Your first graph has one startling implication – that blacks are way worse off.
it also appears to show that unemployment usually continues down immediately following a rise in the minimum rate, and that the effect is more pronounced on teen blacks than the overall rate.
We could draw a graph of say, sunspot activity – and say that was responsible for the rise in unemployment? why is it because of min wage?
Artificially raising wages for unskilled workers reduces the demand for those workers at the same time that it increases the number of unskilled workers looking for work, which results in an excess supply of unskilled workers. Period. And another term for an “excess supply of unskilled workers” is an “increase in the teenage jobless rate.” Despite the wishful thinking of politicians and labor unions, the laws of supply and demand are not optional.
Debt Slave is a wake up call for all Americans to break out of the corporate control of the mainstream media
What does that mean, if you don’t endorse “corporations”?
What difference would there be if there were individual ownership of media? No difference…..so what are you complaining about here? Capitalism, or limited companies?
How would your free-market view assure diverse media ownership etc?
So what is your complaint about “corporate control of media”?
Similarly, about healthcare, you write:
In short, ObamaCare doesn’t need to set up “death panels” to make retail decisions about ending the lives of individual patients. The whole “reform” scheme is one giant death panel in its own right.
The Obamacare lemmings are begging for a crappier system that will ultimately kill them prematurely. Bizarre.
Under a market scheme, as you presumably support, then the market is “the death panel”…….a rich old man can survive severe sickness whilst poor children succumb to malnutrition etc. The market decides – unfair to suggest private medicine can supply infinite demand – it can’t – it just raises prices to reduce the effective demand. But it doesn’t actually satisfy the demand – it simply chases dollars.
What does that mean, if you don’t endorse “corporations”?
What makes you think I endorse corporations?
How would your free-market view assure diverse media ownership etc?
By eliminating the advantages some corporations have via regulation.
The market decides – unfair to suggest private medicine can supply infinite demand – it can’t – it just raises prices to reduce the effective demand.
You really don’t understand basic economics. Demand for personal computers has done nothing but grow since they were introduced, yet the price has done nothing but fall. Your argument is invalid.
You can’t use computers as an isolated example to illustrate a general point.
For one thing, computing was developed using state funding, via DoD. Turing, for example was working for the British government, in case you forgot.
Secondly, it is not a remotely comparable market. You can’t buy a little mass-produced physical gizmo made of sand to replace a worn-out heart or lung, or leg, or finger, etc etc.
On the other side, things like dentistry have become far cheaper than prior to National Healthcare, in UK, for example. Socialised healthcare has made healthcare cheaper – it is available to even the poorest, whereas computers are not. In the UK, even the poorest people have access to healthcare whereas prior to national healthcare they did not.
Your position is one that wishes to reduce costs for the wealthiest in society, by removing them from any social obligation (via taxes) to help pay for healthcare for the poorest.
Let’s be clear – you would prefer to reduce healthcare costs for those that can afford it – bankers, politicans and CEOs, for example, whilst putting healthcare out of the reach of the poor.
Private healthcare has to set aside revenue/income for distribution in profits to healthcare owners, insurance companies, etc. This is diverting revenue from healthcare to the pockets of the owners of investment capital.
disinter: What makes you think I endorse corporations?
Because you said
Debt Slave is a wake up call for all Americans to break out of the corporate control of the mainstream media
I asked several questions – open-ended – you could have addressed them already……but chose not to.
You say Americans should “break out of corporate mainstream media”.
What do you mean? Obviously you don’t seem to view “corporate media” in an especially positive light.
Why? And what is the relevance of your reference to specifically “corporate” media? What’s the problem with “corporate media” and what is the cause?
You can’t use computers as an isolated example to illustrate a general point.
That is exactly what you did with your health care argument..
For one thing, computing was developed using state funding, via DoD. Turing, for example was working for the British government, in case you forgot.
The DoD had nothing to do with the success (market-driven advances and price drops) of the PC, unless you consider how many of them they purchased for use.
On the other side, things like dentistry have become far cheaper than prior to National Healthcare, in UK, for example. Socialised healthcare has made healthcare cheaper – it is available to even the poorest, whereas computers are not. In the UK, even the poorest people have access to healthcare whereas prior to national healthcare they did not.
