Immigrants Use Less Welfare Than Native ‐Born Americans
ConclusionThe average immigrant consumed 27.3 percent less welfare than native-born Americans in 2020. Further reform should reduce that substantially by building a higher wall around the welfare state instead of around the country. Still better would be reducing or eliminating the welfare state for all but reducing or eliminating non-citizen access is a politically feasible first step. In the long-run, there are good reasons to think that immigrants won ’t increase the size of the welfare state and compelling evidence that they would reduce support for it. Still, the net-fiscal effects are most important – watch this ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 1, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Alex Nowrasteh Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Judean Taliban
In Chapter 15, King Asa decides to please God by decreeing that everybody who doesn ' t worship the right God, in the right way, will be killed. This is indeed very pleasing to God. ' Nuff said.15 The Spirit of God came on Azariah son of Oded.2 He went out to meet Asa and said to him, “Listen to me, Asa and all Judah and Benjamin. TheLord is with you when you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you.3 For a long time Israel was without the true God, without a priest to teach and without the law.4 But in their distress they turned to theLord, t...
Source: Stayin' Alive - February 1, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Genocide for God
The story in Chapter 13 is not told in Kings. Kings does have the general idea that Judah and the northern kingdom, a.k.a. Israel, were at war, and that the King of Israel Jeroboam was apostate -- that he created golden calves as idols and allowed non-Levites to perform the sacrifices. (The golden calf motif, of course, first occurs in Exodus.) Remember that Chronicles was compiled (I say compiled rather than written because it is likely that little of it is actually original) after the destruction of the northern kingdom and the restoration of Judah following the Babylonian exile. The Chronicler was presumably a Levite pr...
Source: Stayin' Alive - January 25, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Backsliding again
The story in Ch. 12 is also told in Kings, more briefly, but this is obviously from a different source, probably one of the lost books he mentions at the end. It ' s basically the Groundhog Day story we read a dozen times in Judges. The leader abandons Yahweh and suffers military defeat. Before telling this story, Kings has a couple of chapters about going on in the northern kingdom, which the Chronicler skips. Note that in verse 1, he calls Judah " Israel, " which he does frequently, and which can be a bit confusing. 12 After Rehoboam ’s position as king was established and he had become strong, he and all Isr...
Source: Stayin' Alive - January 22, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Tale of two cities
The first four verses of Ch. 11 are lifted from Kings, but the rest is of unknown provenance. However, it is generally consistent with Kings in the idea that Israel, under Jeroboam, strays from the law, including Jeroboam ' s golden idols and promotion of non-Levite priests, while Rehoboam ' s Judah remains orthodox. The idea that Levites and faithful people of other tribes migrated to Judah is not really in Kings, however.For those of you who think the Bible says that marriage is between one man and one woman, read the last part of this chapter. Rehoboam ' s marriages are also incestuous, his wives are his nieces and cous...
Source: Stayin' Alive - January 18, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: You read this before
Chapter 10 is essentially lifted from 1 Kings 12. It recounts the secession of the northern Kingdom of Israel (at other times called Samaria) from Judah and the House of David. It is very odd, in the context of Chronicles, because this is the first time it has been mentioned that Solomon was actually unpopular.He was purportedly the wisest man who ever lived, who made the kingdom unimaginably rich and powerful. In Kings however, there is a long story which the Chronicler omits, about Solomon being seduced by some of his many wives to worship other Gods, and so losing Yaweh ' s favor, which is why the northern kingdom seced...
Source: Stayin' Alive - January 15, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Walter E. Grinder, 1938 –2022
John Hagel IIIWalter Grinder passed away in December 2022 after fighting many illnesses. He lived a long and productive life, driven by his desire to help those around him and to drive change in the broader world.Born in the Pittsburgh area in 1938, Walter graduated from Grove City College, where he had the good fortune to study under Hans Sennholz. He was then drawn to the New York City area, where he had an opportunity to study with Ludwig von Mises, Ludwig Lachmann, and Israel Kirzner at New York University and taught economics at Rutgers University –Newark. Walter and his wife, Mary Jane, lived in New Jersey, wh...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - January 12, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: John Hagel III Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: More boasting
The first part of Ch. 9, the visit from the Queen of Sheba, is lifted from Kings. The rest is more ridiculous boasting about Solomon ' s possessions and the vastness of his empire, all of which comes from a parallel universe. The Chronicler gives a bibliography toward the end, but for some reason does not mention Kings:" Nathan the prophet, in the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite and in the visions of Iddo the seer concerning Jeroboam son of Nebat. " All of these books are lost. Presumably they are excerpted in Chronicles, but we have no way of knowing which is which. We do not know how the Tanakh was canonized,...
