Quality of Life - Thoughts

[ttwtt78640]

Yup. Two different problems in scope, details, and effect means there would be two different solutions.

In other words, you simply don’t want to address those other ‘quality of life’ issues. HAND

 

[Slartibartfast]

In other words, you simply don’t want to address those other ‘quality of life’ issues. HAND

I already did in post 48. I don't consider those particular problems to have the same dimensions or to need the same type of response as health care issues. Just as I wouldn't use a hammer to dig a hole.

 

[ttwtt78640]

I already did in post 48. I don't consider those particular problems to have the same dimensions or to need the same type of response as health care issues. Just as I wouldn't use a hammer to dig a hole.

What does Medicaid do?

Medicaid.gov: the official U.S. government site for Medicare | Medicaid

www.medicaid.gov

 

[Slartibartfast]

What does Medicaid do?

not enough. IMHO.

 

[HikerGuy83]

HikerGuy83:

Thank you for the clarification.

Quality of life is so subjective that I don't think you'll get any well deligated conclusions about it. Rather I think you'll get a more nebulous locus of responses with some correlating points and lots of outliers.

In my case quality of life is a state of mind, not a state of being. For years I worked like a dog teaching high school students with a combination of perfectionist and missionary zeal for the cult of learning. I resisted succumbing to burnout for over thirty years but eventually the long hours (6 days a week and I worked or volunteered during summer breaks) and the fast-paced fluidity of the job made me very ill in my late 50's. It took me two years to recover physically from that damage to body and during that much slower period of my lifetime I thought hard (really for the first time in my life) about who I was and what I wanted. That led me to a complete reshaping of my thoughts about quality of life and allowed me to recalibrate what I knew about my own desires and the channels/pathways towards happiness and contentment.

Much less concern with the material aspirations of life and much greater emphasis on feeding the mind rather than feeding greed, ego or ambition. Today with far less resources at my disposal, I am nonetheless very much more contented with my life (except for a damned cat which plagues me). I am more happy with both less and the prospect of less down the road. I now tutor students in need rather than teaching the best of the best or the toughest of the tough at a break-neck pace and have a much better life for it. However my beloved wife died many years ago and I have no kids, so I need only worry about myself, my aged aunt who lives with me and for whom I am the primary care giver, her aristocratic cat and my wider family. Others' situations will vary.

For me, less has become more and that has been very satisfying to me.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

Great post.....as always

"Liked" 20 times by me.

 

[HikerGuy83]

What does Medicaid do?

Medicaid.gov: the official U.S. government site for Medicare | Medicaid

www.medicaid.gov

Not just about health care.

 

[Evilroddy]

Since the OP does not want this thread to focus on healthcare or insurance to fund it (see posts #27, #28 and #37), I will address only the bolded above portion of your post.

ttwwtt78640:

Okay.

Which (other) sectors of the economy (industries?) are “vital with limited resources where people’s lives (or, as the OP put it, ‘the quality of their lives’) are at stake”?

Housing is a vital need in certain climates but not in all. It can best be addressed by both public and private sectors working in parallel. Housing can vary from helping those with the means to save and eventually to buy into the housing market over to housing the often unwilling and difficult to manage among the homeless. There should be different solutions for each target population. As a general rule, as a group becomes less able to house themselves, the level of public participation should increase in tandem with private charitable institutions which might manage such housing estates. This a big topic however so I'll let the details slide unless others demand them.

Like housing, certain utilities can be vital to people's basic well being. I am a big fan of public utilities competing with private ones through common publicly subsidised or created infrastructure. The public side can compete with the private to derail collusion and anti-competitive practices while still making reasonable profits for the publicly owned utilities.

Food is best handled by publicly funded subsidies/transfers to families and individuals who can then buy what they need in order to subsist in terms of food from private commercial institutions, cooperatives and privately run food banks.

