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- Sunday, January 29, 6:12 AM "High taxes help the richest, too" asserts Cornell economics professor Robert Frank, as the increased public spending would "produce clear gains in satisfaction for the wealthy," such as better-maintained roads. And besides, what difference does it make it if you have a home that's 15,000 square feet or one that's 10,000?
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the difference quite simply is...
it's none of the government's business,
or your damn business!
You are drawing correlations but there is not a relationship.
You forgt to mention I-Phones, & I-Pads too.
Along with Air connidtioning, Food Stamps & Obesity.
Total payments to the IRS as a percentage of GDP was less in the 1950s than it is today. Under 10%. most Americans did not pay anythig and the rich had tax shelters. America WAS in debt, due to WWII, but we didnt have medicare, medicaid and most of the welfare state spending we have today, adding to our debt.
wonder what quality we would get???
And, much larger pensions, too. Meanwhile, we'd still have students schooled in liberal propaganda, but who can't read or add a column of numbers. And, people wonder why technical jobs are filled by foreigners or move off shore (sheesh).
I don't believe there is a law which prohibits them from paying more taxes. If they're so civic-minded they can just pull out their checkbooks any old day and send a few billion Uncle Sam's way.
Thank Eisenhower for the highway system and your local government for the nice street you live on.
All paid for with tax dollars.
Support your country. Pay your taxes.
You are correct. These are things the government SHOULD be doing and I doubt anyone objects to paying for them. However the lavish benefits for those you cite (twenty and out for example) are not warrented.
The objection is all the things the government SHOULD NOT be doing and throwing money down the rat hole.
I've been thinking that we should pass a law that all gov workers begin every sentence with the words, "Thank you", and all public assitance payments come with the requirement to come pickup a check, and you have to get on your knees and say, "Please" and "Thank you". A little reminder of who is in the wagon and who is pulling the wagon never hurt.
PS. Roads are about 1% of govt spending these days, cops and fireman another 1% ... it's ludicrous to mentions these and ignore the $2 trillion in transfer payments and welfare payments that the federal govt engages in. the Welfare State is why we have so much in deficit and taxes, nothing else.
Our taxes don't go towards the things he writes about. We pay plenty of taxes to build and maintain quality roads..... but the money finds its way not into our roads, but rather into the pockets of the public unions, favored contractors and politicians.
And he ignores the fact that now 15% of our population is employed at some level of government. So raising our taxes hurts those that work in the private sector because the market determines their wages..... but the public employee will gain as politicians will have more money to buy their votes.
And lets be clear, the government CHOOSES to not build infrastructure and do pure research because the POLITICIANS attempt to use our own money to buy their votes. The government has been taken from the people and they are now their own distinct group - trying to use the very nature of government's power against its own people.
So perhaps he should write about people taking care of themselves and government making good infrastructure and needed regulations a priority as we wouldn't spend our money on social programs and bureaucrats. And part of good regulation is constantly updatingand eliminating them when they are out of date, something our government never does.
The problem in this country isn't that I don't send enough money to government - the problem is we have a government that is consuming us through borrowing and destroying our freedoms and liberties. I'll take freedom and liberty over cheaper 10,000 square foot houses every day of the week!
That is the problem with unions today. Once the dupes and misinformed realize that then we can fix them. Your arguments only strengthen the position of the union hierarchy so the focus is on "anti union" and not on the the few that have exploited it to siphon dues money into their's and their friend's pockets.
But now unions aren't going to play as large a role. With under 10% of our workers in manufacturing there simply aren't as many opportunities for unions to exist.
The problem isn't private sector unions. I support them and their right to organize and negotiate with management and shareholders as a single voice.
The problem is public sector unions. They sell their votes for outrageous pay, benefits, and work rules. They provide less and less service and get richer every year. There is no place for unions in the public sector - the workers are already protected by all the work rules that exist, they aren't negotiating with a management that views pay raises as lessening profit margins. They are bribing politicians for bigger and bigger paychecks and benefits for less and less work. These public unions need to be disbanded and outlawed.
The comment is along the lines of a solution for world hunger I hear a few years ago..."eat old people"...make sense if you don't think about it. I mean they are plentiful and not of high value - not only are they a source of sustenance - by reducing their number you will have more other food left for everyone else. Quite a neat solution.
Same with taxes. We should all pay more - as much as we can really. Since when money is taken away from weak minded individuals and in the hands of Government - a third party - wonderful things can happen - not only will it be spent in the wisest and most efficient manner - it will be apportioned without any element of political favor. Yes we can rely on our exemplary Government Mandarins to take all the money from individuals and spend it for the common good.
From each according to his ability to each according to their need. Where have I read that before? Can't remember. No matter. Well sign me up - instead of the $120,000 I paid last year - make me pay more (it for my own good) and let's all do the same and get on the train pardon me Comrade the поездor with our most worthy Redistributionist in Chief...Premier Obama straight on to Utopia. Second star on the left and onward till morning. Make haste. Торопитесь
In all seriousness. The answer is not 0 taxes.
Clearly Government must have revenue to fund needed programs. There must be a safety net for children, the elderly and the very poor. Healthcare and income support for those in most need and nothing for those who don't. Yes nothing.
There must be a removal of Corporate and Farm welfare - there must be a closing of the loopholes and deductions. All of them. The mortgage deduction must go. It is unconscionable that middle class and rich are subsidized to buy homes while children are hungry or do not have healthcare.
Yes. We need to fund education but the real issue with education as in other sectors of the economy that are not exposed to the bracing winds of globalization - most Government services and a lot of Healthcare - is the lack of competition, inefficiency and the featherbedding high levels of Unionization and stifling of the private sector. In fact the poor quality of education in public schools is one of the main drivers of income disparity. Let parents vote with their dollars or vouchers. Let the market impose some discipline on providers. And let the good ones reap their just rewards. This commonsense change alone would yield an increase in welfare. And yet it is a bridge too far.
The tax code must be simplified and distortions removed. Much of this will hit the middle as well as the rich. But it must be done.
Government revenue are high enough. Before they are raised there must be a redesign of many of the programs to weed out the ones that are no longer needed and to focus support on the needy and away from the greedy. Again this will also hit the middle and the rich. But it must be done.
No. The answer is not higher taxes. It is a better tighter tax system. It is not more spending it is better efficiency and more targeting.
Do that and you will go a long way to a better society.
E
Wow, thats a communist socialist line if I ever heard one. If someone had asked 50 years ago "what difference does it make if you want color or B&W TV? Why do the rich need color?" .. then we'd all still be watching those clunky B&W 10 inch boxes.
But, as you so eloquently put, what difference would it make if we were a society like North Korea?
It's also proof that the mainstream media is in the tank for Obama and the Dems that they won't point out this simple fact every time this millionaire's tax comes up. (And let's not forget the dirt-bag that is Buffett and his role in this nonsense.)
Don't hold your breath.
I get real sick in even thinking that the Government could get anything accomplished, givin a private sector company, or individual could do it for less, quicker and with a better attitude. I don’t recall exactly when Government started taking over everything, one thing I noticed is when the Government took control of the Educational process of our children , it didn’t take to many years before American children were falling behind a greater number of countries, I sure hear allot about Increasing the money for education over the last 50 years which I have come to realize it has nothing to do with the kids it’s all about keeping their pensions funded, Talk about the private sector getting the raw deal, Sad part I could go on for a real lengthy post and not even cover the reasons government should get out of the way, and are not the solution but the cause.
During the Civil War, the Federal government began the land grant college system. During the 19th century, states gradually enacted free compulsory education, paid for by taxes disproportionately applied on the wealthy.
The rich understood the benefits of workers that could read and count.
Other countries around the world are emphasizing education. Cutting teachers, as many U.S. cities have done, will have negative effects on U.S. education. Furthermore, the general "teacher bashing" will do nothing to draw the best into the teaching profession.
> effects on U.S. education. Furthermore, the general "teacher
> bashing" will do nothing to draw the best into the teaching
> profession.
This is all true, but keep in mind that much of the public education system in the U.S. is fundamentally inadequate in its current form. To improve it, you have to make significant changes in how it functions, you can't just do more of what's not working.
And like many things in America such as healthcare, we know HOW to do it well, and we DO do it well for a privileged few, but we can't (or won't) make it available to the masses at a reasonable cost.
Start with outlawing teacher unions.
Don't be so quick to pass judgment based only on what you heard from Fox News.
I've done a LOT of volunteer work with a lot of public schools over the years, and the biggest problems I see are the administrators -- who are non-union.
Yes, there are crappy teachers, just like any profession, but they are frequently a small minority in schools with decent administration staff. The unions are usually the only thing protecting the good teachers from getting fired (or treated like crap until they quit) by the bad administrators -- unfortunately they protect the bad teachers too, but in schools with good leadership, this is a very small problem.
The real problems are more structural and cultural, such as:
- not enough hours spent on class and homework (U.S. kids are lazy compared to international competitors)
- teachers spend too many hours on busy-work (let teachers teach, hire secretaries to do the paperwork)
- kids have too many touchy-feely classes (you need a little art and music, and some history, but you need a LOT of math and science)
- parents fight the teachers rather than help them (you'd be surprised how often math teachers are accused of having a liberal bias!)
- the standardized tests suck, period (some too hard, some too easy, most too irrelevant)
- teachers' incentives focus on testing, not learning (Freakonomics 101: people do what their incentives reward them for)
- too many resources go to sports extras over academic extras (how many labs could be bought in place of that football field? what's more important, a championship banner or your college placement rate?)
Oh stop. It is not the teachers, they are all wonderful dedicated people, it is those bad administrators. If not for the union, the administrators would fire good teachers for "no reason'. Therefore, we need tenure. More bull.
Stop being an oppologist for the union teachers.
For all the things you listed the teachers are damn well paid, get rediculous fringe benefits, and work a very short year.
Add in the full pay and bennies and figure it out to each hour actually worked and there is nothing for them to cry about.
Your nostalgia for an educational system like that of England in the early to mid 19th century (with the class divides that entailed) is 'charming' and not well thought through.
The overall tone wreaks of "we the people in service to our government". Maybe that's how it is in Quebec and that's fine - just keep it up there. That's not how it's done in the states.
There is no doubt that organizations, in striving to help their membership, do harm to society. From protecting bad teachers to protecting coaler jobs on diesel trains, unions have done harm.
But if one looks for harm caused by organizations, one need look no further than right wing think tanks which were formed to legitimize points of view long thought relegated to the trashbin of history. The disparity of income and the disparagement of labor coincides with their existence. Trickle down economics is ennobled as beneficent charity, the worker being deemed unworthy of the few scraps he still receives.
In the past, positions like this have led to revolution. Tread lightly on the poor lest there be a backlash.
Your thinking is bipolar which leaves no room for the vast middle. Working conditions are not even remotely close to what they were during the Industrial Revolution.
The teacher's union is a corrupt mechanism to extort money from the tax payer and put up resistance to any changes. Good teachers are penalized in this system.
I'm not sure what he official Lybian economic culture was, but the wealth apparently flowed back to Ghadaffi and his tribe.
http://bit.ly/yKiPC3
"Crony capitalism is a term describing an economy in which success in business depends on close relationships between business people and government officials. It may be exhibited by favoritism in the distribution of legal permits, government grants, special tax breaks, and so forth."
"In its lightest form, crony capitalism consists of collusion among market players. While perhaps lightly competing against each other, they will present a unified front to the government in requesting subsidies or aid (sometimes called a trade association or industry trade group)."
"The military-industrial complex in the United States is often described as an example of crony capitalism in an industry. Connections with The Pentagon and lobbyists in Washington are described by critics as more important than actual competition, due to the political and secretive nature of defense contracts."
"Noam Chomsky has argued that the word "crony" is superfluous when describing capitalism. Since businesses make money and money leads to political power, business will inevitably use their power to influence governments. Much of the impetus behind campaign finance reform in the United States and in other countries is an attempt to prevent economic power being used to take political power."
But I see where you got the concept: "Laissez-faire economists oppose crony capitalism as well disparaging governmental favors as incompatible with a true free market. Laissez-faire advocates criticize the term as an ideologically motivated attempt to cast what is in their view the fundamental problem of government intervention or “investments” as an avoidable aberration; free-market advocates refer to governmental favoritism as "crony socialism", "venture socialism" or "corporatism, a modern form of mercantilism" to emphasize that the only way to run a profitable business in such systems is to have help from corrupt government officials. In this view, high levels of interaction between corporations and governments are considered socialist, which is taken to its maximum in the form of nationalization of industries."
"Force" is something that is inflicted by the rule of law. Laws are designed to protect both citizens and corporations from unfair taking of property owned by other persons or businesses, or protect against actions that directly cause actual bodily harm. We have laws to prevent illegal loan sharks operating outside of the government-supervised banking system because these organizations have a history of acting with illegal use of force including physical attacks, intentionally inflicting property damage through the use of force, and even murder. When corporations pollute the water supply of homeowners, they are forcing physical harm upon their victims, who may unknowingly ingest toxins and become ill. So use of force is by definition a human trait and is endemic to both corporate and governmental behaviors in the extreme. A corporation can force a homeowner to sell their property and relocate if they buy off enough local zoning officials so that they acquire property needed for the needs of the corporation by emminent domain.
"A corporation can force a homeowner to sell their property and relocate if they buy off enough local zoning officials"
Are you suggesting that gov is a possible threat, and that private business can be dangerous when it has access to gov force?
The recent SCOTUS Kelo decision showed that the coercion begins and ends with government power. When a corporation is an aegis of government it is no longer a corporation but a GSE. As an example, Fannie Mae should never have been a publicly traded company. Neither should GM. And neither should GE. None of these are corporations. They are all GSEs.
There are no free markets in any of the above examples.
The phrase isn't crony capitalism. It is crony Stalinism.
"Coercion" involves two players and both are equally guilty. Corporations are not innocent merely because they needed a government official to accept their illegal bribes. Corporations are guilty merely by making such offers.
Your definition of 'socialist' is rather idiosyncratic. I suggest that most persons asserting the point you are making would use 'autocratic' in place of 'socialist' in that context.
Be that as it may, I suggest that you are being too arbitrary in your division of the world metaphorically into 'sheep' and 'goats'. Their have been tyrannical capitalist regimes (think that of Pinochet in Chile or even Germany in the late 1930s) and democratic socialist regimes (think the UK in the late 1940s, Australia, New Zealand and the Scandinavian countries each during several terms during the 20th century and most of Canada's Provinces during various terms in office).
One can approve or disapprove of the conduct of various Parties during their terms in office in various countries but to do so in the starkest way based arbitrarily only on the professed political orientation of each such Party (and not on what was attempted and how this was achieved) doesn't really advance the argument.
Put somewhat harshly, you simply define some political groupings as inherently bad and then, based on that definition exercise alone, hold that they were bad.
Socialist by definition must take from someone and they have the army behind them to enforce their taking away. Sounds like force to me.
Capitalism provides for private ownership and ties governments hands to take away for the most part. Or at least makes it difficult. In India it is more difficult to build infrastructure as private owners have to be accommodated but in China people are cleared out of the way and projects begin.
The groupings really are those that take away and those that don't. So politicians and systems self select their grouping.
I think you and some others try too hard to pigeonhole socialism and capitalism as polar opposites in all matters where the real error to be avoided and resisted is the unreasonable repression of creative endeavors. Socialism and capitalism each can take many forms and each can be creative or repressive.
I think my demarcation was clear and appropriate. The real error is to keep searching for gray to hide the reality that socialism is about transfering wealth.
But if not please make out a check from Canada to our UST for $15.3 Trillion because we are all in this together.
That will not go over well.
That's the problem with Socialists.
They are only Generous with other people's money.
http://bit.ly/n93OLN
Really referring to public unions. The relationship between government and those unions is corrupt and is impoverishing the middle class to support them.
Government and unions working hand in hand is a recipe for stagnation and corruption.
Some Right-wingers today seem to think that practices that cut profits have to be bad. They either have no knowledge of history or no heart. Perhaps that has already been acknowledged in thinking "bleeding heart liberal" could be considered an insult.
There's a vast difference between private sector unions and public sector unions. In the private sector their are clearly distinct and separate interests between the negotiating parties of management and workers. In public sector the unions vote for their own management (of which they are the 800 lb gorilla voting bloc) so the natural checks and balances don't exist. That's why we need to return to the pre-1960s environment when teachers were true professionals and not unionized. They have more than enough power as it stands through the democratic process.
Ha. That's a good one. The rich that had business didn't want to pay for the education themselves, so they convinced the public of all the virtures of a "free" education, so as to subsidize their businesses by offloading the cost of education to the general public via property taxes on their businesses which is just becomes a sales tax to the general populace.
Free markets may not give everybody everything they could ever want, but the stark reality is that gov control absolutely guarantees that it won't happen. In fact, gov is the most likely to disappoint, because, by design, it does not have access to nature's pricing mechanisms. Its like trying to hammer a nail with a cocked and loaded revolver. You may get lucky and have a few good hits, but mostly likely you are going to blow a hole in yourself.
The US or any country for that matter, could have the cheapest, most advanced, highest quality education on the planet if the pricing mechanisms nature has provided for were utilized to allow people to learn what is efficient and not efficient with the product of eduction. The real cruelty here is that specious reasoning is used to pad egos so people can feel good about themselves without actually doing anything to feel good about themselves, while they deny people the true benefits of what is possible by denying them the information that nature can provide.
This may be pure co-incidence and correlation, with no causation involved. But it surely puts the lie to your thesis.
Free markets are a great pricing mechanism. They are only an economic tool. They are irrelevant to most of life's important choices. I hope you chose your spouse by other means. Collective action through the government, prevents you from taking advantage of low prices for wood or coal by burning them in areas of high pollution. What would be economically good for you would be terrible for the collectivity. This denial of individual rights, this perversion of the free market, helps make possible a modern civilisation.
If the world existed in a perfected Jeffersonesque landscape of yeoman farmers, there would be some logic in depending on Adam Smith's invisible hands to make all economic decisions. The real world soon discovered its flaws and reacted with Utilitarianism, before concocting other theories to attempt to rectify the failings of laissez-faire capitalism. But so many American Conservatives ("nature's pricing mechanisms"in your 2nd paragraph) seem to be locked in an 18th century time warp.
