Clown Car VI: Hello, Goodbye. On to 2024.

[hobbsyoyo]

These are the people that argue with a straight face that you not buckling your seat belt harms them enough to compel you.

Failing to wear a seat belt can cause immediate, acute damage not only to yourself but anyone else in the car you're with, or anyone outside your car you hit as you catapult out the window.

Getting a more grievous injury (or dying) in a car accident than you would have gotten if wearing a seat belt means the other guy's insurance is going to pay out a lot more. Even if you haven't physically hurt the other driver, you're still injuring them monetarily.

The less obvious question about smoking is that as they age, their health care costs go up and everyone else pays for that.

This ties into my last line above, but I think I have read that smokers actually tend to cost less than your average person because they die younger. Is a 6 month cancer treatment that results in death more or less expensive than 5-10 years in a nursing home?

This kind of packaging will occur in the US over... well... I guess... more dead bodies?

I think it's just around the corner.

I'm ok with these packages to be honest.

 

[Farm Boy]

Yup. Muh munny, muh munny.

 

[Estebonrober]

Torn by the grandstanding smugness of the anti-smokers and the disdain from the FarmBoy. . . lol I want on neither side of this.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I think it's just around the corner.

I'm ok with these packages to be honest.

Its not around the corner. You can write it down. Those types of packages will, never... never happen in these United States. Phillip Morris is a US company. Its different, putting labels on a foreign product to discourage people from buying it.

Also, I'm skeptical about the impact of the packaging. A tequila I buy, Espoulon Tequila has images of the grim reaper and skeletons on the label. I don't gaf. I buy it anyway. I think the labels are interesting. There are hot-sauces that are literally called "death" and similar, with skeleton faces on the label, and people buy them anyway. I used to smoke. I can say with 100% certainty that I would have scoffed at packaging like this and kept on smoking. If anything, this type of packaging just drives the prices down, because it neutralizes branding, meaning the cheapest wins... which makes smoking less expensive, and thus more attractive, not less.

This packaging is just sadism... people delighting in mentally torturing others who they disapprove of. Its also condescending... people thinking that others are too stupid to do what they think is best for themselves.

 

[Sommerswerd]

You may have talked around it, but not really about it. This is the first estimate of "cost" I came across:

We estimate a net saving of £14.7 billion per annum at current rates of consumption, with the costs smokers incur significantly outweighed by the sum of tobacco duty paid and old-age expenditures avoided due to premature mortality.

The government spends £3.6 billion treating smoking-attributable diseases on the NHS and up to £1 billion collecting cigarette butts and extinguishing smoking-related house fires. But these costs are covered more than four times over by early death savings and tobacco duty revenue.
​

Considering they take about £10 billion in tobacco duty per year, a significant amount of that saving is dying sooner.

Total tobacco receipts for 2019-20 to date (April to October) are £5,259 million, which is £318 million (5.7%) lower than the same period in 2018-19.​

​

Thanks for these stats, because I never even considered this possibility. But this brings up something else...reducing smoking to the economics of money saved by early deaths versus medical/insurance costs is pretty effing gross. That's not on you Samson, but again, thanks for the stats as they gave me an opportunity to think about the subject in ways that I had not done as deeply, previously. I say gross... the first person I tried to convince to stop smoking was my aunt in Ohio, my grandmothers primary caretaker. I showed her pictures in a magazine of a tar-blackened lung and begged her to stop smoking. I was probably about 8 years old. Needless to say, I was unsuccessful, and she eventually died of lung cancer, the first of my father's seven siblings to pass away, more than one of which was due to lung cancer. My point is, when people die from smoking, the national and/or corporate economics of their death are irrelevant to their families. How much money the insurance industry saves has no bearing on the loss of the people who loved and depended on the person. The impact of the loss of a loved one is not properly measured in coins.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Ted Cruz: The Booger on the Lip of Democracy.
A fair and balanced, we report, you decide documentary on the lizard that is know as Ted Cruz.

(warning, this video contains mistreatment of bacon.)

 

[Gorbles]

There are few greater lies than, "it isn't personal."

Smoking is not drunk driving and killing somebody else. Fundamentally. All the way down. Smoking in a car with your kid with the windows rolled up maybe. But those are not remotely the same. You are imposing your costs. Then enforcing them.

The deep seated desire to change other people's bodies to our own liking is deep rooted. All the way down.