I believe you are confusing price controls with market-driven price changes.
Your position is one that wishes to reduce costs for the wealthiest in society, by removing them from any social obligation (via taxes) to help pay for healthcare for the poorest.
No, my position is one that wishes to reduce the costs for everybody by getting the government out of the way.
Because you said
Debt Slave is a wake up call for all Americans to break out of the corporate control of the mainstream media
How on earth do you twist that to mean I endorse corporations?
Me: You can’t use computers as an isolated example to illustrate a general point.
You: That is exactly what you did with your health care argument.
I was making a specific point about healthcare – in reference to a post you had made wherein you were trying to suggest that privatised healthcare doesn’t use the ability to pay as an effective “death panel”. Opponents of community wish to suggest socialised healthcare uses “faceless bureacrats” to decide peoples’ fates….whilst eliding the fact that privatised healthcare turns the ability to pay in into a “death panel.” With abolutely no appeal procedure, obviously. We only have so many resources, the issue is who gets them.
Yes, the point was meant to be taken more generally too, as an attack on your ideological – and imo mystical – commitment to “free markets”.
I didn’t mention the development of computing – you did.
So, ok – “you were just doing what I did”? But why only say that? What about responding to the content, not the form of the dialogue?
Address the actual points? Generally or specifically – specifically about privatised healthcare turning ability to pay into a “death panel”…..computing being developed by taxpayers via DoD….the market employing relatively far fewer blacks……and apparently minimum wage increases decreasing the gap, if fleetingly. Plus, as I say, I could draw a sunspot graph against that picture and show that decreases in sunspot activity cause a rise in minimum wage. Correlation isn’t causation. You surely know that – so why fall for it, and why suggest others should too?
How about a graph showing the relative incomes of each 10 percentile over the last years since before the New Deal, for example? You know what such graphs would show? And yet you’re complaining about relatively tiny rises in wages for the absolute poorest. This is even as you apparently take a stand on behalf of “the American people” for “liberty justice and the pursuit of happiness” and all that – and seemingly against “the powers that be”. To me it is extremely incongruous.
The DoD had nothing to do with the success (market-driven advances and price drops) of the PC, unless you consider how many of them they purchased for use.
It had nothing to do with the success of computing industry? Other than undertaking the vast majority of the investment in research and development to get it all going?
And as I say – Turing was working for the government during WW2 – Bletchley Park. The British state during that time was in a desperate position – and fighting for existence. What form did it take? Not free-market capitalism…..and so Turing’s efforts (and most everyone else’s) were part of a planned economy. Did they resort to that because it was “doomed to failure”, or because it has some very definite strengths? Obviously there are strengths – Turing’s efforts, and the cold-war development of computing were part of that (more loosely during cold war)
I believe you are confusing price controls with market-driven price changes.
Well, there’s surely no argument that dentistry is “cheaper” in UK (and across all of Europe) than prior to it being socialised. It wasn’t even available to the vast majority of people before it was socialised. Do you know private physicians were amongst the most resistant groups to the institution of the British health service? Apart from maybe education, it is the single most popular and cherished aspects of British society. And people here look enviously at continental Europe’s far better health services…..paid for by taxes, of course. And all achieved on lower per capita expenditure compared to USA, of course. Sure – you say that’s because “of government”…..yet nevertheless the American healthcare (and society) produces lower life expectancy than Europe….even lower than Cuba…with a far less socialised system. Clearly a more socialised system – such as in much of Europe – gets far better results? Sure – the average Joe in Europe doesn’t have access to healthcare that a Hollywood star would receive………but who does in America? And who would under your system? Only Hollywood and bankers would get superb treatment under your system…..just as now. Plus many millions are entirely without cover – as they are now. Plus, when Americans get ill – as anyone can – there’s little or no safety net, so illness is all the more grievous. I don’t know what price a market would put on SECURITY. What do you think it’s worth?
No, my position is one that wishes to reduce the costs for everybody by getting the government out of the way.
I don’t see how paying dividends to owners of capital reduces costs “for everybody”. It transfers capital to those whom already have plenty, from those who are sick or taking measures incase of it. Same money – just who ends up with it, and what it gets spent on is different. I think millions upon millions of people are a constituency that needs help – instead you seek to transfer all that wealth to a relatively very tiny few. Because it cuts costs? By paying over a certain profit margin to investors?