Where is John Galt when we really need him?
Actually free markets allocate capital and set priorities that meet peoples' freedom of choice in their "pursuit of happiness."
It is front and center not a nuisance consideration and works in harmony with freedom. Unlike government fiat.
You have your history wrong. Government involvement was well underway before WWII and we had the Great Depression. At minimum you cannot draw causation. I can clearly demonstrate however we have the largest most dynamic economy in the world which is not all that bad considering the US has been predicted to fail for over 200 years by clever pundits around the world who felt it needed central planners and deep thinkers. They have all been buried thank you.
Displaying dominant strength after WWII was not difficult when everyone else was in shambles. All those countries could only ascend.
Bieber probably does beat Beethoven in Canada but that is something you will have to figure out.
The closest to failure of the U.S. came when citizens of its southern states thought that the Central planners and deep thinkers of the northern region were overstepping their powers in applying a development model antithetical to the southern economic model based on slavery and free trade.
I know of no one who would have predicted the fall of the U.S. for lack of central planning, though fear of "mob rule" ie. democracy was a constant fear of Conservatives.
Euro powers predicted the fall of America non stop as it fit their mindset that a monarchy was superior.
The southern issue was driven by an independent mindset of states rights and a disagreement about slavery. I don't agree with the issue the felt was worth fighting over although I know their economic model was based heavily on it. The north was not uniform in their thinking but eventually as the war dragged on their had to be a clear rationalization for all the blood shed.
Very perceptive comment on the true dynamics of the slave south and our own current plantation government. Now we are supposed ot be happy that we only work 3 to 6 months for free. So I guess that means we are half free?
You know its an interesting question. How much confiscation of your labor via confiscation of your income does it take to finally be a slave? What's the difference between 99% and 100%? Is it 90%? 85%? Or since income is really about choices, the question might be, "How many of your choices have to be eliminated before you become a slave?" Sometimes it happens so slowly that you don't see it. For instance, I would say that one of the tests of slavery is the lack of an option to leave a relationship. The slaves had to be chained down, and socialists/communist states build walls to keep people in.
A portion of our incomes are taxed in order to make a forceable donation to a charity that someone else decides is good (much the way people used to be forced to tithe to churches they wanted nothing to do with). What happens if you don't pay? They send "law enforcement" to imprison you. Suddenly your choice of association has just been taken away. If you resist arrest, they shoot you.
So contrary to the claims that shooting and imprisoning people here ,like they do in North Korea, won't ever happen, is contrasted with the reality is that we do shoot and imprison people in the US when they attempt to sever associations that the people with the guns and jail say they should have. Have we become slaves and have yet to recognize it?
The last time I checked, no one "forces" you to collect a paycheck from your employer. Hence your conclusion that taxation is slavery is a complete untruth masked with doublespeak.
You say it's OK to let a corporation buy as much land as it can afford; yet by doing so you eliminate the choices of citizens in the community as to where they can walk, live, or breathe clean air and drink clean water. Corporations can buy political votes. That eliminates representation on the basis of one-vote-one-person and changes the equation to one-vote-one-dollar.
I claim slavery is when government passes laws to incarcerate those who could not afford to pay their taxes and their TOTAL payments to the government --- sales tax + FICA + medicaire + state tax + federal income tax + capital gains --- amounts to DOUBLE the percent of their total income compared to the 1%.
BOOM!!!
Love it ColdLogic!!
100% true my friend!!
All the best.
And it's worth noting that, "Two large-scale, nationally representative United Kingdom data sets (N = 15,874) found that lower general intelligence in childhood predicts greater racism in adulthood, and this effect was largely mediated via conservative ideology...All analyses controlled for education and socioeconomic status...Of the total predictive effect of childhood cognitive ability on adult racism, between 92% and 100% was indirect, mediated by conservative ideology."
Hodson, Gordon, and Busseri, Michael, 2012. "Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes : Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low Intergroup Contact". Psychological Science 2012 23: 187. Sage Publications. Association for Psychological Science.
http://bit.ly/yTCiu1
This study blows big holes in the idea that smart people do dumb things.
That is a study looking for a preconceived outcome and any conclusions from a UK study would not mean that much in the US anyways. The UK should be embarassed.
In the US the low brow culture is anti women, worships the drug and gun culture and is pretty much anti state and anti authoritiy.
That culture and those attitudes will not get one a job with a liberal or a conservative in the US and in the words of today "just sayin."
Tax rates have declined since the post-WWII era. Particularly since the Reagan Thatcher era, there has been a tendency in the West (Canada included) for higher taxation on consumption to compensate for lower taxes on income. The U.S. has no Federal consumption tax but has nevertheless lowered taxation on income. We are far from the 91% top marginal rate during the Eisenhower era.
You might have a better argument in government intrusion if you did not drop regulations. Certainly, environmental regulations are stricter, and utilized where standards did not even exist ( consider the CAFE standards for the auto industry. Safety standards save tens of thousands of lives each year, a benefit of government "intrusion".
Perhaps the concern of Conservatives to all perceived attacks on their idealized society makes one think that governmental involvement in peoples lives has increased. Reagan's "success" is evident in the inability of what's left of the social safety net to lessen the growing inequality of American life.
The size of Government grew immensely under his tenure.
It is like a tumor, out of control.
Like Al'Queda, if it is not eradicated very soon, it will kill us all.
You're also trying to play games with nominal vs inflation adjusted brackets and marginal vs effective tax rates. The 91% bracket started at $3 million for married filing jointly and there existed numerous tax avoidance mechanisms at the time such that effective tax rates were at or lower than where they are now, particularly as we now have the AMT hitting the middle and upper-middle classes that did not exist in the Eisenhower era.
Social safety nets never have and never will lessen inequality. Indeed the "inequality is bad" argument is mindless swill for those that fall for cheap pabulum. Dynamic societies that maximize wealth creation and the increase in standard of living also typically see growing income inequality. Only the foolish want the issue to be a fight over equality in a shrinking pie.
You present a misleading dichotomy. The choice is not limited to "Dynamic societies that maximize wealth creation and the increase in standard of living (with)...growing income inequality" vs. "equality in a shrinking pie". Germany, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Canada, Australia (to name only a few examples) are dynamic societies with significantly less income inequality than the US.
Arguably, in fact, growing income inequality in the US is a key factor which is retarding US economic growth and stability. While no one would argue that the US over the past 3 or so decades has not experienced significant sectors of dynamic growth and innovation, a good argument can be made that the stagnation of income growth for a large portion of middle and low income Americans (and the dependence of many of these people on unsustainable accumulation of debt to mask income stagnation) has been a serious drag on the vitality of the US economy and a source of growing fragility of that economy over recent decades. The exponential growth of income and wealth for a small sector of US society at the expense of the others has not offset the problems described posed by stagnation for the bulk of the population; quite the contrary.
You make the assumption that income inequality is a bad thing which it might be and perhaps not. If a small percentage of the people have the education and the drive to move large portions of the economy that benefit a greater population then careful about the next step. Much better than an elite minority in government who could not run a puppy farm impoverishing all citizens through "fair" and foolish policies. The US is still the largest economy in the world and still grows on that very large number YOY.
You also assume that they people in middle and low income are not there by choice and that those income stratas are their destination and not a way station to another level. The causation for excessive debt by people may be excessive tax burdens at all levels, excessive consumption, people in their child bearing years or a high divorce rate.
I don't think we understand as much as we believe we do because politics drives the debate not clear understanding.
I'll grant you that assumptions that if only everyone received the basics for a healthy life, a decent access to opportunities to develop and benefit from their talents and a decent income stream, then the problems and tensions in society would melt away and each individual and society as a whole would develop optimally have in retrospect been shown to be naive. The early and middle years of the 20th century were the highpoint of implicit acceptance of such assumptions and we now live in a time of reaction against the excesses in such optimism.
An overreaction to such assumptions leads, however, in my view to unwarranted pessimism and implicit Social Darwinist assumptions (especially bizarre when held by those whose religious beliefs reject Darwin's theory of natural selection). The better view in my opinion is that the sort of amelioration of social conditions I tried to summarize at the beginning of this comment is, on balance, beneficial to the majority of society and to society generally but that we should not make overly optimistic assumptions about the nature and extent of the gains that can be achieved. Further, we all individually and as a society must constantly assess whether particular measures adopted by society are actually achieving the benefits assumed and doing so in an efficient and effective manner.
In short, both optimists like me and pessimists like you when it come to these questions have valid points to make and together we help ensure that society doesn't get into an ideological rut on such matter. I just happen to think that, at present. the pendulum in the English speaking world has swung too far in favour of the position you express.
Actually I am an optimist because I believe everyone should choose their lifestyle and the level of investment and sacrifice they want to make to live a different lifestyle. That opportunity exists today in America. I respect people that make those clear headed decisions. What does not exist in any reality for long is people wanting to put nothing into themselves or invest but expect that they deserve the same lifestyle as someone who does.
And by the way religious beliefs that are in harmony with this view are all over the Bible in that able bodied people should work. God worked 6 days and rested on the 7th and insisted the children of Israel do the same. Sorry but this refutes your opinion at its core.
Making a holistic choice about lifestyle and investment in work and the other key drivers of income are personal perogatives and should be respected not lamented. That is why you are in fact pessimistic. You think anyone who is not on the same fast track to riches is to be pitied. They may have made that choice intentionally and for sure they made it unintentionally.
I cannot live in NYC so by your logic that is not fair. I should obviously get a massive raise and a bonus for real estate investment in Manhattan. I never felt that way until I started reading your views and now I realized I have been screwed.
Ultimately income disparity provides political fodder to drive voters' thinking and behavior and is used as a vote lever not as a point of understanding how people make decisions. And we don't even have a good idea of who is moving in and out of these income stratas. We talk about them all as static groups. I question whether they are destinations or way stations.
The middle part of the 20th century was also a period of recovery from WWII and the only way was up. In addition America had no competetition so success was easy. It is a head fake to interpret that time period as a zenith of long term planning or policy.
Also it is naive to think that tensions will ever disappear in society because jealousy is a human trait. When we lived in agrarian economies people competed over the best and the most farmland. People in the country resented people in the village. People on the hillside resented people in the valley. Emotions should not drive policy which is what politicians are trying to exploit all the time to motivate supporters.
The only time income inequality is a concern is when it’s a symptom of government force or private fraud, and even then it’s not the problem to attack. The increasing income inequality between private sector workers/retirees and public sector workers/retirees is simply a symptom of a far greater problem with the functioning of government. (Note that in this case Bob has no problem with income inequality.)
Conversely take the example of Apple Inc.. I don’t care that Steve Jobs and his collegues widened the income gap with me because of their development of the iphone, ipad, and ipod. Even though I fell behind in income they increased the total pie and raised my standard of living and enjoyment of life right along with theirs. Bob however sees this as a bad thing. It's nothing more than a display of his perverse view of the world that he’s got to have as much or more than everybody else, and if not it’s government’s role to make sure that happens.
It doesn't appear to bother you that the US now ranks at or near the bottom of the G20 countries in terms of social mobility, that the US income distribution increasingly mirrors that of third world countries rather than that of modern advanced ones and that, over time, the pattern described by the aforesaid will tend to become hereditary.
I'm not an American and don't live in the US so these are issues that generally don't affect me. However, if I were an American I would want reasonable, moderate but effective efforts to be taken through the taxation system to recycle income and wealth sufficiently to ensure that the US remained a truly equal opportunity society.
The brain drain is out of Europe (and elsewhere) to the US, not the other way around. The likes of Apple, Google, Intel, etc. are filled with bright young people that left to escape the stagnation that is Europe. Do all these bright people contribute to a greater income spread (i.e. inequality) in the US - absolutely! And that's a good thing. It benefits all of us and should be celebrated just as Steve Job's successes should be celebrated.
Success doesn't come from theft (aka "recycling income"), nor does a civil society tolerate the mob rule that enables such theft. The path to a corrupt third world banana republic is the path you advocate - having bureaucrats like yourself decide what level of income is "good" and confiscating beyond that threshold through the tax system. At the same time you demonize the producers and rationalize the theft by fooling a large segment of the population that were it not for the producers they'd be more successful themselves. You don't want equality of opportunity, you want equality of condition, and that requires oppressive government to pull off.
What brought this to mind was your assertion that recycling income is theft. The anarchist Proudhon had asserted that property was theft. Marx's labor theory of value considered the wealth of "job providers" as theft from workers whose labor was underpaid. From these assertions could and did come violent reactions and revolutions. Are we not today approaching again the views of the Social Darwinists who favored allowing nature to take its course and letting the "losers" die. The supporters of the Eugenics movement were for the betterment of humanity. Nazis were giving nature a hand and practicing "human husbandry" in a search for a perfected human society.
Today's singleminded belief that, from the "job providers", all good things come, justifies for the Right, a call for the elimination of taxes they pay. To those of this mindset, the existense of cheaper labor somewhere on the planet, demonstrates the overpayment of workers in rich countries. When one venerates the god of material success, it becomes easy to rationalize away the difficulties of overpriced losers.
As to linking bureaucracy with third world results, I believe you have it wrong. I personally have often ranted at what I have considered inappropriate bureaucratic regulations. But, as oxygen is a marker for the existence of life, the existence of a mandarin class is a marker for an evolved civilization . The renowned economist, Hernando Desoto, blames much of our present economic problems to the circumventing of official bureacracy. The resultant opacity made possible the creation of the financial house of cards that made its presence known by its destruction.
...Firstoff, there *ARE* property rights. Just because their are *LIMITS* in special circumstances to property rights is not tantamount to saying there are no property rights at all.
...Second, material property rights are *NOT* equal in measure and extent to the "rights" to one's own body. I can shoot a tin can on the side of the road that doesn't belong to me without fear of jail, but I cannot shoot a person standing on the side of the road.
"The only way for people to be consistently abused is when power is given to a select few..."
Now I agree with your quote taken in isolation. IMHO, taking away the *RIGHT* of the people to elect officials and the *RIGHT* of a representative government to pass laws, INCLUDING progressive taxation, is giving unbridled power to a select few who generate the greatest increase in cash, wealth, income, and capital gains every year.
If you want to live in the USA - or any country for that matter - you have to play the economic game by THEIR RULES. After all, it is you who expect to gain from the enterprises, infrastructures, commerce, and producing members of society who co-exist and live by the rules within that country. No one has the *RIGHT* to singularly decide to take away all the rights of government to pass laws to protect its citizenry and make an orderly structure of economic well-being and life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Thankfully there are but a very, very tiny minority who would trade all their taxes for a country with NO PUBLICALLY FUNDED roads, bridges, police and militia, medical system, educational system, regulation of banks, brokerages, and financial markets, regulation of the safety of cars on the road, regulation and control over safe practices to prevent poisoning as a result of unsanitary or toxic agricultural practices, food processing, or product sales, regulation of safe drug development and protection against fraudulent claims and advertizing in drugs, and regulation of the medical industry for safe doctors and hospitals. Sure there are extremes that should constantly be checked and balanced through elimination of unnecessary laws, but also there are good laws that perform a needed function. Would you rather it be legal to put melamine in milk or benzene in your neighbor's well?
----- If Hell is considered punishment, then the only way to get rid of punishment is to get rid of Hell. Of course, if you don't believe in Hell, then you shouldn't be able to believe that Hell is punishment. Since you do believe in punishment, then you must believe in Hell.
Shall we now compare our methods for counting angels on a pin? We can all try, even those who say that they do not believe in angels. By your logic, everyone who believes in pins has to believe in angels.
The same is true for people who say they don't believe in property. If they make such a profession, then they should live with actions that are consistent with that profession. If they don't believe in property, then they shouldn't have anything or want anything. However, they do want and they do have, and what they want and what the want to have, is someone elses property. They are being inconsistent with regards to what they profess to believe. In other words they are committing fraud so they can steal.
Who is 'their'? Is not the foundation of this country 'we the people'? We make the rules. The problem is now that 'we the people' are shut out of that process. Agreed. No one has the *RIGHT" to singularly decide to take away all of the rights of the land, including a runaway CIC.
Next time you insist on your "right" to not pay taxes, it will be fair for the rest of the country to insist that you have no right to use their paid-for facilities and services as you are actually freeloading, which means you cannot travel upon public roads, send your kids to public schools, get treated at public hospitals, use electricity, water, or sewer from a public utility, or be saved in an accident by public EMS services if you won't pay your fair share towards these elements of infrastructure and public services. That pretty much leaves your only option to rot on your own real estate becaues there won't be any way to leave that area to relocate to that shack in Montana where no one will care if your children are educated, if anyone responds to your 911 calls when your neighbor shoots you for yelling at him, where you won't have electricity, won't be able to drive a car anywhere because all roads are owned by the public, and won't be able to use a bank because the Federal banking system pays for the oversight of our monetary system. Since no doctor will come to your house when your wife gives birth becaues you won't be allowed to set foot in a publically owned medical facility, then there will be no future generations to continue in the same extremism.
If you are Canadian you go to Montana to get healthcare so it certainly wouldn't be a problem if you're already in Montana. You're just another of the knobs here that have no idea how what you advocate actually works when applied in the real world.
http://bit.ly/zZ7J6N
CANADA’S 10-MONTH WAITING LIST FOR MATERNITY BEDS
"It turns out that the rare identical quadruplets recently born in Montana were delivered in the U.S. because the Canadian health care system had (you guessed it) no available maternity beds. The AP describes what the parents had to go through in order to find a hospital bed:
The Jepps drove 325 miles to Great Falls for the births because hospitals in Calgary were at capacity.
Here's more of the same. The second is from a Canadian doctor describing how much their healthcare system sucks.
http://bit.ly/AolgMD
http://bit.ly/AyiL5Q
Each system of health care funding has its strengths and weaknesses but arguably those in Canada (each Province has its own distinct plan but these plans are broadly similar) measure up rather well in comparison to the US situation.