Source: Stayin' Alive - January 11, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Ridiculous boasting
Chapter 8 is absurd. It gives Solomon a vast empire, including numerous tributary kingdoms, a marriage to the daughter of the Pharaoh, and a tribute from Hiram of 50 metric tons of gold. The reality is that Israel at this time was a minor domain consisting of a few villages. There really isn ' t any more to be said about this, it ' s complete bullshit.8 At the end of twenty years, during which Solomon built the temple of theLord and his own palace,2 Solomon rebuilt the villages that Hiram[a] had given him, and settled Israelites in them.3 Solomon then went to Hamath Zobah and captured it.4 He also built...
Source: Stayin' Alive - January 8, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
AI Improves Results of In-Vitro Fertilization
Eran Eshed, CEO and Co-founder of Fairtility, cites research showing that 48% of the work done by embyrologists during in-vitro fertilization is administrative. Fairtility was founded to automate this tedious work, which not only makes the embryologist more efficient, but eliminates the many errors caused by manual work.
Furthermore, by taking data from EHRs and incubators—about 2.5 million data points in each pregnancy cycle—Fairtility can analyze the embryos’ viability more accurately than the embryologist. (The embryologist checks results to correct occasional errors.)
Another benefit of Fairtility’s au...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - January 5, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Andy Oram Tags: Analytics/Big Data Clinical Health IT Company Healthcare IT Embryologists Eran Eshed Fairtility Fertility Clinics Fertility Tech Health IT Israel Healthcare IT Video Interviews In-Vitro Fertilization Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: I wish Chronicles would be over but we have a long way to go
I warned you that Chronicles is the most boring book of the Bible. Ch. 7 is consistent with 1 Kings 8 and 9 in that Solomon performs a sacrifice, and has a second vision of God, but the descriptions are quite different. The fire doesn ' t come down from heaven to consume the sacrifice in Kings, and the description of the sacrifice and festival here is more extensive. The words God speaks to Solomon in the vision are different here and in 1 Kings 9, although the general idea is similar. Other than that, I got nothin ' to say. 7 When Solomon finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - January 4, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Holistic Health at Sweetch: “ Feel like a person, not like a patient ”
In this video Dr. Yossi Bahagon, Co-founder and Chairman of Sweetch, discusses the deeply holistic approach they take to helping people with diabetes adopt healthy behaviors.
Whereas conventional systems for connected health deliver cold, generic instructions (“walk another 4,000 steps”; “take your medication now”), Sweetch intensely personalizes messages: “Why don’t you take an umbrella and walk just nine minutes through the rain to your favorite coffee shop.”
Sweetch is comprehensive. It collects data from the patient’s phone and any connected devices they wear, and combi...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - January 3, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Andy Oram Tags: Clinical Communication and Patient Experience Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System Telemedicine and Remote Monitoring Diabetes Management Health IT Israel Healthcare IT Video Interviews Holistic Health patient engag Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Blotting the copy book
Chapter 6 is largely lifted from 1 Kings 8, but it ends differently -- not notably different in sentiment, just different wording. On the whole, I find the purpose of the Chronicler ' s project puzzling. He has basically cut and pasted from versions of Samuel, Kings and some lost books, perhaps made a few alterations or added some comments of his own, although it ' s hard to tell. The first part is tethered to events in Genesis and Exodus, but consists mostly of nothing but (mostly male) genealogies. Once he gets to the history in Samuel and Kings, he skips a lot, and just picks fragments. You can see why he thought this o...
Source: Stayin' Alive - January 1, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Stories of an ambulance medic in Israel
An excerpt from Side by Side with Heroes: Stories of an Ambulance Medic in Israel. The worst day of my life started out a normal day at Magen David Adom, the Israeli national ambulance service. At the end of a long shift, I was in the washroom with my pants around my ankles. Suddenly, I
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Stories of an ambulance medic in Israel originally appeared in KevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - December 28, 2022 Category: General Medicine Authors: Dr. Sara R. Ahronheim Tags: Physician Emergency Medicine Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Holy holiness
Chapter 5 is basically lifted from 1 Kings 8, but the Chronicler inserts verses 11 and 12. This suggests to me that these verses were in an earlier manuscript of Kings 8, but didn ' t get copied into the canonical version. Those of you who are interested in music will be glad to see these verses, which in addition to the cymbals, harps and lyres mentioned previously give us 120 trumpets. I don ' t see how the harps and lyres could possibly have been heard over 120 trumpets, however. There is no description of the arrangement. It ' s possible the trumpets would have sounded intermittently. Theologically speaking,...
Source: Stayin' Alive - December 28, 2022 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
