Of course. I don’t care about paying for other people’s health care. But, if it makes you feel any better, I am not American by birth.
When you have to pay tens of thousands of dollars in taxes every year for people who suck the system dry, then come back to me and tell me that you love doing it. I suspect right now your probably don’t pay that much in taxes. Just a wild guess though.
You are correct; that is a wild guess.
And I noted that of the three reasons you provided in that sentence, two of them were equally true in the U.S.–leaving only the waiting period.
So, yes, I did read what you had written.
I would disagree that our doctors and surgeons are incompetent. I don’t know if you have ever used such a socialized programme, but if not, it’s really hard to understand. I didn’t realize the difference until I had to experience both.
jojobean, please see This thread for a lot more anecdotal stories from people with experience with both Universal Health care and the US system. So far you are in the tiny, tiny minority.
Yes, you are being selective, which is understandable. However, when it comes to population health, you are wrong.
Once again, I am soooo glad that I live in a country where the majority of people have decided, through our votes, that we actually care about our fellow citizens enough to give everyone decent health care. I’m glad that the medical professionals make decisions with triage to make sure that the most urgent cases get treated first, that we have excellent clinical staff, and that whining, whinging crybabies who want special treatment because they’re wealthy have to suck it up.
[fascinating thread!]
Going back to what Sam Stone said about corporate taxes driving jobs overseas, do you really think that’s only significant reason why they’re relocating?
I thought it had as much to do with avoiding environmental protection and worker protection, making use of recent innovations in logistics (that whole “just in time” practice in manufacturing), and a favorable exchange rate. And of those, I thought the first two were far and away the most important.
And I’ve wondered if other countries (notably China) are going to continue to ignore the need for environmental regulation and worker protection laws, particularly given recent scandals (melamine, the quality of their air, the mine collapse, etc). Doesn’t it seem their situation is becoming dire? Won’t their citizens demand more?
As you say, we’re all in flux.
I’ve also wondered about Obama’s ability to inspire a course of nationalism, even without tariffs, that might direct consumer spending. Buying locally, buying green, and supporting cottage industries are all big buzzwords on message boards – might that have a genuine impact once it grows beyond a threshold?
Then you don’t “believe people should take care of each other”, because without coercion they WON’T. That’s why government safety nets ( and much of the rest of the government ) were created; because people are too selfish and shortsighted for volunteerism to accomplish much.
By watching what they actually do and don’t do, as opposed to what they say. By actually considering what happens when and if they get their way. When people consistently push for a system that will let them brutally exploit people, I consider them people who want to do just that. Especially when that’s exactly what happens in places and times where thay HAVE gotten their way.
There is an imaginary crisis claimed by the Right, who want to replace SS with a non-government retirement scheme that they can loot to the ground.
Then you are self destructive, or you are rich. You probably haven’t been on the wrong end of the American version, or you probably wouldn’t be posting - you’d be too poor to have a computer, or a home. I fail to see the attraction of a system that ruins people like ours does, among it’s other flaws. We pay more for less.
Quality of life in general is better in socialistic countries, including medical care. Most Americans are sublimely convinced that “America Is The Greatest Country In The World”, so they refuse to consider that fact. It’s unthinkable that some other country might be doing something better. That, and many Americans are simply just that sociopathic; they hate the idea of helping others so much that they don’t care about the consequences to themselves when THEY need help.
I submit our own Rand Rover as one example. Claims to make $500/hour by providing the critically needed and socially important service of tax avoidance advice, does not want the government to take a nickel of his money to give to the lazy poor because charities should look after them, yet admits that he does not contribute a penny, nor a moment of his time to charitable causes.
Trust me - there may be few Rand Rovers on this board, but there are LOTS of them in real life.
Those are troubling claims, of course.
I am, however, still trying to find any actual definition of “rural” employed in the studies as well as any indication that the crime is specific to an “underclass.”
These are not insignificant questions. Different studies have chosen to include cities as large as 175,000 persons as “rural”. The Bureau of Statistics report to which you linked claims
Visiting that site and chasing further links seeking definitions, one eventually comes to the Office of Management and Budget page, http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/bulletins/fy2008/b08-01.pdf on which the information is provided:
It would be interesting to discover where the apparently “rural” crime is being reported, but I see no reason to simply accept a definition based on governemt averaging that bears little to no resemblance to a sociological definition of rural and which is even in direct conflict with the creators of the definitions.
And, while it would be a probably be a good guess that crime is more likely among the poorest (and richest) members of the population, since the discussion in this thread was specific to an underclass, I would like to see that such crimes are actually occurring within that population and not among lower middle class or even wealthy persons moving out into the country.
Do you consider Obama to be a socialist? He’s certainly stepped up the leftist rhetoric over the last eight weeks, and it’s hard for me to remember that, except for ethnicity and gender, I once could not tell him apart from Hillary Clinton. For me at least, that is good news because I do lean far to the left.
While I realize you and I probably disagree wildly on a number of points, I think there is a point where capitalists and socialists are forced to find common ground, not merely to be nice to each other, but because neither system really works well without incorporating elements of the other. “Spread the wealth around”–sure, that sounds scary to a capitalist. But if the lifeblood of a market is disposable income, then doesn’t the system work best if everyone has a modicum of such income? There’s only so much one consumer can spend. If a few people have the majority of the wealth, and everyone else has virtually nothing, then does that not mean the effective consumer base is much reduced?