The websites you provide give a distorted picture of why Canadians travel to the US for health care. Canadians do travel to the US, India, Malaysia and other destinations for medical treatment in some cases. A significant part to this travel to the US is the result of Canadian health authorities sending patients to US facilities, and paying for the services there. This is a cost saving measure for these authorities as it forestalls the need to enhance occasional peak or rarely used specialist capacity locally. Canadian residents, like many US residents, also as individuals at their own cost travel abroad for medical treatment for a variety of valid reasons and this is not necessarily a basis for claiming that health care is intrinsically or generally better in such other places. Numerous US citizens travel to Edmonton in Alberta for eye surgery or to Spain or Italy for stem cell related treatments because of the advanced techniques available in each of these niche situations.
Even where it is not one of these niche situations, many US and Canadian residents travel to India or Malaysia for surgery at their own cost because they have reason to believe they will receive quality service, sooner and at lower cost than would be the case back in their home countries. We do not conclude from this that the Indian and Malaysian health care systems are generally superior to those available in North America.
The system of publicly funded health care in each of the Provinces provides many advantages to Canada and Canadians (these include: universal coverage, significant savings to employers in employee health care benefit costs, a national net cost savings equal to about 5% of GDP in comparison to US costs, fewer discrepancies in service levels between urban and rural areas and between districts within urban centres and a significant contribution towards the fact that Canadians currently live, on average, about 2 years longer than Americans). There is one area of weakness that should be noted, however, which is a tendency to underfund services for chronic but not life threatening conditions. This can lead to delays for hip and joint replacement surgery and the like. How best to address this problem area is a hot topic of public and political debate in Canada.
Contrary to your claim here these aren't Americans pointing out that the Canadian healthcare system sucks, they're Canadians pointing out that the Canadian healthcare system sucks.
Here's the Globe and Mail:
"No one knows that better than Jade Pascoe, of Cranbrook, B.C., who went into labour 15 weeks earlier than her due date. She gave birth on March 29, to Nevin James William Moore, who came into this world weighing 1 pound 10 ounces. “They tried to get me somewhere in Canada,” said Ms. Pascoe, 19. “But there was nowhere to send me.” The hospital where she gave birth does not have a NICU. And when no NICU bed could be located in B.C. or Alberta, her son was sent to a hospital in Spokane, located in eastern Washington.
http://bit.ly/zuh5qS
Here's Dr. Kurisko's testimony before a Committe of the Minnesota House of Reps (Kurisko is a Canadian physician):
"There are three practical reasons why Canadian universal health care is a failure."
http://bit.ly/yAXgf0
Here's the Toronto Star publishing a piece interviewing Dr. Anne Doig, former President of the Canadian Medical Association:
"We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize," Doig told The Canadian Press.
http://bit.ly/xMlGOf
Go wrap yourself in the Canadian flag Bob. You're just another BC bureaucrat promoting a failed system that doesn't serve the public you're supposed to be serving to keep yourself from having to go out and seek gainful employment.
Bob,
The above is among the most pernicious of your fictions. Nevin James William Moore would likely be dead were it not for an NICU in Spokane Washington. That neither BC nor Alberta had a place for such an innocent life is an EPIC FAILURE of the Canadian so-called "healthcare" system.
Unbelievable that you'd so blithely dismiss the faults in such an inept system.
I think that Bob Adamson meets the loftiest levels of the standard indicated above. Accusing him of blithely dismissing the "faults in such an inept system" indicates that your prose had propelled you into rant mode.
We all know that our system can be improved. We compare our health system to what is being done in other countries and often find it wanting. But, as I have indicated elsewhere, and so far with no refutation, there is no quicker road to political oblivion in Quebec and I assume in the rest of Canada, than to recommend the elimination of our system in favor of the pre-Obama U.S. health care system.
There is nothing lofty about deceit to promote an ideology.
To claim that "There is one area of weakness that should be noted" is an outright lie. As cognitively challenged as Bob may be he's fully aware of that. The Canadian system is suffering systemic failure built on numerous failures. One of those is BC’s habit of cramming newborns into air ambulances for extremely high-risk trips to Washington (state) hospitals to try to keep them alive. Only in Bob's perverse view of the world and his "my ideology must win at all costs!" mentality can he dismiss this as not a problem. If you don't see that you're as far gone as he is.
Here’s more from the story. Note that I used to live near Spokane and it’s a conservative part of the State. There’s some irony that the folks you two punters call “Social Darwinists” and continuously demagogue with your Marxist drivel are the good folks that are bailing your butts out because you two are more interested in promulgating your ideology than a functioning healthcare system that can take care of your own citizens including a vulnerable newborn but a few hours old.
http://bit.ly/zuh5qS
“Whenever a sick baby is born, it's really a disaster for these families because it was unexpected. And it just puts a terrible stress on them,” Dr. Chessex said. “If they are sent out of country at that moment, it is just unbelievable the kind of pressure that they must go under.”
No one knows that better than Jade Pascoe, of Cranbrook, B.C., who went into labour 15 weeks earlier than her due date. She gave birth on March 29, to Nevin James William Moore, who came into this world weighing 1 pound 10 ounces. “They tried to get me somewhere in Canada,” said Ms. Pascoe, 19. “But there was nowhere to send me.” The hospital where she gave birth does not have a NICU. And when no NICU bed could be located in B.C. or Alberta, her son was sent to a hospital in Spokane, located in eastern Washington.
During that time, doctors, nurses and others took turns using a manual respirator for six hours on the boy, until he arrived by air ambulance at Deaconess Medical Center. He is expected to stay there until July.
Of her son, born at 25 weeks gestation, Ms. Pascoe said: “I didn't know they came that small.” Though he is not yet stable enough for her to kiss or cuddle, she can touch him. Patrice Sweeny, assistant neonatal intensive-care unit manager at Deaconess Medical Center, said Nevin is on a ventilator and requires a lot of support but he is improving.
“Jade comes in every day and is very devoted and does everything that she can,” Ms. Sweeny said in a telephone interview. “She takes his temperature, changes the diaper. She is as involved with her baby as possible.”
Ms. Pascoe's grandmother, Sydenia Cumming, said while the B.C. government pays for all the care costs in the U.S., there are other expenses the family must absorb, such as food, lodging and transportation.
“There are a lot of expenses; it's pretty hard,” said Ms. Cumming, 70, who was visiting Nevin in Spokane. “The hospital is wonderful, the staff is wonderful. Nothing could be better that way; it would just be more convenient to be home.”
To claim that "There is one area of weakness that should be noted" is an outright lie. That is your assertion. Where's the lie? Should he, as a Social Democrat, blindly espouse his preferred health system as perfect? Or, did he wilfully miscount the areas of weakness that are worthy of note?
I used to enjoy Bill Buckley's Firing Line and his writings in the National Review. I usually disagreed with him.. I disagree with much of the writings of Karl Marx. I have never thought that either was "cognitevely challenged." To resort to questioning the intellectual capacity of one of obvious ability, as you have done, is to demonstrate either your personal inability to support your point of view, or the weakness of the point of view itself.
WFB is far superior.
Missed this before and need to stop your attempted coverup here, particularly when you're citing Douglas as a "Father" when he advocated eugenics.
Here is Bob's statement again:
"There is one area of weakness that should be noted, however, which is a tendency to underfund services for chronic but not life threatening conditions."
That's a lie. That neither BC nor Alberta could keep 1 lb 10 oz Nevin Moore alive is a "life threatening condition" and it's a weakness. In fact it's far more than a weakness - it's a symptom of a system in crisis and failing. Keep in mind that Nevin's case is not an isolated incident - it's become commonplace. That Bob attempts to cover this up with statements such as the above is clear deceit.
I suggest you not try pulling off this bs in the future. You're only wasting your time and mine.
I’ve really got up your nose for reasons I don’t fully understand and never intended. I’m merely trying to describe and evaluate things as I see them relating to the country in which I reside and about which I know a fair amount. I am not sugar-coating the matters I’m describing nor am I expecting non-Canadians to necessarily be persuaded by what I describe or to change their views and adopt the Canadian system; I’m simply participating in a discussion.
I don’t particularly mind the vigorous way in which you express your disagreement with my positions in the matter of Canadian health care but find it passing strange that you would describe me as making ad hominem attacks on yourself at the same time as you choose to describe me as some cartoon version of a manipulative Marxist ideologue bent upon imposing my will come what may on the people of my country.
Clearly you and I see quite different things when we read the Globe and Mail story to which your preceding comment refers. I see a geographically very large country that made some health care service delivery choices a decade or so previously and finds the delivery of these emergency services becoming unacceptably difficult in what can only be very stressful circumstances for all involved. I see an open public debate about the need to redress this difficult problem and, in the meantime, I see local medical systems scrambling in a cooperative manner to find the best way to respond to a medical emergency which lead to sending the mother to the US having first canvassed what was available in two large Provinces. The emergency was successfully responded to albeit with undue stress and anxiety for all concerned. A debate is underway to see how best to improve the availability of services given other competing needs. This, to my mind, is the way difficult choices should be made.
Interesting. A binary statement being used to condem binary statements. Its like saying, "There are no black and white positions", but the presence of the word "no" then means that the position of "no black and white positions", is a black and white postion.
http://bit.ly/y9fmir
Get people to stop making excuses for taking the food out of the mouths of my children and giving it to themselves via gov and calling their theft compassion.
We now both agree that there are black and white positions in the world. So before we go and start taking huge risks in the areas where we aren't sure what the black and white positions are, we should remember that we are not sure what we are doing. There are alot of people in this thread suggesting I should let them violate the rights of me and my family based on their unproven assumptions.
Granted, I can't prove my assumptions either, but I'm not the one saying I should be able to use force and fraud to put their labor and time at risk. I am saying the only thing gov force should be used for is to repel illegitimate force between two individuals. The rest is up to our ingenuity, reason, and instincts. If I am limited from stealing by people in gov, and if people in gov are limited from stealing from me, the only alternative left for survival and improving my standard of living is voluntary cooperation. In such a system, no one can get rich while someone else gets poor. The only time that can happen is in a system where force is being used, and it doesn't matter if the force is used by gov or by private actors. What is being argued here in this thread is a series of excuses, unsupported assumptions, and specious reasoning by a bunch of self righteous pietist to make excuses why some stealing is justified. This is called fraud.
I would only amplify the points you have made by noting that, like capitalism, government funded or assisted delivery of universal health services takes an almost infinite variety of forms from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. By way of illustration, the UK system traditionally relied upon the actual direct employment of a large proportion of medical doctors and other health professionals for its delivery of universal services but also did not interfere with the continuation of a parallel private sector of doctors and clinics that functioned outside the public system on a fee for service basis from private patient clients while, by contrast, the large majority of Canadian medical doctors, both in Family practice and Specialists, remain in private practice but receive fees for service from Provincial plans for medical services provided to patients of those doctors (However, it is a condition of the contract those doctors each have with their plan that they will not provide services covered by the plan apart from the plan to private clients and will not bill bill for those services except as provided for by the fee schedules established under their plan). In other words, the UK plan traditionally has been administered much more as an organization directly providing services through its employees (but allows a parallel private sector to serve private clients at the expense of those clients) while, on the other hand, the Canadian plans focus much more on the funding of services delivered by private practitioners to patients of those private practitioners but these plans strongly discourage the capacity of private practitioners to establish private practices outside the plans.
From this it is worth noting that the way public health care provision develops in each jurisdiction is strongly influenced by the historical evolution of the delivery of health care services generally in each jurisdiction. Typically such an evolution is incremental, unique to the jurisdiction and spaced over an evolution of many decades.
Indeed you really stepped in it declaring that little Nevin James William Moore and the quest to keep him alive on an air ambulance flight to a US hospital to save him was not a problem to your way of thinking. It’s laid bare your blind march toward an ideology whatever the cost to others. Just one bureaucratic screw-up defending the brotherhood.
His family should have called around to the veterinary clinics. Dogs have better and quicker access to medical care than what you’re willing to provide to Canadians (the humans that is).
Here's what a privatized system could bring to Canada:
"Veterinary Care Faster Than Health Care for Humans"
Dr. Danny Joffe is only half joking when he says that if he'd fallen asleep on the last day of vet school in Saskatoon and woken up some two decades later in his current workplace, he would not have believed it was an animal hospital. Joffe is one of 11 specialists at the C.A.R.E. Centre, a 28,000-sq.-foot palace of veterinary medicine built two years ago in Calgary by a consortium that owns 23 vet clinics and animal hospitals across British Columbia and Alberta. It has four operating theatres, a $100,000 CT machine, two ultrasound machines, a digital X-ray unit, an endoscopy centre, a lab and 16 examination rooms. Its intensive care unit boasts 20 cages and eight dog runs, staffed 24/7. "It's just like an emergency centre at a tertiary care human hospital," Joffe says.
There is almost no pet illness that can't be treated here. For eye problems, C.A.R.E. provides ophthalmologists who perform cataract surgery. Orthopaedic surgeons do hip replacements or arthroscopy - minimally invasive surgery on joints. To treat cancer, a surprisingly common disease in dogs and cats, says Joffe, "Our oncologist can offer intricate chemotherapy protocols and our surgeons can do very extreme and elaborate surgeries, including mass removals, amputations and bone transplants from cadaver dogs." As for MRIs, C.A.R.E. has a standing two appointments a week booked at a private human facility in the city. "For you or I it might be a several-month process," says Joffe of getting an MRI. "We get it done in a week or less."
Trouble is, when it comes to medical care in Canada, our pets are often getting what we get - and a whole lot more besides. And they're getting it faster too. Using just about every machine known to human health care - CT scans, MRIs, ultrasounds, lasers and scopes of all sizes - animal cardiologists and oncologists, ophthalmologists, dermatologists and orthopaedic surgeons are offering a level of service so high that it rivals - some say surpasses - human medicine's. Vets can identify every pet problem from bowed tendons to blocked urethras to arthritic hips, and set to work fixing them immediately.
http://bit.ly/AoAQU0
I could care less about your attacks on me. What I was pointing out is that when I cite sources such as the former President of the Canadian Medical Assoc. Dr. Doig and other Canadian physicians and sources you simply attack them as "distortions" without citing any countering sources. That's the definition of ad hominem - you're attacking the character of the sources I present rather than dealing with the facts and countering with your own sources.
Let's try to revisit the topic of the use made by local health authorities in Canada of medical facilities in the US. As I have said previously, this is a management strategy whereby these local authorities avoid the high costs of establishing and maintaining (a) services that are rarely called upon and (b) peak load capacity for some other services where it would be inordinately costly to maintain that capacity on a continuing basis. As noted earlier, these local health authorities also co-operated amongst themselves within Provinces and across Canada to the same end.
You quite properly note that such management strategies can result in situations occasionally arising where a critical service is needed on an emergency basis and everyone concerned must then scramble at great risk and with high anxiety and, importantly, that these added problems should be avoided wherever practical I responded that where such cases arise, this calls for a review of the circumstances to ascertain how availability of services needs to be improved in an efficient and effective way. I continue to hold that it is a mark of a good system that it provides needed services of high quality in the most effective and efficient manner at reasonable cost and that it continually adjusts when evidence of inadequacies are uncovered.
Say what you will about the health care system in Canada, it is capable of uncovering and responding to systemic issues and this can not be uniformly said of some systems elsewhere (I leave it to others to judge the situation in the US in these terms) which, while great in other ways, do not lend themselves to addressing systemic problems in an organized way.
Focusing back on the management decision of some local health authorities, in effect, to outsource some peak of occasionally used service delivery (either on a contract or a case by case ad hoc basis) to nearby US facilities, an analogy can be drawn to a university that encourages its students to avail themselves while completing their degree program of opportunities to take a semester or two at a university abroad. This can be great for all concerned if well thought through and executed but a disaster if not well conceived and operated.
That is actually an interesting question.
US citizens routinely travel to Canada for laser surgery to correct myopia as this is not a service covered by our Medicare pPans (and therefore provided generally at patient cost), is significantly cheaper than in the US and is well performed.
Tourists needing medical treatment can receive emergency care at hospitals. It is wise if they have insurance to cover this before coming to Canada as this simplifies the process of getting treatment.
Because it is a condition of the contract of medical doctors receiving payments under Canadian Medicare Plans that they not charge for services covered by these Plans except through these Plans, doctors' offices generally are not organized to process the billing of foreign insurers or foreign patients for many services. In other words, while there is no legal reason why Canadian doctors can't provide such services to foreign patients, most would probably not be prepared (i.e. they would be unsure of the legalities under Provincial law, what fees they should charge and how they would bill foreign ensurers etc.) if one were to approach them for service.
Further to my earlier comment, you might be interested in the following article that assesses how Canadians wishing to seek medical services in the US should go about this.
http://bit.ly/AlM9CU
This is the flip side to the issues raised by your earlier question.
Note as well that that article is addressing the 'medical tourist' issue which is somewhat different to the 'peek load' strategy of Canadian local health authorities that find it advantageous to send patients to nearby US facilities as needed rather than create local peek load capacity.
It's the only one of which I'm aware that actively markets in the US for patients. As I tried to explain in my earlier comments, one of the ways that the Medicare Plans in each of the Provinces try to control the pace of cost increases to their Plans is to require that doctors that provide services under their Plan to patients covered by that Plan to not also bill privately (i.e. where the Plan will not ultimately pay or reimburse for the service rendered) for those covered services to other patients eligible under the Plan. In other words, doctors can opt in and billing under their Province's Plan or opt out and only bill private patients where the Plan will not be so billed; doctors don't have the option to
(a) split their practice into Plan covered patients and patients not so covered (or provide Plan covered services sometime for payment under the Plan and sometimes not), or
(b) split their practice year so that they operate within the Plan part time and outside the Plan other times.
Unless a doctor is satisfied therefore that he or she will have a sufficient steady stream of private well paying patients who
(a) are prepared to pay for services covered by the Plan without billing the Plan for those services.
(b) seeking services such as laser vision correction that the Plan does not cover,
(c) are non-residents in Canada not covered by the Plan
(d) are solely a mixture described by points (a) to (c)
it is simply not worth the doctors effort to cultivate this 'private' market.
