That being said, the fact that the Health Care Reform bill, which really should be called insurance reform, doesn’t allow illegal immigrants to even purchase insurance is crazy! Why would we not allow someone to buy health insurance if they can afford the plan without subsidies? Understandably, I see why some people would be against giving these illegal immigrants subsidies(i.e. money from tax payers to buy the plans), because they don’t pay income tax. Though from a strictly economical point of view, it would still be worth it to give these illegal immigrants the subsidies, since we pay for their care already through increases in private insurance costs/uncompensated care programs.

Do you realize that we already pay for their health care? When an illegal immigrant goes to the emergency room, it is illegal for the hospital to turn them away because of their immigration status when the disease is life threatening. Many times, the only reason that disease was life threatening was because they failed to get primary care. So for example, if you leave a cavity go untreated, that person will eventually get a bacterial infection which can spread to your blood stream, in turn, to other parts of your body—so effectively you can have a $100 cavity turn into literally a $100,000 open heart surgery + hospital stay. In the end, if the patient cannot pay for the rendered care, the hospital incurs the loss resulting in the hospital charging folks with insurance more money. States also have programs called uncompensated care programs which dole out literally millions of tax payers money yearly.

These illegal immigrants have no choice of whether or not they pay taxes, but I’m sure if they had the opportunity to come to the US legal and pay those taxes, they would. The system is set up so these immigrants can be on waiting lists for many years, as the quota of unskilled, legal immigrants is so small. This is, quite frankly, why so many immigrants come to the US illegally—it’s stupid to wait year upon year when the only risk you run, if you come to this country illegally, is deportation.

At any case, they still come here illegally, so they don’t pay income tax (the only tax they pay is on sales tax, which varies state to state and hovers around 7%) and they do take up plenty of our services including using our roads, public transportation, public safety, and pertinent to this discussion, health care, as it is illegal to turn someone away from life-threatening care regardless of immigration status. So for example, if an illegal immigrant goes to a hospital because they are having a heart attack, the hospital must treat the patient, incurring a loss. The hospital then charges those with health insurance more for care as well as billing the government through a program called the ‘uncompensated care program’—tax payers pick up this tab. That being said, it is stupid that we don’t allot these illegal immigrants the same rights as US citizens, in terms of receiving discounts on their health insurance, ability to even get health insurance, etc. if we are already paying for them in a more expensive setting (getting care at a hospital is far more costly than getting care at a doctor’s office). Since the tax payers are footing the bill, if illegal immigrants can afford to purchase health insurance, it’s nonsensical to not give them that right. Plain and simple.

Of course if we actually looked at this issue more broadly, we would see that we need this cheap labor to keep products cheap in the US as well as compete on a global scale. For example, we purchase crops from the US and international market. Without these illegal immigrants, the US agriculture system would foil since we would never be able to compete on the global scale. This goes for many industries including restaurant, clothing, and hospitality. Enforcing immigration laws would foil our economy.

So what we should do is talk less about deporting these immigrants and more about extending unskilled work visa’s. If we did this, we should then enforce anti-immigration laws on businesses that employ workers who do not have these proper visa’s. That way, we can ensure we are receiving tax revenue from these working. Once we have this tax revenue, we would not be subsidies all of these tax payer programs mentioned above such as roads, public safety, healthcare, etc.

I don’t know how anyone here is disagreeing with that he is saying—unless you folks are “too stupid” that you can’t see it. Ever since my sophomore year, I’ve been so tired of doing busy work at Penn State; I just know I need to stay here to get a degree. Personally, I’ve wanted to drop out just because I feel like this place is a waste of time.

As far as breeding conformity, that really hits the nail on the head. I feel like no one here does anything productive on their spare time beside go on facebook/ hang out with friends. Granted, I hang out with my friends way too much—there isn’t a Thursday/Friday/Saturday that I’m not with them. But I also have plenty of time to read the news, write papers, think about new ideas, learn about a subject I know nothing about…. I only have one friend in this school that does that besides me. I really think all of this comes from conformity. All people want to do is do things that they know/understand and not question anything else. They don’t even bother looking at other issues!

Noam touched on this a bit, but when you look at other cultures where they teach their students strict math/sciences, that’s all they are going to know(especially in these countries when students are in class 10 hours a day, 6 days a week). Do you expect these kids to think on their own at all/be creative? I think that these countries that educate children in such a structured way are going to be in trouble—what good are engineers who can’t think out of the bubble? That’s why Google and apple are so successful—they get engineers who think outside the box!

One way the US education system is failing (or could do a much better job at it) is increasing creativity. I know there are some proponents that want to increase the amount of time students go to school in the US. I think a better solution would be simply to restructure it to encompass other subjects or at least put more of an emphasis on other subjects. There was a Harvard physiologist that spoke of numerous types of intelligence (maybe 7 of them). They included something along the lines of street smarts, math smarts, English smarts, direction ability smarts, artistic smarts, and people smarts—I don’t remember exactly, but you get the point. The reason this is important is because if the US were to broaden the subjects we emphasis in school, we would produce a much more rounded society—not a bunch of robots which we are starting to create.