How on earth do you twist that to mean I endorse corporations?
I didn’t. Originally I asked what you meant if you didn’t support corporations. Look:
You: “Debt Slave is a wake up call for all Americans to break out of the corporate control of the mainstream media”
Me: What does that mean, if you don’t endorse “corporations”?
you’ve now said you don’t endorse corporations……….
So, what did you mean? What is it about corporations that makes “mainstream media” something Americans need to “wake up and break out of”?
You’ve earlier argued for your ideological belief in free-markets and privatisation – there’s Mises and Austria school stuff everywhere here. That’s your position – that’s clear enough. Fair enough. But you’re claiming “corporate media” is something Americans need to “wake up and break out of”. I don’t understand your position – I am asking for an explanation, that’s all.
” The latest examples of the glories of “national” (re: socialist) health care come from Britain where more than four in ten woman in labor are turned away by maternity units.
The wonderful folks running Britain’s health system have also stopped paying for drugs to treat a rare lung disease, imposing a death sentence on patients suffering from this illness and denied heart surgery to a 61 year-old grandmother because she is too old.
Good thing British health care is controlled by selfless bureaucrats and not greedy capitalists!”
Socialized medicine first appeared in Germany in 1880-81, sponsored first by the Social Democrat Party and later by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. The German Government undertook to provide free health care for all of its citizens. Over time this became more and more expensive. Finally the Government got the idea of saving money by killing those people who were expensive to treat. This was called “mercy killing” and killed about 100,000 Germans over the course of the 1930s. This killing program later expanded into what we today call the Holocaust.
Other countries imitated German socialized medicine. They all ran into the same problem (of cost), and all of them solved it in the same way. Kill those people expensive to treat. Other nations did not carry it as far as Germany. They kill people in more subtle ways. But given the absurd expenses run up by a government operated health care system, no one has ever found a way to control costs except by killing people.
In “civilized” England, for example, the waiting list for surgeries is nearly 800,000 out of a population of 55 million. State-of-the-art equipment is nonexistent in most British hospitals. In England, only 10 percent of the healthcare spending is derived from private sources.
Britain pioneered in developing kidney-dialysis technology, and yet the country has one of the lowest dialysis rates in the world.
In the United Kingdom, in the treatment of chronic kidney failure, those who are 55 years old are refused treatment at 35 percent of dialysis centers. Forty-five percent of 65-year-old patients at the centers are denied treatment, while patients 75 or older rarely receive any medical attention at these centers.
disinter: “A BRITISH Gulf War veteran pulled out 13 of his teeth with pliers when he could not find an NHS dentist.”
hehe
1 – do you seriously think there were not private dentists who would have happily seen this (formerly employed by the government) veteran?
You need to answer why this veteran found it preferable to pull his own teeth than visit a private dentist.
Now – let’s wonder why he chose his course? Because social provision is being scaled back, and he was unable to afford the costs of going private. Hardly bolsters your argument/
2 – dentistry is actually one of the most privatised parts of the health service. People are ANGRY that NHS dentistry has detriorated to the extent it has – from previously much better provision. ie it was better when it was more socialised – increased privatisation has come at the cost of social provision. And people are unhappy about it. 20 years of Thatcher’s neo-liberalism did a lot of damage…..and Tony Blair did little to overturn it – in dentistry, certainly.
I don’t see how any of that supports your position.
And where did this story come from? The Daily Mail or Telegraph, I suspect.
What were you saying about corporate media earlier?
————-
You try to turn Bismark’s supposed social healthcare into nazi euthenasia! wow. that’s desperate? Let’s just ignore Germany’s crises which helped bring about Nazism, eh? Let’s ignore Nazi brutality and ideology eh? And a world war….defeat. Let’s blame socialised healthcare! Come on, that’s absurd.
disinter: This killing program later expanded into what we today call the Holocaust.
Other countries imitated German socialized medicine. They all ran into the same problem (of cost), and all of them solved it in the same way. Kill those people expensive to treat.
Are you suggesting France and Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland are disposing of their old citizens? To save money?
Some evidence might be helpful here.
Other nations did not carry it as far as Germany. They kill people in more subtle ways.