Corrective laser eye surgery is a niche market that can meets the criteria just described (i.e. serving Canadian residents and non residents with a service generally not covered by Plans but in sufficient demand to be profitable for private clinics in Canada) but, to my knowledge, there are not other similar niche markets.
It might also generate one in Canada as well but whether such a legal action would succeed is an open question. Clearly the fact that the vast majority of Canadians will not seek medical services available under Medicare from a doctor not covered by a Medicare Plan makes almost all areas of medical practice uneconomic as a business model if one as a doctor wants to practice outside the Medicare Plan. Thus, the fact that such a doctor is free in law to try to establish such a practice is, practically speaking, somewhat beside the point. Set against this is the fact that there are different Plans in each Province, each with its own fee structure, and that those fee structures are settled collectively through negotiations between the Provincial Government and the Provincial Branch of the Canadian Medical Association in each Province. Relevant as well is the fact that doctors practicing under the aegis of a Medicare Plan are only really constrained in the level of fees they can charge patients for Medicare covered services and are left largely free as private professionals to develop their practices as businesses subject only to the professional ethics of their profession. While it probably isn't directly relevant from a legal standpoint, it is worth noting that medical doctors do benefit economically from the monopoly on the right to practice medicine accorded to members of their Provincial Professional College.
I've reviewed my earlier comments addressed to you to see if there is any basis for your assertion that you have been subjected to ad hominem attacks therein. I assure you that if such had been my intent (I can actually do ad hominem quite well but always regret afterwards having done so) this would have been plain for all to read (but such is not the case).
The Federal Government of Canada in 1995 embarked upon a major fiscal austerity program which, while it stood Canada in good stead in a general sense on and subsequent to the 2008 global economic meltdown, resulted in a drastic cut in transfer payments to the Provinces and thus constraints upon spending for social programs including health care. This means that services in some cases need to be sought for patients at public expense away from their area of residence and that there can, in some of these situations, be a scramble to find and arrange transportation for such patients for such care. Like with any other system there will be cases where mistakes will be made in making such arrangements. This may well go some way to describe the Jade Pascoe case and I only ask, in turn, whether every woman in Washington State (or in other US States) who found herself in the medical situation faced by Jade Pascoe would have had ready access to a NICU at public expense on a routine basis without delay.
It is a paradox face by medical systems throughout the world that as the potential to serve patients rapidly increases the cost of doing so increases much faster and the anxiety and frustration of people generally on this account increases as well. All these systems, each in its own way, tries to address this paradox and, with all its limitations, I believe the plans in Canada do quite well at striking a balance between cost and equitable service.
http://bit.ly/AaLMRs
Remember that the sampling error here is 3% (5% regarding Great Britain’s result).
The results show that Canadians have a level of satisfaction with the “quality of healthcare” in their country (52%) that is a bit higher than the level of satisfaction that Americans have with theirs (48%). It also shows that Canadians have a much higher level of satisfaction (57%) with the “availability of affordable healthcare” than Americans do (25%).
Seems to me that Canadians should be enormously satsified with "availability of affordable healthcare" since the cost is supposedly borne by somebody else. I am surprised it is only 57%while Americans feel the cost more directly. Another view is that for a program that all the people participate in to only have around 50% support is not that impressive.
On another note if we only polled people with life threatening illness I wonder what we would find.
And polling can be pretty useless and mindless. For the same reason that Steve Jobs never did focus groups for product development. And that is quite an old poll by the way.
As for life threatening disease, I can only provide anecdotal evidence. I have had to waste time waiting for service in the emergency room because my needs were deemed accurately as non life threatening. However, I was amazed at how fast service was provided for my mother in her last years, because her condition was life threatening. She died at age 91.
As for the "who pays" argument, when we have a choice in paying for a good or service directly, we want to believe that we have decided well. This is why it's so easy to sell a winning stock and so hard to sell a losing one. To sell at a loss means we've made a mistake. To hold on to losers provides the hope that we will eventually be proven right.
Americans who have choice in their health care should be more satisfied. To do otherwise would mean they've made an error. Canadians, who have no choice but to pay taxes into the system (think Wyatt Junker) should be dissatisfied and looking to find fault.
The fact is, there ample evidence that Gallup provides that correlate with real world outcomes. From Wikipedia:
“Historically, the Gallup Poll has measured and tracked the public's attitudes concerning virtually every political, social, and economic issue of the day, including highly sensitive or controversial subjects. In 2005, Gallup began its World Poll, which continually surveys citizens in more than 140 countries, representing 95% of the world's adult population. General and regional-specific questions, developed in collaboration with the world's leading behavioral economists, are organized into powerful indexes and topic areas that correlate with real-world outcomes.”
Link: http://bit.ly/zv31oe
Basically, the takeaway from the poll regarding “quality of care” is that people in both countries have comparable levels of satisfaction, and dissatisfaction. This is a simple concept. The logical conclusion here doesn’t translate into demonization of the Canadian system.
Also, the overall cost of Canadian healthcare in both dollars and as a percentage of GDP is less the cost of healthcare in the U.S. This includes revenue dollars from taxes contributed by the government. This is another simple fact. Check out “Cross Country Comparisons” in this article:
http://bit.ly/xGBoJC
While you are at it, check out the other metrics presented in this article, and compare Canada with the U.S.
As for polling people with life threatening illness, I guess you can start with me, though I must caution you that this only amounts to anecdotal evidence.
I’m a double cancer survivor, and, amazingly, have a good prognosis despite the mistakes made by healthcare providers. The most blatant was an incomplete diagnosis by a facility owned by an LLC, whose primary partner was an oncologist who just happened to do the diagnosis. I could tell that he was quite eager to do my treatment, as he didn’t provide an unbiased view of the alternatives.
On top of that, I had to wait two months for the treatment because of the waiting line, all this time watching the tumor grow.
When I arrived for treatment, I was told that the referring doctor, who was supposed to assist, wouldn’t be there, and there also would be no substitute (I guess it was too close to Christmas). I was extremely uncomfortable about proceeding, and this was very stressful, but decided to go ahead because I had already waited so long.
The nurse tried to comfort me by saying, “Your doctor really doesn’t need to be here. We just invited him to assist as a thank you for his referral”. Yes, that’s exactly what she said. I wrote it down at the time, so I know. It was just a nice little kickback that would have unnecessarily added to the cost of the procedure.
As it turned out, the treatment provided did cure one cancer completely, but exacerbated the progress of the other, which was much more serious. I won’t share what I had to endure, other than I heard later that my doctor was concerned about keeping me alive long enough to be treated (had to wait for that one, too), and if I would survive the treatment. I knew that I might die, and did take opportunity to rewrite my last will and testament.
I managed make it through two stem cell transplants (using my own stem cells), and here I am, with a very good prognosis.
There was another similar incidence of the same kind of thing, however I don’t have time to relate it.
Again, this personal account is anecdotal, and I’m not presenting it as evidence. I’m sure you can find more isolated horror stories in both countries.
Good to hear you are doing well through your ordeal. Good luck.
Here is why I just don't like loose polls like these:
1. The questions frame the answers. Do you feel you have affordable health care? The word "affordable" is a trigger word.
2. Different cultures respond differently. I work with people around the world. When I talk to someone in Eastern Europe they tell me everything sucks and give me a list of things wrong. When I talk to someone in India about the exact same issue they tell me things are fine and it is all sunshine and roses. It is actually hilarious and my colleagues and I laugh about it all the time. But you cannot compare the feedback because it is something in their culture that makes them respond differently.
Canada has the Kumbaya health system that should be hitting 90% satisfaction in my view so 50% is astounding. Here in the US we bitch about everything to some extent because we expect so much.
Also asking people about "affordable health care" when they have nothing to compare it to but only know they want to pay less is a ridiculous question.
The more I think about it the more this poll appears worthless. And come on it is almost 10 years old.
I agree with you that meaningful polling concerning general satisfaction within a country concerning their healthcare system is next to impossible. Further, it follows that trying to draw meaningful conclusions from comparison of the results of such polling in two or more countries is even more problematic.
The state of one's health and the implicit underlying concern with one's mortality arguably make the demands we all make on our health care systems in our minds infinitely inflatable. A perverse consequence of this fact is that as the potential benefits of available services and products increase we become ever more demanding that the best possible outcomes be attained (and are frustrated when the reality falls short of this overly ambitious goal). Increasing potential initially makes us happy and failure, when it occurs, to attain that potential fully is therefore doubly disappointing. The crosscurrents in a society of these reactions that we all share to some degree introduce an added element of irrationality and mood swings when it comes to questions of public attitudes about the health care they experience.
Thanks for the good wishes.
I’m not surprised that I got responses questioning the validity of polls and polling data. Done poorly they prove nothing. There is a good explanation of the potential problems inherent in polling in this article:
http://bit.ly/yQyByY
This particular poll was done by one of the most well regarded polling organizations. Polling is their business, and that is how they make money. They use well designed sampling techniques, and they have no bias one way or the other.
This poll is just what it is, nothing more, nothing less. It’s a sampling of opinion of a populations overall satisfaction with there own healthcare system. The results are to be interpreted in the light of the potential sampling error, which was disclosed.
I agree that “affordable” is a bit of loose word, and I appreciated your point there. So let’s just restrict this discussion to the “quality of care” question. There is no need to rely on an opinion poll regarding this anyway, since, in fact, Canadian healthcare is cheaper. That is a simple fact, and I provided a link to information on that in my comment above.
These two populations are voicing opinion on two different entities, and that has to be taken into consideration as well. They are not comparing each other’s healthcare system.
And yes, the study is 9 years old . My own conclusion regarding this was that in the years since the study, the two healthcare systems have not changed in any kind radical fashion, so that if the poll was done today, the result would be within a few percent of what they were then.
O.K., I think you and I may be on common ground now.
Given those factors mentioned above, one has to come to some conclusion as to what the poll might indicate (but not necessarily prove), and logic and reason can aid in making this assessment.
The conclusion that I came to was simply that this data didn’t support demonizing Canadian healthcare, as the poll indicates that it does, in fact satisfy a large segment of the population.
If you don’t agree, that’s fine with me. I only intended to open a window and provide some food for thought.
Other data outside of this poll also indicates that on some key parameters, average lifespan and infant mortality, widely recognized as being indicative of quality of healthcare, the U.S. and Canada are quite comparable, with Canada having a slight edge. Canada has slightly better numbers here than does the U.S. Canada ranks 12th regarding lifespan, and the U.S. ranks 36th. Regarding infant mortality, Canada ranks 24th, and the U.S. ranks 34th. Here’s some info:
http://bit.ly/z0IxG2
http://bit.ly/xp87Qw
Is either system perfect? No, they obviously aren’t, as roughly half of each population is dissatisfied.
I see other posters in this thread have provided information about some aspects of Canadian healthcare showing clear need for improvement. As some of the information provided was several years old, I’d be interested to know if there has been any improvement since then.
Some of the information was about the need for some Canadians to travel to the U.S. to receive treatment. Certainly this situation is not optimum, and hopefully is being addressed. I’d like to point out that in the U.S., there is often need to travel long distances to receive specialized treatment, 100 miles or more is not uncommon. And yes, this is inconvenient. I know from experience.
By the way, years ago, I did manage to have a nasty fall in a fairly remote area in Canada, and spent several days in a little 4 bed hospital. I was the only client, the other beds were vacant, so it was quite a cushy experience. But this is just anecdotal, and counts for naught.
Regarding polls almost all are done be large polling firms so that is not a point of credibility. Knowing who paid for the poll is something worth pursuing. These are not non-profit entities.
Having said that I would not use polls for much of anything even if they agree with my view. And polling people with different understanding of an issue is polling the ignorant and hoping for intelligence.
Seems to me the differences beween Canada and US is that Canada is providing general healthcare and rationing care through the budget process. US is providing general and specialized care and it costs a lot of money. However everyone wants specialized care when they need it so they fly to the US when the chips are down and also ask for subsidized drug treatments in their own country.
Bascially US citizens subsidize health care globally just like we underwrite military budgets.
It is true that much poll data from sources that are demonstrably biased are frequently used to provide “concrete proof” of one view of an issue. I have seen this done repeatedly on SA. It is certainly good to be aware of kind of thing, and a good point to bring up regarding polls in general. But Gallup Corporation is not one of the those.
Here’s info from Wikipedia about Gallup:
http://bit.ly/xaOATX
And here’s a quote from that article:
“To ensure his independence and objectivity, Dr. Gallup resolved that he would undertake no polling that was paid for or sponsored in any way by special interest groups such as the Republican and Democratic parties, a commitment that Gallup upholds to this day.”
I certainly don‘t want to convince you to use polls, but being one who uses and has used data sampling for many different purposes, I find well done polls to be a good place to start formulating hypotheses.
a) You describe what results you want, and any competent pollster can contrive a poll to give you those results.
b) A lot of idiots take polls. I'd rather not base my decisions on the answers of idiots to what is nothing more than a multiple choice test.
c) There's no comparative analysis in such polling. You have no evidence of to what degree those polled can accurately describe the state of their own country's healthcare system, let alone another country's.
d) I'd rather pay attention to what's happening in the real world. It's orders of magnitude more informative. Go to some of those links I've posted and pay particular attention to the doctors there such as Dr. Kurisko, the former President of the CMA Dr. Doig, and the guy that started it all, Castonguay. It's the practitioners and those that are actually attempting to use the system that you should be listening to.
Let's suppose you poll Ferrari owners and Cheverolet owners with their level of satisfaction with the cars they drive. And suppose just for argument the respondents in both groups are equally satisfied with their cars. Does that mean the Cheverolet is as good a car as the Ferrari. If you wanted to get out of town quick, which car would you choose. The poll does not in any way allow one to describe whether the technical, safety, etc. merits of one car are better or worse than the other. Thus given the polls above, you can't draw any conclusions about the quality of the health care systems being compared.
I’m bothered that you would leave the little people of Canada to suffer a system run by faceless bureaucrats that don’t care, aren’t held accountable, and (as you’ve attempted to do here) cover up the failure of the system.
Though the little people of Canada be not the self-important bureaucrat that thou art, will you step out of the grand edifice of the bureaucracy and bend an ear down to them to hear their pleas?
http://bit.ly/zUQnhl
I think you would be hard pressed to find in Canada "little people" in the condescending way you use that term in your post. We tend to become quite feisty if anyone puts on airs or purports to push us about. Like other countries we have our share of government, large corporations and other organizations that require a bureaucracy to function adequately and we expect people employed in such capacities to do their job well in the public interest (i.e. respect is a two way thing).
Turning to the YouTube presentation at the end of your comment, I suggest it reflects three things
1. There are shortages of Family Doctors, especially in Ontario and Québec and there are wait time problems for elective surgeries from time to time in various parts of Canada. As I said in an earlier comment, each type of system has its strengths and weaknesses and the lack of adequate peak capacity is the trade-off that Canadians sometimes face as a consequence of strenuous cost control measures. It might be argued that the US system avoids these problems for those that can pay well but at the cost of denial of service or substandard service for many millions of Americans. We in Canada struggle to better address our problem; I leave it to Americans to assess whether the US is taking adequate measures to better address its challenges.
2. There are those in the US that oppose the single payer system of health care provision and therefore want to show Canada's system in a bad light. The result is slanted presentations like the YouTube in question. There are, of course, presentations by other Americans that present a too rosy picture of Canada's system. I would suggest that the true picture is more complex but, on balance, that Canada's system works well for Canadians.
3. There are Canadians who would disagree with my supportive assessment of the Canadian system and there are other Canadians who like the notoriety and money to be made in the US by trashing the Canadian system. Their views are well disseminated in the US by those there that oppose the single payer system.
The fact is that there is a full array of health care funding and delivery models to choose amongst or select features from if Americans want ideas for possible reform of their current system. For example, the Swiss and Dutch have private sector based systems that provide both universality and cost control that might be more attractive than the Canadian model for many Americans. THere are many ways to skin this cat.
Here are more failures for you to cover up. If the BC Ministry of Truth isn’t already sending you a fat paycheck I think you ought to apply for a transfer in and give it a shot.
File these under “Canadians dumped into US Hospitals for care” or maybe, “Once we have Canadian healthcare in the US we’ll all be heading to Mexico to see a doctor”:
More than 150 critically ill Canadians – many with life-threatening cerebral hemorrhages – have been rushed to the United States since the spring of 2006 because they could not obtain intensive-care beds here.
Before patients with bleeding in or outside the brain have been whisked through U.S. operating-room doors, some have languished for as long as eight hours in Canadian emergency wards while health-care workers scrambled to locate care.
http://bit.ly/yUcUh4
More than 400 Canadians in the full throes of a heart attack or other cardiac emergency have been sent to the United States because no hospital can provide the lifesaving care they require here.
Most of the heart patients who have been sent south since 2003 typically show up in Ontario hospitals, where they are given clot-busting drugs. If those drugs fail to open their clogged arteries, the scramble to locate angioplasty in the United States begins.
“They rushed me over to Detroit, did the whole closing of the tunnel,” said Eric Bialkowski, 47, of the heart attack he had on March 14, 2007, in Windsor, Ont. “It was like Disneyworld customer service.”
While other provinces have sent patients out of country - British Columbia has sent 75 pregnant women or their babies to Washington State since February, 2007 - nowhere is the problem as acute as in Ontario.
http://bit.ly/wi0MV7
Hospitals in border cities, including Detroit, are forging lucrative arrangements with Canadian health agencies to provide care not widely available across the border.
Agreements between Detroit hospitals and the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care for heart, imaging tests, bariatric and other services provide access to some services not immediately available in the province, said ministry spokesman David Jensen.
The agreements show how a country with a national care system -- a proposal not part of the health care changes under discussion in Congress -- copes with demand for care with U.S. partnerships, rather than building new facilities.
http://on.freep.com/yy...
<numbers are minute marks for a few of the interesting bits>
5:00 – a guy with a broken clavicle waits five hours to be seen by a doctor and then is told there’s nothing they can do for him and he should go see an orthopedic doctor (gee thanks, that was helpful). Another patient waited nine hours to receive penicillin.
