Liberals versus conservatives – conflicting mating choices

According to Douglas Kenrick at Psychology Today, liberals and conservatives adopt their morals regarding sexuality in order to serve their preferred lifestyles. Kenrick breaks it down like this--first of all, for skeptic liberals:

1. Smart people are more likely to go to college.

2. If you are going to get a college degree, it helps to delay starting a family.

3. Smart people still have sexual drives.

4. If you don’t want to wait till you are in your mid- to late- 20s to start having sex, but aren’t ready to settle down, you have liberal attitudes about sexual behavior, birth control, and abortion.

On the other side of the coin, if you are not going to go to college, and you want to have a family early, you don’t want a lot of promiscuous people running around – available unattached sexually experimenting people disrupt monogamous families. Early reproducing women don’t want those “loose women” hanging around tempting their husbands, because that means less resources for their children, and a possible divorce. Early reproducing men don’t want promiscuous men lurking around, because they want to be sure that those children they’re supporting are their own.

People don't come prewired with beliefs. Rather they choose their morality based on their perceived needs:

liberal nonbelievers adopt a certain set of attitudes not because they are more logically compelling, but because they serve a particular lifestyle and mating strategy. Because liberals are more educated, they are better at expressing their ideas in compelling logical ways. But although the beliefs on "our" side may seem more logical and enlightened, Weeden has abundant data to show that political and religious attitudes are less about logic than about serving one's own reproductive goals.

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The horrendous cost of health care

These numbers from the Miliman Research Report are stunning. This situation cannot possibly be sustainable for most Americans, and I have little faith that the Affordable Care Act will reduce these costs. I want to believe that the ACA will address costs, but I simply can't believe this. It's also amazing that in light of these numbers, and in light of the recent blockbuster Time Magazine article, "Bitter Pill," America seems incapable of having a rational conversation about what it really needs to do to reduce these horrendous costs.

Last year, when healthcare costs for the typical American family of four exceeded $20,000 for the first time, the Milliman Medical Index (MMI) compared the cost of a family’s healthcare to the cost of an average midsize sedan. This year, with costs exceeding $22,000 ($22,030), we note that healthcare costs for our family of four are almost as much as the cost of attending an in-state public college ($22,261) for the current academic year. The total share of this cost borne directly by the family—$9,144 in payroll deductions and out-of-pocket costs—now exceeds the cost of groceries for the MMI’s typical family of four. The out-of-pocket cost alone—$3,600 for co-pays, coinsurance, and other cost sharing—is more than the average U.S. household spends on gas in a year.

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Taxing social welfare groups

Propublica gives important background for understanding the alleged improper actions of the IRS:

In the furious fallout from the revelation that the IRS flagged applications from conservative nonprofits for extra review because of their political activity, some points about the big picture -- and big donors -- have fallen through the cracks. Consider this our Top 6 list of need-to-know facts on social welfare nonprofits, also known as dark money groups because they don’t have to disclose their donors. The groups poured more than $256 million into the 2012 federal elections. A century ago, Congress created a tax exemption for social welfare nonprofits. The statute defining the groups says they are supposed to be “operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare.” But in 1959, the regulators interpreted the “exclusively” part of the statute to mean groups had to be “primarily” engaged in enhancing social welfare. This later opened the door to political spending.
Here are the six points elaborated by Propublica:
1. Social welfare nonprofits are supposed to have social welfare, and not politics, as their “primary” purpose. 2. Donors to social welfare nonprofits are anonymous for a reason. 3. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision meant that corporations could pay for political ads, anonymously, using social welfare nonprofits. 4. Social welfare nonprofits do not actually have to apply to the IRS for recognition as tax-exempt organizations. 5. Most of the money spent on elections by social welfare nonprofits supports Republicans. 6. Some social welfare groups promised in their applications, under penalty of perjury, that they wouldn’t get involved in elections. Then they did just that.

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