Like letting the market decide, you mean?
Come on? You can’t have it both ways. There are only so many resources, simply privatising things does not automatically mean there is an abundance of healthcare for everyone. You seek to portray socialised healthcare as a means to kill people, whilst you completely ignore the fact that you wish to let the markets (and ability to pay) decide who gets treatment and who doesn’t, who dies and who doesn’t.
~At least be honest about it?
You won’t admit because you know it’s deeply unpopular – because it’s morally repugnant.
Just like you (and Ron Paul) don’t want to say you think Americans are overpaid.
You pretend to be outraged at bankers and social inequality, unemployment etc – but at the same time you stand as the defence and vanguard of people like “bankers”, fighting to remove any burden of taxation or regulation from them.
State-of-the-art equipment is nonexistent in most British hospitals.
How do you know this? What’s your evidence?
I think you are deeply mistaken. But nevertheless, Britain’s model is no longer the most socialised version in Europe – far from it – and it certainly isn’t the best healthcare across the board in Europe. Other nations are often much better. They usually have a higher tax-rate to go with it. See the connection there?
What price social cohesion? Community? All these things american capitalists and conservatives everywhere want to maintain – so they say. But they always wish to avoid the burden that comes with it – demands of community, demands of society, etc. Even the victorians had a notion of “enlightened self-interest”.
As for the figures from mises.org – where are they from? And let’s compare the figures with France…..and compare how privatised the UK model is, and how much less has historically been spent on health here as % of GDP, taxation levels, etc? A different tale will emerge.
disinter: Why must these psychopaths force their will on everyone else?
You say that about socialised healthcare……
but not about your free-markets and your neo-liberalism and capitalism.
why should society be forced to suffer under what you think is best?
Why shouldn’t people be allowed to implement socialised healthcare (or anything else) if they so choose?
If they choose to do so – where’s the force? On those that don’t wish to do so? Fine – but many people don’t wish to live as you seem to insist we all must. In such circumstances, it’s you whom is doing the forcing, right?
That takes us to another aspect that flows through your views – that democracy is an evil. Quite what you propose in its place I have no idea – other than some elitist authoritarian doctrinaire totalitarianism, which seems to be your drift, despite your claims to “libertarianism”.
Your first graph has one startling implication – that blacks are way worse off.
it also appears to show that unemployment usually continues down immediately following a rise in the minimum rate, and that the effect is more pronounced on teen blacks than the overall rate.
We could draw a graph of say, sunspot activity – and say that was responsible for the rise in unemployment? why is it because of min wage?
Hello U – see this:
Artificially raising wages for unskilled workers reduces the demand for those workers at the same time that it increases the number of unskilled workers looking for work, which results in an excess supply of unskilled workers. Period. And another term for an “excess supply of unskilled workers” is an “increase in the teenage jobless rate.” Despite the wishful thinking of politicians and labor unions, the laws of supply and demand are not optional.
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2010/03/minimum-wage-maximum-teenage.html
You avoided the race issues.
And now you are arguing people should have to accept low wages at whatever level……that they must accept unemployment…..
You are arguing for vast and infinite income inequality – even though you pose as critical of the social effects of such doctrine.
If you are going to take such a position, don’t pretend otherwise?
You agree with Ron Paul that “Americans are overpaid”?
Huh? Where? When?
Where do you get this stuff? When did Ron Paul ever say that?
For example, elsewhere you write:
Debt Slave is a wake up call for all Americans to break out of the corporate control of the mainstream media
What does that mean, if you don’t endorse “corporations”?
What difference would there be if there were individual ownership of media? No difference…..so what are you complaining about here? Capitalism, or limited companies?
How would your free-market view assure diverse media ownership etc?
So what is your complaint about “corporate control of media”?
Similarly, about healthcare, you write:
In short, ObamaCare doesn’t need to set up “death panels” to make retail decisions about ending the lives of individual patients. The whole “reform” scheme is one giant death panel in its own right.
The Obamacare lemmings are begging for a crappier system that will ultimately kill them prematurely. Bizarre.
Under a market scheme, as you presumably support, then the market is “the death panel”…….a rich old man can survive severe sickness whilst poor children succumb to malnutrition etc. The market decides – unfair to suggest private medicine can supply infinite demand – it can’t – it just raises prices to reduce the effective demand. But it doesn’t actually satisfy the demand – it simply chases dollars.