6:40 – nurse tells patient that to get a blood test for a cholesterol check that you need to get on a wait list for a family doctor and that the wait is TWO to THREE YEARS. The nurse also tells patient that he is young so he’ll be ok – he can afford to wait. At 8:00 she recommends a private clinic that will do the test for $900.
9:00 – at another government clinic the next day the receptionist recommends going to a private clinic “if you have the cash”. At this point it’s clear that to get treatment in Canada you really do need “cash” after all. (Ain’t gooberment run Canadian healthscare a blast?)
10:00 – lady describes her mother was to have one leg amputated due to circulatory problems but after a year’s wait for the surgery they had to amputate both legs due to the delay in amputating the first leg. Also they removed the best leg first (makes sense to me). She also mentions (@ 12:20) that her dog gets better (and immediate) treatment at the vet because “it’s private.” She considers getting her blood tested at the vet as well. (I certainly would if I was stuck in Canada.)
12:35 – after stepping on a rusty nail a guy describes going to clinic for a tetanus shot on a Monday and after a long wait to see a doctor he was told they ran out of tetanus shots and to come back on Thursday. He gave up and never went back.
http://bit.ly/wFThMo
Here's the guy that started it all in Canada. He's now saying "Stop the Madness!"
File this under “Canadian Health Care We So Envy Lies In Ruins, Its Architect Admits”:
The government followed his advice, leading to his modern-day moniker: "the father of Quebec medicare." Even this title seems modest; Castonguay's work triggered a domino effect across the country, until eventually his ideas were implemented from coast to coast.
Four decades later, as the chairman of a government committee reviewing Quebec health care this year, Castonguay concluded that the system is in "crisis."
"We thought we could resolve the system's problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it," says Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: "We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice."
Castonguay advocates contracting out services to the private sector, going so far as suggesting that public hospitals rent space during off-hours to entrepreneurial doctors. He supports co-pays for patients who want to see physicians. Castonguay, the man who championed public health insurance in Canada, now urges for the legalization of private health insurance.
http://bit.ly/y1iRyw
Claude Castonguay was the Quebec minister in charge of the implementation of a similar program in Quebec. In 2007, he questioned the long term viability of the program and made recomendations for financing it into the future. In 2009, he continued to recommend "flattening" the bureaucracy, but dropped any idea of increasing its financing by user fees or a hike in the provincial sales tax for the duration of the recession. Even though he wishes to continue the system, his recommendations for future financing put him on the Right in the Québécois context.
As I have mentioned previously, there is no faster road to political oblivion in Quebec, and I believe in the rest of Canada, than to suggest dropping the Canadian health system, warts and all, in favor of the pre-Obama U.S. health system. No, I have no proof as no one has yet been insane enough to propose it.
"Back in the 1960s, Castonguay chaired a Canadian government committee studying health reform and recommended that his home province of Quebec — then the largest and most affluent in the country — adopt government-administered health care, covering all citizens through tax levies."
You have skipped a few steps. Thus the insistence on Claude Castonguay who is of importance for Quebec, but is only a minor figure in Canadian health care. His desire for change in Quebec works, superficially at least, for your point of view.
If you want any credibility with those, even with only a cursory knowledge of Canadian health care, I suggest that you Google Medicare Canada and read the Wikipedia article. Considering your previous sources of information, I am sure there is much with which you will disagree. But, with Wikipedia, you can correct the "errors", if indeed there are any. From there you can go to factual general history or you can go immediately to cherry pick data to support your point of view.
For anecdotes, you should enjoy why publicly funded health care became such a big deal for Tommy Douglas (Kiefer Sutherland's grandfather, by the way). Douglas was a folksy orator, a preacher become politician, and his Mouseland speech is worth seeing. There is a CBC rendition of it on YouTube with an actor doing a very credible job of intoning his folksy style. It's a pitch for his CCF party, at the time, quite left wing, as compared to the establishment Liberals and Conservatives. The succesor party to the CCF is the New Democratic Party (probably Bob Adamson's preference) which now forms the Loyal Opposition on the Federal level and has at times formed the government of numerous provinces.
The U.S. analogy to the NDP would be the early 20th century Progressives whose "best" ideas were borrowed/stolen by the Democrats. The Liberals(usually my preference) did the same to the CCF/NDP.
Sorry! I did use lots of footnotes way back when, but I am incompetent with this tool. In fact all my earliest posts on Seeking Alpha are one paragraph. I couldn't start a new paragraph the way I had with an old-fashioned manual typewriter.
When you google and find your article and get the one you want, the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) address will show up in the top bar on your browser. Simply click you mouse in that bar where the URL is and it will highlight it. Then do "CTRL C" simultaneously to copy that information. It will stor it in working memory temporarily until you paste it. Then put your mouse cursor back into the comment section in an open space and do "CTRL V" to past it into the comment. When you hit REPLY, Seeking Alpha will change it to their format. Bingo you're done.
Bob - Thanks for helping me out and sort of acting as my informational crutch.
Cincinnatus - You've goaded me into admitting to one failing. You'll have to up your game to get me to to do it again.
Gee, I feel like Jacques Demers ( former succesful Montreal Canadiens coach who managed to hide his illiteracy for most of his life).
Is there some way on SA to see which articles have the most comments? This ones up to 285. I was wondering if we could get it to 500 and maybe set some sort of record.
http://seekingalpha.co...
http://seekingalpha.co...
An interesting contrast between the argument that we are doomed by MMT and fiat currency debasement vs the strong case for protecting the downside by going into 100% cash.
As you note, Cincinnatus cherry picks amongst some sometimes dubious sites and quotes to buttress his assertions. Here are some reliable sites that give a more accurate rendition of:
1. The evolution of Medicare in Canada
http://bit.ly/xcLRS7
http://bit.ly/yO6AE3
2. The related populations of Ontario and Québec at intervals throughout the 20th century
http://bit.ly/yt2XOC
I should have included the following link with my earlier comment relating to the accuracy of the sources quoted by Cincinnatus. It shows that the Quebec economy has consistently been smaller than that of Ontario since 1910.
http://bit.ly/ytZKey
That's the same dubious website that the Maclean's piece is on. Is it no longer dubious now that you've linked to it? I want to keep up on which websites our Bureaucrat-in-Residence has placed on the Approved List.
Thanks.
(Though I still think the Maclean's piece is a better source than your no-name author.)
As I said all you have going for you is character assassination. To claim that Maclean’s, Investor’s Business Daily, The Global and Mail, Toronto Star, etc. are more dubious than you are is comical.
A few corrections here. Firstly Douglas was from Saskatchewan, not Ontario. Secondly Quebec is larger than Ontario. It was “largest and most affluent,” with no claim of being most populous.
Lastly, your national system is derived from Quebec, not Saskatchewan. Quebec was the first province to institute universal and “free” coverage for all.
This is from the same website you provided so I suspect a character attack on this one is unlikely (though with you anything is possible in your ideological quest).
http://bit.ly/xfS0ny
For your further edification I submit this is from the McCord Museum which used to be connected with McGill University. This one probably deserves a good character attack so give ‘er a shot.
In 1966 the federal government continued its reforms, setting up a shared-cost health insurance program.
Concerned about ensuring its autonomy in the health care sector, the Québec government decided not to join this new program. Instead, that same year, it established the Castonguay-Nepveu Commission to ascertain the situation of health care and social welfare in Québec and examine the question of whether the province should establish its own health insurance program. The Castonguay-Nepveu Report proposed a complete overhaul of Québec's health care system. The commissioners recommended establishing a comprehensive health care system that would take into account the relationship between social conditions and health. They also recommended that the system be fully managed and funded by the State and that all care and services be universal and free of charge. Brought in by the Liberal government under Robert Bourassa (1933-1996), the Health Insurance Act was passed in July 1970. The resulting program covering all care and services constituted the backbone of the new Québec health care system.
http://bit.ly/zCSFzr
The Robert Bourassa Liberal government came to power in 1966. It is burned into every Canadian that the separatist Parti Québécois defeated the Liberals and came to power in 1976. This date is as evident to Canadians as 1066 is to the English and 1776 to the Americans. Quebec has not been the dominant province for about 100 years. The big 5 banks in Canada run their operations out of Toronto including Scotia Bank and the Bank of Montreal. The largest Canadian bank, the Royal Bank, was founded in Halifax, had a long stint in Montreal and is now headquartered in Toronto.
Horace Greeley's "Go west, young man, go west" was as true for Canadians as Americans.
All this is irrelevant to your analysis. If in your evaluation, freedom of choice is more important than the threat of bankruptcy from an expensive illness , more important than a less expensive system with better overall results, then so be it. The large majority of Canadians disagree.
There was no assertion by IBD or myself that Quebec was first. You’re changing the topic and arguing against a straw-man.
Your national system is derived from Quebec and as IBD stated Castonguay was the architect of that system. The Quebec model wasn’t first, but it was the model that was copied throughout the provinces through federal legislation. It’s a system in which the entire healthcare apparatus (hospitals, clinics, practitioners) were in totality sucked into a fully government-run and managed healthcare system. It’s also a model where facilities receive a block allocation of funds that is completely unrelated to the actual services and mix of procedures provided.
That’s not in any way close to the system that Douglas instituted in Saskatchewan. The private system remained in place in Saskatchewan. In fact one of Douglas’ pledges was to pay the going rate for services in Saskatchewan for those patients covered by the government insurance plan (which was universal and covered all that needed it).
What’s comical about one of the anti-privatization advocacy websites Adamson linked to is they glorify Douglas (who in fine socialist tradition was an advocate of eugenics) while at the same time being against the very system of privately run facilities that existed in Douglas’ Saskatchewan.
To get back to the point of the IBD piece: Castonguay was the architect of the Quebec system that became your national model. He's now done what any reasonable person would do. He's seen the results that it's achieved since the 1960s and is acknowledging the system has failed and is calling for a move back towards a privatized system where individuals in Canada have freedom of choice. There's nothing evil in that, though you attempt to spin it that way.
"We thought we could resolve the system's problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it," says Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: "We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice."
Since you seem to hold Douglas in high esteem I take it you know he was an advocate of eugenics. Adamson's position that it was not a problem that neither BC nor Alberta could keep little 1 lb 10 ounce Nevin Moore alive is entirely in keeping with Douglas' views that the human breeding stock needed to be kept pure and the "subnormal" culled from the gene pool through sterilization and isolation.
Also I take it you are aware that the foundation of socialism is that it's all about what is best for the state, and that the notion of the Rights of the individual is rejected. It's for this reason that many socialists like Douglas were advocates of eugenics, and that socialism as cause is sympathetic to its "virtues."
Crow all you want about caring about the people. I know better and it's why I could care less about the whims of the mob rather than the Rights of the individual.
http://bit.ly/xgbPfI
M.A. thesis on eugenics:
Douglas graduated from Brandon College in 1930, and completed his Master's degree (M.A.) in Sociology from McMaster University in 1933. His thesis entitled "The Problems of the Subnormal Family" endorsed eugenics.[16] The thesis proposed a system that would have required couples seeking to marry to be certified as mentally and morally fit. Those deemed to be "subnormal" because of low intelligence, moral laxity or venereal disease would be sent to state farms or camps while those judged to be mentally defective or incurably diseased would be sterilized.[17]
Douglas rarely mentioned his thesis later in his life and his government never enacted eugenics policies even though two official reviews of Saskatchewan's mental health system recommended such a program when he became premier and minister of health.[17] By that time, many people questioned eugenics after Nazi Germany had embraced it to create a "master race".[18] Instead, Douglas implemented vocational training for the mentally handicapped and therapy for those suffering from mental disorders.[19] (It may be noted that two Canadian provinces, Alberta and British Columbia, had eugenics legislation that imposed forced sterilization. Alberta's law was first passed in 1928 while B.C. enacted its legislation in 1933.[20] It was not until 1972 that both provinces repealed the legislation.)[21][22]
Your attempt at belittling Douglas' influence, and/or demonstrating that he was on the wrong side of history on other issues, does work for those reaching for any straw to "prove" their pre-conceived viewpoint. It does not stand up to any careful analysis.
All this is irrelevent to the initial point. Quebecers and Canadians have lots of reasons to complain about their health care system, but it sure beats what used to be the American alternative. Think of the American attitude about Obama. But then ask Americans if they prefer Congress to Obama.
So we’ve now established the real Social Darwinists. It was the left/socialists/ progressives such as Douglas that enthusiastically embraced Social Darwinism. It was they who saw it as the task of the state to determine who was fit and unfit, and to take compulsory actions to achieve their desired results.
The socialists rightly recognized state-run healthcare as a key prerequisite to fully enabling their Social Darwinist policies through such mechanisms as eugenics. In the mid-20th Century Sweden alone sterilized more than 62,000 women through their eugenics programs.
Socialism is a bankrupt ideology born of minds that were (and are) far more unfit than those they tried to eradicate. No other ideology has so fanatically dismissed the Inalienable Rights of Man and promulgated the idea that we are but inferior wards of the state (i.e. politicians, bureaucrats, and academic ideologues) than socialism.
http://bit.ly/A4DLR1
Social Darwinism has dealt a deadly blow not only to Christian creationism but also to the idea, dominant since the enlightenment, that history would find its fulfillment in an all-encompassing humanization of man. Darwin, still convinced of the intelligibility of the world and the idea of human progress, unwittingly created the precondition for a dramatic change in the intellectual atmosphere from his death in 1882 to the outbreak of World War I. What French anthropologist and sociologist Georges Vacher de Lapouge expressed about the foundations of human existence was, in many respects, only the brutal consequence of then widely held views:
“One neither decides to become a member of a family nor a nation. The blood, which runs in one’s veins from birth on, one keeps for one’s entire life. The individual is dominated by his race and is nothing. The race, the nation is everything. Every man is related to all other men and all living beings. There is no such thing as human rights, no more than there are rights of the armadillo or the Gibbons syndactylus, of the horse which is harnessed or the ox which one eats. As soon as man loses the privilege of being a special being created in God’s image, he possesses no more rights than any other mammal. The idea of justice is an illusion. There exists nothing but force. Rights are only agreements—contracts between equal or unequal powers."
With reference to T. C. Douglas and Euthanasia, you accurately quote from the Wikipedia entry on Douglas and I do not doubt that Douglas wrote the Thesis in question. Eugenic, at least in its milder form of advocacy of sterilizing children born with a low IQ etc., had a significant following within the Progressive movement in both Canada and the US during the 40 years before the Great Depression - a fact that no one on the political centre-left can take pride in today. It is a telling illustration of the serious mistakes one can make by assuming that there are purely technical solutions to the problems of mankind.
As others have noted when the fact of the Douglas MA Thesis was published in The Standard and in the National Post in, I believe, 2006 (I suggest that the Wikipedia article essentially quoted those earlier publications on this point), Saskatchewan under the CCF government headed by Douglas immediately after WW II did not duplicate the 'defective' sterilization laws of Alberta of 1928 or BC of 1933 and there is nothing in the public record of either Douglas or the CCF to suggest that racist or other like odious motives motivated either.
It is fair to be highly critical of the Thesis and Douglas for writing it but wrong to attempt to tar Douglas, the Party he lead and the policies of the CCF solely on the basis of this Thesis written well before the National Socialists took power in Germany and the world clearly saw where the 'logic' of eugenics could lead. The whole thrust of his public life belies such a conclusion as even the large majority of commentators in Canada who would otherwise disagree with Douglas on many matters would readily agree.
More to the point, this matter has nothing to do with Canadian Medicare.
Nice spin. The point was not that Douglas achieved his aims - that was not claimed. The point is that they were his aims, and but for the interference of outside forces and actors he would have achieved them.
More to the point, it goes to the heart of the motives of Douglas' motivations for Canadian medicare, which you after all give him credit for being the "Father" of Canadian medicare. Such state-controlled, state-run systems are the key enabler of Douglas' eugenics policies.
And as indicated previously, this still has nothing to do with present-day Canadian healthcare.
You continue to point fingers and blame others for the core tenets of your bankrupt ideology. Socialists, including Tommy Douglas and Hitler, believed in the same principle - that the state is an organism unto itself and thus has the “right” to select for and against certain genetic traits in its human population. If they serve pints in HE LL little craven, depraved Tommy Douglas is sharing a pint and lecturing his friend Adolf that had he simply stuck to sterilization to achieve his aims little Tommy would have been able implement the same in Canada.
It's you and little Tommy that are the Social Darwinists.
http://bit.ly/xOGn8C
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations.
Historically, many of the practitioners of eugenics viewed eugenics as a science, not necessarily restricted to human populations; this embraced the views of Darwin and Social Darwinism.
Eugenics was practiced around the world and was promoted by governments, and influential individuals and institutions. Its advocates regarded it as a social philosophy for the improvement of human hereditary traits through the promotion of higher reproduction of certain people and traits, and the reduction of reproduction of other people and traits.
Well, you've managed to join Rich, Douglas and Hitler at the hip (metaphorically speaking) as devoted practitioners of Social Darwinism who fostered the totalitarian state and the most extreme and depraved form of Eugenics. Further (and most creatively) you've managed this feat through pure assertion without the need for a tiresome reference to the facts or the rather different arc that the lives of each of these three men followed or is following.
There are weaknesses in the single payer versions of health services delivery as practiced in Canada but the way you present your arguments does little to identify what these might be and how they should be addressed. I really think you should consider why your increasingly intemperate and fantastic musings on this topic persuade few other than yourself.
I would add to your point about Provincial leadership that in many of the Provinces, BC where I live for example, each regional health authority has considerable latitude in the design and delivery of service to its particular region of the Province. This in some ways was pioneered in Saskatchewan where the prototype for that Province’s comprehensive funding and delivery of medical services was developed with funding assistance from the Provincial government in Weyburn, a district then of less than 25, 000 people in the south east of the Province near the Manitoba border, in the late 1950s. Weyburn was essentially an agricultural region with a strong with an active co-operative movement and it was community leadership and support developed through church, co-op and civic activities that spearheaded the development of the Weyburn project.