As long as a reasonably functioning public transportation system is available in cities large enough to be beyond walking distances for intra-city transport, that should address about 85 percent of the transportation problem. I have no answer for how to address transportation issues among the rural poor or the best way to provide effective services to both the urban and rural mobility impaired.

The other sectors which I think are vital are policing, fire-protection (public institutions seem best to me), drug production (public-private competition model), basic education and vocational training/retraining (public-private competition models). I am sure I have failed to mention many.

Wouldn’t those ‘quality of life‘ impacting sectors (industries?) include housing, groceries, utilities, transportation and clothing? I, and certainly most folks, spend far more of their (often meager) incomes satisfying (or at least trying to satisfy) those other ‘quality of life’ needs - or do you consider those other sectors (industries?) to mainly (only?) provide wants?

Needs and wants are always going to be a contested tug-o-war in a consumer society as there is an incentive for both the consumers and the producers to expand the need-envelope wider in order to create demand and to sell more goods and services. Therefore I think that maintenance of life at a subsistence level should not be confused with with quality of life in a consumer society. The state can have a responsibility to keep people alive and functional with a measure of dignity but any further goals beyond that should be on the persons themselves to make happen.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

 

[ttwtt78640]

ttwwtt78640:

Okay.

Housing is a vital need in certain climates but not in all. It can best be addressed by both public and private sectors working in parallel. Housing can vary from helping those with the means to save and eventually to buy into the housing market over to housing the often unwilling and difficult to manage among the homeless. There should be different solutions for each target population. As a general rule, as a group becomes less able to house themselves, the level of public participation should increase in tandem with private charitable institutions which might manage such housing estates. This a big topic however so I'll let the details slide unless others demand them.

Like housing, certain utilities can be vital to people's basic well being. I am a big fan of public utilities competing with private ones through common publicly subsidised or created infrastructure. The public side can compete with the private to derail collusion and anti-competitive practices while still making reasonable profits for the publicly owned utilities.

Food is best handled by publicly funded subsidies/transfers to families and individuals who can then buy what they need in order to subsist in terms of food from private commercial institutions, cooperatives and privately run food banks.

As long as a reasonably functioning public transportation system is available in cities large enough to be beyond walking distances for intra-city transport, that should address about 85 percent of the transportation problem. I have no answer for how to address transportation issues among the rural poor or the best way to provide effective services to both the urban and rural mobility impaired.

The other sectors which I think are vital are policing, fire-protection (public institutions seem best to me), drug production (public-private competition model), basic education and vocational training/retraining (public-private competition models). I am sure I have failed to mention many.

Needs and wants are always going to be a contested tug-o-war in a consumer society as there is an incentive for both the consumers and the producers to expand the need-envelope wider in order to create demand and to sell more goods and services. Therefore I think that maintenance of life at a subsistence level should not be confused with with quality of life in a consumer society. The state can have a responsibility to keep people alive and functional with a measure of dignity but any further goals beyond that should be on the persons themselves to make happen.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

Thank you for your thoughtful reply. The ‘subsidy’ issue then becomes do we subsidize the (lower income?) buyers directly and let them pick goods/service providers or do we subsidize and/or take over control of the goods/service providers to keep costs (for all) lower?

You seemed to be split on that, based on the particular good/service involved.

For individual subsidies a problem is how to ensure (force) those subsidized individuals to spend any public (taxpayer?) funds received responsibly wisely (and for the intended purposes) rather than foolishly (or for unintended purposes). This is where cash benefits are the most problematic.

Another problem is the basis for personal subsidy eligibility and establishing subsidy amounts. Many “safety net” programs are structured such that adding $2 of income reduces their “safety net” benefits by $1. That effectively asks (requires?) them to perform any additional work for half of the nominal wage - which could be below the statutory minimum wage.

 

[HikerGuy83]

I clearly did a lousy job of stating what I wanted out of this thread.

But I did get something out of it anyway.

Now that it has calmed down, i'd like to hear peoples thoughts on what they feel the key factors are in their idea of a good quality of life.