In a recent case of someone living in TX learning that their fetus had trisomy 18, there was a whole legal case that had to be fought, and when Judge Gamble ruled that terminating the pregnancy could proceed in this case, TX AG Ken Paxton filed an emergency petition to ask the state supreme court to overturn the ruling, and that blocked Judge Gamble's ruling. Meantime, the woman's condition was deteriorating enough that she left the state to get her healthcare needs met.
So, what can we expect when TX is making it this perilous to provide basic healthcare for such a large percentage of its population? More of the same, I'd argue.
If you care about your sisters/daughters/spouses' access to healthcare, consider other states.
adding a “can” in there can clarify the author’s intent, I think. I mean, some truth to that, a political economy is not a solely hands-off thing in all cases, or solely planned-out either. And some aspirational idea thrown in about being able to direct an economy — I mean we were able to redirect our economy into a total war machine in our not so ancient past, and that was a common good arguably.
So could you slowly rotate a satellite and extract a bit more energy in orbit? Since the side facing the sun is baking and the side that's away is freezing?
For one, this is not as one-sided and simple as "X is a tax burden".
The Congressional Budget Office reported in 2007 that "the tax revenues that unauthorized immigrants generate for state and local governments do not offset the total cost of services provided to them" but "in aggregate and over the long term, tax revenues of all types generated by immigrants—both legal and unauthorized—exceed the cost of the services they use."[1] Unauthorized immigrants create demand for goods and services[10] while an estimated 50 to 75 percent pay taxes.[9] Due to cheaper labor, they contribute to lower prices in the industries where they work, such as agriculture, restaurants, and construction.[2]
Also, legal immigration just doesn't work well as a policy today. There's this perception that there's a line that people should just get in, but actually that process has been jammed up and there's active efforts to sabotage, with rhetorical tricks like claiming family immigration includes more than just immediate family (parents, spouse, children, only, not uncles and nieces etc), and silently walling off by extending processing times to multiple years, to the way quotas work -- same level regardless of size of country.
But more to the point, talk about morality when noticing how some vilify refugees and asylum seekers, and don't learn from history, like with WW2 refusals of refugee jewish people from Europe, which led to the 1951 Refugee Convention.
Want to practically and cheaply address illegal immigration? Maybe consider actually solving systemic issues like issues with legal immigation instead of throwing refugees and children in cages perhaps?
Sorry but where there's asylum seekers caged and cases of sexual abuse and abuse of power and lack of oversight and cases of deaths, and when there's such a clear understanding of the real issues that could be improved that people just conveniently set aside, it's clear what the dictates of morality are in my mind.
On the second point, I think folks are rightly dubious about the effectiveness of incentives broadly[1]. There's also some hilarious historical examples of incentives backfiring or having unwanted side-effects (like the Cobra Effect [2].)
More broadly, I don't think it's that easy to think that private prisons can even work well as a solution, regardless of whether they should be allowed to exist as a matter of public policy and ethics. Consider one summative look at this issue provided in this evaluation[3] -- it's dubious whether they're even cost effective, one of the strongest pro-private-prison arguments there has been in public debate, and how there's much better alternatives than the kind of perverse incentives bundled with private prisons, like re-evaluating whether parolees should be allowed in public housing, and providing more transition housing so when sentences are complete, inmates aren't forced to spend even more time in prison because they don't have an address to go to.
This is a common argument (bordering on memetic and cached) and well, the budget for ISRO is about 170M USD, rounding up and considering steady increases lately. That 1:9 compared to recent outlay for just healthcare in the budget, after some basic googling. And strategically, India’s historically wanted increased self-sufficiency after the colonial era, and you need deterrence and military power to protect your own interests. So, it seems to just follow from basic needs and doesn’t seem to be out of whack. ISRO handles a ton of commercial launches too, and space industry is growing more and more — makes economic sense to continue to compete and iterate.
So, what can we expect when TX is making it this perilous to provide basic healthcare for such a large percentage of its population? More of the same, I'd argue.
If you care about your sisters/daughters/spouses' access to healthcare, consider other states.