Thus over the past six decades the role of the Federal Government has become to provide significant funding (currently about 20% to the total cost) to the Provinces so that roughly similar levels of health care services can exist across Canada and help ensure that reciprocal services are available to Canadians from one Province should they require health services while visiting another Province. The role of each Province, in turn, is to fund, develop and maintain its own universal coverage health services delivery plan within general guidelines agreed upon by the Provincial and Federal governments that ensure that health care delivery is provided on a not for profit basis. Canadian Provinces vary considerably in size and population and the larger ones generally provide funding for and delegate management of service delivery to local health authorities that remain accountable to the Province for the effectiveness and efficiency of service and compliance with the general objectives of the Provincial medical services plan.
I only described all this because non-Canadians tend to focus on the ‘single payer’ aspect of the Canadian system of plans. Each Province does serve as the ‘single payer’ but with Federal assistance. Further, while each Provincial government chooses which services it wishes to provide directly itself (typically those that serve the Province as a whole) and maintains a Provincial agency to manage the payment of fees to doctors and other fee-for-service health professionals, most services are established by local regional authorities. Seen as a whole, the Canadian scheme tries to maintain quality, coherence and consistency of service across Canada by policy and funding arrangements between the Federal and Provincial Governments while delegating actual service delivery management down to the local community level and not interfering with the doctor patient relationship (save for setting the fees that the Province will remit for services delivered under the Provincial plan to those patients). The Provinces each remain the primary fund provider for their Provincial plan (expending about 80% of its annual cost), directly pay the costs of their plan (with the aforesaid Federal assistance) and design and maintain their plan’s general architecture; thus the Provincial governments remain the keystone of the Canadian system but the Federal and local authorities play vital roles as well.
Actually you can't do ad hominem very well, but that's never stopped you from trying.
Feel free to spew you Marxist rants and partisan beliefs, but spare us the attempt to re-write history.
They really got you duped as if there is a difference between the parties, I see.
That's exactly want they want from the Sheeple like you.
It was not just "Bush's" war.
http://bit.ly/Av8N4w
The same exact thing goes for those who pay no income taxes, the 40%.
They should not be able to use any of the above, by your own selfsame logic.
The misers and miscreants of the world, and we have more than our fair share of them here out in the woods, think that if they pay one dollar in taxes then they think somehow that gives them a right to boss around or condemn anyone as a suspect they don't like the looks of they see walking down the road minding their own business that displays evidence of doing or having anything that cost a dollar or more.
This is the best reason of all to eliminate all taxes immediately so they can find something important to complain about like why we don't provide shots for our kids in this country anymore.
Is anything more American than the New England village surrounding the Town Common. By today's right wing standards, the word "Common" would have to be eliminated as too socialistic. The Common itself would probably have to be sold off for the sake of rationality - only money counts.
When Jefferson borrowed from John Locke in the Declaration of Independence, he had eliminated Locke's "property" to substitute his more nebulous "pursuit of happiness". Apparently, even 18th century Patriots/Rebels could understand that property was not sacrosanct.
The oppressor's obsession with eliminating property makes perfect sense, as the only way to defraud another human in order to allow violations of their body is to claim that there is no such thing as property. Once that is done, the violation of people can begin. Tyrants never come to power promising to be violators. They come to power promising to be saviours. I think it was Voltaire who said, that once you convince someone of absurdities, you can commit all sorts of atrocities against them.
How 'bout some facts that hit close to home?
If it weren't for commodities exports Canada would be a poor backwater unable to sustain any of the bloated government it suffers from. Exports are 30-35% of GDP, and of that 60% is natural resources (oil, nat gas, coal, timber, minerals, etc.). It's economy more resembles a colonial mercantilist economy than a modern 1st world domestically driven industrial and consumer economy.
http://bit.ly/wVXiVN
My point being that Canadian government policies are very poor at job creation and wealth production, but it's hidden behind an economy that is ridiculously dependent upon sucking and gouging stuff out of the earth and selling it to foreign markets to maintain any standard of living. That's not a viable model for much of the world (and won't be for Canada at the next commodities cycle downturn).
Rich and rru2s have made excellent responses to your latest comment addressed to me and I have nothing really to add.
http://bit.ly/zVoOVr
Read the article. This guy seems to have no grasp of economics as the underlying driving force. He seems to think capital is inert when in fact it flows looking for highest returns and every person on the planet is an actor in that ecosystem whether they know it or not.
He also looks to government for solutions and repeats the left wing Rolling Stone talking points on the financial crisis.
Although middle income wages are stagnant he does not seem to understand people can stay or go in that class and overall the middle class lives better than they did 20 to 40 years ago.
He has the same view that people did 200 years ago which was the economy could not expand. Arable land was all consumed and in fact we were going to starve. Whoops.
He is right about one thing which is that Obama is a 1% guy and in my view just pushes peoples' jealousy buttons to get vote. Not helpful at all.
TVP : I'm not convinced that one must agree with Fukuyama's thesis to find value in the argument. By reasoned debate and discussion it is possible to either confirm or disprove our own strongly held albeit sometimes less than 100% accurate conclusions. Better confidence in our positions along with some flexibility and openness to new ideas can often leads to better results. It does seem a worthwhile effort to at least consider the argument rather than rejecting it out of hand with no rebuttal.
I reject the notion that our objective is "protect the middle class." What do they need protection from and why are they not taking steps to protect themselves? And what is the cost? And who says that is the same people? And how do you measure that group? And why is that goal in conflict with "maximizing aggregate income?"
And from a world perspective the entire US population is middle class or better which means if all is "fair" then a true engagement with the world would require a step down in life style for everyone in the US.
The whole premise of the discussion is not agreeable without a lot of questions being answered by some central planner which brings us right back to the issue of elite planners and centralized control.
I have examined all these approaches 6 ways from Sunday and although full of flaws capitalism wins hands down along with individual responsibility while centralized planning and protected classes and industries lose every time. Government would do well to police the action and hand out penalties for abuse rather than try to figure out how to run an advanced large scale economy.
Amen to that.
While not claiming Mr.Fukuyama has offered a meaningful solution, it does seem that he has summarized well what is perceived by many as "The Problem". What I am able to glean from his message is a recognition that the accumulated wealth of a national economy is not the same as a healthy economy.
While tempting to dismiss the line of thinking out of hand with the highly effective but not necessarily proven "class warfare" counterargument , it is possible to carry this logic forward as a need to provide for the iconic "General Welfare" over some other lesser priority.
Again, visions of socialism dance in the heads of many when such lines of thought are explored.
I would suggest, however, that a focus on the importance of the individual citizen by our government does not necessarily imply central planning, though it could be used as an argument to advance such programs.
That's why I agree, as you say, that "people will pay taxes for projects that drive common good like roads and schools provided the waste is kept to a minimum and corruption and graft don't take over."
Finally, your idea that "The government exists to serve the people and when it only serves itself then people want nothing to do with it." is IMO spot on. If you can expand on this idea it may very well help prove your case. Thanks.
I really don't believe that Fukayama has summarized the problem well although I do agree with bits and pieces of his analysis. His perspective is tainted by populism and a failure to question common assumptions about the problems and do proper root cause analysis. So the starting point of his discussion is not correct. This starting point needs to be established correctly or the debate is nonsense.
Similair if I asked you how it feels to be out of jail even when I know you have never been in jail. I have framed the debate fraudulently and you are in the box of denying you were in jail which looks to be a personal problem or shaking your head yes and saying it feels great which only perpetuates the fraud.
And I don't see any understanding of economics in his discussion and he is fundamentally talking about an economic problem.
We can disagree as to the type of rules that would lead to a better society, but history shows us that there must be rules. The degree and kinds of help given to the "losers" in the creative destruction of capitalism can be argued, but it would seem from history that total neglect will not do. Any cursory study of the history of industrialisation in the U.S. should clearly show that to anyone who is not blinded by ideological dogmatism, be it of the Left or the Right.
I will have to remember Central Planning is a straw man when I look at the federal budget deficit and our taxes.
By your logic if the slave owner buys a mule for his slave all is well. I thought you would like that.
Capitalism worldwide was driven by the Industrial Revolution in the 1800's and government had little idea what their role should be as it was new. Countries that skipped IR 1.0 like Russia decided to catch up with Lenin and Stalin central planning which was a great success after millions of deaths so I guess you could look at that as a better model..........or not.
Rules are fine but saying "capitalism must be harnessed" is the ultimate central control freak language that crushes any innovation and growth. Losers in a capitalist system are people who are not investing in themselves and/or are making bad decisons. Success is driven by sacrifice and choice and that is individual.
Having said that the US is terrible in technical school education which would help a lot of people and is where Asia is strong. Hence jobs go to Asia.
Francis Fukuyama, Bruce Bartlett and David Frum (to name only three prominent conservative commentators in the US context of the last couple of decades) are to be commended for their openness and capacity to evaluate the world unfolding before them and apply their honed analytical capacities without undue ideological constraint to that end. Too often they have been shunned by the conservative media and political movements, not because they have abandoned the conservative precepts that first brought them to prominence, but only because the output of their analysis is sometimes ideologically inconvenient. William F. Buckley and even Barry Goldwater late in their careers were receiving blow back to some extent along these lines.
The Left, of course, has many examples of similar ostracism to account for and my point is simply that open reasoning from a principled background is not an easy road and therefore is all the more a valuable thing in any society.
Mr. Fukayama was not really that conservative and his analysis is spotty and some of it is front page tabloid language. I am not impressed.
These guys don't hold a candle to William F Buckley whose intellect is much deeper.
You are all missing a real fundamental concept and that is "freedom." Compelling anyone to work for someone else whether it is the slave on a plantation or an overtaxed and overworked employee all falls on the broad spectrum of forced labor. It is immoral and only foisted by elites who think they know better how society should be organized (i.e. central planning) and how capital should be deployed. Often they try to sell their program through terms of "fairness" and "helping others" and make people feel bad who tell them they need to "get a job" or help themselves.
The constant clamor over the devaluation of unskilled labor is a waste of time. I don't pay my son $1000 for shoveling my walk because it is not worth it. So he is still going to school to train for something better. The noise over our middle class not making progress is also uneducated. Our middle class lives better than the middle class of the 50's, 60's and 70's. They have a better and healthier lifestyle. It could be argued that they are less secure but workers went though multiple layoffs in those decades so that is also not true. I seen it first hand.
Property rights are important. In fact the US economy rests on property rights. One of our largest is Intellectual Property. An economy cannot succeed if there are no property rights. We can all just head down to the pub and drink if we don't have this right and the right to the fruits of our labor.
I believe people will pay taxes for projects that drive common good like roads and schools provided the waste is kept to a minimum and corruption and graft don't take over. Nobody wants to pay taxes to pay for bums to sit at home and play X Box or pay for some bimbos bastard children. Everyone needs to accept responsibility for their actions and pay their own way for personal decisions. If their decisions make them poor then that is a lesson they can pass on to their kids. The government exists to serve the people and when it only serves itself then people want nothing to do with it.
It is difficult to respond to your comment without being obvious or trite but I’ll try.
Freedom to my mind is not some narrow concept that can neatly be set on some pedestal above the cares of the real world or that can be enjoyed fully by an isolated individual apart from the needs of that individual’s neighbours and of the society within which they must all live. While I will agree with you that freedom is not something that the state can or should be able to give or withhold at will and that, with the best will in the world, the modern democratic state can impinge unnecessarily on the freedoms of some or all of its citizens, I also hold that the state can serve as a vital tool whereby citizens (if they act with intelligence and moderation) can enlarge the scope of freedom for all citizens.
People are not truly free if they live in want with no practical and reasonable avenues to significantly improve their lot. To say otherwise is to say as Zola did in another context (I’ll paraphrase), “The rich and poor are equally at liberty to sleep at night under a bridge”. It is true that to pay for programs to help ensure that such avenues are adequately available to those who need them the better placed members of society will be taxed for these programs which they may well not themselves use (and, in some sense, that this is an impingement on the enjoyment of the rights of those better placed persons). The latter point is but one illustration of the fact that the better enjoyment by some of their freedoms often necessarily entails some curtailment of the enjoyment by others of their freedoms and that a proper distribution of freedom throughout society necessarily requires compromise, mediation and even arbitration. The state plays an indispensible role in that compromise, mediation and arbitration process in many situations. Some of us might argue strongly for direct involvement of the state in the production of goods and services in many circumstances, others may be fundamentally opposed to anything beyond a ‘night watchman’ role for the state while the position of others still will fall between these poles; the key, however, is that the relevance of any of these stances concerning any issue of the moment will be judged by the citizens, legislatures and courts implicitly in terms of the balance of the nature and scope of freedoms enhanced or constricted.
Of course the state can discharge this role badly and even disastrously but this is not the same thing as saying that the state should not play this role or that this role should not be large where justified; only that citizens must be wise and active participants in the democratic process.
People in the US have no excuse with the opportunity that exists to not succeed. Being stupid is a choice and poor goes along with it. They have the freedom to not succeed and although I don't agree with it they may have better things to do with their time.
However their freedom to choose should not imprison me to shield them from the consequences.
On a more narrow point raised by your comment, you might consider for a moment that Intellectual Property rights exist only because the legislatures and courts (i.e. the State) has created these rights and the means for their enforcement. The same can be said for the concept of the limited liability corporation and other vehicles (i.e. trusts, partnerships etc.) through which one or more individuals can conduct their business affairs with the benefit of rights and protections not otherwise available to them when acting only in an individual capacity.
My point is simply that the State acts in many ways to create the framework in which we each live, that we often forget that much of this framework scaffolding is the artificial creation of the State and that even the most Libertarian amongst us would feel lost and a loss of freedom if much of this framework scaffolding were torn down.
It follows that the real debate is over the nature, extent and degree of elements of this framework and not over dark and overdrawn insinuations about good and evil.
I am not arguing a role of government in policing the game and also providing frameworks that protect property, etc. I will argue that government should not be running businesses and they should not being hogging 25% of output to fund their activities at the federal level. The policemen has essentially turned into Al Capone.
Arguably we all, with very few exceptions, agree that the State has the role you describe and it is simply a political question (and not an existential one), over which reasonable persons can differ honestly, whether that role might include further functions and, if so, what those functions might be.
Might be overstating to say it is "simply a political question" as if politics solves everything or has no constraints. Furthermore when political considerations do not logically fit together then the issue is not political but rather just a lack of clear thinking. Politics is more often than not driven by emotion rather than logic which is why we have some of the issues we have today.
You are correct that the political process is driven by many factors and that logic and lack of bias are, to put it mildly, not near the top of the list of these factors.
Arguably the good thing about democratic political decision making is not so much that the initial decisions will be superior than those arrived at through a more autocratic or top down process. Rather, that when circumstances change or earlier choices prove not to have been well founded, decisions will often be revised or reversed more readily than would be the case where some autocrat or panel of experts are wedded to their earlier choices.
True but maybe less government action would just let things work out in the private sector rather than letting government screw it up for years if not decades.
I would agree that States, corporations and other such social entities too readily over-engineer the detail of the lives of the people that function under their aegis (and this can be a real pain for all concerned when it gets out of hand and a real drag on the attainment of reasonable goals of these people and of the entity in question). The optimum thing such entities can do is establish the minimum framework needed to accomplish the purposes for which they exist (including effective means for monitoring and evaluating activities occurring in their name, for calling to account when things go wrong and for promoting periodic attention to the need to renew and reform) and, importantly, then leave it to the people within the entity, consistent with the protection of the freedom of others, to operate within this framework in creative ways of their own devising.
In other words, the distinction to be drawn is not between governments, on the one hand, and all other individuals and organizations, on the other. Rather, the goal should be to promote productivity and innovation within all organizations and, in doing this, to encourage individuals to take personal responsibility and act creatively and cooperatively as a free part of the organization in question.
You also assume an "elite minority in government ... could not run a puppy farm" and state that government is, "impoverishing all citizens through 'fair' and foolish policies". If the middle class can afford a greater standard of living because of government help, then they are not being "impoverished". Government provides fair incentives for a college education, which in turn increases standard of living for the many, not just for the few who decided to hoard their gold dubloons.
You also suggest that "causation for excessive debt by people may be excessive tax burdens at all levels", among other things. This is also a faulty assumption because spending in our society is completely voluntary, and you don't get into debt unless you spend beyond your means. The reality is that in the last 25 years, consumers have been allowed too easy access to credit in cases where they did not have the necessary income verus debt plus expenses ratios, which was IN FACT mediated directly by deregulation and loosening of government controls over tight credit lending standards for credit card companies and banks lending to private individuals. This has allowed unmitigated growth of dangerous levels of personal debt.
If you want to control all capital and personal choice then just jump to facism or a dictatorship and skip all the high sounding rhetoric.
A small % of the population does take on personal risk to start businesses and deal with government red tape and they in turn hire the majority of the people. The numbers speak for themselves. Not sure why you confuse corporations with people but picking up on that issue corporations are entities that leverage capital and hire people to help them meet the objectives of their owners. Gee kind of like a small business. And a lot of those corporations go out of business or wane into the background of the economy as their products and services are no longer valued. Do you have any idea how many corporations from the 60's are not around today?
If a middle class needs government help then they are not middle class. They are government dependents. Excess tax burdens do drain the wealth of the economy and personal wealth which then requires more working hours and/or a lower standard of living and/or more debt. Saying "too easy access to credit" is the cause of the problem is the same as saying we should get rid of grocery stores and restaurants because people are too fat.
You hold conflicting views. On the one hand you don't think that a small % of the population really drives the economy on the other hand you believe that too much choice for people is a bad thing because it appears they are just not smart enough to handle it.
Greater income equality is typically a symptom of stagnant economies. The Soviet Union and China under Mao's Great Leap Forward had a great deal of income equality, but a poor standard of living. Agrarian societies have greater income equality, but they're tough places to live and have poorer standards of living. Give everyone a small plot of land and an ox and you have a great deal of income equality, but that's nothing to brag about.
From a historical perspective, mankind's creation and use greater levels of mechanical and cognitive tools has led to greater income inequality, and that's a good thing. The Stone Age had a great deal of equality, and using your logic would be a better place to live. What you fail to understand is that standard of living is the appropriate metric. Income equality is a false tell.
Nice reality check against the Right Wing spin machine promoting lower taxes and greater distribution of wealth to the top 1%. Thanks for the fact-check.
