even poor people are intelligent, innovative and capable of producing and greatly benefitting society - they were simply not born into the opportunity to achieve those things. And when the tyranny is destroyed and the upper class vanquished - do you honestly think there will be no more achievement of excellence in society? Access to money does not correlate to capability.
Doesn't matter, I decided to let you have your cake and eat it too.

Galt - I'm not sure if I responded to your final version or not. But it's an interesting discussion, so if there is more your wanted to add, please highlight that portion when you post again.

/shrug. I simply told you what happens if you punish them. If your goal is to kill people, or you find people's death inconsequential, you can ignore this fact.

Secondly, they have a right to revolt -- to take up societial justice in the court of last appeal. When you push down on people at the bottom of society, they either die or they tear society appart in revolution.

Thirdly, blood from a stone -- it doesn't work. If government seeks to be the largest leviathan of the society, it cannot allow rivals within it's sphere of power. If it isn't the largest leviathan, than it is no longer really the government of that region. Whatever the real power in the area is matters, not the nominal government.

Ayep. There have been situations where the rich get punished so much that they starve. See the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution or...

And no, I'm not saying this is good. I'm just admitting it can happen.

If you like, you can rearrange society that way. I'm sure many people will be happy to sell your lower-classes weapons, it has happened many times in history.

Naturally you could reverse society back far enough that the under-classes are so downtrodden they can't even manage to revolt. But that would reduce the upper-classes to a level of poverty that most westerners wouldn't like, and would make it hard to maintain a military defence against hostile, more progressive, societies.

If you determine worth by what happens if they go away, what happens when the land owners decide to revolt? When the owner of a thin line of land decides to prevent crossing?

Monopoly gives you market power, but that doesn't make the price just.

If the wealthy disappeared from the face of the earth, Ayn Rand's novel wouldn't happen. It's a work of fiction. With really bad sex scenes.

No more police. Invading armies crossing the land, plundering what they will. No more property rights. No more contract enforcement. No more medicine. Bandits on the roads, bandits in the castles, bandits at your back. Deadly infections deseases everywhere, killing 10%-50% of children under 10 from all over the socioeconomic spectrum.

What is being taxed from the rich is money, wealth, buying power -- while the resources gained by the rich by a stronger economy (above a certain level) are not all that important, compared to not starving to death, at the same time the things being taken away are equally unimportant.

A stable strong economy genereates more wealth and money, and a capitalist one tends to concentrate it above and beyond the virtues capitalism seeks to reward would explain.

A doctor, lawyer, computer programmer, or business man benefits hugely by having a stable society of law and order around them. Their benefit above and beyond the poor person in the street is 'only money', and that is the only additional obligation society seeks from them.

Sorry about that, man. For some reason the forum automatically logs me out if I take to long to type my post, so I had to type a really long post really fast and then edit anything I didn't like. But then the changes I made when editing were appearing and disappearing every time I logged in or out or refreshed my screen (and there are a lot of differences between my original post and even what I have saved right now). I'll try to fix my post in the next day or two.

I just started thinking, "Damn, I hope nobody was reading my post when I erased it." That's why I just now came back to check. Sorry again.

IQ is a strong factor in acquiring wages across the board from low to high. Again, my proof didn't change, it was just an additional source of evidence.

Of course it relates to the discussion. We were arguing about the influence IQ has on SES. It was an additional source of evidence. I was never talking about just "large" wages. I was talking about wages across the spectrum. Actually, I didn't think that either of us were talking about large wages.

I entered the discussion in response to the statement below made by Charlatan. My argument was that it's not educational opportunity that's driving wage differences, it's something else (like ability or talent).

So, if we were talking about any level of wages, it would be wages sufficient to get a good education, a good enough education to avoid working:

I think their lack of closeness is a byproduct of something other than lack of talking to eachother, but your statement sounds like "one of the fundamental reasons the classes remain apart is because they are not close."

This is all tangential to the question of universal health care. Personally, I think that those with more money should pay more money into such a system.

The discussion I was having had to do with SES being far more of a factor in predicting high wages - not higher wages than ones parents.

In the case of the latter, I agree that IQ would be more of a factor. I do not see SES as a significant factor in relatively marginal increases in wealth over previous generations.

Sorry for the confusion.

I wasn't just arguing "higher wages than ones parents" either. I used the within-family study by Waller as an example of controlling for SES through sampling (rather than statistically) to see what influence IQ has. (Prior sources of evidence I cited, controlled for SES and IQ statistically).

Now, outrageously wealthy people, people who have had outrageous amounts of money for generations and generations, even if they are of lower IQ than their parents will likely remain quite wealthy. However, 1) they don't represent the majority of whom I would consider rich, and 2) if they continue to have lower and lower IQs, they will lose their fortunes over generations.

I'm speaking of, say, $200,000+ a year wages. Not outrageously wealthy, but high.

There is far more probability that someone raised in a $200,000+ family will go on to earn $200,000+ than there is of a $20,000 family going on to earn $200,000. Regardless of IQ.

As for your last statement, that over generations of lower IQs, the wages will drop significantly - this is a possibility. But practically, it would be hard to reproduce the consistent drop of IQ over multiple generations as well as account for the inherent maintainability of wealth (you does not need to manage your wealth if you are rich enough to afford payment to someone who can manage it for you). If such a thing were probable, at some point we would reach a state of wealth distributed precisely according to IQ - but that does not seem remotely realistic as it would then require a child born with an anamolous high IQ born to a poor family jumping to a rich income, and vice versa.

That's where I see our country going. Anomalous high IQs do occur. I think that's where we get stories about "if you just work hard enough even the most disadvantaged can have the 'American Dream'." It wouldn't require a jump from poorest of the poor to richest of the rich in one generation to create a society stratefied by IQ. Again, I think that's where the US is headed. We're going to have an increasingly isolated high IQ class, that high IQ group will merge with the affluent, and a deteriorating quality of life for people at the low end of the IQ spectrum.

I don't see any evidence of a progression towards that state. Money is not given to intelligence, it is given to the intelligence (or the implication, but lack, of intelligence) of those who surround the money.

I think that money is earned by the intelligent, not given to the intelligent (or the intelligence of those who surround the money).