Activated brain areas included the insula and amygdala, which are associated with subjective “gut feelings”, disgust, reaction to norm violations, threat detection, and evaluation of trustworthiness.
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Politics and Economics
As our moral sense develops, we may find ourselves reflecting less and reacting more. In the beginning we struggle to sort it out. Eventually we become more settled in our judgments. What began as moral reasoning is increasingly replaced by moral intuitions. Some of us may become opinionated and easily outraged...
Next to age and education/skill level, single parenthood is the biggest predictor of poverty and low wages. Single mothers do not have enough time and energy to increase their skill levels or work more than they do if they cannot afford childcare.
Insurers don't have much margin. Insurance premiums are pretty much in lock-step with healthcare costs. If the premiums employers pay for healthcare insurance went down, part of the savings would go to wage increases. If our health care costs could get in line with Western Europe's, that would mean a healthy pay raise for millions of American workers.
Good News! Just last night, while I was singing the glories of these tiny housing units, the Berkeley City Council voted unanimously to move ahead and solicit bids to build them...
Residential hotels used to fill a niche: an alternative to homelessness for the down-and-out. If all else fails, you can get a room, with a shower down the hall. But building residential hotels is a low margin/high hassle business and they just aren't being built like they used to be.
What matters is a sense of control and hope within a lifetime. The feeling that through my actions, I can make progress towards something that matters to me. Self-efficacy! Not that I’m the master of my destiny – more that there are things I can do that will make it better.
Political coalitions are more or less ideological. On the less ideological side, they may be held together by alliances of convenience, whose common cause may be more dislike of the other side than broad agreement on a range of issues.
An ideology is an army of convictions about how the world is and how it ought to be. As befitting a military force, ideologies are fueled by a sense of threat - kept at bay through a fortress-like structure called the ideological square.
It makes sense that states with the most progressive tax systems often get into fiscal trouble. High earners have especially volatile incomes.
A new study for the Mercatus Center at George Mason University ranks each US state’s financial health based on key fiscal obligations.
These considerations wouldn’t matter so much is there were no costs to actions/policies based on worst case scenarios. If all actions and their effects were equal, then go with the worst case! Nothing to lose and everything to gain!
The AMA campaigned against Medicare, FDR’s efforts to include health insurance with Social Security, Harry Truman’s universal-insurance scheme, and Bill Clinton’s healthcare plans.
Some neural networks are associated with attention capture, where the stimulus rules. Other networks are associated with attention deployment, where goals rule.
...attitude is rooted in 19th Century romantic aesthetics, in which emotion, imagination, freedom from rules, and spontaneity are opposed to soulless capitalism and the instrumentalist mindset it engenders.
Of course there are reasons other than I've discussed why healthcare spending is so much higher in the US than other developed countries. Drug costs play a role, as do high administrative costs and patient characteristics (e.g., demanding, non-compliant and obese).
...specialists get paid more in The Netherlands and Australia, but the healthcare systems in those countries use GPs as gatekeepers, meaning to see a specialist, your GP has to refer you to one. Gatekeeping is an important cost-containment measure... Gatekeeping is not nearly as widespread in the US.
...a hospital stay in the US is over $18,000 on average. The countries that come closest to spending as much — Canada, the Netherlands, Japan — spend between $4,000 and $6,000 less per stay.
The imminent dismantling of Obamacare is a shame and an opportunity to do it better next time. Two main challenges: reining in cost and achieving universal coverage. This series will address the cost issue.
Education, healthcare, healthy food, safety, and housing: those are the basic goods governments should strive to provide for all citizens. Plus some type of safety net...