Not at all, as evidenced by this oxy-moron above. Your conclusions are again just pure specious reasoning. It can just as easily be argued that we may have eliminated poverty in the US had the gov control of the economy never taken place. We can also point out the extreme poverty of economies almost completely controlled by gov. We can also point out the first pilgrims almost starving to death because their first charted required them to hold things in a collective. It wasn't until they were allowed to have their own property that they actually began to feed themselves.
We can also go back in time to later religious settlers to the New England that fought nonstop with European regulations that were throttling their economy. We can also point to those early settlers with their anti-stranger laws and their laws against Quakers that caused many of the same strifes we see today. The American Revolution against Britain wasn't the first revolt fought in the colonies. Their religious freedom was tied to their political and economic freedom.
In fact, all issues are economic ones. The wife you choose or don't choose, the religion you choose or not choose, and the job you choose or don't choose. All these things are related to the basic human instinct of survival, and the pricing mechanisms that nature provides via a person's perception about their standard of living.
The basic point here is that gov's monopoly of legitimate force makes it completely blind to these pricing mechanisms. So you might have some vision of how you want people live (which I think is dispicable to try and make people live according to your religious views), the simple fact is gov has no tools to allow you to make people be the kind of people you think they should be. Even if you could have everyone think just like you, and you used gov to your fullest wishes, you would all still be desparately poor and austere, simply because you have now cut yourself off to nature's pricing mechanisms. This is what killed the Soviet Union. They could never agree on what was working and what wasn't, and it didn't take long before they started shooting and imprisoning each other to get their way.
Again, there is a difference between what you would like to do and what you can do, which is why there is a difference between what we would like gov to do and what it actually can do. This is not about you care and I don't, or you are nice and I am not. This is about what is real and what is not. If you utlimately got your way with everything you wanted gov to do, it wouldn't be long before you had to start shooting people and locking them away because they refused to get in the lines you said they should and wait for their rations that you can no longer produce.
Maybe we can agree as we contemplate the other that human beings do come with radically different value systems. But, I do refute your conclusion that countries with great governmental involvement paid for by greater taxation than you would find comfortable, will come to rationing and shooting. I just don't see Norway, Finland , and Canada for that matter, heading in that direction. I prefer my neighbors, healthy, well fed and well educated, and will gladly pay my share to arrive at those goals
Actually Norway and Sweden are both quite generous when it comes to foreign aid. I recall reading recently that on a per capital basis Norway provided amount 9 time what the US provided annually.
You should also look at it in terms of private giving as that's the true indicator of generosity, not what politicians are willing to spend. In private aid Americans give five times the foreign aid that Norway and Sweden give on a per capita basis.
To answer the healthcare question, Sweden passed legislation some years ago to deny subsidized public healthcare services to illegal immigrants. They're only eligible for emergency services. In general immigrants and the drain on the healthcare system has been a hot topic in Sweden as such healthcare services aren't intended for non-Swedes and immigrants aren't "true" Swedes, just as Turks in Germany aren't German no matter that they be 2nd, 3rd, etc. generation born in Germany. Socialism and ethnicity are tightly intertwined given the history of the European nation-state. It's not about generosity.
Fair comments.
It is worth noting that former settler colonies like the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and some of the countries in Latin America have historically found it easier to accept immigrants from widely diverse sources than have countries such as Japan and those in Europe that each have a longstanding sense of ethnic national identity. In the 21st century, the foundation of the societies of these former settler colonies on their histories as civil societies rather than a unique ethnicity arguably gives them some distinct advantages when coming to terms with diversity and change.
Greed is not wanting to keep what you earn or wanting to earn a lot. Greed is wanting what others earn so much that you are willing to threaten their body to take it.
What is better, to earn a million dollars or give away a million dollars?
They believe in collectivism but it's driven by self-interest. European states were historically (and are still now) mono-ethnic fortresses. Collectivism is just another name for tribalism. Protect the tribe and you act in your self-interest. It's a corrupt political philosophy that cares nothing of freedom or human rights, though it regularly corrupts those terms in its propaganda.
You give a fine synopsis of relevant US economic history and a sound analysis of how state intervention and the free market can each play a constructive role in the promotion of a free, creative and productive modern society. You likewise caution that blind adherence upon either state intervention or free markets can lead to grief.
The worrying aspect of too much conservative analysis within the English speaking world at present is its resort to ideological dogmatism. In this it mirrors nothing so much as it does the left wing of the democratic socialist movement during the 1930s. Both the hard right now and the hard left in that earlier era were too inclined to see thing in Manichean terms (i.e. pure truth and light, which they espoused, and pure sophistry and darkness, which all others espoused and they decried). These conservative currently tip the scales excessively in favour of free markets (disregarding, for example, the chaos in the financial industry that blind deregulation engendered during the three decades preceding 2007) and against constructive state enterprise (despite the current ongoing deterioration of much of the public sector infrastructure though lack of funding and creative development and despite the need to foster through enlightened public support the development of new technologies and infrastructure to create the new products and services for the future).
As your comment implies, free markets are invaluable as a pricing mechanism provided they function in a framework in which the values of society are adequately represented. That framework needs to evolve as the circumstances of society change and both free markets and democratic debate can play a constructive role in the reshaping of that framework but only if we don’t rum amok in the name of some illusionary ideological purity.
The only way for you to have empirical evidence that gov regulations are better than private market regulations, and that tyranny is better than restricting gov to its only logical role is to go back in time and run different scenarios, and see which set of circumstances creates the most capital. Clearly we can't do this. As such, you basically have a religious conviction that you use to rationalize your support of tyranny and your desire to take your neighbors property. You want to hire gov guns to wrest from your neighbor what they have labored to create so you don't have to labor.
If you and Quebec were any students of history, you would see that history is chains, dungeons, war, torture, and stealing all made possible by the misuse of gov. The grand experiment of the US was to limit go to the one logical thing it can do, which is to protect property. You and your fellow thieves, once again want to use gov force for the historical norm of plunder.
Arguably the repeal of Glass-Steagall was only the most obvious in a long chain of deregulation measures instituted concerning the financial industry prior to the 2007-8 meltdown. Those measures coupled with deliberately slack enforcement of what regulations that remained in place created the framework of chaos within which excesses occurred often bordering on the criminal. The fact that this abdication of government's responsibility to ensure that an adequate regulatory framework existed is no less stark because some ghost of regulatory oversight remained at the time of the 2007-8 meltdown.
By contrast in Canada this mania for finance industry deregulation was kept within adequate bounds and the meltdown was not replicated domestically.
On another point you raise, your implication that some of us who are open to the notion that governments (properly bounded by laws, the courts and democratic process) can play a positive role as active participants in the economy are but one small step removed in intent from Khmer Rouge or Joe Stalin bent upon instituting collectivization at the point of bayonets is more than a bit over the top. By that logic anyone marginally to the left of former President Eisenhower is very dangerous indeed.
Again, you logic is faulty. The only way to say gov regulations or deregulations is to go back in time and rerun the scenario. You might as well be selling get rich quick real estate guides on 3am infomercials. After all if one person got rich selling real estate, ergo every one can get rich selling real estate. Once again, you are engaged in specious reasoning.
I don't know how familiar you are with the regulation of the Canadian financial industry but I assure you that it was and remains better regulated in matters that, at the end of the day, count. While it is true, as you suggest, that the regulation in Canada differ from those in the US and that on several matters they appear to allow Canadian banks to do things or do things in a manner that US regulation bar for US banks.
On the other hand, Canadian banks exist because they have each received a charter from the Federal Government and these charters are subject to periodic review and renewal. This coupled with the smaller size of the Canadian financial industry and the active monitoring that the banks are subject to on an ongoing basis means that limits on mergers, practices etc. are imposed as circumstances evolve and, consequently, dangers are avoided on an ongoing basis as they become apparent.
It can justly be argued that Canadian banks form an oligarchy and that the Bank of Canada, the Federal Department of Finance and the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation (the latter ensures and sets the standard for insurance for the large majority of Canadian residential mortgages) work closely together and with that oligarchy. One benefit, however, of this somewhat incestuous relationship of all the prime players has to date been the avoidance of the excesses that marked and continue to mark the US banking industry, particularly in investment banking.
I'm not suggesting that Canadian banking is vastly superior to that in the US or UK (or even that the US system does not have certain legitimate advantages) or that it is a model that either the US or UK should adopt in total. I do suggest, however, that if one views regulation of Canadian banking in the broader sense and not merely as a set of written rules, then it works well in the Canadian context and, in that sense, illustrates that forming a sound framework for banking through regulation is a vital matter.
Shameless Canadian love fest and your selective historical record. Ugh.
In the most recent trend, what happened to taxation levels and the level of US national debt after Clinton left office with a budget surplus? The short answer is that, in a brief span of only 8 years, military spending DOUBLED, the national debt increased by over 10 trillion dollars, the government's spending on medicare and private citizens' spending on medical services also increased by big multiples, and the cost of a college education more than doubled. Meanwhile, in return for creating all this new debt, what happened to the spending power of the middle class? It dropped by a marked amount. What happened to the taxation level on those making over $250,000 per year? It dropped by a big fraction. Directly as an outcome of 10 years of insufficient tax levels that are the LOWEST in the last 60 years, the nation is now 10 trillion FURTHER INTO DEBT and the middle class is paying TWICE the relative percent tax burden compared to the top percentile making over $250,000 per year expressed as a percent of their total taxes from all sources (fed income, cap gains, state, local, and property) divided by total income from all sources (earned and investment income).
Thank you for the kind comments.
I should add that the current trends towards over reliance on the private sector are not only a US problem in my view. We in Canada are increasingly trending in that direction as well to our long term detriment in my opinion. This is not to suggest that public programs wouldn't benefit from constant critical scrutiny and that shifts back and forth of economic activity between the public and private sector shouldn't occur as circumstances change.
My real point is that it is fine for each of us to have our personal biases (mine are clearly on the left) but these should be acknowledged and we need to always be ready to change or refine our positions, particularly on matters of detail, in a pragmatic manner (and be open to the fact that persons having quite different biases than our own may well bring a useful perspective to the debate).
If the government model was working so great in Canada nobody would want to move to private sector expansion. Their are key advantages that the private sector drives that the public sector cannot. One of them is access to more capital to drive growth. Secondly an engagement of all the citizens to drive innovation and growth. Both of these are absolutely critical.
The public sector can only grow so big before the waste of capital and stagnation becomes overwhelming. The USSR and China proved that very well in the last century or do you think they just lacked good central planners?
Central planners always think they are just one good program away from Nirvana or if that pesky private sector was not in the way they would do so much better.
When we talk of Canada turning more towards the private sector we are talking a shift by degree, not a radical rejection of the public sector in favour of the public sector. These shifts back and forth naturally occur as circumstances change over time and the old way of doing things increasingly appears shopworn.
It is never a good sign when a country lurches from one extreme to the other and happily Canada, with all its faults, generally avoids making such lurches. My guess is that after a few more years of the Conservative Party being in power nationally, Canadians will be ready to elect a more progressive party to power.
Historically the Conservative Party has been centrist party in Canada (the Liberal Party, in turn, being centre left and the NDP social democratic). Currently the Conservative Party federally is somewhat more to the right than has been its custom in the past and this does not bode well for their long term electability as the governing party nationally.
That said, the fact the Conservatives are in power means that the policies and practices at the national level are undergoing close scrutiny with fresh eyes and, while as a social democrat I often disagree with the directions they choose to take, a bit of a shake-up from time to time is no bad thing.
"The real cruelty here is that specious reasoning is used to pad egos"
You certainly are using a lot of specious reasoning, sir. Not to mention that you are so far out in right field that you can't hear any voice except your own.
The longer this discussion drags on the more I think you embody the essence of the personality of Ebenezer Scrooge. Yes, sit at home and count your doubloons. Let the masses teach themselves how to read while sitting in the gutter. Say what? That's not what brought about the educational improvements in the USA? Details, details, the past is no predictor of the future. Only jhooper can predict the future.
Right, they go into what pays and/or what gets respect. You have nothing but your own attitudes to blame for this.
They never did except at the university level.
In Finland, considered to be one of the top education systems in the world, the teachers are paid about the same as what U.S. teachers are paid, yet it is a highly respected and popular career path, with many highly qualified applicants for every opening, with only around 10% being accepted.
From a "social status" perspective, teachers in Finland are like doctors in the U.S. -- instant respect.
Other notable differences in Finland:
- A lot of teacher autonomy
- No standardized tests
- Socialized education up through the university level
- Very low income inequality nationwide
- Similar income tax rates to the U.S., but higher taxes on investment income
- And, just to poke the snakes -- socialized healthcare! :)
Now, how popular do you think all this compassion and understanding would be if Finland had to provide welfare, healthcare, and education to everyone else in the world? How popular is the one big family idea when it means bailing out Greece? Of course, do really be true to their ideals, they should provide healthcare for every US citizen. After all if healthcare is a basic human right, then why is it being refused by the Fins to humans all over the world. What Finland is doing is refusing healthcare to people all over the world that can't pay for it. Isn't such practices only the purvue of evil profiteering capitalists?
Its a lot like the guy in the locker room after a round a golf that brags about how his game has improved, how he feels better, and swings better ever since he got one of those "magnet" bracelets that improves his biorythms. But you notice his scores haven't gone down, and he hasn't won any tournaments. Then you ask, "If these things are so good, why doesn't every PGA player wear one?" Or better yet, if there is only one PGA player wearing one, then why isn't he the only winner?
Its all based on specious reasoning. It is fake causality. Its like saying, of the top growing countries, 40% were autocratic states. Ergo, to have a fast growing economy, you need an autocrat. The real question is not the likely hood of being a fast growing economy and having an autocrat, but how many of the autocrat states have fast growing economies? When you do that you find the results are pretty dismal for autocrats. Better yet, when you look at fast growing autocratic states you find that most of them have oil.
So the question for Finland is not to ask how gov control has improved their lives, but to ask how often does gov control around the world improve people's lives when you find countries with gov control? When you look at it that way, suddenly you realize that the places more likely to be shooting people for trying to leave are places with gov controlled states.
Its no wonder liberals love it.
Their fund invests everywhere but in Norway precisely to prevent short term artificial high growth. They are thinking ahead for the benefit of future generations when the oil will have run out..
All countries should not provide beyond their means (however defined) to other countries. There is no point in giving to a corrupt country if the aid does not find itself going to the proper recipients. There would be no reason to give to a wealthy country such as the U.S., one unwilling to provide for its own, despite numerous differing examples of success around the world.
What? Suddenly there are limits to compassion? The Fins are willing to let people die because they can't produce enough for everyone? The Fins are just selfish. They have so much and don't want to share. They would surely produce enough to supply for everyone else. They would have to. In fact we can learn from higher taxes here. Higher taxes means people have to work harder to have more, thus if the Fins were taxed by the world to provide healthcare for everyone, they would surely do it.
The problem is "afford". There should not be prices.
Why should the people have to pay for anything?
That is what government is for. Where do I go for my new yacht?
Go reread Animal Farm. As I remember, everything worked out just fine for everybody.
For example, IMHO, I think our education system sucks. We are not turning out students of excellence. But, is it because of schools? Is it because of parents? Is it because society demands something different from participants than what was demanded 50 years ago? I can suggest that we need more math, engineering and science. But how? One thought, for example would be to completely subsidize higher education in skills deemed critical to the success of the country. But would that make a difference in motivating students, if parents and society weren't part of the solution? So then the question becomes, does tax policy or can tax policy solve such problems?
We have proven we can spend money in this country. A 1.5 Trillion deficit is enough to send 50 million kids a year to college at a cost of $30,000 each. So money is not a problem. We can get all we want. The question is what do we do with it. Seems "no child left behind" is not the answer to creating middle class wealth.
I agree with you that there has been an overall worsening in American elementary and high school results. (The top U.S. reasearch universities remain a beacon of light for the world and a center of growth for the U.S).
What has changed since the 1957 Sputnik spaceshot spurred thinking about education in the U.S? The emphasis by the strategic planners was on improvement in the sciences and mathematics to win the Cold War. The U.S. had to produce more scientists and engineers. I never saw the argument put in terms of G.N.P. (G.D.P. was not generally used then) or maximizing personal income. Today's preoccupation is not making products or providing services and thus making a "good living". Today's preoccupation is making money.
The cutthroat Darwinian economic competition that is emphasized in the U.S. today tends to lead students into professions serving the financial casino . That is what the secondary market is. And, like the original casino, it's a zero sum game producing nothing.
If you can make money without an education, if the Arts are for losers, if honest useful work by learning a trade is a passé route to mediocrity - all seen through the metric of money, why bother getting an education? So many others have become "successful" without an education. So can you.
Somewhere in this thread, there is the assertion that all is economics, including love and religion. It is ironic that a society motivated by a growing love of money could lessen its ability to have it, by choosing non productive means to attain it. The parallel would be the aspiring goalie, quarterback, point guard wannabe, who neglects his studies, fails, and has nothing.
Spotty local financing and American anti-intelectualism are long standing problems and to me, don't explain the decline in U.S. education. I am left with the argument espoused above which can, at best, only be a partial explanation. It is indeed easier, as you say, to shine the spotlight.
You forgot one, no unions to protect the lousy ones.
I saw on TV a good example of the unions.
There is a teacher in New York who for the last ten years has sat in a room drawing a salary of $100,000 per year because he is forbidden to enter a class room because of past conduct towards teenage girls. The city can't fire him because it is against the contract to fire a teacher.
He is 67 years old and refuses to retire because he is adding to his ultimate pension. The city can't force him to retire either.
Try that in Finland.
You can find an anecdote for anything.
Wow, What a tragedy.
People being fired by their superiors.
What a bizzare concept. I never heard of such a thing.
I suppose that never happens in the private sector.
In the private sector, the elimination of incompetants , saves money.
How many lawyers, hearings lawsuits etc, were required.
And, just what did it cost the taxpayers to dispose of that incompetent teacher?
What was the settlement, or the legacy costs?
In the private sector, it could be, and should be, ZERO.
Thanks to the Democrats and Obama, the USA has become far more socialized, while Europe in recent years has become less so.