This is a complete aside from the rest of the discussion, but I just want to say that while smoking is definitely not drunk driving, secondhand smoke is a real danger. It's not just being locked in a car or a room with a smoker. It is, generally, a dangerous phenomenon to those around you. Let's not undercut it just because someone made an exaggerated comparison.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

*Checks thread title*

it says

Clown Car VI: Hello, Goodbye. On to 2024

So lets get back to posting clownish political stuff and continue the oh so insightful comments like how smoking is bad for you in another thread, so I don't have to deal with you when I want to have my silly politics fix. Because 2 pages of this horsehocky clearly isn't enough.

Thank you.

 

[adcarrymaokai]

Biden hasn't exceeded my expectations, especially with the minimum wage hootenanny (owo kirsten sinema girlboss uwu), which is now coming back to bite him in the butt, but on the other hand, it feels good to get the vaccine and also not hear or read about Trump and his tweets on a daily basis. The bar is set so incredibly low that even Biden comes off as a radically progressive president in these garbage times.

Also, looks like AOC completely sold out. Wow, even faster than Nancy or Hillary. Complete fold into the establishment mix in just about 2 years. Disappointing but not surprising.

 

[Ajidica]

Also, looks like AOC completely sold out. Wow, even faster than Nancy or Hillary. Complete fold into the establishment mix in just about 2 years. Disappointing but not surprising.

Anything specific she has done? Or are you just grumpy she decided that playing nice with leadership from time to time can be useful? Bernie Sanders didn't become chair of Senate Budget Committee by throwing food at Democratic leadership.

 

[adcarrymaokai]

Anything specific she has done? Or are you just grumpy she decided that playing nice with leadership from time to time can be useful? Bernie Sanders didn't become chair of Senate Budget Committee by throwing food at Democratic leadership.

The Tea Party psychos held the entire GOP hostage and passed the policies they wanted. Playing nice doesn't really accomplish anything. The Squad got bigger, but all they do is tweet inspirational quotes. How about we raise minimum wage at a time when people are struggling to make ends meet, and business can't even find workers who are willing to work for crumbs? I mean really, yasss kweening Kamala isn't going to do much for the people.

 

[Ajidica]

The Tea Party psychos held the entire GOP hostage and passed the policies they wanted.

I think you figured out the problem there. AOC and "The Squad" aren't psychos whose goals can be accomplished by nuking the whole thing from orbit.

 

[Lexicus]

The Tea Party psychos held the entire GOP hostage and passed the policies they wanted.

Like? Did they repeal Obamacare or drastically slash spending on "entitlements"?

 

[Ajidica]

Ted Cruz: The Booger on the Lip of Democracy.
A fair and balanced, we report, you decide documentary on the lizard that is know as Ted Cruz.

(warning, this video contains mistreatment of bacon.)

How was it that we used to make fun of Fox back in the old days?
Something like "We report, you deride".

 

[Samson]

Queenie asks for for her image to be taken off trump bus

Did not you guys fight a war to get rid of her?

Buckingham Palace has requested a doctored image of the Queen wearing a 'Make America Great Again' hat and a QAnon brooch is removed from a "Trump Train" bus.
The bus was last seen at a rally for Republican representatives Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene - both outspoken supporters of the former president.
​

 

[Birdjaguar]

Pence is done. As is Matt Gaetz.

 

[adcarrymaokai]

lol that muscular Trump... it's the delusion for me

 

[Sommerswerd]

Pence is done. As is Matt Gaetz.

Yep on Gaetz, he's effed. But what's this about Pence?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Yep on Gaetz, he's effed. But what's this about Pence?

Pence has no path to anywhere. He is a nebbish. He has no significant political support, He has no charisma. He has no record to speak of. And he lost the last election he was in.

 

[Traitorfish]

It's striking how often Trump enthusiasts graft his head onto a muscled, Schwarzeneggerian body. Not just because that's a deeply weird thing to do with any political leader, even if they weren't in their seventies, but because Trump's public persona is so fundamentally at-odds with that body type. He's a symbol of excess, of decadence, of the absolute absence of any sort of self-discipline or self-restraint. Some politicians have the sort of rigid ambition that, if they had spent their life among weight machines instead of political machines (ha, see what I did there), it's wholly plausible they could have turned themselves into muscle-bound titans- but Trump is in every respect not one of those people.

Which gives you an insight into the sort of unstated philosophical idealism which underlies this sort of politics, where a hulking heavyweight physique is not the product of regimented activity but the outward a projection of the inner strength of will and certainty of self, that allows them to know that Trump possesses the inner essence of a 1985 Hulk Hogan, even if he happens to possess the outer form of an overweight old man. Strength of body proceeds from strength of will, which is why so many of these sixty year old district grocery store managers with beer guts and bad knees believe they could turn into John McClane if the situation called for it.