Then help me out here. Where is, or where are, the bottleneck(s) in the system? All I can say is that I’ve visited Canada and several Western European countries, and lived in Germany where I had one brief, entirely satisfactory encounter with their system. In the other countries, I couldn’t see the problems with their system, although that is hard to discern as a visitor.
When you say “surgeries” do you mean the clinic or doctor’s office, i.e. it takes a long time to get in to see a doctor, or do you mean that it takes a long time to before you can schedule an actual operation? If you have something urgent, like a ruptured appendix, can you not get in to have it taken care of right away?
If you don’t mind, where did you immigrate from?
But to the sort of capitalists who look at wealth as a source of power, that’s a great situation. Desperate people who have no financial cushion will take what jobs you give them and submit to whatever form of exploitation and abuse you heap on them, especially if the government is in your pocket and won’t stop you. In some ways, something like a Great Depression is desirable from the right wing capitalist’s point of view; it may diminish their wealth, but they are still rich, and it gives them more power. And many on the right have a deep hatred of helping others, and look forward to a major economic collapse as an excuse to slash social programs and starve the poor.
I recall a story from, I think, the '50s: A Ford exec was proudly showing a UAW official the Ford plant’s new automation. “So,” he said, “how are you going to organize these machines?” The labor leader replied, “How are you going to sell them Fords?”
Your arguements are ridiculous. While it is true with the complete absence of government their would be less freedom that is only because those with the means would FORCE their will upon others. They would become a government. A sensible and small government needs to be in existence for just such a reason.
But the rest of your argument falls flat. Why would a tyranny of the market (that you seem to think would exist) be any worse than the tyranny of the government over individuals telling them how much they will get payed and what they will do with the money that have earned.
Essentially what I am saying is this: When government is involved their is a immediate loss of freedom. For government to work freedom and liberty must be given to this government. This is a necessary trade, since without a government that you give up some of your liberty too and government would arise that would take your liberty from you. So if the government gets involved in the economy, I lose economic freedom, In general I lose. I am restricted from my ability to provide for myself and to earn my own wages through the selling of my labor or thoughts. This is clearly not right. We need to be as free was we possible can. The concession of our liberty that we give up to the government need to be small not large.
Their is no moral or ethical justification for the redistribution of earned wealth. Period. Any good or positive benefit does not over rule the fact that it is slavery and/or theft.
How did you earn that wealth? Did you conjure it out of thin air?
Or did you just get lucky and find resources (animal, mineral or human) that you could sell for more than they cost you?
And where did you get that money, bobthebuilder? Are you just trading goats and chickens, or is there currency?
I said it before; I’ll say it again: your ideals will not work in the real world. They do not make sense when put to the test of reality.
But all property is theft, so turnabout is fair play. That’s ethically and morally sound to me.
Whence get you this delusion?
Can you say, “straw man”? But, OK, I have libertarian socialist influences, I’ll bite. In such a world that an equal distribution of wealth left all mankind starving, poor, & wretched, we’d clearly be over a sustainable level of human population. So tell me, Mr Private Initiative, if you think there are too many of us to be supported by our natural resource base, how are a bunch of free actors acting independently going to tackle that problem? Or do you feel more noble letting it fester?
Because we have the power to control the government via voting. And because the government doesn’t have the same incentive to crush them. And because it’s not the JOB of the government to crush the workers; that IS the job of the employer, to squeeze every last ounce of profit out of them with as little given in return as possible. With the capitalist ideal, of course, being slavery.
Oh, nonsense. More often than not, you have MORE freedom; for example, thanks to the government women can reject the sexual advances of their employers, instead of being forced to serve as their sex toys.
Nonsense again. Without government, you’d be a slave or dead, or a bandit in some tribe in the wreckage of civilization. As others have said, your ideas simply fail the test of reality; in the real world, without governments you have places that are horribly impoverished and not free at all. They are called “failed states”, and are not the kind of paradise some people like to think the world would be without government. And as for a minimum government without control over commerce; well, we had that too, and it was a hellish time for most people.
More nonsense. You exemplify the standard libertarian attitude that property/monetary rights are all that matter, trumping even the survival of others, AND the delusion that the only source of oppression is the government.
The “theft” is by people like you. People who benefit from society, but want to contribute nothing back in return. You want to opt out, to avoid giving anything back for all the ways the rest of society benefits you. No doubt under the theory that other people will pick up the slack for you, why you indulge yourself with your parasitic money
As for “slavery”, that is the inevitable result of people like you getting their way; slavery or a good imitation for most of the population. That’s what we had when people like you DID have their way. Either you are in denial about that, or you deep down think that you will be one of the slavers and not the enslaved.
And I’d also point out that if you owe those less fortunate no consideration, then they owe you none. Assuming the less fortunate buy into your every man for himself attitude, they have no reason at all not to just kill you and take what you have. After all, a lack of concern for others is the very heart of your philosophy; why NOT kill who you want and take what you want if other people don’t matter ? You philosophy guts the entire reason for any morality to exist at all, and is fundamentally sociopathic.