Here in the US we would probably sue them both for malpractice.
that is the best idea I've read.
If the bankers can be sued for fraud, why not the teachers?
Half of our money goes into the soviet-style bureaucratic overhead of the education monopoly, and only half into the classroom. High cost and low result.
But the biggest difference is that in our system we dont get to educate just young Finns.
Compare our test results on an ethnic basis with the corresponding 'home country' and you will get interesting results.
You missed the truth. These people have no choice but to go into teaching because they cannot get into anything else. It is the easiest college on campus. Whose fault is that? And perhaps it should be the easiest as the job description is not that demanding. And why should society pay exorbiant wages to teach the same thing year after year?
You wont get the best and brightest to want to do the same thing every year.
Some facts for the uneducated (pun intended):
Elementary education is a degree, and yes, often an easy one.
But to teach high school, and often middle school (depending on the state/county/city), a teacher must have a bachelor's degree related to the subject being taught, plus additional training courses equivalent to about a third of a master's degree, and sometimes specific certifications (true of many tech teachers).
But by all means, keep over-generalizing. :)
> And why should society pay exorbiant wages to teach the same
> thing year after year?
Wanna get philosophical? OK, why should society pay exorbitant wages to make the same trades year after year? And yet this is what we're doing with ZIRP and an unfortunate lack of prosecutions against banking executives (who, coincidentally, would love for most people to be dumber than dirt).
Society finances Wall Street to destroy trillions in value every year -- surely it can spare a few pennies to create value by teaching kids.
There are MANY professions, many of them financial, whose compensation is criminally out of proportion to their contribution to society. Teaching is not currently one of them.
> You wont get the best and brightest to want to do the same thing
> every year.
Very true, but again, this is a systemic problem.
The current system requires teachers to teach the same book, same curriculum, same lessons year after year after year. Most of the higher performing education systems give teachers a lot more autonomy. Programs change from year to year, even semester to semester -- the best and brightest get to manage and improve their own lot in life, so it gets done.
High school is much different as the brain begins to differentiate between 'not wanting to be a burnout' under the bleachers to taking AP courses for college prep.
Even college is a joke. The first two years working on your associates is mindless pap. It is really only until you figure out what you want to do in life and study that, that you get the real beginning of 'learning'. 99% of the rest was just social and relational skills development up to that point.
And even that final 1% of real learning is a joke compared to working a job and actually learning about reality itself.
School is a joke. It was created during the Industrial Revolution to get kids used to working an 8 hour factory job.
It was only recently within the last 35 years that we have turned school into this ridiculous religious concept of emotional romanticism. And that was proffered in order to keep the unions beefed up. And the DC polis liked that because it was a guarantee on their political monopoly of public discourse, which bends left.
The reason Asian kids are smart is because they actually are geared to applying themselves to real world applications as that is their goal the entire time.
I disagree. Schools are 100% effective at teaching and achieving retention on the one lesson the gov schools care most about. Children are taught how to use gov to steal from their neighbors and all the required excuses and frauds necessary to rationalize and even glorify the violation of the rights of their fellow human beings. How ironic that in the name of taking care of one another they justify looting one another.
Look here.
http://bit.ly/t0cOl6
Thanks for the link.
The fallacy that more money and better teachers are going to make hip hop infested kids to learn more is wrong. Our kids are lazy and are not invested in the process. Never mind Asian schools are built towards results not process driven.
As for making fun of the first 2 years of college, well it is certainly POSSIBLE to waste your time in college, I'll grant you that. As for me, 37 years ago I decided not to take any class that didn't seriously have the potential to help my career later in life, and to spend every waking moment short of driving myself insane with getting the most out of studying and academic life. Honors calculus, honors chemistry major here. Side courses in physics, biology, genetics, statistics, economics. 5 hours sleep a night and 7 days a week of studying till midnight (or later) for 4 years at a top big 10 school. For me, college was not a waste of time. At age 54 I can still solve calculus, physics, and chemistry problems to help students in my family. Not to mention a few other things that level of deep thinking taught me - like enough ability to focus to derive unique combinatorial probabilities whenever the need arises.
But maybe those on this thread who never took school that seriously feel college is a "joke" purely because they only got out of it what they put into it - a half-hearted effort and a focus on diluted subject matter of little scientific signficance.
Wyatt may have overemphasized the point but I believe there is an issue with "warehousing" kids to keep them out of the factories that has led to our current state. And we don't do a good job with technical schools leading to strong career paths which would be 2 years in length. We are getting our lunch eaten in the latter.
I am not sure we need huge buildings for schools when we can feed coursework through the internet. Also the teacher to student ratio could go down.
Basically we need a transformation in the school system. Reminds me of the old Apple commercial where the runner throws the hammer through the screen of Big Brother in 1984. Big Brother being IBM. We need a hammer through the current system of teachers, unions and large scale construction of schools.
This is actually a valuable topic to explore that will change the nature of educational spending, educational quality, and socialization skill development for future generations. It would be fear-mongering to say that let's not explore and experiment with internet educational resources as another tool because it just might decrease socialization skill development in children. However, the opposite is also true - that complete reliance upon substituting isolated learning through the internet for all forms of face-to-face classroom experience could end up producing some very unfortunate products of training as underperformers in workplace social skills, ability to take orders, get along with others, and effectively communicate in a working environment.
In addition, there are examples of internet-based studies which have certain deleterious outcomes on educational quality. Thus, this form of education needs to be improved and refined. For example, I was taught calculus in college with instructors reviewing and providing comments on my handwritten proofs and step-by-step problem solving, augmented with face time in class and a rich feedback cycle of lecturing, questions, answers, and further explanation. However, in the last 5 years, I am seeing colleges teach calculus with canned, non-human approaches, using pass/fail problem submission via a fill-in-the-box answer, without allowing the instructor to examine the student's derivation. This, combined with reduced face time in the classroom, means the instructor does not receive nearly as much feedback during a lecture as to which students are not getting the point - it is too easy to hide behind the computer screen and not ask questions of the lecturer, who does not get visual cues from the students normally present when lecturing in a classroom. I claim students are much more likely to ask questions in a physical classroom, and the instructor is more likely to re-explain things in such an environment.
You exageratte the requirements for beginning teachers but by all means keep over-generalizing. And I took a bunch of Education classes just to pad my GPA so it is a cakewalk. Only 1/3rd of a Master Degree is not a big deal so let's put that aside.
If a teacher wants to go into trading securities they should go for it if they believe it is just as easy as teaching. And society does not pay Wall Street the market pays Wall Street and apparently it pays them higher than your unknown expertise can bear. Your view brilliantly illustrates why teachers are heavy left leaning socialists in that they don't trust markets and they want to leverage government for benefits. Reminds me of the old USSR.
Our overall education system needs a dramatic transformation to make it more accessible, more flexible, less costly and higher quality. Teachers and the union have been the biggest problem.
You really think our government officials have the intellect to decide? Content of history books run by government will change with voting patterns which means why bother teaching history at all? It will turn into a subjective narrative.
As for intellectual capacity, the provider of the paycheck is powerless to change that. To argue otherwise is to weaken your case.
I can tell you live in Canada. It is a different country you know and the way people think and the way government acts is quite a bit different. The scale is very different also.
We don't need government involved except to regulate for kickbacks and other corruption that goes on. Academia, school officials and a panel of citizens is plenty of expertise. And get all the books online so we can all see what is used and make our own judgments.
Pro athletes and movie starts make tremondous amounts of money. Who on the left is decrying those salaries?
This is the definition of irrational.
I would argue, however, those in the 50% percentile income bracket are barely scraping buy and about 95% of their pay is spent on goods and services, which supports demand in the US. So if those folks are being taxed HIGHER than the top 5% bracket when considering taxes from all sources - fed income tax + FICA + medicare + state + local + property tax - then the marginal effect on spending in the US would be that there is about 95% efficiency in returning every additional dollar of tax lowering to the 50% percentile people in increasing consumption and economic demand, whereas I would guess there is a probably only about a 30% to 50% efficiency for every dollar of tax lowering to the upper 95th percentile people in increasing their spending on consumption and demand in the US. Hence lowering taxes on the middle income bracket stimulates the economy and raising taxes on the upper incomes produces a marginally smaller effect. Job creaters boo-yah, wealth hoarders yes indeed.
We don't tax wealth in this country we tax income. A person with a high income might not have much wealth for example a doctor just out of college. We have never seized wealth in the US as a general policy and if we do then we have returned to whence we came which is King George.
Very wealthy people can reduce their income and wait out the punishment of capital and just buy more assets from the distressed middle class that is in a deep recession. The trick really is to tax all parties at a reasonable rate which will optimze economic output.
As Milton Freidman said the real tax rate is what the government spends each year and that is why we have the problems we are having. No one class of people or even all together can fund the government spending we have now.
You can balance the books with low taxes and low levels of services, as you can with high levels of taxation and services. The failure to match the two , leads to trouble, be it in Greece or the U.S. Poor Greeks trying to live the northern European without the productivity to support it were duped as much as "voodoo economics" "deficits don't matter" Americans
By the way, in all fifty states, hard to hide wealth is taxed. You can't easily hide your house and it is taxed. In some states, the residual value of your car, and boat are taxed. Since they are registered, it's an easy and cost effective means of taxation.
If you are talking about the wealthy it is not captured in their homes or cars so your point is missing the mark with respect to their material wealth is elsewhere.
We really are failures in the US (sarcasm) as we have only the largest economy in the world and create much of the world's IP but I am sure there is some socialist country thinking in the "we" that has something better.
Entitlements are for losers but we don't begrudge anyone from losing when they try. We expect some losers. We just want them to try again versus sit around and suck off the government. Losers by choice are despised and deserve it.
One call also have herpes, smallpox scars, and a gimpy leg and still have a sex life. But it doesnt help.
Supporting low tax rates is altruistic because it is for the rational good of the society. Hight tax rates harms the economy to such an extent that there are levels at which tax revenues will actually fall, and in many cases our rates are already at that Laffer curve peak or beyond. Selfish Big Govt folks want their greedy hands on other people's money - such greed is natural but not virtuous, as it is toxic to our well-being as a collective.
First, one can have a legitimate debate on the form and amount of taxing that should be done. My view is that the less done, the better. That stems from the fact that the recipients of the tax revenue don't seem to have a good track record of doing anything constructive with the proceeds (although I don't believe the government needs to tax in order to spend anyway).
Next, there is the argument that altering the tax rates on the "rich" (who already pay the lions share of the taxes anyway) will not accomplish anything, except perhaps to make those below the mean feel better.
Finally, as a soon to be recipient of Social Security, I did some calculations recently confirming that 85% of my SS income will be taxable, despite the fact that it was already taxed once. Just seems reasonable that I should not have to pay any taxes on SS income until I get a full return of my contribution.
And double finally.....until we figure out what to do about stagnant wages for the middle class, nothing we do re: tax policy will make a difference. We need to change the nature of how we educate for competitive success.
Strikes me that the middle class may be an ever shifting group of people. So the same people may not have stagnant wages but perhaps it is just a way station on to something better.
This would mean that a lot of people went from middle class to upper class and our standard of living reflects this reality.
And really who is the middle class? What are the income brackets?
I am not aware of any studies that have been done that would show what the composition and movement is between various earning groups. I wonder of the Census data would show income by age groups. You could plot the curve for the last 50 years for each age group, and watch how they move and change positions with eachother. Hey, here's a great idea....why don't you do that and put it on a instablog on SA. I could never do that and take credit for it after you came up with the idea. :-)
The data is taken from: http://bit.ly/wXxX0m
Results track the average real household income by age bracket from 1965 through 2010, using 5 quintiles of 10 years each, starting with 15-24 year olds.
Using a graph of these rusults to estimate the data, I come up with the following income shift as one "family" ages through the 5 quintiles starting from 1965 at 15-24 years old. The numbers have been adjusted by the author to consider the same basis of purchasing power in the most recent year.
15 - 24 : started at $34,000
25 - 34 : next went to $51,000
35 - 44 : next went to $69,000
45 - 54 : next went to $84,000
55 - 64 : dropped back to $79,000
over 65: dropped back to $48,000
So your comment is spot on. The average household (presumably individual as well) advances from lower incomes earlier in earning career and peaks in the mid 50's then falling back as they approach retirement and into retirement.
Interestingly, incomes in all quintiles increased up until about 2000. After which point the incomes within quintiles flattened or declined, with a single exception: the retiree category.
Interesting data. A very troubling aspect of todays economy is the high unemployment of young people. One of the criteria for moving up the salary chain, besides obviously talent, is experience.
With so may young people in their twenties unemployed, that lack of work experience will hinder their salary growth for their entire life as they will forever be behind the curve.
And, as bad as it is here, it is way worse in Europe where the unemployment rate for the under 30ish people is ca.30%.
Very interesting data and supports some economic discussions I had back in the day during college. The conclusion is that people do not stay static but move up a curve and down the other side. The other view is that the curve may be flattening a bit but it is still there. The flattening may have to do with global competition which is understandable.
What is really critical as one compares middle class from decade to decade is their standard of living. By that measure today's middle class is living large so are we fixing a problem that does not exist or are we just unhappy about someone else doing better?
"false assumption here is that consumption drives an economy": GDP is goods produced and services performed. Cash is created by selling goods and services. Our labor is not as cheap as that overseas (and won't be for some time to come), so in order to have companies make money, they have to sell to people, or sell to other firms that turn around and use that input to create something else to sell to people. If people have less cash to spend, there is less demand. Less demand = less sales AND lower prices for each widget sold. Production is done to satisfy demand for consumption.
"Wealth transfer to spur consumption only results in captial erosion": I'm not talking about existing assets, but the income stream. Personal taxes (except the death tax) do not transfer wealth that existed as of December 31 of 2 years ago, they extract a fraction of income generated in the last 12 months. Since a fraction of personal income is left over after spending over the course of the year, taxation does not reduce wealth but instead affects the rate of increase in wealth. Big, big difference. And the corrollary is, for the middle class so pinched that their wealth is actually destroyed by their expenses exceeding income each year, their buying power is reduced each year they continue this existence.
"High progressive taxes are ultimately a subsidy for big businesses": I'm only talking about taxes on an individual, not a corporation. Being self employed does present a host of interesting lines to draw in the sand between what is "owned" by the individual's business and what is owned by the individual, when it comes down to WHERE the increase in asset/wealth goes as the business cash flow comes in each year.
"We don't tax wealth in this country we tax income": Agreed. But I also claim that the annual relative percent increase in wealth depends on income PLUS capital gains from all sources, which by virtue of being wealthy and/or having a high income in the first place, makes the average percent increase in wealth much greater for persons in this category due to the fact that investments are taxed much lower than income. Again, this is talking about taxing the annual increase in wealth, whether from working or investing. It should NOT be the average trend that a person in the top 1% tends to increase their wealth each year by more than 11% while the person in the middle 50% tends to barely tread water and keep at the same level, meanwhile the amount of tax paid as a percent of that increase in wealth is far less for the person in the top 1%.
And I'm not going out on a limb to state that low income people should pay zero taxes altogether, there are may degrees of progressive taxation of income and capital gains and IMHO, there is a balance to be achieved which makes all Americans contribute something back to the government which then helps to pay for those things that government provides - goods and services.
Last but not least: Contrary to what pure "zero-government" extremists are saying, government has and continues to perform valuable services that increase the quality of life for individuals and also create infrastructure that greases the wheels of convenience and economic fairness in society. I'll give several examples:
1) Take away public schools and you will get the poor not sending their kids to ANY school as they cannot afford it.
2) Take away federal highway programs and we would have transportation bottlenecks in every rural area where the tax base is insufficient to enable roads or bridges essential to long distance transport from points far apart.
3) Take away oversight of financial firms and we would have a Lehman-like event every 6 months. We would have credit card scammers jacking interest rates to 50% on the first late payment with consumers having no recourse for enforcement. We would have new and more unstable derivatives trading leading to downfalls of the stock market monthly.
4) Take away higher education funding - both assistance to the students by way of loans and grants that at one time helped schools get started in the first place, and we would not have ANY of the state public universities that were created in the mid- to late-1800s, leaving the masses with no affordable alternative for college. Take away research funding, and we would have lost World War II and have had OUR cities decimated by a ruthless enemy that DID manage to divert research money to inventing the atom bomb. And you can forget about the likelihood that cancer treatments, heart surgery, and many medical advances would be beyond the state of advancement of the mid-1940s - much of the funding for advancements in the 20th century came from government supported grants in medicine. The list just goes on.
Keep yanking the neck pullstring though.
Let's try something smaller.
Could you have a 100% consumer economy? In other words just C of GDP, everything else is zero.
You must imagine that these people who have a lot of income are a static group sitting in their homes in the Hamptons endorsing dividend checks while cackling about their wealth. I would not assume that and as pointed out before doctors start out 100's of thousands in debt and make handsome salaries in year 1 but they are not wealthy. People in their peak earning years make a lot of cash but they support kids and are building wealth so their income is not coming from a big nest egg. Throw in half of them are divorced and that cash flow does not look so big.
The truly wealthy have a lot of capital and will just move it to where it is treated the best or shelter it in non productive ventures for a while as that will be a higher return than taking risk and getting taxed heavily on it. Good bye capital. But in the meantime you will hammer emerging wealth into oblivion and those people drive a lot of the Consumption which starts with C and rhymes with D which stands for Depression.
I don't have a problem with taxing the uber wealthy but let's hear a plan that is actually legal not showing up at their house and hanging them in the courtyard and running out with their wallets and brokerage statements. AND don't hammer emerging wealth into the stone age.
1b) Take away our government soup kitchens and the poor will starve their kids to save themselves.
Hint: You, as did the Soviets, haven't grasped the inherent advantages of the private market as goods and services provider over government-run entities.
http://bit.ly/zavELn
Keith Olberman will have none of that.
"safety regulation requires an across-the-board decline in wages..."
Tell that to the Airline Industry. When safety improved so did passenger loads as well as profits. How's that austerity working for you now, Mr. Hindenberg?
http://bit.ly/xuCVsi
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http://bit.ly/y6TKc9