What makes you think I endorse corporations?
By eliminating the advantages some corporations have via regulation.
You really don’t understand basic economics. Demand for personal computers has done nothing but grow since they were introduced, yet the price has done nothing but fall. Your argument is invalid.
You can’t use computers as an isolated example to illustrate a general point.
For one thing, computing was developed using state funding, via DoD. Turing, for example was working for the British government, in case you forgot.
Secondly, it is not a remotely comparable market. You can’t buy a little mass-produced physical gizmo made of sand to replace a worn-out heart or lung, or leg, or finger, etc etc.
On the other side, things like dentistry have become far cheaper than prior to National Healthcare, in UK, for example. Socialised healthcare has made healthcare cheaper – it is available to even the poorest, whereas computers are not. In the UK, even the poorest people have access to healthcare whereas prior to national healthcare they did not.
Your position is one that wishes to reduce costs for the wealthiest in society, by removing them from any social obligation (via taxes) to help pay for healthcare for the poorest.
Let’s be clear – you would prefer to reduce healthcare costs for those that can afford it – bankers, politicans and CEOs, for example, whilst putting healthcare out of the reach of the poor.
Private healthcare has to set aside revenue/income for distribution in profits to healthcare owners, insurance companies, etc. This is diverting revenue from healthcare to the pockets of the owners of investment capital.
disinter: What makes you think I endorse corporations?
Because you said
Debt Slave is a wake up call for all Americans to break out of the corporate control of the mainstream media
I asked several questions – open-ended – you could have addressed them already……but chose not to.
You say Americans should “break out of corporate mainstream media”.
What do you mean? Obviously you don’t seem to view “corporate media” in an especially positive light.
Why? And what is the relevance of your reference to specifically “corporate” media? What’s the problem with “corporate media” and what is the cause?
That is exactly what you did with your health care argument..
The DoD had nothing to do with the success (market-driven advances and price drops) of the PC, unless you consider how many of them they purchased for use.
I believe you are confusing price controls with market-driven price changes.
No, my position is one that wishes to reduce the costs for everybody by getting the government out of the way.
How on earth do you twist that to mean I endorse corporations?
Me: You can’t use computers as an isolated example to illustrate a general point.
You: That is exactly what you did with your health care argument.
I was making a specific point about healthcare – in reference to a post you had made wherein you were trying to suggest that privatised healthcare doesn’t use the ability to pay as an effective “death panel”. Opponents of community wish to suggest socialised healthcare uses “faceless bureacrats” to decide peoples’ fates….whilst eliding the fact that privatised healthcare turns the ability to pay in into a “death panel.” With abolutely no appeal procedure, obviously. We only have so many resources, the issue is who gets them.
Yes, the point was meant to be taken more generally too, as an attack on your ideological – and imo mystical – commitment to “free markets”.
I didn’t mention the development of computing – you did.
So, ok – “you were just doing what I did”? But why only say that? What about responding to the content, not the form of the dialogue?
Address the actual points? Generally or specifically – specifically about privatised healthcare turning ability to pay into a “death panel”…..computing being developed by taxpayers via DoD….the market employing relatively far fewer blacks……and apparently minimum wage increases decreasing the gap, if fleetingly. Plus, as I say, I could draw a sunspot graph against that picture and show that decreases in sunspot activity cause a rise in minimum wage. Correlation isn’t causation. You surely know that – so why fall for it, and why suggest others should too?
How about a graph showing the relative incomes of each 10 percentile over the last years since before the New Deal, for example? You know what such graphs would show? And yet you’re complaining about relatively tiny rises in wages for the absolute poorest. This is even as you apparently take a stand on behalf of “the American people” for “liberty justice and the pursuit of happiness” and all that – and seemingly against “the powers that be”. To me it is extremely incongruous.
The DoD had nothing to do with the success (market-driven advances and price drops) of the PC, unless you consider how many of them they purchased for use.
It had nothing to do with the success of computing industry? Other than undertaking the vast majority of the investment in research and development to get it all going?