Either way, Noam I thought did a good job in this speech, I really don’t know how people don’t see how much time we kill going to school. I’m graduating this semester and I really can’t wait to not be going to school. I will of course miss the amount I party, but that is sad to think that’s the best thing I do here.

I don’t agree with the part of your post that says women conform more than men—I think it’s equal. I’m sure a lot of feminist are going to have a word with me, but that is of course encouraged.

First, the point of the skit in this class was to show how crazy it is that girls do stuff like get boob jobs just to please men/look sexy(obviously). The thing is, guys also go augmentation—calf muscle implants,. Granted, girls boob jobs are far more common, however it’s not easy to grow boobs, and even if you’re taking birth control, they can only grow so much. So if girls want bigger boobs, they go to surgery. If guys want bigger muscles, they just hit the gym. I suppose the lazy ones get the calf transplants. Either way, I’m not arguing that this a smart thing to do cause I think they are both stupid.

Other surgeries men and women go through could be nose jobs, face lifts, and lipo. Again, I think more women go through these surgeries, but I don’t think that it is because women conform more than men—it just hasn’t caught on with men. There is of course the make-up issue, which I’m sort of surprised the makeup industry hasn’t started to market makeup to men. I think it would actually be pretty easy. Imagine if Mike the Situation started to put on makeup. I’m sure a fair amount of his beloved followers would follow suit.

In any case, I still think a lot of the reasons people think that women conform more than men is simply because many trends haven’t caught on with men yet.

Oh dude, the US could care less about Palestine. There should be no question in anyone’s mind of who’s land this belongs to, but Palestine doesn’t have Judeo-Christian values like the US was supposedly founded on. Plus, as soon as Israel starts bombing the shit out of Iran, which I wouldn’t be surprised if that happens, the ties with the US are only going to get stronger.

Anyone with common sense would see the pea-shooter of weapons Palestine shoots at Israel compared to Israel’s GPS guided missiles are unfair. But of course we could care less or better yet, we care less to think about those sorts of issues.

How was he criticizing both of your beliefs? If you ‘feel some way about something’, and I’m assuming you think it’s not right, then do something about it. That was the point he was trying to get across. If you believe that God created everyone (or had something to do with creating everyone), then you should feel compelled to help your fellow humans. It’s certainly much easier to sit back and be complacent, which it sounds like both of you are going to do, but chances are, your god would like you to do something about it. In fact, your god is going to think it’s fucked up that you sat back, and if you purchase slave made items, fully supported, slave labor.

Better yet, how are you so certain your ‘God’ is real? There is absolutely no proof there is a God or gods, yet people are so completely sure one exists. You even comment on the popular line that God is not meant to be understood or analyzed. Don’t you think that if you were sitting down making up a god, that would be the first clause you would put into the religion since that is a pretty flawless argument which required no evidence to back up. There is the same amount of evidence saying there is a god and there isn’t a god, so to be completely sure there is a god is ludicrous.

What about all those other religions that have multiple gods, completely different from your one God? Don’t you think those people are nuts having 100 different gods? Of course it is…. But what is so different about their gods vs. your god. Both of you have the same amount of proof you are right, which is zero. I don’t know your religion, however some religions say those who don’t believe in their religions set of standards, they are going to hell. That’s an awful lot of people who are going to hell.

The point of iunlearn’s comment talking about the picture of Jesus was to show you how political religion is. If Jesus was black, the world would be a much different place, don’t you think. I have a feeling the Europeans would have constructed a different holy figure to follow that looked a little more like them.

You also talk about how we need to be here for a reason. That is what many religions play off of, because if you think about it… why are we here? It’s nice to feel important. People are always going to think, “well, what happens next when I die?”. And it’s a morbid thought to think that you just rot in the ground like everything else. And that’s where religion comes in—it plays into the fear of death. People want to think that when they are put into the ground, life doesn’t stop there—but is there much of a difference from humans and animals? Probably not, but I understand some people need it.

And you are a perfect example of how happy you are that you found God. Maybe you’re one of those people who needs a God, which is fine with me as long as you don’t become a ‘warrior of god’ like some extremists do. It’s just a natural trait of humans. Even Native Americans have constructed there forms of gods, when they had no communication with the rest of the world. With that being said, for people to be so certain there is a god, just isn’t right.

I would take this a step farther and say a pretty good rule of thumb would be, if you don’t need it, don’t buy it. You could personally save a load of money, plus you can be sure you don’t support sweatshop labor.

And as Sam said in class, this is a tricky issue. If you don’t buy these products all at once, people are not going to be in a good situation. If people do start to buy fair trade, this is much better, however you are still supporting an economy in those countries that serve the industrialized world. This is a problem when they are simply trying to put food on their table—not make money.

One thing I wish he would talk about more are solutions to fix many of these issues. It seems like he highlights everything, but there is no hope. As I said previously, I know many of these issues. I’m not sure if everyone else knows the things he talks about, but if everyone else is in the same boat as me, I think it would be beneficial to talk about what we should do next. I do understand most of this class is to encourage dialogue too, which may take away from policy suggestions—or maybe he doesn’t care about policy suggestions. Either way, I have learned some things, so it’s not like this class was a waste of time by any means.