And as I say – Turing was working for the government during WW2 – Bletchley Park. The British state during that time was in a desperate position – and fighting for existence. What form did it take? Not free-market capitalism…..and so Turing’s efforts (and most everyone else’s) were part of a planned economy. Did they resort to that because it was “doomed to failure”, or because it has some very definite strengths? Obviously there are strengths – Turing’s efforts, and the cold-war development of computing were part of that (more loosely during cold war)
I believe you are confusing price controls with market-driven price changes.
Well, there’s surely no argument that dentistry is “cheaper” in UK (and across all of Europe) than prior to it being socialised. It wasn’t even available to the vast majority of people before it was socialised. Do you know private physicians were amongst the most resistant groups to the institution of the British health service? Apart from maybe education, it is the single most popular and cherished aspects of British society. And people here look enviously at continental Europe’s far better health services…..paid for by taxes, of course. And all achieved on lower per capita expenditure compared to USA, of course. Sure – you say that’s because “of government”…..yet nevertheless the American healthcare (and society) produces lower life expectancy than Europe….even lower than Cuba…with a far less socialised system. Clearly a more socialised system – such as in much of Europe – gets far better results? Sure – the average Joe in Europe doesn’t have access to healthcare that a Hollywood star would receive………but who does in America? And who would under your system? Only Hollywood and bankers would get superb treatment under your system…..just as now. Plus many millions are entirely without cover – as they are now. Plus, when Americans get ill – as anyone can – there’s little or no safety net, so illness is all the more grievous. I don’t know what price a market would put on SECURITY. What do you think it’s worth?
No, my position is one that wishes to reduce the costs for everybody by getting the government out of the way.
I don’t see how paying dividends to owners of capital reduces costs “for everybody”. It transfers capital to those whom already have plenty, from those who are sick or taking measures incase of it. Same money – just who ends up with it, and what it gets spent on is different. I think millions upon millions of people are a constituency that needs help – instead you seek to transfer all that wealth to a relatively very tiny few. Because it cuts costs? By paying over a certain profit margin to investors?
How on earth do you twist that to mean I endorse corporations?
I didn’t. Originally I asked what you meant if you didn’t support corporations. Look:
You: “Debt Slave is a wake up call for all Americans to break out of the corporate control of the mainstream media”
Me: What does that mean, if you don’t endorse “corporations”?
you’ve now said you don’t endorse corporations……….
So, what did you mean? What is it about corporations that makes “mainstream media” something Americans need to “wake up and break out of”?
You’ve earlier argued for your ideological belief in free-markets and privatisation – there’s Mises and Austria school stuff everywhere here. That’s your position – that’s clear enough. Fair enough. But you’re claiming “corporate media” is something Americans need to “wake up and break out of”. I don’t understand your position – I am asking for an explanation, that’s all.
” The latest examples of the glories of “national” (re: socialist) health care come from Britain where more than four in ten woman in labor are turned away by maternity units.
The wonderful folks running Britain’s health system have also stopped paying for drugs to treat a rare lung disease, imposing a death sentence on patients suffering from this illness and denied heart surgery to a 61 year-old grandmother because she is too old.
Good thing British health care is controlled by selfless bureaucrats and not greedy capitalists!”
“A BRITISH Gulf War veteran pulled out 13 of his teeth with pliers when he could not find an NHS dentist.”
Socialized medicine first appeared in Germany in 1880-81, sponsored first by the Social Democrat Party and later by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. The German Government undertook to provide free health care for all of its citizens. Over time this became more and more expensive. Finally the Government got the idea of saving money by killing those people who were expensive to treat. This was called “mercy killing” and killed about 100,000 Germans over the course of the 1930s. This killing program later expanded into what we today call the Holocaust.
Other countries imitated German socialized medicine. They all ran into the same problem (of cost), and all of them solved it in the same way. Kill those people expensive to treat. Other nations did not carry it as far as Germany. They kill people in more subtle ways. But given the absurd expenses run up by a government operated health care system, no one has ever found a way to control costs except by killing people.
In “civilized” England, for example, the waiting list for surgeries is nearly 800,000 out of a population of 55 million. State-of-the-art equipment is nonexistent in most British hospitals. In England, only 10 percent of the healthcare spending is derived from private sources.
Britain pioneered in developing kidney-dialysis technology, and yet the country has one of the lowest dialysis rates in the world.
In the United Kingdom, in the treatment of chronic kidney failure, those who are 55 years old are refused treatment at 35 percent of dialysis centers. Forty-five percent of 65-year-old patients at the centers are denied treatment, while patients 75 or older rarely receive any medical attention at these centers.
http://mises.org/story/3650
disinter: “A BRITISH Gulf War veteran pulled out 13 of his teeth with pliers when he could not find an NHS dentist.”
hehe
1 – do you seriously think there were not private dentists who would have happily seen this (formerly employed by the government) veteran?
You need to answer why this veteran found it preferable to pull his own teeth than visit a private dentist.
Now – let’s wonder why he chose his course? Because social provision is being scaled back, and he was unable to afford the costs of going private. Hardly bolsters your argument/
2 – dentistry is actually one of the most privatised parts of the health service. People are ANGRY that NHS dentistry has detriorated to the extent it has – from previously much better provision. ie it was better when it was more socialised – increased privatisation has come at the cost of social provision. And people are unhappy about it. 20 years of Thatcher’s neo-liberalism did a lot of damage…..and Tony Blair did little to overturn it – in dentistry, certainly.
I don’t see how any of that supports your position.
And where did this story come from? The Daily Mail or Telegraph, I suspect.
What were you saying about corporate media earlier?
————-
You try to turn Bismark’s supposed social healthcare into nazi euthenasia! wow. that’s desperate? Let’s just ignore Germany’s crises which helped bring about Nazism, eh? Let’s ignore Nazi brutality and ideology eh? And a world war….defeat. Let’s blame socialised healthcare! Come on, that’s absurd.
disinter: This killing program later expanded into what we today call the Holocaust.
Other countries imitated German socialized medicine. They all ran into the same problem (of cost), and all of them solved it in the same way. Kill those people expensive to treat.
Are you suggesting France and Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland are disposing of their old citizens? To save money?
Some evidence might be helpful here.
Other nations did not carry it as far as Germany. They kill people in more subtle ways.
Like letting the market decide, you mean?
Come on? You can’t have it both ways. There are only so many resources, simply privatising things does not automatically mean there is an abundance of healthcare for everyone. You seek to portray socialised healthcare as a means to kill people, whilst you completely ignore the fact that you wish to let the markets (and ability to pay) decide who gets treatment and who doesn’t, who dies and who doesn’t.
~At least be honest about it?
You won’t admit because you know it’s deeply unpopular – because it’s morally repugnant.
Just like you (and Ron Paul) don’t want to say you think Americans are overpaid.
You pretend to be outraged at bankers and social inequality, unemployment etc – but at the same time you stand as the defence and vanguard of people like “bankers”, fighting to remove any burden of taxation or regulation from them.
State-of-the-art equipment is nonexistent in most British hospitals.
How do you know this? What’s your evidence?
I think you are deeply mistaken. But nevertheless, Britain’s model is no longer the most socialised version in Europe – far from it – and it certainly isn’t the best healthcare across the board in Europe. Other nations are often much better. They usually have a higher tax-rate to go with it. See the connection there?
What price social cohesion? Community? All these things american capitalists and conservatives everywhere want to maintain – so they say. But they always wish to avoid the burden that comes with it – demands of community, demands of society, etc. Even the victorians had a notion of “enlightened self-interest”.
As for the figures from mises.org – where are they from? And let’s compare the figures with France…..and compare how privatised the UK model is, and how much less has historically been spent on health here as % of GDP, taxation levels, etc? A different tale will emerge.
disinter: Why must these psychopaths force their will on everyone else?
You say that about socialised healthcare……
but not about your free-markets and your neo-liberalism and capitalism.
why should society be forced to suffer under what you think is best?
Why shouldn’t people be allowed to implement socialised healthcare (or anything else) if they so choose?
If they choose to do so – where’s the force? On those that don’t wish to do so? Fine – but many people don’t wish to live as you seem to insist we all must. In such circumstances, it’s you whom is doing the forcing, right?
That takes us to another aspect that flows through your views – that democracy is an evil. Quite what you propose in its place I have no idea – other than some elitist authoritarian doctrinaire totalitarianism, which seems to be your drift, despite your claims to “libertarianism”.